Given the stuff I post here at Insomnia it’s not surprising that my social media feeds and suggestions on November 27 were full of notices about Jimi Hendrix’ birthday on that day in 1942. What was surprising is that I was also alerted to lots of notices about Bruce Lee’s birthday on the same day in 1940. I had no idea these two heroes shared that special day, and a bit more snooping revealed that they both attended the same high school in Seattle. Jimi and Bruce combine to represent the perfect embodiment of the characteristics that we’ve been talking about on the Art Fight Club podcast: the fight to make great art and the great art that can inform fighting. Both were revolutionary innovators who defied artistic traditions and racial barriers to become bold and vibrant pioneers who continue to inspire and motivate artists and warriors across a spectra of disciplines.

Happy birthday, boys!

Here’s a fun fan video that rather remarkably highlights the parallels between their two paths…

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This week we celebrate the birthday of Jimi Hendrix on November 27, 1942. Here’s a post from just a few months back marking the end of the genius. The first cut is the deepest…

Over the weekend Open Culture pointed back to one of its own posts to remember Jimi Hendrix’ death in London on September 17, 1970.

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Over the weekend Open Culture pointed back to one of its own posts to remember Jimi Hendrix’ death in London on September 17, 1970.

Here are a couple of great acoustic performances with some words from Open Culture…

Solo acoustic recordings of Hendrix—film and audio—are incredibly rare. In fact, the only other footage may be the short clip above of Hendrix at a party playing a partial blues rendition of “Hound Dog.” If like me you’re a fan of Hendrix, acoustic blues, or both, these videos will make you hunger for more Jimi unplugged. While Hendrix did more than anyone before him to turn guitar amps into instruments with his squalls of electric feedback and distorted wah-wah squeals, when you strip his playing down to basics, he’s still pretty much as good as it gets.

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Rainbow Bridge is an odd little cinematic curiosity from the early 1970′s. Nowadays it’s become a cult fave with its over-the-top grooviness, New Age sensibilties and inclusion of the last footage of Jimi Hendrix shot before he died.

The Wiki has the rundown…

Rainbow Bridge is a 1971 film directed by Chuck Wein about different countercultural figures interacting on the Hawaiian island of Maui. According to author Harry Shapiro, “the idea was to shoot an antidote to Easy Rider showing the positive side of the youth movement”.[1] Wein described it as “a kind of space-age Candid Camera. We’re going to place Pat [New York model Pat Hartley, the protagonist] in all kinds of real-life situtations, and film what happens. We’re going to shoot a lot of film and just see what comes out of it”.

Filmed with non-professional actors and without a script, it features improvised scenes with a variety of characters. When it became apparent that it was floundering, producer Michael Jeffery brought in his client Jimi Hendrix to film an outdoor concert (July 30, 1970). Hendrix’s heavily edited (no complete songs) performance appears near the end of the film. Rainbow Bridge was a critical failure and has been re-released on video tape and DVD formats. Although it only contains 17 minutes of Hendrix performing, it continues to attract attention as his second-to-last American concert and the last one filmed.

Here’s Rainbow Bridge…

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This past weekend we celebrated the 45th anniversary of the Woodstock Music and Art Fair. The event was a legendary happening that’s been illuminated from so many angles, it’s hard to shed any new light on the subject. That said, it is — and always will be — a milestone in the establishment of the American counterculture after World War II, the atom bomb, the Beatniks, the 1960′s anti-war movement, the dawn of the sexual revolution and the rise of psychedelic culture.

While all of the socio-political implications of the event will always reverberate on such occasions, it’s important to remember that Woodstock was ultimately about the music.

Here are some of my favorite moments from the fest…

Crosby, Stills & Nash performed their second gig at the festival. It starts out rough with their famously out of tune guitars and vocals, but eventually settles into a legendary performance of “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes” from their hit debut album.

When I think of Woodstock, I think of Richie Havens. His nearly-three-hour performance opened the festival with the frantic energy of Havens’ rhythm guitar playing, poetic lyrics and emotive vocals, but it’s his closing tune that made him a legend and created his career. Here’s the Wiki…

Havens as a live performer earned widespread notice. His Woodstock appearance in 1969 catapulted him into stardom and was a major turning point in his career.[2] As the festival’s first performer, he held the crowd for nearly three hours. In part, Havens was told to continue playing, because many artists scheduled to perform after him were delayed in reaching the festival location with highways at a virtual standstill. He was called back for several encores. Having run out of tunes, he improvised a song based on the old spiritual Motherless Child that became Freedom. The subsequent Woodstock movie release helped Havens reach a worldwide audience. He also appeared at the Isle of Wight Festival in late August 1969.

The Band didn’t make the cut in the feature film of the concert, but their inexorable legacy and this footage of their performance of “Tears of Rage” says that they deserve a spotlight in a remembrance such as this…

The Who played a medley of their rock opera songs at the fest before leaning into this incendiary, deconstruction of their iconic hit, “My Generation.” Pete Townsend apologizes before the band kicks off the obligatory performance, but he definitely didn’t need to…

We can’t talk about Woodstock without talking about Sly & The Family Stone. Here’s Ultimate Classic Rock‘s take on their iconic performance…

Sly & the Family Stone were already stars when they took the stage at 3:30 Sunday morning. But they had recently released their first classic album, ‘Stand!,’ and were at the tightest point in their career. Their early-morning show is a bit sloppy, but the blurry-eyed delivery digs into the dirty, nasty pull of the music. Their entire 50-minute set is pretty remarkable, but the stumbling-toward-ecstasy drive of ‘I Want to Take You Higher’ is the highlight.

Jimi Hendrix’s performance of “The Star Spangled Banner” has been heard in every capturing of the event, but it remains the bullseye document of the festival’s flashpoint marriage of politics, rock, sex, drugs and what it meant to be a young American at the close of the 1960′s. May we all be patriotic enough to live up to this outrageous call for liberty, love and freedom.

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