http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zZANxW4iFnk

“Machine Gun” was first performed by popular psychedelic artist Jimi Hendrix in 1969. Though this lengthy instrumental jam session equals to roughly 10 minutes, the sparse sung lyrics of Hendrix voices his opinion on the Vietnam war. For example the lines ‘Evil man make me kill you, Evil man make you kill me’ is clearly an anti war statement that describes the duty a soldier must fulfill that might be against one’s volition.

Hendrix experiments with the use of different effect pedals, a style he was known for. In “Machine Gun” he emulates different sounds of warfare with his guitar and stomp boxes. Jimi Hendrix conveys the sound of the titular machine guns by muting his strings and ferociously strumming. Not only was Hendrix a vanguard of music, but he was also a heavy experimenter of drugs. He truly was an iconic figure that demonstrated the liberated attitude of the counter culture movement, in both his music and his life.