Famously, Jimi Hendrix closed the final slot of Woodstock in 1969. His version of The Star Spangled Banner always felt like the ultimate downer to me. The very real chaos of the arse end of the pivotal music festival. The aftermath of lost people leaving the knee-deep mud and heading back to the real world. That bigger sense of the summer of love as a distant memory, a failed dream, Vietnam and the huge sense of collective optimism giving way to harder more sobering times.
The cold hard reality hadn’t really prepared us for the state of the world in 2018. The dystopian Sci-Fi’s of my own childhood set in our current present day didn’t predict quite how much our world sucks today. The car crash that is Brexit and the red-capped freakshow that is Trump’s America…
So Bitchin Bajas captured live by a friend on the ground in Chicago performing The Star Spangled Banner feels like one of the millions of tiny pieces gathering together to redress the balance. A 13-minute modular synth reimagination of the USA as an acid dipped writhing hotbed of creativity and possibilities.
Perhaps one of the single most provocative statements of the year, without saying a single word. As much a sonic middle finger to the uptight as a psychedelically mutated symbol of the past and future…
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