Treble squeals peel from his freaked out solo; his teeth savagely lash at the strings as he zips back into the theme. But it's too extreme, he breaks a string and must hold a note in sustain while a roadie quickly plugs in another guitar. "Thankyou for waitin'! Thankyou," he shouts as Purple surges on. Regaining authority, he finishes off with wild stringus-cunnilingus, licking and flicking his instrument as passionate approval explodes in the field house.

"Thankyou very much. We have Billy Cox on bass, Mitch on drums," Jimi and the band leave the stage amidst chants for more. They return for their "rare encore" and go right into Voodoo Child - which is normally their closing song anyway. Jill's tape runs out during the solo. This second show runs for approximately 70 minutes and contains monumental musical peaks.

Mick looks at Jill sitting on the sofa next to him. She's reading an oversized book by Edward S. Curtis titled Visions of a Vanishing Race. "Whatcha readin' about?" he asks.

"Indian legends." She closes the book and sets it beside her. "There's an American Indian prophecy that predicts one will come among them who will plead their case before the white man and all around him will be chaos."

"Is that Jimi?"

"He fits the bill, but Jimi really relates to all oppressed people."

Mick pauses briefly then asks, "Do you hafta go back to Oklahoma after the summer?"

"I have one more year before I get my degree." She looks down at her book and adds, "But I'd really like to do something to help stop the war if I can."

Mick stands and glances out the window just as the street lamps light up in the twilight, "I'd like to bomb the Pentagon! But if I'm not home before dark I'll get grounded."

Jill laughs and walks him to the door. "Tell Mary I'll stop by tomorrow." Mick thanks her for the music and hops on his bike. He's anxious to meet Lane at school tomorrow and tell him about Jimi's special concert in Oklahoma.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

Malcolm and Cliff take their last exam of the semester on Friday afternoon. Gates open at 1 pm. tomorrow for the rock festival in Philadelphia so they plan to leave after dinner for a nearly 400 mile drive south. Cliff packs his father's movie camera and swings by to pick up Malcolm at half past six. Mrs. Tent opens the door and he hears Malcolm, Millie and Lane jeering Evening News reports of more deadly campus violence. This time state troopers and city police have gunned down 11 black students at Jackson State College in Mississippi.

Mississippi. Again.

The trouble began two nights earlier when a white activist passed out leaflets urging protest against Nixon's invasion of Cambodia. Many students at Jackson State were charging that too many blacks were being sent to Vietnam immediately after they graduated. On Thursday night police received complaints about rocks being thrown at cars passing along Lynch Street, which bisects the campus. Seventy-five cops and troopers, carrying loaded shotguns and rifles, were sent over to Lynch. Kent State had signaled open season on students and rednecks were ready for the hunt. They found a small pile of burning boards at the edge of the campus and called in a fire truck to extinguish it. The only gathering this posse encountered was a crowd of about 200 students clustered in front of a girls' dormitory. The group was under the control of campus security officers, none of the students bore any firearms. They watched the fire trucks parked two blocks away. When the trucks moved into the area, a police radio blared "sniper fire!"

The Dormitory on Lynch Street

Fire Captain George Selby, who was on the fire truck, later recalled, "We did have a few marks on the truck, but these may be from rocks that were thrown at it on the way out." The posse lined up execution style in front of the girls' dorm. No tear gas was used and no warnings were given. TV reporter Jack Hobbs said, "All of a sudden a bottle shattered at my feet." The trigger happy pigs immediately opened fire for 30 seconds and discharged several hundred rounds into the crowd of unarmed spectators. They fired .00 buckshot - enough to kill a deer at 100 yards. Seventeen year old James Green and 21 year old Phillip Gibb fell dead; nine others were critically wounded - all of them black.

Cops claimed that they'd taken a sniper shot from the dormitory before they fired. The students maintained that no shot was fired before the police attack. A group of Senators and Congressmen inspected the bullet riddled building several days later. "It looks like Normandy, the size of the weapons." said one of them.

"Like Normandy" - Bullet Riddled

Senator Walter Mondale stated, "It's a new national syndrome - the unfound sniper. Every time there's an overreaction, that unfound sniper always gets the blame." It was this "syndrome" that allowed radical cops to perform legal homicide; again, none of the murderers were ever brought to justice.

Many campuses had already shut down after Kent State. Those that were still open were at the tail end of their semesters on Friday, May 15th. The killings at Jackson State became a national issue, but reaction was less dramatic and headline grabbing than the reaction to Kent State eleven days earlier. Black Panthers had become infamous for sniping at cops in city ghettos. Much of the public regarded Jackson State as another shootout between black militants and cops. Violence among young blacks was commonplace, even expected. What made the Jackson State killings notorious was that they occurred in the wake of Kent State at another campus. It was the deadly encounter between middle class white students and troops in Ohio that was uncommon and focused widespread outrage. Cops killing protesters is like the spread of heroin; it becames a hot media issue only when it affects middle class whites, even though such violence has terrorized black ghettos for decades. For those who related the fight to stop the war with the fight against racism, the murders in Mississippi only inflamed already intense anger. The 1969-1970 school year saw a wave of 250 terrorist bombings, at least 9 student deaths, and 247 cases of arson. In New York City alone, during the first ten months of 1970, police investigated more than 8700 bombing cases; up from 3192 cases for the entire year of 1969.

Jack watchs TV reports about Jackson State from the dinner table and sneers, "All them radical niggers oughtta git the firing squad."

"This'll teach these college brats to stop making trouble for the government," hopes Mary.

"They'll never learn," adds Jack, "they're too dumb to get educated in high school, that's why they gotta keep goin' to college, heh-heh-heh."

Mick swallows a fish stick and pretends to ignore them. He thinks about how they never eat meat on Friday because Jesus supposedly died on a Friday. Then at Mass on Sunday they swallow make-believe "body of Christ" cookies and claim the snack drives away evil spirits. The whole klan is as crazy as cannibals who won't eat a killing on weekly anniversaries of its death. Mick flees upstairs and turns on Clyde's radio. He feels uplifted as he hears Melanie's new song, Lay Down (candles in the rain).

* * * * * * * * * * * *

The next day Malcolm and Cliff are among the first people to enter Temple Stadium in Philadelphia (exactly 15 years later Temple Stadium would be used to house the thousands of blacks made homeless after Philadelphia cops bombed a commune called "the Move" and caused several whole blocks of the ghetto to burn to the ground). Billed as the "Super Saturday Rock Festival", Temple Stadium has the distinction of being the first "rock festival" of 1970. With the Woodstock movie and album a current hit, festivals are now the rage of the counterculture more than ever before. Any outdoor concert with four or more bands is likely to be called a festival. Super Saturday may be a one day affair in a university football stadium, but it is outdoors and it does feature Jimi Hendrix and the Grateful Dead - both of whom are veterans of Woodstock.

The sky is heavily overcast and temperatures hovere in the 60s. Malcolm and Cliff sit on their sleeping bags directly in front of the stage. Malcolm looks up at the threatening dark clouds and says, "I hope it doesn't rain."

"If it does it'll be like Woodstock," muses Cliff.

"At least we're not in a cow pasture."

Cactus opens the show at 3 pm. A couple of the band members used to be in Vanilla Fudge when they toured with the Experience in the summer and fall of 1968. Next came the Ides Of March to sing their current hit Vehicle. They sound like Chicago Transit Authority. When the Grateful Dead appear in the late afternoon, Cliff points his movie camera at a beardless Jerry Garcia and then turns it to film some tripping freex around the stage. Night has fallen by the time left-handed Steve Miller comes on stage with an upside-down Strat. Cliff catches a few seconds of Miller for the novelty of his Hendrix-style guitar.

Star Spangled Jimi

Finally Jimi strolls out onto the dark stage. The lights are dim and it's difficult for people to see him clearly from any distance. Cliff rolls his camera as a strobe of flashbulbs light up Jimi's shimmering gold sequin vest and star spangled shirt. Multi colored scarves droop beside his turquoise bellbottoms and a pink feather is tucked in his red and white polka-dot headband. He looks like a stoned Geronimo on the warpath. Yesterday's killings at Jackson State fill his voice with anger as he complains, "DRAG that America's guns have made the CRACK in the Liberty Bell their symbol (the Liberty Bell is nearby in Philadelphia). And we'd like to do a thing called Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band." This tune is not mentioned in any of Jimi's concert reviews after March 1968 and only two recordings of Hendrix playing it in 1970 have been found. A drum roll from Mitch kicks off the set as Jimi sings just the first four verses before stretching out with 24 bars of soloing. The mammoth blast of the band comes to rest on a booming E-chord and Jimi slashes straight into Johnny B. Goode. After two bars he realizes he's in the wrong key and quickly jumps up a whole step from A to B and starts again. Only three versions of this Chuck Berry classic have turned up on the 120 known Hendrix concert recordings, although Johnny B. Goode is mentioned in a few reviews of other unrecorded shows. The song is a standard number at Grateful Dead concerts in 1970, but the intense energy with which Jimi pumps it up here bears little resemblance to the Dead's version. Demonic throb propels Billy's earthquake bass. Jimi's riffs sizzle from the amps as if his fingers were flame throwers slithering over the strings. Freeks scream under the onslaught; it's rock 'n roll in the grandest tradition and Jimi tops the bill.

Now the crowd is primed for Hendrix to take to task the issue at hand. "And then we have the American Revolution," he blurts, "which is in the third and last phase, fake love for the, ah, LIE people who sold their faith, which will take care of that one (riffs). Like to do a thing in memory to all the cats that spilled a little bit of blood here and there in their lives and everything; the people who just didn't make it, but they did, really, because like they're makin' it for us and we're gonna make it for somebody else, for our children and so forth."

"Right on!" shouts Cliff.

"Dig him, dig him, all together, right on together! There's a whole lotta cats fightin' wars within themselves, so then we can relate it like any kind of way. A thing called Machine Gun." A collective "YEAH!" greets the anthem of the day. Jimi trills three notes faster and fast and tumbles through somber mood. He does not play with meditative pathos like he did in Oklahoma a week ago. Yesterday's student murders in Mississippi have the Temple University students riled. Jimi reflects their aggression and tears out turgid and scathing mayhem. He pushes his leads to insane extremes out of sheer indignation. The amps expel a torrent of hostile howls before he concludes with a bizarre cacophony of distortion. Abruptly, he shuts down the tumult. There is silence as the freaked-out crowd is caught unaware by the surprise ending; a full 10 seconds pass before their blown heads can muster a response. With their recovery, Jimi mercifully shifts back to rock 'n' roll. The shattered composure of Grateful Dead fans is regained during a danceable rendition of Lover Man. A swirling ending spews shockwaves as if an electrical storm had descended upon the stage. Then Foxy Lady swells from the black Strat. Just before he sings, Jimi stretches the strings for a freaky descent of feedback. Cliff films him nipping the instrument with his lips and balling the neck against the mike stand. The crowd is ecstatic, this concert is already legendary.

Geronimo Warpath Feather
in Headband

With a few mumbled words Jimi "pleads the case" amidst national chaos and boogies appropriately into Freedom. The band banters through a carnival of urgency. Red House comes next and Hendrix relaxes for the first time since the show began. He drawls his lyrics leisurely in between metallic clips of blues. Careening over the bended strings, he tilts and sways with the waves. It's not an epic version of Red House, it's just flawless and sufficient. Fire flares next and he extends his solo to include melodies from Outside Woman Blues mixed with snatches of Sunshine of Your Love. Stinging sweet leads extinguish this number.

"This cat's waitin' at the train station called Get My Heart Back Together," says Jimi. His mysterious blues attain enhanced sadness through the Univibe pedal's liquid pulse effect. Perhaps it's too sad because Jimi soon lapses into perfunctory riffing and Hear My Train fails to really roll in Temple Stadium. It runs an abbreviated course and prematurely lops into Purple Haze. Jimi begins with bloated guitar tones, but the band keeps the beat intact. He's lost the intensity and drive that propelled the first half of the show. Purple Haze unfolds seamlessly but struggles to gather the head of steam that usually bursts into dizzying climax. Instead, Jimi quietly winds down to doodle a delicate bridge leading into Voodoo Child (slight return). Suddenly a star spangled Hendrix returns to bubble with funk and blue notes. This show is driven out with determined vigor as a weird string of bitten tones brings down the house. Jimi waves goodbye to his adoring fans and the stadium lights come on.

Back in Rochester the next day, Malcolm draws the curtains in his attic bedroom so that just a sliver a sunlight seeps in around the edges. "There, now it's threaded," mutters Cliff as he fidgets with the 8mm projector. He flips the switch and a white square illuminates the bed sheet tacked to the wall. Scenes of the Grateful Dead at Temple Stadium appear. From the front row Cliff's camera pans the smiling band members before the angle turns to capture a freek in the crowd waving a sparkler against the clouds. Suddenly the screen goes dark and Steve Miller is seen briefly with his inverted Hendrix-style Strat. After Jimi died, Miller recalled this concert. "I played a show with Hendrix at Temple University in Philadelphia," he told a journalist, "and at that time the cat's scene was so far gone that he walked by me and smelled like he was dying. There were cats walking around with .38s in their pockets, his band was fucked up and couldn't play. I'm sorry that the cat died. I loved him as a musician and I'm sorry that the audience encourages people to burn themselves up, and I'm sorry that he didn't have anymore sense than he had, because he was dead a long time ago." Anyone who hears the Hendrix recording from Temple Stadium will understand why Miller's characterization of Jimi's set there is absurd. The collected Hendrix concert recordings reveal that Jimi, far from being "so far gone…couldn't play…dead a long time ago", was instead delivering his finest live music throughout the spring of 1970, including the show at Temple. Upon hearing the tape, one is left wondering who really was "fucked up" that night. Perhaps Steve Miller - with his upside-down Hendrix-style Strat - had some other compelling reason to dismiss what he witnessed that night.

Cliff's film shows popping flashbulbs strobe Jimi's image, revealing him sprinkled with stars and scarves, his sequin vest glitters like a Christmas tree. Pink, orange, red and blue outlines penetrate the dim dark as he straddles the black Strat. If there'd been a spotlight on him the scene would be spectacular. The camera zooms in for Jimi's rap to the crowd and then catches the ending of Foxy Lady; the guitar neck is slid across the mic stand as he exhales forward to expose his headband's pink feather sticking out over his right shoulder. Mick is awed by every frame of the three and a half minute film. Home movies of aliens from space couldn't have fascinated him more…

Walking home from school on a muggy afternoon in June, Mick passed the Mason's house and saw Jill reading on a porch chair. He plods up the driveway and asks, "Whatcha readin'?" She holds up the cover of Aldous Huxley's Brave New World for him to see. An envelope is inserted like a bookmarker between the pages. "My roommate at OU saw Jimi in her hometown. I got a letter from her today. She said it was a great show, but she lives in Tulsa, Oklahoma," Jill explains. "Tulsa used to be the oil capital of the world. But the oil was on Indian reservations so politicians had to get judges to declare the Indians crazy and take away their land. No one likes to talk about Indians in Tulsa." She pulled an article out of her envelop and gave it to Mick. He winced when he saw the headline, "Hendrix Loud Noise Not Very Appealing". This Tulsa Daily World article is written by Bob Beck:

The Jimi Hendrix Experience hit Tulsa Sunday night (June 7th), something the city could have done without. The best description of the show - Hendrix on guitar, Mitch Mitchell on drums, and Billy Cox on bass - is that it was a bad experience. That may sound like a pun, but it is the nicest thing to be said for the hour and a half of noise that blared from the Civic Assembly Center Arena and entranced 4700 teenagers. Not that the entire show was a waste. The lead-in group, Ball & Jack from Los Angeles, exhibited some real talent…About the only complaint with Ball & Jack's performance was that it was much too good to be given only 45 minutes to lead into the Hendrix group.

To say Hendrix & Co. do not have any talent is misleading. Cox and Mitchell are good backup men and probably could put out some good sounds, except that leader Hendrix distracts from them with his attempted playing and singing. His wild gyrations and contortive playing are the most obnoxious, but his singing, which unfortunately could be heard above the noise, is a close second. To make up for his lack of quality, he substitutes quantity and trick guitar playing. It may not have occurred to the average person, but the guitar can be played by mouth, between legs, behind the head and back, or by rubbing it against a microphone stand. The resulting sound didn't resemble good music, but it did get wild responses from the audience, none of whom would probably be able to vote if the voting age were 18.

The first few numbers were bad enough, but when Hendrix started into a rendition of the Star Spangled Banner, complete with electronically produced sound effects such as bombs exploding and machine guns firing, the show reached a low point from which it never recovered. By this time the audience was on its feet, dancing in the aisles and chairs. The police gave up trying to seat the swaying, rocking crowd and formed a living fence to keep the stage cleared of everything but the performers. They had the wrong idea; things would have been better if the audience had been on stage - their dancing was more entertaining.

An advance publicity release said that "when people go to (a Hendrix) concert they begin to let their minds flow...they begin to feel the primitive sounds that Jimi produces from his guitar." One can only hope that the primitives had better taste in music.

* * * * * * * * * * * *

Mick hands the article back to Jill. "Asking this guy to review Hendrix is like asking Hitler for his opinion of Jewish art," she notes.

"Malcolm says Jimi doesn't do tricks with his guitar unless he's really getting the music together," Mick tells her.

"It doesn't matter how together his concerts are," Jill replies with a sigh. "He's a symbol of the freex, that's all the establishment needs to know." She pulls out a cassette of the Tulsa gig that her roommate sent. Mick listens to Jimi and nearly gags, the music sounds so beautiful…