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Showing posts with label LSD. Show all posts
Showing posts with label LSD. Show all posts

Friday, November 02, 2018

KIRO-TV's Telephonic Happening



On Saturday nights at 11:15pm in early 1971, after the 11PM evening newscast was over and the older folks were likely going to bed or watching the last late movies on other channels. KIRO TV & Radio in Seattle, Washington got psychedelic with their briefly run locally produced live music TV show series Telephonic Happening.


With then contemporary rock hits such as "Black Magic Woman/Gyspy Queen" Santana, "My Sweet Lord" George Harrison and "Honey Tonk Women" Rolling Stones and Matthews Southern Comfort's rendition of "Woodstock" (not heard on this clip) and guest appearances on this surviving episode by local acts Adam Wind and Cold Trane, Telephonic Happening was presented in experimental 4 channel Quadraphonic sound with color psychedelic visuals, filters, imagery and garden gnomes courtesy of local psychedelic light show producers, Retina Circus on the TV screen for freaky visuals.

It was a bold and overlooked first in broadcasting because unlike the pioneering Quad radio broadcasts, which began at Classical stations WGBH and WCRB in Boston in 1969, used the Stereo signals of the two FM radio stations, thus requiring two costly FM stereo receivers to hear the full program in Quad sound.

The experimental KIRO Quad system in Seattle for this program used all three of their AM/FM and TV signals. And it was awkward and uneven sounding. But it was simple, had a visual component and used equipment you already had; Your TV tuned to KIRO-TV 7 in front of you for a mono front-center channel and visual stage. An FM Stereo radio with separating speakers (tuned to KIRO-FM's then-frequency of 100.7 MHz) with the speakers placed directly at your left and right sides. And for the rear speaker, your AM tabletop or portable radio set to KIRO-AM (710 kHz) for Quad sound in an unusual diamond shaped pattern that probably would have impressed Pink Floyd if they saw it.

And at the very birth of the home theater experience, you took whatever you could get.


But psychedelia, rock music and experimental visual and audio voodoo in diamond patterns were not things KIRO was particularly known for back then. Owned then by Bonneville, the media division of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, neither KIRO-AM or FM even played rock music either in 1971. Which makes this all the more interesting an artifact.

Unfortunately, the audio on this clip is in mono.

The elegant sounding announcer you hear on this clip is the late Hal Willard. For decades, he was "Mr. Announcer Man" at KIRO-TV who read the weather reports during the J.P. Patches morning show.

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Listen at the end of the Telephonic Happening program where he recommends you send a postcard to the station telling them your requests and suggestions for future Telephonic Happening programs, but "suggest gently"....

Wednesday, April 08, 2015

Friday, September 05, 2014

Tuesday, April 29, 2014

How To Blow Your Mind And Have A Freak Out Party


I remember encountering this record at a vintage record shop I worked in back in the '80s. How To Blow Your Mind And Have A Freak Out Party (in that order?) is one of the very first records that I suspect was deliberately targeted towards the "chemically altered". And as you would expect, the stereo left/right panning is used codependently. And to extremes.

Nothing else is known about The Unfolding and it's not clear if they were an actual group or a one-off assembling of studio musicians.

But without the psychoactive drugs, this record doesn't induce much more than a headache. But if you got 'em (or just curious), you can hear it here.

Friday, January 17, 2014

"Don't Be So Holy Poly Over My Souly" Kit Ream (1978)


Oh dear, where do I simply begin?

The story of Kit Ream begins in the 1960s. Kit was a very wealthy heir to the Nabisco cookie fortune. And living such a charmed life up to that point, he had instant access to anything he wanted. Women, cars, the very best in anything and everything. And drugs.

And then someone gave him acid.

From here, the story goes off into multiple tangents. Some say his behaviour became increasingly erratic over time, others say he was at a party one night and bought and ate his dealer's entire stock of acid in one night on a whim. Who knows? All that is known is things were never the same again for Kit Ream.

He spent the rest of the '60s and most of the '70s in a psychiatric hospital as the acid wore off (which is probably an indicator of how much acid he actually ate), staring at his own reflection in a mirror. Before the decade ended, he was deemed recovered enough to be released. After which, it's been said he tried to start a religious cult (which has been discredited by sources close to Ream.)

He also recorded and released a vanity album titled All That I Am, from which we hear this incredible selection.

Listen to the entire tune. The drugs have already been done for you. Just turn it up loud. If you dare...