Unfinished Novellas: Trippin' with Jack (...and Tom and Doug and...)

Yesterday afternoon, while the majority of my town’s citizenry were watching the Broncos blow out the Saints, and others were, perhaps, downloading the jaw-dropping clip of Friday night’s Pacers/Pistons B-brawl game, I was the potato on the couch, nuzzled firmly in the throes of San Francisco as hippie mecca, taking in the fun and, surprisingly, not-so-bad 1968 flick Psych-Out. This is one of the best of the hippie B-movies, starring none other than Jack Nicholson, Bruce Dern, and Dean Stockwell, and produced by the ageless Dick Clark. (Speaking of the latter, he recently won a lawsuit against Swedish rockers The Soundtrack of Our Lives because he holds a patent to the phrase "the soundtrack of your life". What a joke. Like Ebbott and Co. were really impacting ol’ Dick’s income.)

While the script isn’t exactly Scorcese material, it is a cut above the average storyline for such flicks. In a nutshell, a deaf runaway girl shows up on the Haight/Ashbury scene at its peak, looking for her older brother, a.k.a. The Seeker (Dern), who has sent her a cryptic postcard bearing the subtle message, "God is alive and well in a sugar cube." Nicholson and Stockwell are musicians in a failed garage band (Jack’s mimed guitar "playing" is hilariously unconvincing, and one of the highlights of the movie!) who team up with the girl to seek The Seeker.

As a time capsule of a bygone era, the movie succeeds brilliantly, with the good, the bad, and the ugly of the late sixties hippie world represented in accurate proportions. (As this is ’68, much more of the bad and the ugly is beginning to come to light. More than once, a character asks rhetorically, "What about peace and love, man?", even as the pre-Altamount violence swirls around him.) The cinematography is colorful and vibrant as expected, with the director framing some truly freaky shots, including what are some of the best hallucination sequences of the time. The scariest: guy freaks on acid in hardware store and wields a power saw, determined to cut off his own hand! Beautiful stuff! Another reason to watch: the soundtrack, of course, which features the Strawberry Alarm Clock & the Seeds, who play at a deliciously weird hippie funeral. Inexplicably, TV Guide refers to the "acid rock" on the film’s soundtrack as being "the single biggest detriment to the film." A wha?? I would strongly disagree, as would most psych fans. Still, though Psych-Out is the better movie, an even better soundtrack was set to 1967’s similarly themed Riot on Sunset Strip, featuring more "live" (lip-synched) performances from the Standells and the Chocolate Watchband. I caught this one on Starz a few months back.

Great quotes from Psych-Out:

Undercover narc in the diner: "I’ll be glad when the costume party is over, when these freaks grow up and start to make a living like everyone else."

Hippie Girl: "There’s something crawling on your sleeve. I think it’s a louse."
Hippie Boy: "Yeah, that’s Manny."

Dean Stockwell: "All the games have to go, man, cuz it’s all one big plastic hassle."
Jack Nicholson: "So live in a jelly jar."
Dean: "You see this beam of light? That’s all there is. The rest is in your head."

Ah, the timeless, scatterbrained wisdom of the Buddha!

This movie, along with another early Nicholson venture, The Trip, were recently issued together on a single DVD, but apparently, both movies have been highly edited from the originals. I’m not certain which version I saw.

Other items of note:

Tom, a.k.a. Nick Drake, begins to “get” Smile. Next up: a revisitation of Pet Sounds. If you don’t “get it”, let me know and I’ll “send it” to you. : )
Doug saw the Arcade Fire last night, and boy, am I even more excited for 12/3!!!
Saturday’s get-together was a definite success. Food, beer, friends, dogs, and sweet, sweet psychedelic music. A little taste of Comus was had by all. Thanks ya’ll, for coming.
A big what-up to my two new friends, Danny and Jon. Both of these fellas hail from Queens but were out in the Rockies this weekend visiting my former long-time roommate, Mr. Bryan Egle. These three cats met on the Appalachian Trail last year, and I think the world will end up a better place for it. So keep in touch, my brothas, and turn me on to more of those funky links!
A smattering of new discs this weekend: Picked up Vision Creation Newsun by the Boredoms at Black & Read. This band has changed greatly, and for the better, since the unstructured noise freak-outs of their early nineties days. Another Television Personalities CD (Closer to God) arrived in the mail—-thank you, ebay. Also, I received my latest Forced Exposure order, featuring, among other items, Hava Narghile (a killer compilation of obscure Turkish psych bands, circa 1966 to 1975) and the recent reissue of the 1979 Symptome – Dei album from French act Flamen Dialis (excellent stuff, like, say Eno’s Another Green World soundscapes with its pop elements jettisoned for a more obscure French prog-experimentalism.)
The anniversary of JFK’s assassination is today, with an odd remembrance from a Scottish video game company.
This just in: Jet crashes before picking up elder Bush.