The Star Spangled Banner ...

My future wife and I were actually at Woodstock as my loyal readers know. Crappy weather, amazing music and a vibe that will never come back, IMHO, describes how the 4 day seance went down, an experience forever etched in our minds. We left due to the weather and exhaustion and ... while being assisted by the noble Wavey Gravy and crew to push our paisley decorated 57 VW van though the mud, we heard Jimi's searing version of the National Anthem, a paean  of protest against a misguided foreign policy initiative based on a lie known as Vietnam. 

I knew that he had performed at Woodstock, that mythic experiment in living free from status-quo strictures held on a farm somewhere in New York (I tried to imagine the farms in the Wisconsin village where I lived holding such an event), and soon I was able to acquire a VHS cassette of Michael Wadleigh’s epic documentary of the festival. After all the footage of scaffold assembly, the interviews with stoned pilgrims, the endless P.A. announcements (watch out for that brown acid), the rain and mud, and the often great music, there came, near the end, footage of Jimi playing “Voodoo Child (Slight Return),” a tune I knew well, which then segued into “The Star-Spangled Banner.” 

The youth of The New Yorker's Paul Grimstad is evident here but also is his passion and knowledge of 60's music ranging from Miles and Monk to Joni and Chuck, something both telling and wonderful as he gets what the late 60's were all about. Read his entire piece, it's the right thing to do. :)