Meditations in Green - Stephen Wright

The foot rides the accelerator down to the floor.
The tires, working the road outside, pick up a rhythm from the radio, drum a rhythm onto the pavement, roll a rhythm through the body, lock a rhythm into the wheels of the head, and bam! blood explodes in the piston chambers, axles rotate along the spine, gears mesh, transmission achieved. Interstate consciousness. I could drive like this forever, swift and loose, senses drowned in a shriek, headlights boring holes in the void, because somewhere out here there must be a way home. 

Bantam Books, November 1984

Stephen Wright's 1983 novel about Vietnam, Meditations in Green isn't an easy book to read. It demands a lot from the reader. There is really no sense of plot to hang onto between long passages hallucinatory scenes military life, of war and addiction. But if you stick with it you do find the rhythm and pace of the novel in a way that mirrors the boredom and horror of war and the tolls it takes on the psyches of its combatants and victims. There are many scenes that illustrate both the mundane routine and order of military life at odds with a war that has no respect for regulations and polished boots. Anyone who has spent time in the military can appreciate the way Wright translates his experiences through the eyes of one soldier, Spec. 4 James Griffin, into the novel.

Griffin is assigned to the 1069th Military Intelligence Group, where he spends days hunched over surveillance photos of Vietnam. The 1069th is also where POW's are held and interrogated. During downtime, Griffin and his fellow soldiers smoke pot, drink, gamble, hate the military, and dream of home. The 1069th is also a microcosm of the structure and dysfunction of Army life and combat and the ways it bores into the souls of its participants. You have headcase "Trips" Triplett, virginal Indiana kid Claypool, by-the-book Major Holly, Vegetable, Simon and Wendell living among the insanity of war and reacting in kind. Routine is observed and retaliated against with massive doses of drugs, insomnia, insanity and fear. And the cracks show:

The war had gone on too long, a joke without a punchline. Da Nang already resembled a hippie ghetto. In the offices there desktops were concealed beneath dumps of neglected paperwork, personal correspondence, hometown newspapers, cock books, stale food, half-empty soda cans, and Styrofoam cups fuzzy with mold; once-aseptic walls had become infected with a creeping fungus of pinups, film and travel posters, family photographs, and crudely drawn, militantly obscene short-timers calendars. 

The chapters of the novel are broken by Meditations in Green, Griffin's dreams of nature. Green dominates the novel, in landscape, foliage, camouflage, jungles, mountains, sunsets, paint and horror. Life after coming home is spent getting high, chasing solitude, looking for solace, undergoing therapy and looking for answers that don't exist. Griffin befriends a social worker named Huey (Huette Mirandella) and entertaining Trips's planned retribution against the sergeant who killed his dog.

It's a strange book, not for everyone, but certainly one I'd recommend to readers who admire war novels. Veterans and their families would also appreciate it. It's probably not on many reading lists like the classics we all know, but it deserves an audience regardless.

Vineland - Thomas Pynchon

"I'm not gonna forget," Zoyd vowed, "fuck 'em. While we had it, we really had some fun."

"And they never forgave us," Mucho went to the stereo and put on The Best of Sam Cooke, volumes 1 and 2, and they sat together and listened, both of them this time, to the sermon, one they knew and felt their hearts comforted by, though outside spread the lampless wastes, the unseen paybacks, the heartless power of the scabland garrison state the green free America of their childhoods even then was turning into.

Penguin Books, 1991

So let's see if I get this all straight here, In the mid 60's Zoyd Wheeler and his buddies in Gordita Beach have a psychedelic surf combo named The Corvairs gigging around the Inland Empire. Somewhere near El Paso, on one of their gigs, Zoyd hooks up with Frenesi Gates who is on the lam, kinda sorta, from a turn in a militant anti-establishment hippie gang known as the 24 fps, They were something of a documentary film group who liked to stir up shit on college campuses and film it happening. Frenesi had a major role in turning the formerly uptight buttoned down College of the Surf into its own self contained nation called The People's Republic of Rock and Roll. This came about by the seemingly innocuous introduction of a joint shared between two students, whose eyes were opened at once onto the oppressively fascist Nixonian truth of their USA, and fueled somewhat by popular professor of mathematics, Weed Atman. Frenesi and Weed have a hot affair of sorts going on the side, but unknown to Frenesi's comrades in the 24 fps, Frenesi has been also ensnared by the mesmeric Brock Vond, a federal prosecutor who has made it his mission to eradicate hippies and their drugs permanently from the landscape. Brock Vond seems to have the inexhaustible backings of the government behind him, giving him free reign to use whatever means needed to accomplish his mission. Frenisi, thanks to Brock's sexual manipulation, is something of a double agent until she goes off the grid and runs into Zoyd.

But our pal Zoyd's got his own issues. He's been set up by DEA federale Hector Zuniga to turn stoolie on Gordita Beach's marijuana supplier. Zoyd and Frenesi tangle briefly before she's swept into hiding by Brock Vonn. Frenesi's pals in the 24 fps include DL Chastain, who herself is a female ninja (yes, a lot like Uma Thurman's character in Kill Bill) who is later lured into a bizarre assassination attempt on Brock Vond in Japan by Ralph Wayvone, a sort of nefarious millionaire with connections to the underworld. DL Chastain will pose as a Japanese schoolgirl prostitute and seduce Brock Vond into a compromising situation wherein she'll deliver a Vibrating Palm death-blow on him, from which he'll live approximately one year before dropping dead of a heart attack. Brock Vond gets hip to Wayvone's scheme to kill him and arranges a substitute patsy to meet DL Chastain in her slutty little schoolgirl disguise by kidnapping Takeshi Fumimota and sending him into The Gentlemen's Tits and Ass Club in his stead. Before getting kidnapped by Brock and his agents, Takeshi has his hands full investigating the total destruction of Chipco by what appears to be a giant dinosaur-like taloned footprint, not unlike Japan's favorite celluloid monster Gojira! But instead, Takeshi and DL tangle and Takeshi gets laid the Vibrating Palm on him. Wayvone, realizing Brock has outsmarted him, whisks DL back to the U.S. Takeshi follows her, after discovering he's got about a year to live thanks to the deadly Vibrating Palm that DL laid upon him.

Where does this leave Zoyd? Remember Zoyd? He's the sap in the surfadelic combo who had the bad luck to fall in love with Frenesi Gates, who has left him high and dry with a daughter named Prairie before disappearing. Brock Vond eventually hooks up with Zoyd and frames him with a shit-ton of marijuana. Or was it Hector Zuniga who framed Zoyd? Shit, now I can't remember myself, and I just read the damn book about a week ago! Anyway, Zoyd's looking at something like 900 years in prison if he doesn't come clean on Frenesi's whereabouts. 'Course he doesn't know, and neither does anyone else.

Now dig, all this is told in retrospect of sorts through various characters in the present day, in this case 1984 in Reagan's America. It's come to a head because Zoyd has been paid a visit from Hector Zuniga again after all these years since the wild and crazy hippie 60's. Now Zoyd is older, mellower, sadder and living on mental disability checks. Only thing is, to keep these checks coming in Zoyd has to perform some kind of public act of insanity once a year, like jumping through a plate-glass window for TV cameras. Hector reappears in Zoyd's life, looking for Frenesi Gates, with word of warning that Brock Vond is back on the scene. But Hector is now addicted to his own narcotic, The Tube, meaning that one-eyed monster sitting in household living rooms across the U.S.A. Hector quotes Star Trek, Gilligan's Island and The Brady Bunch indiscriminately as he carries out some quest to film a documentary on the drug-fueled 60's produced by one Sid Liftoff and which he hopes he can get Frenesi Gates to star in. The Tube is this ubiquitous force that's got Frenesi masturbating to Ponch and Jon in CHiPs as though "some Cosmic Fascist had spliced in a DNA sequence requiring this form of seduction and initiation into the dark joys of social control."

This all goes to show that Vineland is Pynchon somewhere between the grandiose chaos of Gravity's Rainbow and the loopiness of Inherent Vice. The connection is Gordita Beach, where Doc Sportello himself probably caught a few gigs of The Corvairs with Shasta Fay at his side. Mucho Maas from The Crying of Lot 49 makes a cameo as well. I think that V. had a guy jumping through plate-glass window for kicks but I can't be sure. I can't be sure of anything anymore...

There is a lot in Vineland to admire. The plot is Pynchonesque, obviously, but never too hard to follow. There are dense slabs of prose that mine the craziness and contradictions of America and freedom and growing old and love and loss and dreams. There are puns and songs and movies and TV, and there is warmth and soul throughout. I'd recommend it.

The Crying of Lot 49 - Thomas Pynchon

She looked down a slope, needing to squint for the sunlight, onto a vast sprawl of houses which had grown up all together, like a well tended crop from the dull brown earth; and she thought of the time she'd opened a transistor radio to replace a battery and seen her first printed circuit. The ordered swirl of houses and streets, from this high angle, sprang at her now with the same unexpected astonishing clarity as the circuit card had. Though she knew even less about radios than about Southern Californians, there were to both outward patterns a hieroglyphic sense of concealed meaning, of an intent to communicate. 

Bantam Books 12th Printing

This is the second reading of Thomas Pynchon's novel The Crying of Lot 49 for me. The first time was in college almost 30 years ago when I was too busy to let all of the novels I was reading at the time really make an impact. It's one of those English major reads that students had to go through to get their degrees. It's also one of Pynchon's most accessible novels, and my recommendation for the Pynchon novel newcomers should start with.

Consider this before starting though. You know how it is when you're going along through day to day life, then you happen to notice that odd little thing that's out of place, whatever it is, that's been there the whole time but you've just never paid any attention to it before? You think about it, remark upon it to your friends, and then shrug it off. But then you see it again in another part of the city, or hear it mentioned in a coffee shop, and soon you see the trail of this very thing everywhere, that it's infected everything around you in a subtle way, daring you to pursue it, to pull the threads of meaning loose from it, but the more you try, the vaster it becomes until...

The novel follows a suburban wife Oedipa Maas after she's named co-executor of her former lover Pierce Inverarity's vast estate. Oedipa is now married to a DJ named Wendell (Mucho) Maas. Oedipa faces her duties with vague consternation and arrives in San Narciso at a roadside motel named Echo Courts which lies under the tall highway sign featuring a nymphet (yes, you're supposed to think of Lolita when seeing the term nymphet). There she meets Metzger, lawyer and co-executor who will be working with her on Inverarity's vast estate. Metzger has a deep understanding of all the property and holdings and investments that Pierce Inverarity controlled. He's also a former child actor and so good-looking that within hours both he and Oedipa are bumping fuzzies after after an exploding can of hair spray wreaks havoc in her motel room which resulted from a stripping game made up of a bet on the ending of one of Metzger's old movies that just happens to be playing on the TV. You got all that? Because that's pretty much the kind of looping zaniness you're going to deal with when reading this, or any other novel by Pynchon. It's a love hate, patience or not, kind of thing with Pynchon's plots. But since this novel clocks in at only 138 pages, you can take it. And doing so you'll get rewarded with some really cool conspiracy stuff involving an underground mail system, a Jacobean play of murder and revenge, a sinister entity known as Tristero, a muted post horn symbol showing up in the most bizarre places, heaping doses of paranoia, LSD, a Nazi disguised as a therapist, and a Beatleesque band of pot smoking mop-tops and their sexy teenage girlfriends. You also get mythic men in black, entropy, gay bars, a play within a novel, nocturnal wanderings into the seedy side of San Francisco, a used bookstore that holds more clues to a vast network of a society off the grid, or a big fat grand fucking hoax played on our heroine Oedipa as she follows a thread of conspiracy that seems everywhere around her. In addition, the short novel is rife with references to TV shows, songs, and mores of the 60's.

In a short novel like this, giving much of the plot away would ruin the fun for anyone who may be interested in reading it. Is it all a farce? Or is it something far more dark and sinister going on. The last paragraph of the novel could be interpreted in different ways. Forget about Gravity's Rainbow, or V. or even Inherent Vice. Yeah, those books get the spotlight from the intelligentsia but let's face it, a vast majority of people who start Gravity's Rainbow will never finish it. Pick up The Crying of Lot 49 instead and you'll get Pynchon's themes without having to tax the noodle, and your patience.

Saturday Vinyl - Ultimate Spinach

ULTIMATE SPINACH is growing...expanding and exploding with myriad consciousness, laughter, feelings, thoughts, ideas...Barbara looking out at the world through a pierced retina, always the Jolly Green Earth Mother to us all...Richard continues his forever search for the eternal black horse...while Keith races, enlightened, out of the nineteenth century looking like a modern Diogenes on a ten-speed bicycle.

MGM Records SE-4518 1968

Yes! You're in for a heaping dose of 60's psychedelia here when you got liner notes that start like that! Ultimate Spinach's first album is one of those records that I've never gotten tired of playing. Probably because I don't play it too often. But when I do, I always enjoy it.

Released in January of 1968 their 1st album is probably their best known and most successful. It actually got as high as number 34 on the Billboard 200. Coming out of Boston and marketed as part of the "Bosstown Sound" intended as the east-coast response to the San Francisco sound, the band was Ian Bruce-Douglas on vocals, player of most of the instruments, songwriter and guru of the band. Well maybe guru is a fancy way of calling him the band's leader. He also wrote the liner notes for this album. Lengthy liner notes that continue in style to what you have above. The other members were Barbara Hudson on vocals and guitar, Keith Lahteinen on drums, Richard Nese on bass, and Geoffrey Winthropon on guitar and sitar.

The record is composed of nine cuts, with each song explained, well kind of explained, in the liner notes. I'm sure I've read the songs' notes, but really, one doesn't have to read them to enjoy the songs. It's the usual 60's tropes here, and nothing earthshaking. Youthful earnestness and anti-establishment rebellion combined with poetic angst swimming in a lot of keyboards and guitar, and you get the idea. That said, the songs, all of them, are pretty good if you're a fan of psychedelic music.

Gateway sleeve, liner notes by Ian Bruce-Douglas

Later in the year, Ultimate Spinach released a second album, but personnel changes and burnout were dampening the thrill. Psychedelic music travels best in short and brilliant journeys. It's not something you're going to pack for a long trip with. In 1969 the band released a third album which crashed right out of the gate. By the end of the 60's the band was no more.

You can check out their songs in all the usual places. I've seen their first two albums occasionally in the used record stores. I screwed up not buying the second one when I had the chance, but it'll show up again some day. As for their third record, well...I think I'll stick to the ones the band liked.

White Witch

You never know what you'll turn up just digging through the miscellaneous record bins in the used stores. For example, a couple of weeks ago I found this cool relic from the past.

White Witch - Capricorn Records - 1972

The second I saw this cover I pretty much knew that I had to buy it. And at $5.99 it was over and done and sold. Later on I looked White Witch up online and discovered that they're from my hometown of Tampa Florida. I was in grade school when this record came out, so anything White Witch was doing at the time went way over my radar. I did have a have a favorite babysitter who might have been into them, who knows...she kind of had her finger on the pulse of the rock scene at the time. (No wonder I had a crush on her, but that's another story.)

Released in 1972 on Capricorn Records, White Witch is Ronn Goedert: lead vocals, Buddy Pendergrass: organ, piano and mood, Buddy Richardson on lead guitar, Beau Fisher on bass guitar and Bobby Shea on drums.

Musically, they're all over the map on this, their first of 2 albums. I've seen online that many people prefer their second album to this one. This record does his its "swing for the bleachers" feel about it, but you can't blame the band for that. Tampa Florida wasn't the sort of place to find fame and glory back then. I understand they opened for Alice Cooper and other big names at the time. From the music on this record it sounds like they would have been a good time live.

So, for your listening pleasure, here is a cut from White Snake named "Illusion". It's a wild one!

Classic Psychedelic Rock - Clear Light

To fully appreciate the spectacular sound of double drumming in CLEAR LIGHT, play this record at high volume.

Clear Light - Electra Records

All right, I've played this record loud a handful of times. In fact I'm playing it now as I write this to get into the groove, I can hear the dogs howling outside. But I have to say, I'm not getting the spectacular sound of double drumming. What I do get is a pretty decent psychedelic record from 1967 that pretty much went nowhere when it was released. I'm sure that Electra had ideas of having Clear Light ride the success of their other little combo at the time, The Doors. Hell, the kids really dig that new sound, and here we've got a handful of guys that look like a rock band, so let's sign 'em up, boys!

Members of the band listed on this record are: Cliff De Young - lead vocal, Bob Seal - guitar, Ralph Schuckett - organ, piano and celeste, Douglas Lubahn - bass guitar, Dallas Taylor - drums, Michael Ney - drums & percussion. And to round out the credits we have Robbie Robison - guru and Lee Housekeeper - seer and overseer. Produced by Paul A. Rothchild.

As for the music, it's a pretty fair example of rock and psyche blend. Sometimes it feels like the band is having an identity crises, which might explain why this is their one and only offering as Clear Light. Afterwards members of the band all went on to more successful ventures. Now, almost 50 years later, record nerds like me find their one and only album in plastic wraps stocked among assorted duds and nuggets in downtown record stores. I've seen copies of it a few times since picking up mine. I would imagine the prices asked for it are far more than the guys in Clear Light would have dreamed of. Actually, I didn't pay all that much; $9.99 plus tax; a good deal for a nice clean playing record. You can see a little wear on the edge of the cover, but I'm not complaining. I think it's also been released on CD, so you might see it there in your jaunts downtown.

I still don't get the need for two drummers though...

Psychedelic-40 - Louis Charbonneau

There were key clubs, private dance clubs, so-called entertainment clubs catering to almost any wish, in every American city of almost any size…An erotic response to PSI-40, usually coupled with a stripping away of inhibitions and restraints, occurred in perhaps one case out of six or seven. Just as the nature clubs and religious temples sprang up for those who enjoyed a mystical experience under the chemicals influence, so the sex clubs provided places where those who shared this specialized reaction could meet.

Bantam - January 1965

And that, my friends, is about as steamy as this novel gets. Still, that is one cool cover by Paul Lehr, which is pretty much the sole reason I picked up this novel and took it home with me.

Psychedelic-40 by Louis Charbonneau pretty much falls short of all the potential the blurbs hinted at on the back of my copy. Especially missing is any thought-provoking study on what may result from a society that chooses to pacified by designer drugs, instead of reality. Instead, what we get in the pages of this 1965 science fiction novel is mostly a "secret agent" yarn with elements of 1940s crime novels thrown in. By that, I mean the sort of crime novels where the detective pursues one direction but is sidelined by another conspiracy along the way, so that ultimately both conspiracies join into a tidy ending where the villain pulling the strings is revealed to by someone the detective is supposed to have trusted.

In this case, the detective, Jon Rand is an agent for The Mental Freedom Syndicate, run by a board of "Specials" which are old men with full ESP and mind-control powers. It's 1993, and the Specials use agents known as "Sensitives" to do their dirty-work, which basically is maintaining their agenda of control by promoting the mental wonder-drug PSI-40, by any means legal and illegal. Rand’s assignment is to find the leader of Mental Freedom Syndicate’s chief opposition, a rebel group known as the Antis. Between you and me, The Antis isn't a moniker that particularly strikes awe for a rebel group. Anyway, The Antis are headed up by a shadowy figure known as Killjoy. Killjoy is assumed to be Kemp Johnson, son of PSI-40’s inventor, and a natural Special. The previous two agents assigned to find Killjoy have disappeared and are presumed dead. Rand’s assignment is a diversion of sorts from an internal power struggle within the Mental Freedom Syndicate. The Syndicate’s chairman, Garth Taylor, is old and maintaining a feeble control on the Syndicate's rule. Rand’s superior, Loren Garrett, wants to be the new chairman of the Syndicate. Too bad for him, so do the other members of the Syndicate’s board.

Halfway into the novel, Rand is captured by black market “pirates” who want to steal the next supply of PSI-40 for their own nefarious means. Other than jacking the price of PSI-40, it’s not clear how this plan will work, considering PSI-40 is government endorsed and can be manufactured at the Syndicate’s direction. But this plot twist does provide a couple chapters of action for Rand and a mysterious woman named Taina Erickson who manages to appear at opportune moments. Of course, Taina becomes a love interest for Rand, but he can’t trust her. She could be an agent for Killjoy! Their coupling has about as much chemistry as a pairing between Gwyneth Paltrow and Keanu Reeves.

There is plenty of action, but not much sociological depth here. It's more of a caper, complete with goons and a femme fatale of sorts that would have been right at home in the pages of a pulp magazine. That's not a bad thing necessarily, but the novel lacks the hellzapoppin pace and drive of those old pulp yarns. Yes, it’s better written but still, it's been done before. 

The Pollinators of Eden - John Boyd

"To my knowledge, you’re the first woman who ever did it to a flower, and the first case of space madness located in the primary erogenic zone."

Dell - November 1970

The Pollinators of Eden by John Boyd had the goods to be way more fun than it was. Plant sex, weird experiments, a smoking hot yet frigid babe, space travel, talking tulips, and hot orchids! Right? Well…not so fast. Instead, these pulpy ingredients got stirred into a novel that, after all is said and done, more is said than done. There are some cool moments and intriguing ideas presented, and yes, there is a pretty hot space orchid-on-woman scene (the orchid’s name is Suzy, if it matters), but that comes way too late in the novel. Long past the point that many readers would have likely bailed and missed it. I didn't bail, and I sort of glad for it. But that didn't make the novel much fun getting there.

A brief rundown: In the year 2237, Dr. Freda Caron is a cystologist for the Bureau of Exotic Plants. Her fiancé, Paul Theaston, is due back from an expedition on Flora, or the Flower Planet. Instead of returning as scheduled, Paul has decided to remain on Flora and continue is studies of the plant life there. In his place, he sends back an assistant, Hal Polino, and a couple of native tulips that have some very unusual characteristics. Freda is a bit miffed at Paul’s decision and isn't too thrilled at getting an eager, smitten assistant in his place. The tulips have this weird ability to mimic sounds, including speech. They’re also single sexed, instead of having both male and female parts, that we're all supposed to have remembered learning in high school biology. Hal and Freda set up studying the plants, and do a lot of verbal teasing back and forth in the process. Freda soon learns that Paul is more than just interested in the studying the plant life on Flora. In fact, he’s gone native there, and is now living among the plants with no intention of returning. Then there is a sideline to the plot where Freda goes to Washington D.C. for a hearing on the potential colonization of Flora. By this point I lost most interest, because while everyone is talking, they’re all really starting to sound like the same person. Most dialog is delivered in a smart-alecky tone where nothing feels serious, or is to be taken seriously. Okay, maybe a book that features plant-on-human sex isn't so serious, but I at least wanted the characters to seem to care a little about the world they’re skipping around in. Ultimately we’re teased by the plot, along with the characters' endless banter, slowly learning that Freda can drink four martinis before she’s in danger of succumbing to her buried horny nature. Okay, we also learn that the procreating tulips display a lethal talent for self-preservation. Hal, and a few other unfortunates, learn this the hard way. But Freda doesn't seem so much concerned for them as she does for finagling a way to avoid getting a gig in the loony bin in Houston in lieu of a ticket to Flora to rescue Paul…remember Paul?

The other gripe I had is that for a novel that takes place in the year 2237, there seems to be very little progress, beyond interplanetary travel, since the year 1969. People still use telephones, paper, mail, film and concepts like marriage, psychology, and mental health, hasn't changed either. It creates a disassociation between the reader and the book. It’s a world that is too familiar, too old-fashioned and absent from the wonder of its themes. I almost envied the victims of “space-madness” described so poetically and wished that one of them was holding a starring role instead of Freda.

The Pollinators of Eden is really a bit too boring to recommend. I will admit that maybe I’m not the right reader for it. Maybe there were things I missed out in it by rushing to the finish. So it’s something you’ll have to decide for yourself if you want to search out for. 

I will add that the cover by Paul Lehr (shown here) is terrific. I’m keeping it in my collection for the cover alone.

And…who knows, there is that hot babe-on-orchid scene that may get a dramatic reading from me at some point in the near future, when I've had four martinis to loosen my inhibitions that is.

Cult Movie Classic - The Big Cube

Sorry about the delay in posts. I set a schedule for myself to do at least one post a week, then failed. Like all great intentions...oh well. At least I've gotten some good books finished in the meantime, in addition to another column for Dark Eclipse which you might want to check out if you're so inclined.

I've been meaning to throw out a post for a pretty cool movie I saw some weeks back on TCM. It's The Big Cube, from 1969 and stars Lana Turner, Karin Mossberg, George Chakiris, Richard Egan and Daniel O'Herlihy. It was directed by Tito Davison.

Karin Mossberg in The Big Cube

The big names in the flick are clearly Lana Turner and George Chakiris, and both play their roles to the hilt. Well, at least George Chakiris does. Maybe Ms Turner was cashing a check, but still, she is enjoyable to watch. As is Karin Mossberg for reasons which are readily apparent in the photo here.

Lana Turner stars as Adriana, a stage actress who retires from the stage to marry Charles Winthrop, played by Daniel O'Herlihy. Winthrop is one of those wealthy cats who makes his living flying around the world making millions. His daughter Lisa (Karin Mossberg) fresh in from school in Europe, takes an instant dislike to Adriana. Adriana is nothing but kind to Lisa, and fervently hopes the two can get along swimmingly. Instead, Lisa immediately falls into the sordid world of bored rich kids and their squalid kicks. She meets a real charmer named Johnny Allan, who notices the swanky jewels on Lisa's lovely body and decides his ship has finally come to port. Daddy is none too pleased with Lisa's savage friends and makes it loud and clear to her. But Charles Winthrop is quickly jettisoned from the story due to a boating accident. He leaves his fortune to Lisa, naming Adriana as executor of the estate. The only catch is that Lisa is not to marry her boyfriend Johnny. Seems old Winthrop has seen right through slimy Johnny's intentions with Lisa. Johnny (George Chakiris) is a medical student of dubious reputation. When not bedding his new rich girlfriend, he gets his kicks dosing people with LSD. It's all mad fun! Everything is all hunky-dory until he learns of the the condition that Lisa not marry him if she expects to inherit a dime of Daddy's wealth. He quickly convinces Lisa that everything is Adriana's fault. If Adriana had never come into the picture, why Lisa would have her fortune and they could be married. Damn that Adriana, damn her! Only one thing the lovebirds can do. That is, dose Adriana with LSD and drive her batshit. Lisa, bless her pretty (empty) little head, quickly falls into line, and together she and Johnny commence with a campaign of psychological warfare on kind and trusting Adriana.

There are plenty of campy, psychedelic trippy scenes in The Big Cube to enjoy, along with a nifty little strip-tease act by one of Lisa's pals. Karin Mossberg is lovely to look at throughout the movie, but can't really compete in the acting department with the likes of Chakiris and Turner. Still, it's kind of a fun movie to check out. I understand it's available in a camp classic box-set from Warner Bros. I've also seen it pop up on TCM a few times, so it shouldn't be too hard to catch at some point.

The Deep End - Joseph Hayes

"If any of you gentlemen become legislators, I hope you'll get a law passed requiring every female infant's birth date be tattooed on her belly just below the navel at birth."

England must be the country of choice for a wife to go to, so that she can leave her husband home to make a complete and utter drunken jackass of himself for the first crazy little twist that twitches her butt at him. For the second time in as many months I've been presented with this setup in a novel dealing with one man’s exposure to a world in which he has no place, leading to his ultimate fall. The first was John D. MacDonald’s potboiler, Clemmie. Now we have 1967’s The Deep End by Joseph Hayes. Below is a picture of my ratty paperback copy. 

Bantam Paperback edition May 1968

Joseph Hayes is probably known mostly for his novel The Desperate Hours, which was made into the 1955 movie of the same name, starring Humphey Bogart and Fredric March, then remade in the early 90’s with Mickey Rourke.

The Deep End is a similar setup, except that instead of an escaped convict invading the suburban castle of an innocent family, we have freaky hippies invading an upper-class Manhattan apartment belonging to a lawyer. Thanks to Manson and his gang, the idea of hippies encroaching on to middle-class turf must have been really terrifying for folks in the late 60’s, considering how often hippies were used as plot tools. Hippies were the scape-goats for many of society’s failings then. They represented everything that wasn't honest and decent and American in those days. Drugs and sex and pinko ideals, just like our communists enemies promised to us: “We will conquer you through your children.”

Adam Wyatt is our hero in this novel. He is a man of character, responsibility, righteousness, and goose-steps to the conservative line. His wife, Lydia, has flown off to London to care for an ailing mother. Their daughter, Anne, is grown and married to a middle-class stiff of her own named Glenn and is living in the country. Adam returns home to Manhattan after a weekend of visiting Anne and Glenn. He's bored, restless and vaguely horny. He comes home to what he naturally assumes to be his empty apartment, only to find a somewhat kooky chick named Jenny waiting for him there. Jenny tells Adam that he gave her the glad eye at the neighborhood pub, and that she’s only there because he wants her to be. She calls him Sam, twitches her hot little ass at him, immediately disrobes, and before you can say the Pledge of Allegiance, Adam is laying the pipe to her. Sure, he feels a little bit guilty for cheating on Lydia. But Lydia is partly to blame for leaving him alone, he reasons. Besides, guys like Adam are somewhat disposed to affairs, as part of their role as stalwart heroes of their nation.

After Jenny and Adam bop between the sheets, Adam goes out to the kitchen for a drink, only to discover a long-haired bearded cat in a fringed leather vest cooking dinner. The guy introduces himself as Wilby, and congratulates Adam on his little conquest of Jenny's reserves. Wilby quickly assumes the role of an anti-establishment blithering radical, throwing all of Adam’s beliefs and mores back in his face. And this is about where the novel has pushed its credibility a bit too far. Adam, is one of those annoying characters who carries the plot forward only by his sheer irrationality. There are numerous points that your average Joe would have got a neighbor, the cops, the building superintendent, anyone, to throw Jenny and Wilby out on their unwashed asses. Instead, Adam entertains their invasion of his castle by demanding they explain themselves, and that they promptly depart of their own volition. Wilby quickly emasculates Adam’s authority by knocking him on his can. From that point on, Adam is pretty much putty in Wilby’s hands. They tell Adam they’ll leave only after he lays some bread on them first. “Bread?” Adam demands. “What do you mean bread? Is that like money?”

Besides being a dick, and a cheater, and a pompous ass, Adam is unbelievably thick in the head about the world around him, much like the Pope would be at an orgy. Wilby rants about justice, the Vietnam War, religion, the law, you name it, as Adam can only recite the kind of platitudes you’d expect from someone as square as he is. Within two days, Adam is questioning everything he’s held as the truth, snapping at his law partners, accusing acquaintances of siccing Wilby and Jenny on him, all the while acting like fool and drinking himself into blind stupors. And on top of all that, he still can’t seem to resist Jenny’s nubile charms in the sack. It’s an interesting dissection of the mid-century White American Male at the mercy of a world he’s completely over his head in. And, it’s impossible to root for him.

In no time flat, Adam is an accomplice to a planned abortion for Jenny. He’s also extorted by Wilby for sleeping with a girl under the legal age. By day two of the novel, Adam is going through life in an alcoholic fog, striking out at friends, questioning his believes, drinking himself blind, and adopting Wilby’s tics and speech patterns as his own. He’s literally off "the deep end" as described in the novel’s title. And that’s only halfway into this “four days of utter hell” that’s promised in the blurb on the back cover.

An interesting novel, Dad. Hippie dialog can be excruciating if not handled right, but Hayes has a good ear for how people speak. It's a bit too long maybe, but never boring. It's not very believable at times, but has its moments and is a nifty little comeuppance for all those arrogant stiffs that have all the answers in life without even knowing the questions, click!

Gene Szafran

Any fan of Science Fiction paperbacks from the 70s will recognize the work by Gene Szafran (11 April 1941 - 8 January 2011). His work graced a series of paperbacks by Robert Heinlein, Robert Silverberg and dozens of others. Below are three covers from my personal bookshelf of his covers. And I'm going to admit that I bought these three books purely based on the covers. Not that I wouldn't have bought the Richard Matheson collection anyway. I think they're a nice example of some sexy psychedelia - barring the silhouette of the middle-aged cat on Vital Parts.

Again, my crappy photography doesn't do the covers justice. If you're interested in seeing a whole lot more of Gene Szafran's work, check out the link provided.

Saturday Morning Psychedelic - Blues Magoos

Actually they're more a blend of garage and psych than purely psychedelic, but they did have the gumption to put "psychedelic" in the title of their first album for Psychedelic Lollipop on Mercury Records in 1966. I think it's a great title, myself. Tells you right away what you're getting when you flip that vinyl on the turntable and have the kids gather around to dig the sounds...

The album features their original hit, "(We Ain't Got) Nothing Yet" among a selection of originals and covers, including "Tobacco Road" (J.D. Loudermilk) and "I'll Go Crazy" by James Brown. The whole record is a gas, to borrow an ancient term, and I was happy to find a nice copy of it on vinyl recently.

Line up on the album is Ralph Scala - "Quiet, Shy, Good-Looking, plays his organ while singing." Ronnie Gilbert - "Loud, Funny, Lazy, plays bass." Peppy Thielheim - "An Idol, Lovable, '17', Drop-out, plays rhythm guitar." Mike Esposito - "Psyched Out, Warm, Friendly, Rich, plays lead guitar. And Geoff Daking - "Blond, Beautiful, Straight, plays drums."

Linked here is their song "Sometimes I Think About" written by Gilbert-Scala-Thielheim-Esposito and produced by Bob Wyld and Art Polhemus.  Noted here is that the liner notes taken from the album cover say that it's Thielheim and not Thielhelm as I've seen elsewhere. Perhaps someone who knows more than I do will correct me on that.

Lancelot Link Secret Chimp

There seems to be a collective amnesia with people my age when it comes to this Saturday morning TV show. Maybe it’s because it had a short life on television. It went on the air in 1970 and only lasted to 1971.

Lancelot Link was a secret agent for A.P.E. (Agency to Prevent Evil) whose arch nemesis was Baron von Butcher and his chauffer, Creto who were agents for C.H.U.M.P. There were also various other villains who regularly popped up to create chaos for our heroes. Lancelot Link’s female partner was Mata Hairi, who may have been as a much a master of disguise as Lancelot.

In addition to his duties as a secret agent, Lancelot Link was also in the rock band The Evolution Revolution. Real swingers, clearly. Mata Hairi played the tambourine as all girlfriends do who are allowed to be in the band.

There was also the host, Ed Simian, who would introduce the Evolution Revolution. Ed Simian would also typically end up spinning in a wild dervish before the camera cuts to the band’s performance, which used to crack me up. 

I think it’s odd that no one seems to remember this show now. There were the usual merchandized tie-ins, mainly children’s lunch boxes.

Maybe this post and the video will jog some memories… 

Sunday Morning Psych - Swami

Here is a fun psychedelic nugget (or pebble) from 1967 by William Penn Fyve. This was originally released on Thunderbird Records. William Penn Fyve (aka William Penn V) was a San Francisco band in the mid-sixties who had some moderate regional success. This is a garage rock classic and has popped up on various compilations over the years. And for any who hasn't heard it before, a careful listen to the lead vocals will reveal that's Greg Rolie behind the mike before he left to join Santana. And years before he left Santana to form Journey.

Sunday Psych - Julia Dream

Very cool song from 1968, "Julia Dream" by Roger Waters was the B side to "It Would Be So Nice" and has turned up on various compilation albums since. I've got it on the Pink Floyd album Masters of Rock released on a German import label in 1974 for Columbia/EMI that I bought from Sun Bums Records in Tampa, thirty-some years ago. That's the cover below. My niece got into vinyl collecting a few years ago and managed to hijack some of my Pink Floyd albums, but she didn't get this one.

Ugly Things

That's right, UGLY THINGS, the magazine bringing you "wild sounds from past dimensions" a couple times a year.

This is one of my favorite magazines to pick up on the rare instances I find it. Oh sure, I should just go to their site, but I'm old enough that I don't think of that first. Instead, whenever I'm in a record shop I check the magazine/book rack to see if they carry it. It's kind of a mental test, to rate the place. It's not a pass/fail kind of thing, but a place scores points for me if I see it there in the racks. There was a cool record store in Tempe, East Side Records, that carried it. Sadly, it's no longer around. For fans of garage rock, psych or whatever, UGLY THINGS is chock full 'o articles, reviews, pics and all kinds of sources to tickle the punk inside us all. Actually, the issues are more books than magazines, at least the handful I've got from past years 2008 and 2009, which weigh in at over 200 pages each. So yeah, this is coming across as a huge plug but I like it and like seeing cool things get the support they deserve. Check it out.

Sunday Psych - Fever Tree

I've really been missing adding to the Ringer Files lately. Couple of things going on in the real world that has been taking up more time than expected. For starters, my first novel SIRENS will be published soon by Perpetual Motion Machine Publishing which is really exciting. If this looks like your kind of thing then I highly recommend checking out the book and the other terrific novels and collections in their catalog. Also, I just started a new job last week, which is always a bit stressful and overwhelming. But enough of the personal plugging.

I thought I would share a pretty cool tune from Fever Tree, a band out of Houston Texas, "Where Do You Go" from their first album on Universal City Records. At first listen they sound like they would be right at home in the San Francisco scene that most fans of sixties rock are familiar with, especially with their single "San Francisco Girls." Texas produced a ton of excellent garage and psychedelic rock in the sixties, including  The Thirteenth Floor Elevators, and The Moving Sidewalks to name just two. Fever Tree had some early success with their first record and single, and went on to record a total of 5 albums. Interestingly enough, much of their material was written by their producers Scott and Vivian Holtzman, including the song "Where Do You Go?" that I'm sharing here. It's a pretty cool tune, with strains of Bolero in it and lots of fuzz guitar that I love.

For vinyl collectors, their first self-titled album is fairly easy to find. I've got their second and third albums on vinyl but I would recommend their first one over the others. But, that said, if you see any of their records, go ahead and pick one up if the price is right, I think you'll dig it. Enjoy.

Sunday Morning Folk: Richard & Mimi Farina

Richard and Mimi Farina put out two good albums on Vanguard Records with some pretty interesting music. I'm not the biggest fan of folk music around, but sometimes I get in the mood for it. This song "Reno Nevada" can be found on their album Celebrations for a Grey Day, released in 1965.

Richard Farina is most well known today for his novel Been Down So Long it Looks Like Up to Me published in 1966. Mimi Farina was Joan Baez's younger sister. The two married in 1963. Farina was good friends with writer Thomas Pynchon, who dedicated his novel Gravity's Rainbow to Farina. Farina died at the age of 29 in a motorcycle accident just after the release of his only novel.

I found both albums by Richard and Mimi Farina for inexpensive prices at a used record store. I would imagine anyone looking to pick them up would find them easily enough. Farina's novel is also still in print and is worth reading as a sort of bridge between the Beats of the 1950's and the Hippies of the 1960's.

Sunday Morning Psych - Giant Crab

From their 1968 album A Giant Crab Comes Forth on Uni Records, here is "It Started With A Little Kiss" by Ernie Orosco.

The album was produced by Bill Homes. This is the 2nd song on side one of the record, right after an intro monologue by Johnny Fairchild. The album was dedicated to Johnny Fairchild, music director of radio K.I.S.T. of Santa Barbara California, in thanks for his encouragement to Giant Crab and other "psych" artists of the day like Strawberry Alarm Clock and The Music Machine, Bobby Fuller and "countless other groups and people." Clearly this was back in a time where radio programs weren't designed by corporate bean counters.

I understand there was a release of this record on CD. I found it on vinyl at a Zia Record store in Phoenix and was quite happy about it. This song is a good representation of the album as a whole, with its multiple instruments and bright sounding psych-pop. Enjoy.

Messiah of Evil

One of the things every horror movie fan knows is you have to wade through a lot of shit to find gold. Messiah of Evil from 1973 is one such find.

To describe the movie would take the fun out of seeing it for yourself, if you haven’t seen it already. I’ll say that it’s a psychotic, random, dreamlike, psychedelic, cannibal, zombie, vampire, swinger movie and let it go at that. All the right ingredients for a classic, right?

Marianna Hill plays Arletty Long, who comes to Point Dune to visit her father Joseph Long, a reclusive artist. She arrives in the night to a Mobil gas station, where the attendant tells her that no one wants to go to Point Dune. An antique pickup arrives and a gaunt, creepy Albino looking dude who tells the attendant that he wants “Two dollars, no knock!” The attendant then sees in the bed of the truck a couple of corpses, one with its eyes ripped out. Just another night in Point Dune, and just the type of weird scene to kickstart the craziness. But that’s nothing compared to the stuff in store for Arletty.

In town, Arletty looks for her father who is missing from his spooky house on the coast. The only clues he’s left behind are his scattered artwork and a chaotic diary, evidence of a disturbed mind. Arletty is meets the local art dealer who happens to be blind. Maybe that’s a shot at art critics, who knows…anyway, the dealer’s assistant tells Arletty that some others have been asking about her father, and they’re staying at the Seven Seas Motel. Arletty goes to the motel and finds Thom, played by Michael Greer, an aristocratic “collector” and his two travelling companions Laura and Toni, played by Anitra Ford and Joy Bang, respectively. Anitra Ford may look familiar to fans of The Price is Right as she appeared on the game show for several years early on. She’s a beautiful woman and would have been seen often on TV in the 70s in a number of shows. Toni is one of those bored seventies girls that you would have seen by the score in lower rung girlie magazines like Cheri back in the day, if that was your sort of thing. Entertaining Thom and his companions is the local town kook, played by Elisha Cook Jr. He blithers on about a blood moon and the town’s citizens turning into animals, before being sent on his way by the gang.  

Later, Thom and his girls take residence at Joseph Long’s house with Arletty. The opportunity for some groovy sex scenes with Arletty, Thom and the girls is squandered here, in lieu of more creepy randomness. Laura gets bored with the scene and leaves one night for San Francisco. She gets a ride into town by the creepy Albino character in his antique pickup, where he tries to impress her by consuming a live beach rat. Needless to say, Laura would rather bail at the next stop sign than ride any further with him. And this is where the movie turns from cheapy drive-in horror to cool, effective dreamlike horror. Laura wanders through a ghost town of brightly lit storefront windows until following a lone pedestrian into an empty Ralphs Supermarket. What Laura discovers in the supermarket is justifiably a famous horror movie moment and my describing it wouldn’t do it justice.

I believe the film is easily available for viewing, and I would recommend it to anyone who appreciates old horror flicks from the 70s and 80s that don’t follow the paint-by-numbers plot of your standard horror fare. I think you’ll dig it.