Terrastock: The Ptolemaic
April 25-27
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Well, as Ken Kesey used to say, you’re either on the bus or off the bus. Thing is, nobody at Terrastock wanted to get on the bus either: the bands, attendees, and sponsors of the festival (officially known as the Ptolemaic Providence Perambulation, after the Ptolemaic Terrascope fanzine it was intended to benefit) all seemed loath to use the word psychedelic to make connections among the many sounds and philosophies in evidence. You can’t really blame them: Inspired by his experiences with mescaline in the 50s, British author Aldous Huxley coined the term from the Greek psyche (soul) and deloun (to show), and its original meaning was about as open-ended as you could imagine. But 30 years after the much-ballyhooed Summer of Love, many people feel unjustly limited by the word, tainted as it has been by tie-dyed T-shirts, Cheech and Chong, the latter-day Grateful Dead, and now the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum, which in its newest exhibit has sealed “The Psychedelic Era” into a neat four-year envelope, the better to sell it to aging boomers.
Sympathetic as I am to these efforts (hey, I wrote a book about ’em), I can’t say that each and every band sent me hurtling into orbit. There were plenty of yawnworthy moments, including the indulgent, sub-Santana guitar wankery of the Bevis Frond (whose sole constant member Nick Saloman is publisher of the Ptolemaic Terrascope) and the disappointing U.S. debut by Flying Saucer Attack (Dave Pearce’s gentle picking and blissful “rural psychedelia” was overpowered by guest guitarist Jim O’Rourke’s white-noise chaos). Still, I had two genuinely transcendent experiences, one on Friday evening, the other on Sunday afternoon–and both without chemical assistance, thank you very much.
