Five Flavors of Dumb - Antony John [57]
Tash and Finn nodded, but I shook my head. Dad frowned, like he couldn’t believe he’d been so negligent. He walked over to the far corner of the den and began rifling through a cardboard box. Eventually he pulled out a few LPs, and a DVD.
He handed me the LPs to look at while he put on the DVD. They had cool covers too. The title of one—Are You Experienced —was written in a kind of psychedelic bubble lettering, wrapped under a photo of three guys in flamboyant outfits (aka: the Jimi Hendrix Experience). Apart from Tash, I’d never personally known anyone who could get away with wearing such outrageous clothes, and it made me feel kind of envious.
When I’d cycled through the LP covers, I realized that Dad was still kneeling in front of the DVD player, transfixed, unable to contemplate the long journey back to his armchair. So I watched the TV too, where the real Jimi Hendrix had taken center stage, presumably live at Woodstock. He wore bell-bottom jeans and a white jacket with tassels, topped off with a red bandana. He should have looked funny, but instead he just looked incredibly cool.
Dad spun around. “Listen to this,” he told me, his hands shaking with excitement.
I could have pointed out that what he was asking was difficult, to say the least, but I just wanted to hang out with this new Ryan Vaughan for a little longer, so I nodded. I wondered if Mom ever saw the version of Dad that emerged during his date nights with Jimi.
Jimi was playing solo now, the crowd cheering wildly. I studied his hands, but the noise coming from the old speakers beside the TV meant nothing to me, gave no hint of the music emerging from his guitar. I’d contented myself with watching Dad instead, when I thought I caught a few notes of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” It couldn’t have been that, of course, not at Woodstock, but then I recognized a little more of the national anthem. Dad lowered the volume, turned to me and smiled.
“Can you believe it?” he asked, his words clear and slow, like he really needed me to understand. “To do an improvisation on ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ at that time, in that place. . . . Hendrix always said he thought it just sounded nice, but it was during the Vietnam War, and his improvisation was so tortured. His guitar spoke for a generation that day.”
Finn had stopped looking at the TV now, and his eyes were fixed on Dad instead. Dad was changing before our eyes, and I’m not sure either of us knew what to make of it.
Eventually Dad shrugged, smiled, and turned the volume back up, communing with Jimi once again. The music became denser, fuzzier, but knowing what he was playing helped me. And because it mattered so much to Dad, I concentrated as hard as I could on Jimi and his guitar, as they sang, scratched, and clawed their way through “The Star-Spangled Banner” like it was part patriotic hymn, part heartrending cry. He seemed to sculpt the sound with his bare hands, pulling and shivering a lever, prolonging the agony or ecstasy or whatever was coming out of the instrument at that moment. And although I couldn’t make out most of what he did, I could tell by the faces of the crowd, and the faces of Finn, Tash, and Dad, that what he was doing was utterly compelling, and positively transcendent.
As suddenly as it began, the improvisation ended. The whole band rejoined their leader, and the crowd drifted back toward insanity. Immediately Tash unzipped her guitar case and pulled out her guitar, and Finn did the same. Dad grabbed the remote and raised the volume until the speakers rocked on their stands and the walls began to shake. He leaned back and laughed with delight as Tash and Finn jumped up and down on the spot, strumming their unplugged guitars. Then he joined them, and suddenly there was a trio of Hendrix impersonators, egging each other on to ever greater feats of imaginary dexterity. For the first time I saw Tash laughing out loud, basking in her own personal heaven. And Finn was right