The All-American Halftime Featured an Electric Anthem Unlike Hendrix’s

Spencer Waasdorp opened Turning Point USA’s “All-American Halftime Show” with a guitar-solo rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner,” the first notes arriving as the screams of an electric guitar. The performance served as conservative counterprogramming to Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl appearance.

The rendition stood in contrast to Jimi Hendrix’s 1969 Woodstock version, in which he tuned his Fender Stratocaster to the anthem’s opening notes and sent them through psychedelic transformations, quotations of “Taps” and a final wash of feedback. Nearly 57 years later, that Woodstock moment remains astonishing and has been read as musical reclamation by the left; as Al Aronowitz wrote, “You finally heard what that song was about.” Musically, Waasdorp’s take was more conservative: despite bent notes and flashes of feedback, it largely stuck to the melody and projected a reverent, if stubborn, patriotism.

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