The Summer Of Love, 1967 -Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere- Neil Young

DVD REVIEW

Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere, Neil Young With Crazy Horse, Reprise Records, 1970


I have mentioned elsewhere in this space that, on any given night in the 1960’s, Jim Morrison and the Doors were pound for pound the best rock and roll band in the world. I would stand by that remark as a general proposition but only add that for quality over the long haul the Rolling Stones would edge the Doors out. However, somewhere, somehow into this mix one must place Neil Young’s work with Crazy Horse in the early 1970’s. Young himself has gone through many transformations including grunge bandleader and lately sort of a soulful folk-rock elder statesman. But back in the day he could rock with the best of them-first with Buffalo Springfield and then the various combinations with Crosby, Stills and Nash.

So what makes Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere special? Easy. Young on lead vocals and guitar and the band play the kind of acid-inspired rock that has withstood the test of time. That is not true for most of the work of that era. Some Jefferson
Airplane, some The Who yes but most of it is rather grating on the ear these days. And the aging of this reviewer is only one of the factors for that belief. Neil and the guys knew how to work the riffs as they related to any particular song. Take, for example, Down By The River, it is simply powerful without being overdone. Or the title song mentioned above, for that matter.

I think that Young, as experienced musician by that point in his career, had something in the back of his mind about doing music for the long haul. The quality of this album reflects that decision. Look, electricity will take virtually anything that an instrument has to offer. The history of rock and roll proves that. If you want to get a slice of what the best use of that electricity was like when men and women played rock and roll for keeps listen here.

The 50th Anniversary Of The Summe r Of Love -The Heart Of The San Francisco Fillmore Night, Circa 1967

The 50th Anniversary Of The Summer Of Love -The Heart Of The San Francisco Fillmore Night, Circa 1967

Scene: Brought to mind by one of the songs in this compilation, The Jefferson Airplane’s Fillmore West-driven classic wa-wa song, Someone To Love.

It wasn’t my idea, not the way I was feeling then although I had “married” them under the stars one night, one late June night, in this year of our summer of love 1967. Married Prince Love (a.k.a. Joshua Breslin, late of Olde Saco High School Class of 1967, that’s up in Maine) and Butterfly Swirl (a.k.a. Kathleen Clarke, Carlsbad High School Class of 1968, that’s down south here in California), my “family” as such things went on the merry prankster yellow brick road bus that brought us north to ‘Frisco. I had only “adopted” the Prince here on Russian Hill one day when he was looking for dope. Before that I had traveled all through the great western blue-pink night, as my North Adamsville corner boy friend, Peter Paul Markin, would say from Ames, Iowa where I got “on the bus,” the Captain Crunch merry prankster bus).

I brought Butterfly and Lupe Matin (her Ames “road” name then although now she is going under the name Lance Peters. No, don’t get the idea she has gone male, no way, no way in freaking hell and I have the scars on my back to prove it. It’s just her, well, thing, the name-changing thing, and her real name anyway is Sandra Sharp from Vassar, that’s a high–end New York college for women, okay) up here for a serious investigation of the summer of love we kept hearing about down in Carlsbad where we camped out (actually we looked out for the estate of a friend, or maybe better an associate, of our “leader,” Captain Crunch, as care-takers). Yes, the “old man,” me, Far-Out Phil (a. k. a. Phil Markin, North Adamsville Class of 1964, that’s in Massachusetts, okay) married them but I was not happy about it because I was still not done with Butterfly myself. Only the residual hard-knocks North Adamsville corner boy in me accepted, wise to the ways of the world, that Butterfly had flown from me.

It was all Captain Crunch’s idea, although Mustang Sally (a. k. a. Susan Stein), if she was talking to the Captain (a. k. a Samuel Jackman) just then, which was always a sometime thing lately since she had taken up with a drummer from one of the myriad up-and-coming “acid rock” bands that had sprouted out of the Golden Gate night, The Magic Mushrooms, and the Captain was not pleased, not pleased at all, probably was the real force behind the idea. The idea? Simple enough, Now that they, the they being the thousands of young people who had fled, fled a millions ways, west, were about creating a merry prankster yellow bus world on the hills of San Francisco the notion that Prince Love and Butterfly Swirl were “married” under the sign of “Far-Out Phil and would have now have a proper bourgeois “wedding reception” was impossible. Celebrate yes, no question. Celebrate high and hard, no question. But the times demanded, demanded high and hard, some other form of celebration. And that is where the Captain (or, as seemed more and more likely once more facts came out, Mustang Sally) hit his stride.

Here is the “skinny.” The Captain knew somebody, hell the Captain always knew somebody for whatever project he had in mind, connected to the Jefferson Airplane, a hot band that was going to be playing at the Fillmore that next Saturday night. And that somebody could get the Captain twenty prime tickets to the concert. [Everybody suspected that the deal was more nuanced than that, probably the tickets for a batch of Captain-produced acid, or in a two-fisted barter, a big pile of dope, mary jane most likely, from somebody else for something else and then a trade over for the tickets. That high finance stuff was never very clear but while nobody worried much about money, except a few hungry times out in some god-forsaken desert town or something, there usually was plenty of Captain dough around for family needs.] So the Captain’s idea was that this concert would be an electric kool-aid acid test trip that was now almost inevitably part of any 1967 event, in lieu of that bourgeois (the Captain’s word, okay) wedding reception. And, see, the Prince and Butterfly, were not to know because this was going to be their first time taking some of that stuff, the acid (LSD, for the squares, okay). And once the acid hit the Captain said, and the rest of us agreed, there would be no sorrow, no sorrow at all, that they had not had some bogus old bourgeois wedding reception.

Saturday night came, and everybody was dressed to the nines. (Ya, that’s an old Frankie Riley, North Adamsville corner boy leader, thing that I held onto, still do, to say hot, edgy, be-hop.) Let’s just concentrate on the “bride” and “groom” attire and that will give an idea of what nines looked like that night. Butterfly, a genuine West Coast young blonde beauty anyway, formerly hung-up on the surfer scene (or a perfect-wave surfer guy anyway), all tanned, and young sultry, dressed in a thin, almost see-through, peasant blouse. According to Benny Buzz, a kind of connoisseur on the subject, it wasn’t really see-through but he lied, or close to it, because every guy in the party or later, at the concert, craned his neck to look at the outline of her beautiful breasts that were clearly visible for all to see. And while she may have been “seek a new world” Butterfly Swirl she was also an old-fashioned “tease,” and made no apologies for being so. She also wore a short mini-skirt that was de rigueur just then that highlighted her long well-turned legs (long flowing skirts were to come in a little later) and had her hair done up in an utterly complicated braid that seemed impossible to have accomplished piled high on her head, garlands of flowers flowing out everywhere, and silvery, sparkling, starry mascara eyes and ruby-red, really ruby red lips giving a total effect that even had the Captain going, and the Captain usually only had his eyes, all six of them, fixed on Mustang Sally.

And the “groom”? Going back to Olde Saco roots he wore along with his now longer flowing hair and less wispy beard an old time sea captain’s hat, long flared boatswain's whites, a sailor’s shirt from out of old English Navy times and a magical mystery tour cape in lieu of the usual rough crewman's jacket. A strange sight that had more than one girl turning around and maybe scratching her head to figure out his “statement.” That didn’t however stop them from looking and maybe making a mental note to “try him out” sometime. (By the way, I told the Captain later that the Prince had no idea of making a statement and, being more than a little stoned on some leftover hash that he found around he just grabbed what was at hand).

Now back to the action. In order to “fortify” everyone for the adventure the Captain proposed a “toast” to the happy couple before we left the merry prankster yellow bus to make the one mile trip to the Fillmore. So everybody, including the bride and groom toasted with Dixie cups of kool-aid. The Prince and Butterfly were bemused that, with all the liquor available around the bus, the Captain proposed to use kool-aid for the toast. Well, we shall see. And they shall see.

And they “saw,” or rather saw once the acid (LSD) kicked in about an hour later, more or less. Now what you “see” on an acid trip is a very individual thing, moreover other than that powerful rush existential moment that you find yourself living in it defies description, literary niceness description, especially from a couple of kids on their “wedding night.” So what is left? Well, some observations by “father” Far-Out Phil, now a veteran acid-eater, as I hovered over my new-found “family” to insured that they made a safe landing.

The first thing I noticed was that Butterfly Swirl was gyrating like crazy when the female singer in front of Jefferson Airplane, Grace Slick, started up on their acid rock anthem, White Rabbit. Some of Butterfly’s moves had half the guys in the place kind of male hippie “leering” at her (mainly giving her a sly nod of approval, and making a mental note to check her out later when the dope hit her at the high point in another couple of hours or so). (Remember she had on that diaphanous peasant blouse, and also remember that sexual thoughts, leering sexual thoughts or not, did not fade away when under the influence of LSD. In many cases the sexual arousal effect was heightened, particularly when a little high- grade herb was thrown into the mix.) I thought nothing in particular of her actions just then, many guys and girls were gyrating, were being checked-out and were making mental notes of one kind or another. It is only when Butterfly started to “believe” that she was Alice, the Alice of the song and of wonderland, and repeated “I am Alice, I am alive,” about thirteen times that I moved over to her quickly and gave her a battle-scarred veteran’s calming down, a couple of hits off the Columbia Red that I had just coped from some freak.

And where was Prince Love during the trial by fire honeymoon night? Gyrating with none other than Lance Peters, who you may know as Luscious Lois or seven other names, by who was my main honey now that Butterfly has flown my coop. But don’t call her Lance Peters this night because after a tab of acid (beyond her congratulations kool-aid cup earlier) she is now Laura Opal in her constant name-game change run through the alphabet. Prince Love had finally “seen” the virtues of being with older woman like I had learned back in Ames Iowa time, an older voluptuous woman and although she was wearing no Butterfly diaphanous blouse Prince felt electricity running through his veins as they encircled each other on the dance floor. Encircled each other and then, slyly, very slyly, I thought when I heard the story the next day, backed out of the Fillmore to wander the streets of Haight-Ashbury until the dawn. Then to find shelter in some magic bus they thought was the Captain’s but when they were awoken by some tom-toms drumming out to eternity around noontime found out that they were in the “Majestic Moon” tribe’s bus. No hassle, no problem, guest always welcome. Ya, that is the way it was then. When I cornered, although corned may be too strong a word, the Prince later all that he would commit to was that he had been devoured by Mother Earth and had come out on the other side. That, and that he had seen god, god close up. Laura Quirk, if she is still running under that name now, merely stated that she was god. Oh ya, and had seen the now de rigueur stairway to heaven paved with brilliant lights. She certainly knew how to get around her Phil when the deal went down, no question.

And how did the evening end with Butterfly and me, after I “consoled” her with my ready-teddy herbal remedy? After a search for Prince and Lance, a pissed off search for me, we went over into a corner and started staring at one of the strobe lights off the walls putting ourselves into something of a trance-like mood. A short time later, I, formerly nothing but a hard-luck, hard-nosed, world-wide North Adamsville corner boy in good standing started involuntarily yelling, “I am Alice, I am alive,” about ten times. Butterfly though that was the funniest thing she had ever heard and came over to me and handed me a joint, a joint filled with some of that same Columbia Red that settled her down earlier. And I, like Butterfly before me, did calm down. Calmed down enough to see our way “home” to Captain Crunch’s Crash-Pad where we, just for old time’s sake, spend the hours until dawn making love. (I send my apologies to those two thousand guys at the Fillmore who had made notes to check on Butterfly later. Hey, I was not a king hell corner boy back in the North Adamsville be-bop night for nothing. You have to move fast sometimes in this wicked old world, even when the point was to slow the circles down.) Asked later what her “trip” had felt like all Butterfly could utter was her delight in my antics. That, the usual color dream descriptions, and that she had climbed some huge himalaya mountain and once on top climbed a spiraling pole forever and ever. I just chuckled my old corner boy chuckle.

And what of Butterfly and Prince’s comments on their maiden voyage as newlyweds? They pronounced themselves very satisfied with their Fillmore honeymoon night. They then went off for what was suppose to be a few days down to Big Sur where Captain Crunch had some friends, Captain had friends everywhere, everywhere that mattered, who lent them their cabin along the ocean rocks and they had a “real” honeymoon. A few weeks later Prince Love, now a solo prince, came back to the bus. It seems that Butterfly had had her fill of being “on the bus,” although she told the Prince to say thanks to everybody for the dope, sex, and everything but that at heart her heart belonged to her golden-haired surfer boy and his search for the perfect wave.

Well, we all knew not everybody was build for the rigors of being “on the bus” so farewell Kathleen Clarke, farewell. And just then, after hearing this story, I thought that Prince had better keep his Olde Saco eyes off Lannie Rose (yes she has changed her name again) or I might just remember, seriously remember, some of those less savory North Adamsville be-bop corner boy nights. Be forewarned, sweet prince.

The Summer Of Love, 1967-Out In The Be-Bop 1960s Night- Rock ‘n’ Roll Will Never Die- British Style- “Pirate Radio”- A Film Review

Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of the movie trailer for Pirate Radio.

DVD Review

Pirate Radio, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, directed by Richard Curtis, Focus Film, 2009


First Question: Who put the rock in rock ‘n’ roll? Well, of course, Bo Diddley (okay, okay others too). Second Question: Who brought rock ‘n’ roll to your double-locked bedroom, dank cellar, storage-filled garage, or other secret ear place back in old time battery-operated transistor radio (pre-iPod, alright) days? Well, of course, your local dee-jay who helped you while away your night, your dream-plagued rock ‘n’ roll night, with his (mainly) mile-a-minute-banter, selection of platters (records, pre-CD, DVD, iTune, youtube, you’ve heard about them, right?), and, yes, selected advertising targeted to the newly enriched (maybe) teenager with disposable dollars. Such names as Allan Freed, Wolfman Jack, Murry the K, and Arnie Ginsberg come quickly to mind. And although the music, praise be, outlasted the careers and remembrance of that lot this classic rock period is associated in my mind (and yours too, I bet) with that very dee-jay night. And that, my friends, is the premise behind this very nicely done trip down rock memory land- British version.

In many ways the British 1960s rock explosion paralleled the American classic rock scene, although later than that genre’s American 1950s heyday. The greatest difference, however, is the way that British audiences heard their rock- literally through the pirate radio of the title. Off-shore, out in the ocean depths, white waves splashing against some barnacled old tub of a ship, rock radio. Without getting into the ins and outs of British broadcasting traditions the battle, the age-old battle really, here is between those who wanted to listen to rock and not just in that double-locked bedroom mentioned above, and those nasty governmental officials and their hangers-on who want to outlaw it by shutting down this uncontrolled method. That battle drives the tension and plot line to almost bizarre (by today’s cyberspace standards) ends. But what this film is about is a bunch of guys (mainly, again) who loved to play rock, who loved to present it in their own fashion, and who wanted the fame, fortune (and, incidental sex) that came with heroic dee-jay-dom.

This motley crew is ready to go down with the ship, literally, in order to keep rock freedom alive. Of course there are more than a few gag (British gag, ala Monty Python) scenes that are better left unmentioned but this is a feel good movie with plenty of drugs, sex, and rock and roll on the high seas. Jesus. You might ask what was wrong with that? Ah, come to think of it what was wrong with that? The cast includes Phillip Seymour Hoffman (a very versatile actor when you realize that he also played American novelist Truman Capote in the In Cold Blood execution-driven drama Tru) as the Count, the only American in the lot. But this whole mix of radio personalities is a good out in the seas rock night, late night, early morning and so on. So, here is the drill. Bo (and, yes, others) put the rock in rock ‘n’ roll but the Count and the boys put the bop in the be-bop pirate radio night. See this one.

Out In The Be-Bop, Be-Bop 1960s Night- The Great San Francisco Summer Of Love Explosion- In The Heart Of The Fillmore Night

On The 50th Anniversary- The Great San Francisco Summer Of Love Explosion- In The Heart Of The Fillmore Night

“To Be Young Was Very Heaven”-With The 50^th Anniversary Of The “Summer Of Love, 1967” In Mind

By Social Commentator Zack James 

[I was about a decade or so too young to have been washed, washed clean to hear guys like Peter Paul Markin, more on him below, tell the tale, by the huge counter-cultural explosion that burst upon the land (and by extension and a million youth culture ties internationally before the bubble burst) in the mid to late 1960s and maybe extending a few year into the 1970s depending on whose ebb tide event you adhere to. (Markin’s for very personal reasons having to do with participating in the events was May Day 1971 when the most radical forces tried to stop the Vietnam War by shutting down the government and got kicked in the teeth for their efforts. Doctor Gonzo, the late writer Hunter Thompson who was knee-deep in the experiences called it 1968 around the Democratic Party convention disaster in Chicago. I, reviewing the material mostly and on the very fringe of what was what back then would argue for 1969 between Altamont and the Days of Rage everything looked bleak after that.)

Over the next fifty years that explosion has been inspected, selected, dissected, inflected, infected and detected by every social science academic who had the stamina to hold up under the pressure and even by politicians, mostly to put the curse of “bad example” and “never again” on the outlier experimentation that went on in those days. Plenty has been written about the sea-change in mores among the young attributed to the breakdown of the Cold War red scare freeze, black civil rights struggles rights early in the decade and the huge anti-Vietnam War movement later. Part too always a factor maybe even just as reaction like in many generations coming of age, just the tweaking of the older generations inured to change by the Cold War red scare psychosis they bought into. The event being celebrated or at least reflected on in this series under the headline “To Be Very Young-With The Summer of Love 1967 In Mind” now turned fifty was by many accounts a pivotal point in that explosion especially among the kids from out in the hinterlands, away from elite colleges and anything goes urban centers.   The kids, who as later analysis would show, were caught up one way or another in the Vietnam War, were scheduled to fight the damn thing, the young men anyway, and were beginning, late beginning, to break hard from the well-established norms from whence they came.

This series came about because my oldest brother, Alex James, had in the spring of 2017 taken a trip to San Francisco on business and noticed on a passing bus that the famed deYoung Museum located in the heart of Golden Gate Park, a central location for the activities of the Summer of Love as it exploded on the scene in that town, was holding an exhibition about that whole experience. That jarred many a half forgotten memory in Alex’s head. Alex and his “corner boys” back in the day from the old Acre neighborhood in North Adamsville, a suburb of Boston where we all came of age, had gotten their immersion into counter-cultural activities by going to San Francisco in the wake of that summer of 1967 to “see what it was all about.”

When Alex got back from his business trip he gathered the few “corner boys” still standing, Frankie Riley, the acknowledged leader of the corner boys, Jimmy Jenkins, Si Lannon, Jack Callahan, Bart Webber, Ralph Kelly, and Josh Breslin (not an actual North Adamsville corner boy but a corner boy nevertheless from Olde Sacco up in Maine whom the tribe “adopted” as one of their own) at Jimmy’s Grille in Riverdale, their still favorite drinking hole as they call it, to tell what he had seen in Frisco town and to reminisce. From that first “discussion” they decided to “commission” me as the writer for a small book of reflections by the group to be attached alongside a number of sketches I had done previously based on their experiences in the old neighborhood and in the world related to those times. So I interviewed the crew, wrote or rather compiled the notes used in the sketches below but believe this task was mostly of my doing the physical writing and getting the hell out of the way. This slender book is dedicated to the memory of the guy who got them all on the road west-Peter Paul Markin whom I don’t have to mention more about here for he, his still present “ghost” will be amply discussed below. Zack James]              

In the tribute book the reflections of the North Adamsville corner boys come first and my sketches related to the subjects they mentioned were attached after them. In this on-line series I have reversed the order and am putting my sketches, singly, first and the good stuff, their stuff, last.     

CD Review

Classic Rock: 1967, various artists, Time-Life Music, 1988

Scene: Brought to mind by one of the songs in this compilation, The Jefferson Airplane’s Fillmore West-driven classic wa-wa song, Someone To Love.

It wasn’t my idea, not the way I was feeling then although I had “married” them under the stars one night, one late June night, in this year of our summer of love 1967. Married Prince Love (a.k.a. Joshua Breslin, late of Olde Saco High School Class of 1967, that’s up in Maine) and Butterfly Swirl (a.k.a. Kathleen Clarke, Carlsbad High School Class of 1968, that’s down south here in California), my “family” as such things went on the merry prankster yellow brick road bus that brought us north to ‘Frisco. I had only “adopted” the Prince here on Russian Hill one day when he was looking for dope. Before that I had traveled all through the great western blue-pink night, as my North Adamsville corner boy friend, Peter Paul Markin, would say from Ames, Iowa where I got “on the bus,” the Captain Crunch merry prankster bus).

I brought Butterfly and Lupe Matin (her Ames “road” name then although now she is going under the name Lance Peters. No, don’t get the idea she has gone male, no way, no way in freaking hell and I have the scars on my back to prove it. It’s just her, well, thing, the name-changing thing, and her real name anyway is Sandra Sharp from Vassar, that’s a high–end New York college for women, okay) up here for a serious investigation of the summer of love we kept hearing about down in Carlsbad where we camped out (actually we looked out for the estate of a friend, or maybe better an associate, of our “leader,” Captain Crunch, as care-takers). Yes, the “old man,” me, Far-Out Phil (a. k. a. Phil Markin, North Adamsville Class of 1964, that’s in Massachusetts, okay) married them but I was not happy about it because I was still not done with Butterfly myself. Only the residual hard-knocks North Adamsville corner boy in me accepted, wise to the ways of the world, that Butterfly had flown from me.

It was all Captain Crunch’s idea, although Mustang Sally (a. k. a. Susan Stein), if she was talking to the Captain (a. k. a Samuel Jackman) just then, which was always a sometime thing lately since she had taken up with a drummer from one of the myriad up-and-coming “acid rock” bands that had sprouted out of the Golden Gate night, The Magic Mushrooms, and the Captain was not pleased, not pleased at all, probably was the real force behind the idea. The idea? Simple enough, Now that they, the they being the thousands of young people who had fled, fled a millions ways, west, were about creating a merry prankster yellow bus world on the hills of San Francisco the notion that Prince Love and Butterfly Swirl were “married” under the sign of “Far-Out Phil and would have now have a proper bourgeois “wedding reception” was impossible. Celebrate yes, no question. Celebrate high and hard, no question. But the times demanded, demanded high and hard, some other form of celebration. And that is where the Captain (or, as seemed more and more likely once more facts came out, Mustang Sally) hit his stride.

Here is the “skinny.” The Captain knew somebody, hell the Captain always knew somebody for whatever project he had in mind, connected to the Jefferson Airplane, a hot band that was going to be playing at the Fillmore that next Saturday night. And that somebody could get the Captain twenty prime tickets to the concert. [Everybody suspected that the deal was more nuanced than that, probably the tickets for a batch of Captain-produced acid, or in a two-fisted barter, a big pile of dope, mary jane most likely, from somebody else for something else and then a trade over for the tickets. That high finance stuff was never very clear but while nobody worried much about money, except a few hungry times out in some god-forsaken desert town or something, there usually was plenty of Captain dough around for family needs.] So the Captain’s idea was that this concert would be an electric kool-aid acid test trip that was now almost inevitably part of any 1967 event, in lieu of that bourgeois (the Captain’s word, okay) wedding reception. And, see, the Prince and Butterfly, were not to know because this was going to be their first time taking some of that stuff, the acid (LSD, for the squares, okay). And once the acid hit the Captain said, and the rest of us agreed, there would be no sorrow, no sorrow at all, that they had not had some bogus old bourgeois wedding reception.

Saturday night came, and everybody was dressed to the nines. (Ya, that’s an old Frankie Riley, North Adamsville corner boy leader, thing that I held onto, still do, to say hot, edgy, be-hop.) Let’s just concentrate on the “bride” and “groom” attire and that will give an idea of what nines looked like that night. Butterfly, a genuine West Coast young blonde beauty anyway, formerly hung-up on the surfer scene (or a perfect-wave surfer guy anyway), all tanned, and young sultry, dressed in a thin, almost see-through, peasant blouse. According to Benny Buzz, a kind of connoisseur on the subject, it wasn’t really see-through but he lied, or close to it, because every guy in the party or later, at the concert, craned his neck to look at the outline of her beautiful breasts that were clearly visible for all to see. And while she may have been “seek a new world” Butterfly Swirl she was also an old-fashioned “tease,” and made no apologies for being so. She also wore a short mini-skirt that was de rigueur just then that highlighted her long well-turned legs (long flowing skirts were to come in a little later) and had her hair done up in an utterly complicated braid that seemed impossible to have accomplished piled high on her head, garlands of flowers flowing out everywhere, and silvery, sparkling, starry mascara eyes and ruby-red, really ruby red lips giving a total effect that even had the Captain going, and the Captain usually only had his eyes, all six of them, fixed on Mustang Sally.

And the “groom”? Going back to Olde Saco roots he wore along with his now longer flowing hair and less wispy beard an old time sea captain’s hat, long flared boatswain's whites, a sailor’s shirt from out of old English Navy times and a magical mystery tour cape in lieu of the usual rough crewman's jacket. A strange sight that had more than one girl turning around and maybe scratching her head to figure out his “statement.” That didn’t however stop them from looking and maybe making a mental note to “try him out” sometime. (By the way, I told the Captain later that the Prince had no idea of making a statement and, being more than a little stoned on some leftover hash that he found around he just grabbed what was at hand).

Now back to the action. In order to “fortify” everyone for the adventure the Captain proposed a “toast” to the happy couple before we left the merry prankster yellow bus to make the one mile trip to the Fillmore. So everybody, including the bride and groom toasted with Dixie cups of kool-aid. The Prince and Butterfly were bemused that, with all the liquor available around the bus, the Captain proposed to use kool-aid for the toast. Well, we shall see. And they shall see.