H-E-N-D-R-I-X: Electrifying Moxie 50 years later

The strangest summer season in my memory has drawn to a close.

I’ve spent recent summers sweating it out at Louisville’s music festivals, interviewing bands and soaking in the scene. I’ve spent this summer looking back with a strong sense of nostalgia, and longing for the opportunity to do it all again.

I wonder if when we do gather again to celebrate great music we’ll witness one of those transcendent, powerful, history-making moments when an artist offers up a breakthrough performance that turns the whole event into a cultural touchstone. Like Woodstock, or Glastonbury, or Monterey.

Jimi Hendrix offered up several of those moments. Like the time he set his guitar literally ablaze on the stage of the Monterey Pop Festival. Or the time he gloriously shredded the Star Spangled Banner at Woodstock, capturing perhaps the most perfect expression of America from that tumultuous era.

Hendrix undoubtedly had many more history-making performances left in him when he departed this life fifty years ago this week. Like many of his era, he had more than a passing interested in illicit drugs and he succumbed to an accidental…