modmove: Entertainment & Popular Culture in Review

Hendrix in the West
Jimi Hendrix
Growing up in the seventies had its good and bad points. One good point, the release of albums like Hendrix In The West, a 1972 posthumous release originally available as either 8-track or album only. My copy was cartridge so it was on non-stop play but only after you wedged a matchbook cover in just right to get rid of the rumble. It helped form an important part of the soundtrack of my misspent youth.

As for bad points, we were outright hooligans and almost always got away with it. Our behavior, which would today probably land us in jail, was accepted then as just quant nonsense from over enthused lads. That point was never better illustrated than by this one afternoon. A friend, let’s just call him Mr. B. drove by to show us some new high performance parts he installed on his truck. He said Let’s go for a spin, so I grabbed the Jimi tape and hopped in.

As we drove, the first couple of tracks got the right foot down only for things to go back under the speed limit when the track Little Wing kicked in. After that it was pedal to the metal. Traffic laws? We don’t need no stinking traffic laws! By the time we got to the screaming covers of Chuck Berry’s Johnny B. Goode and Carl Perkins’ Blue Suede Shoes Mr. B’s accelerator foot was out of control. We ran out of petrol way before tunes and stopped at a servo to fill up.

As Mr. B was leaving the station, he was so amped from the music, he floored it and we smoked our way out of the station into traffic, almost. Halfway trough the burnout, the drive shaft broke, spun itself loose and dug into the asphalt. I was soon staring straight down at the lines on the road as the rear of the truck drove over the broken driveshaft and got flicked into the air. The motor over revved wildly just before the back of the car slammed back down to earth. Ouch! What a shot to the spine. It was extremely dangerous and stupid but we could have cared less.

In the end, I don’t know which hurt more, Mr. B’s pocketbook, our sides from laughing or my back from the jolt it sustained. A lesson wasn’t learned. Oh and if you’re interested, the Jimi 8-track made it through the ordeal unscathed and even lasted a few more years, right up until the time the cassette tape took over but then that is another story for another time.
Seventies Simon