'A documentary report on the current psychedelic drug controversy!'....it says on the cover.I dunno whether this docu-album was conceived,to spread fear about LSD or promote it? Certainly to cash in a little at least.It was recorded and assembled by Capitol Records to,allegedly, strive to achieve a balanced, creditable report on LSD use. The descriptions,and recordings of,so-called, 'Bum Trips', and the photographs that include a young lady looking longingly out of a window while 'tripping' suggests this is a subtle attempt to counter the counter-culture claims of the benefits of acid.
Despite the images undeniably chosen to portray the fad as a kind of 'Madness', the reality is that the narrator is as square as the kids themselves.With certain exceptions, drugs in general open the down escalators of perception for the naturally unenlightened,people without a clue how to do anything off the straight and narrow.The extent of their trips were more or less akin to a chemical fairground ride.......'Groovy, look at the colours in that painting,its like its melting....like...I mean wow!'......wow indeed.Now you can be as square as you were before, but with added chances of paranoid schizophrenia to impress your friends with.
Its all quite quaint and dated of course.And the wide-eyed enthusiasm of some of the 'teenagers' interviewed is charming.
Awwwwww she's on LSD bless her little cotten socks.
Naturally, there are the obligatory appearances of Dr Timothy Leary, and Alan Ginsberg,with merry prankster Neal Cassady and the Greatful Dead(as spelt in the handy glossary on the sleeve)providing the music,backed up with their victims, some tripping teenagers. What a bum trip daddio.
Tracklist:
A The Scene
B The Trip
Like a hippie version of Steven Kings 'It', Hugh Romney, better know as Wavy Gravy from the Merry Pranksters bus, has been spreading the same kind of redundant Hippie humour since this affront to taste began.
One thing I found more creepy more frightening and not at all funny than Hippies when i was a boy, were Clowns! And Wavy Gravy would have been my ultimate choice for the movie role of 'Pennywise', the evil clown from the aforementioned schlock horror novel,'It'.
Just the tiresome Psychedelic humour is enough to send me screaming into the street begging the nearest policeman to take me into protective custody.
Yeah, there are some obvious anti-social aspects to his routine that one can't disagree with,but who cares what 'I' agree with, I don't!
The title of the album is nonetheless quite accurate,the last thirty years of the 20th century in fact were exactly like the sixties.Full of right on rhetoric about a non-existent rebellion,of the mind if not with direct action.But, the enlightened new breed still carried on feeding the consumer machine,and pushed priorites like the enironment back behind job prospects,'partying' and nice stuff for the house.
Someone else can do it, and that is never gonna change.
He may be a creepy clown, but Wavy Davy has kept some kind of faith in what he says,even if he is stuck in an eternal childhood,even in his eighties.
And why not?
Tracklist:
1 The Green Acid At Woodstock 2:32
2 The United States Of Chicago 1:24
3 Nobody For President (A Casual Conversation With The Audience While Putting On My Clown Makeup) 4:20
4 Livermore Or Less / The Mutant Bunny For Peace 3:46
5 Bubbles For Buddah 2:45
6 Harpo's Ladder 5:39
7 How Hugh Romney Became Wavy Gravy And A Tiny Tip Of Texas Went To Heaven 7:38
8 Basic Human Needs 6:47
9 The Perfect High 10:35
Hey cats,Dig Those Crazy Beatniks getting off their tits dude. A psychedelically painted school bus full of middle class drop outs ,pseudo intellectuals,and proto-psych muso's try to outdo each other for 'crazy' weirdness maaaan,on a trip,both chemically and physically,around the posher parts of the US of A.
The music ,mainly by the nascent Grateful Dead, is mostly dreadful.....The Dreadful Dead.
Sounding like a really bad version of The Banana Splits,but with less depth.
Lots of crap white boy blues riffs and rock'n'rooooolllllll maaaaaan. They sound like a right bunch of hipiddy-doody twats on a trustfund cop out mission to make everyone they meet as pointless as they were. Personal freedom maaaan.......i notice they were free enough to do a drug fuelled trip around the USA.Maybe if they'd have done it in East Germany,or through Africa handing out food rather than LSD there would have been a worthwhile point to all this spoilt brat Counter Culture posing.
The Merry Pranksters, like a 1950's university fraternity reunion, are less annoying than Gerry Garcia's psychedelic cheerleaders.
They tend to use the word 'Rap' a lot,which was 'hip' talk for talking for the Beat generation. The spoken word sections and the tape collages are a better recreation of what it was like to be out of your skull on the Acid Tests of 1966.It is also an accurate portrayal of what a pain in the arse it is to around some idiot off his tits on drugs.There is no more boring a person than a person on any class A,or class B for that matter, drug.Alcohol is also included in this observation.
Just imagine being stuck on a bus with thirty or so of them quaffing jug loads of LSD.You'd be well advised to join them or be bored shitless.
Anyway, here's 6cd's worth of the recordings made during the Acid Tests of 1966.If you like bad blues riffs, 'poets' talking through echoplex tape effects,oscillator twiddling, and interviews with some trustafarian psychedelic narcisists,then this is for you.You can almost feel that you were there,even if you're glad you weren't.
Artists huh?
Tracklisting:
Disc 1:The Fillmore Acid Test,
Fillmore Auditorium, San Francisco, CA
January 8, 1966
1. Stage Chaos/More Power Rap
2. King Bee
3. I'm A Hog For You Baby
4. Caution: Do Not Step On Tracks >
5. Death Don't Have No Mercy
6. Star Spangled Banner / closing remarks
Disc 2:
The Pico Acid Test,
Danish Center, Los Angeles, CA
March 12, 1966
1. Viola Lee Blues
2. You See A Broken Heart
3. In The Midnight Hour
[mis-dated, according to David Lemieux, and not corresponding to the vault copy's setlist; these are probably from 3/19/1966]
The San Francisco State Acid Test,
Whatever It Is Festival
San Francisco State University, San Francisco, CA
Stereo Control Room Master (rec. 4:00AM - 6:00AM)
October 2, 1966
4. The Head Has Become Fat Rap
5. A Mexican Story: 25 Bennies
6. A Tarnished Galahad
7. Get It Off The Ground Rap >
8. It's Good To Be God Rap >
9. Nirvana Army Rap >
10. The Butcher Is Back
11. Acid Test Graduation Announcement
12. Send Me To The Moon >Closing Rap
Credits on 10/2/66:
Voices: Ken Kesey and Hugh Romney
Guitar: Ken Kesey
Violin: Dale Kesey
Organ: Jerry Garcia
Engineering: Steve Newman, Ken Kesey, Mountain Girl
Disc 3:
The San Francisco State Acid Test
Whatever It Is Festival
San Francisco State University, San Francisco, CA
October 2, 1966
1. Ken Kesey's dialogue (isolated remix)
Merry Prankster Sound Collage Sequences
October 2, 1966
2. Prankster Music/Sound Collage #1(sequence 1)
3. Kesey Rap > Prankster Music/Sound Collage #2 (sequence 2)
4. Prankster Sound Collage #3 > Prankster Raga(sequence 3)
Prankster Recordings broadcast over the P.A.
End of Whatever It Is Festival,
October 2, 1966
5. Closing Jam
6. Prankster Electronics
Acid Test Graduation Jam,
Winterland, San Francisco, CA
October 31, 1966
7. Jam Session (musicians unknown)
from The World Of Acid film soundtrack
Disc 4:
Related Recordings,
Neal Cassady & The Warlocks 1965
1. Speed Limit
studio recording/Prankster production tape circa late 1965
Straight Theater, Haight Street, San Francisco, CA July 23, 1967
2. Neal Cassady Raps (backed by The Dead)
recording released as a flexi-disc in the 1st printing of The Dead Book
Acid Tests Production Reel
3. Jerry Garcia commentary with Acid Test audio
710 Haight Street House, San Francisco, CA summer 1967
4. - 6. Jerry Garcia
one hour interview about music, drugs, politics and social changes circa 1967
Disc 5:
1. Who Cares Rap (Pigpen, Weir, etc.)
2. Viola Lee Blues
3. One Kind Favor
4. I Know you Rider
5. You See a Broken Heart
6. It's a Sin
7. Beat It on Down the Line
8. Heads up
9. Next Time You See Me
10. Unknown Blues Instrumental
11. Death Don't Have no Mercy
12. Midnight Hour
Disc 6:
San Francisco State Acid Test (alternate version)
1. Jerry Garcia Intro
2. A Mexican Story: 25 Bennies
3. Get it off the Ground Rap
4. It's Good to be God Rap
5. Nirvana Army Rap
6. The Butcher Is Back
7. Acid Test Graduation Announcement
8. Send me to the Moon
9. Jerry Garcia interview
10. Sound Collage
11. Ken Kesey Interview
12. Sound Collage #2
13. Jerry Garcia Interview
If a bridge from the Beatniks to the Hippie Era existed, it was Ken Kesey and his band of 'Merry Pranksters', who travelled the west coast in a psychedelic school bus called 'Further' dishing out LSD to those they encountered. This was called the Acid Test.
Kesey was better known as the author of "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest",among other,lesser, works.
The nascent Grateful Dead,or the Warlocks as they were first known,or The Dreadful Dead as I prefer to call them, were frequently seen at the various venues for the Acid Tests, and contribute some extra drugged up nonsense to this recording of Ken's Gibberish, with BFF, Ken Babbs, adding more unhinged lunacy as resident 'Non-Artist'.
Kesey,like all self-promoting Artist types, wanted to see what would happen when hallucinogenic-inspired spontaneity confronted what he saw as the banality and conformity of American society.Predictably, lots of arrests and middle class outrage was the result, which, contrarily, led to LSD being banned in late 1966.Little did Kesey realise,or maybe this was the underlying metaphor that most artists seem to strive for, that he was creating another form of conformity and banality in the rich kids playground called the counter culture of the mid-1960's.There really is nothing more banal than a drugged up idiot who thinks he's pushing the boundaries,but in reality is just another drugged up idiot who,apparently, doesn't need to work to feed himself,or pay for the drugs needed to extend his realm of idiocy further.
Yeah, they obviously had 'fun', but don't read too much more into it than that.The adolescent challenge to conformist society was already happening,it just didn't have a name,or a semi-celebrity benefactor,all done in the name of 'art'.Most of the sub-culture elite 'artists only please', passengers on the bus either died early, or became part of the post-woodstock society that they were allegedly against.There's no escape.
Alternatively, I suppose they could have done nothing? Now that's a real challenge to the status quo.....do nothing.Buy nothing,say nothing,create nothing,just enough to eat,drink,.... exist.End.
Tracklist:
A1 Ken Kesey
A2 Ken Babbs And Harmonica
A3 Take Two
A4 Bull
A5 Peggy The Pistol
B1 One Way Ticket
B2 Bells & Fairies
B3 Levitation
B4 Trip X
B5 The End
