Living Colour- Cult of Personality-1990 NYC

Crank this December 1990 live performance of “Cult of Personality” performed in Jimi Hendrix’s legendary Electric Lady Studio in Manhattan by favorite sons Living Colour, with the actual voice of American civil rights activist Malcolm X. Talented Vernon Reid supplies the guitar pyrotechnics and the electric bloodline revolutionized by Hendrix twenty years before Living Colour’s 1987 debut, Vivid.  The band seemed very aware that they were honoring American black history even while simultaneously making it themselves.

Props to three of my favorite co-workers Ted Utz, Dave Logan, and Tommy Nast for producing the original event.
Lyrically, Living Colour’s “Cult of Personality” is almost eerily prescient, even name-checking the Nobel Prize! As Prince said, a sign o’ the times…-Redbeard