UCLA Acid Test (CXL)

! ad: Daily Bruin, March 16, 1966, p. 2.

Preface

Suggested audio accompaniment for this post: http://tinyurl.com/hthnmgb, especially 30 minutes in when Ken Babbs is just raving, and things are just WILD.

The UCLA Daily Bruin has been digitized, and is accessible via the Daily Bruin Print Archive at http://samhoff.github.io/archive/. The access is rather cumbersome, basically at the volume level, and this runs from spring to spring. I recommend 1) targeting a date and searching on it, 2) verifying the resulting date range, 3) clicking on "Back to Item Details" toward the top-left, 4) right-click-and-saving-file-as... (or whatever you Macs do), using either the PDF (quite large files) or, for a first sweep, text (much smaller). The text can be searched for your key terms. But I will say, just looking at the text, the OCR'ing appears highly imperfect. So you might need to try many different searching strategies to find anything. I had a pretty low yield rate on the things I was interested in.

Discovery

Since I didn't have a canceled UCLA Acid Test in my cxl spreadsheet field, it didn't exist for me, even though I guess your average w00k might know of it. So I got inordinately excited when I found stuff around it, until reality came around and burst my bubble.

Anyway, still fun.

Preview

I found the preview first, and it is just about the most distilled piece of Babbsiana you'll ever encounter.

Barring the apocalypse, GSA ASUCLA, will allow the Merry Pranksters of Intrepid Trips, Inc. to let loose their version of interpersonal nuclear fission. The Acid Test, from 8 p.m. to 1:30 a.m. March 19 in The Student Union Grand Ballroom. What is The Acid Test? Well, it is a sort of a happening, a very total happening. There is no audience, no group of performers; everyone comes and the thing happens. There is music — The Grateful Dead will play genuine rock-'n-roll for dancing. But anyone can play music — there will be mikes and amplifiers available — and any person or group is urged to bring their equipment. There will be movies, three or four at a time, of the Pranksters and others doing whatever they do. But anyone can bring their own films and/or equipment. There will be people in strange clothes; come as you will. There will be strange lights, strobes and color wheels; bring more if need be. There will be Neal Cassady of On The Road doing battle with the fabled Thunder Machine, Roy's Audioptics, the Electric Man, the Psychedelic Symphonette, assorted miracles and marvels, more noise and yet more music. Tickets ($1.50 for students) are on sale at the Kerckhoff Hall Ticket Office or can be purchased at the door.

! preview: “Acid Test to Happen Here,” Daily Bruin, March 11, 1966, p. 14

In my recent post on the 1/17/69 UCSB show I posted about the winky-winky LSD references. Three years earlier, before acid was illegalized, there is no winking, there is just straight-up "come drink some acid punch with us and trip your _____ off right here on campus", presumably decodeable by enough Initiates to make it a happening.

I love the thought of Cassady ("of On The Road") doing battle with Babbs's Thunder Machine, the soundimage of whatever Roy's Audioptics was capable of laying down, "mindless chaos" as Garcia says in the late 33 minute of the audio accompaniment - the whole scene, naturally enough. Is "the Electric Man" anyone special? I'll leave this mostly to the commentariate to have at. Links to existing work will be gratefully received.

Ad

The ad mentions Tiny Tim and Paul Butterfield, whom we were just discussing in a comment thread, coincidentally enough, and drops the canonical name for the liquid medium of choice. Uncle Sam is in the house. Good stuff.

Furthur

Universities document themselves religiously, full of their own senses of historical importance, and so I imagine that there might be materials in the University Archives about this. I didn't know of this cancellation, and even a closer scan of the Daily Bruin and probably the LA Free Press would reveal more. Perhaps Ross has already gone through it all and already knows everything I am saying! I thought it was fun.

Reading Notes: Goodman 1989

Goodman, Fred. 1989. Jerry Garcia: The Rolling Stone Interview. Rolling Stone no. 566 (November 30, 1989): 66-68, 73-74, 118

Garcia says he has “vacillated furiously” over the years as to whether he wanted to stay with the Dead or not (Goodman 1989, 68).

“The most cogent example of how my life is changing is that when the GD wasn’t working, I used to go play in bars. Low profile, not many people were interested. Now this has escalated along with everything else. And the stress level has skyrocketed” (Goodman 1989, 68). JGMF: This is one way of understanding the arc of Garcia’s solo career. Garcia had the Midas Touch, and when even his bar band started playing Madison Square Garden (11/15/91), the bullshit quotient is moving into the red. That said, I am coming around to the idea that maybe it wasn't as bad as all that, that it remained a refuge until the end.

Here he advocates drug legalization. “Accept the reality that people do want to change their consciousness, and make an effort to make safer, healthier drugs. When you take the greed out of it, all of the damage starts to fall away” (Goodman 1989, 68)

Says of JA “they’re all so amazingly argumentative”, notes that “sometimes it’s the chemistry that makes you fight and that makes the music good” (Goodman 1989, 68). Could be said about the GD.

“I can call up Kantner any time. And certainly Grace [Slick] was very helpful when I was going through my drug trips” (Goodman 1989, 68). Also mentions how much he loves Pete Townshend.

“What the Acid Test really was was formlessness. It’s like the study of chaos. It may be that you have to destroy forms or ignore them in order to see other levels of organization” (Goodman 1989, 73).

#politics Garcia didn’t vote. “choosing for the lesser of two evils is still choosing evil” (Goodman 1989, 73).

Visual art: “I think of notes as objects that have perspective. They have the front part of them and the back part of them, the attack and the release. To me, it’s very visual. If I had the time, I would illustrate all my solos. I could do it – I have seen them that way (Goodman 1989, 74).

“The members of the GD really have a complex relationship. At this point it’s gone beyond even blood. The GD has been the most intimate kind of relationship I’ve ever experienced” (Goodman 1989, 74).

“I spent a good long time trying a drug world that was pretty closed” (Goodman 1989, 74).

Q: why did that happen? “It’s just wear and tear more than anything else. It’s kind of like I needed a rest. … I stopped because I care more about the GD than I do about myself, ultimately” (Goodman 1989, 74).

"The Grateful Dead has become the focus of all of our lives, even though we have families and children. The GD - that's the center" (Garcia ca. October 1989, in Goodman 1989, 74).

Why did you end up with such a bad drug problem? “Self-indulgence, pretty much. I mean, I liked it too much, and the more you like it, the more it likes you, and pretty soon that’s just about all there is. I’m glad I’m not involved in it anymore. … But I haven’t come to any conclusions about drugs at all on any level. I don’t think I’ve gained any particular insights, but I do know that I’ve always basically been an addictive personality. That’s just who I am. And so, for me, it’s one of those things I always have to watch out for” (Goodman 1989, 74).

Good discussion of Neal Cassady over pp. 74, 118. “He blew my mind hundreds and thousands of times” (Goodman 1989, 118).

About the kids coming to shows: “Grateful Dead stories are their drug stories, or war stories. It’s an adventure you can still have in America, just like Neal on the road. You can’t hop the freights anymore, but you can chase the Grateful Dead around. You can have all your tires blow out in some weird town in the Midwest, and you can get hell from strangers. You can have something that lasts throughout your life as adventures, the times you took chances. I think that’s essential in anybody’s life, and it’s harder and harder to do in America. If we’re providing some margin of that possibility, then that’s great. That’s a nice thing to do” (Goodman 1989, 74).