John Coltrane, 'Both Directions at Once: The Lost Album' (1963, 2018)

Anyone even remotely a fan of John Coltrane and/or jazz will dig Both Directions at Once: The Lost Album, tracks recorded in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, on March 6, 1963, and just recently released. 

On the jacket of my double CD version of the release, there's an apt quip about it made by Sonny Rollins: "This is like finding a new room in the Great Pyramid." (Original in all caps)

This was recorded in the same studio -- Rudy Van Gelder's -- that Coltrane used to record A Love Supreme on December 9, 1964.

The main players (The John Coltrane Quartet) are the same on both recordings, too: Trane on sax; McCoy Tyner on piano; Jimmy Garrison on bass; Elvin Jones on drums. 

Track listing on CD1 and CD2, from "UNTITLED ORIGINAL 11383 (TAKE 1)" to "ONE UP, ONE DOWN (TAKE 6)." Some will sound more familiar than others.

I've listened to this about a dozen times so far, and will give it another hundred spins before my next birthday, no doubt. 

Today's Rune: Possessions. 

Ingmar Bergman: 'Nattvardsgästerna' / 'Winter Light' (1963)

Ingmar Bergman's stark 1963 black and white film Nattvardsgästerna [The Communicants] / Winter Light focuses on faith, belief, lack or loss of faith and non-belief. It serves as a test for the nuclear age: for believers and non-believers alike. What do you, can you believe in?

"Although our intellect always longs for clarity and certainty, our nature often finds uncertainty fascinating." ~ Carl von Clausewitz, On War (1832).

"Everything in war is simple, but the simplest thing is difficult." ~ Ditto.

In Winter Light, everything is simple, but the simplest things are difficult.

Main characters: Tomas Ericsson (Gunnar Björnstrand), pastor of two (or more) contemporary (early 1960s) rural Swedish churches. Märta Lundberg (Ingrid Thulin), substitute teacher, atheist and sometimes paramour of pastor Tomas.  Jonas Persson (Max von Sydow), a spiritually lost fisherman distraught about the possibility of nuclear destruction to the point of suicidal urges. Karin Persson (Gunnel Lindblom), his wife and mother of two young children. Fredrik Blom (Olof Thurnberg), cynical, comical and boozy organist. Algot Frövik (Allan Edwall), sexton, serious thinker and believer, previously disabled in a work accident, foil to Fredrik.  

Winter Light is memorably shot in black and white. Cinematographer, Sven Nykvist. 

Fears that seem as pointed in the 21st century as they were during the Cuban Missile Crisis more than fifty years ago keep Winter Light fresh and to the point: ". . . and that it's only a matter of time before China has atom bombs." Change "China" to fill-in-the-blank. Change "atom bombs" to fill-in-the-blank. Voila! More fear pictures. When the pastor suggests that God is a Spider and we're caught in Its Web and wriggling till Death, one cannot help but shiver. 

The funniest line in the whole movie is delivered by Märta Lundberg, the atheistic substitute teacher: "Another Sunday in the vale of tears." That's Winter Light in a nutshell. I would suggest this only to those with strong heart and mind.

Today's Rune: Partnership.

Akira Kurosawa: 天国と地獄 / 'High and Low' (1963)

Akira Kurosawa's 天国と地獄 / High and Low (1963) is a rare example of a movie that's better than its source. Kurosawa took the basic premise of Ed McBain's King's Ransom: An 87th Precinct Mystery (originally published in 1959 and since reprinted) and morphed the setting into a Japanese one. The result is a deliberately paced, noticeably well-crafted black and white film.

The psycho kidnapper is one cold slice. 

Envy and hatred are partial motivators: having to look up at Mr. Gondo's house from relative poverty may have driven him over the edge. 

The great Toshiro Mifune (1920-1997) as Mr. Gondo, a man who rose from shoe-and-satchel craftsman to high officer in the National Shoe Company. All is put in jeopardy by his psychopathic nemesis.

Just as pleasurable as seeing Kurosawa's craftsmanship in play is watching High and Low as a cultural artifact. I tend to do both at the same time -- watch and see.

What this 1963 movie reveals from the perspective of 2016. 

Almost complete male domination of Japanese society in the public sphere.

Reiko Gondo (Kyōko Kagawa), Mr. Gondo's spouse, is dressed traditionally and seems very deferential and submissive. However, she wields influence and helps push her husband in a more compassionate direction.

Back-stabbing and power-plays at the corporate level.

Debates over quality vs. quantity, and profit margins. Mr. Gondo prefers high quality even though this means a smaller profit margin. He is proud of his work and wishes to remain so.

Competent and respectable police force. In the field, detectives and supports operate in pairs.

Sensitive awareness of socio-economic differences between groups of characters by the director and by the characters themselves.

The role of honor -- and differences between honor in theory (high-minded) and reality (more practical or even cynical).

Heroin -- matter-of-fact discussions by police; somewhat lurid depictions of "Dope Alley" reminiscent of  Billy Wilder's The Lost Weekend (1945). 

Articulated mass transit system (trains and trolleys).

Seemingly no air conditioning.

Use of telephones and wiretapping. Public telephones in use.

Changes since 1963?

Women in Japan have made gains, comparatively.

Transit, air conditioning and telecommunications highly developed, with society more fully saturated with all three elements.

Films rarely made in black & white anymore.

Films are rarely this well-crafted, although many newer television series have made tremendous strides in quality. 

Today's Rune: Fertility. 

Once in a Great City: A Detroit Story (2015)

David Maraniss, Once in a Great City: A Detroit Story (Simon & Schuster, 2015). Highly readable book focusing on Detroit as microcosm from 1962 to 1964. Interesting angles include Detroit's enthusiastic bid for the 1968 Summer Olympics, development of the Ford Mustang and Detroit's role at the 1964-1965 New York World's Fair. Plenty of thought and space is devoted to race relations, economics, civil rights, music, architecture and dreams of a more holistic society.  

On May 1, 1992, Rodney King (1965-2012) asked during the '92 LA Riots, "Can we all get along? Can we get along? Can we stop making it, making it horrible for the older people and the kids?" Short answer then, before and since: "No." Easier to factionalize and fight or take flight than to harmonize and build cooperatively and peacefully. The dream lives on, though. At the bottom of Pandora's jar one thing remains: hope. 

Once in a Great City: A Detroit Story (2015) includes lots of big personalities, diverse people ranging from JFK to MLK, LBJ to Malcolm X, Lee Iacocca to the Fords, Walter Reuther and the Gordy family, C.L. and Aretha Franklin, Little Stevie Wonder, Jaramogi Abebe Agyeman, Jerry Cavanaugh, George Romney, Alex Karras, and so on.

Above all that is now lost, I would have loved to have experienced the Flame Show Bar -- but there is still Baker's Keyboard Lounge, thank God. 

Today's Rune: Warrior. 

A Reading of Proust: Take I

Wallace Fowlie, A Reading of Proust (London: Dennis Dobson, 1967; originally published in 1964).

I originally read this in the late 1980s after meeting Wallace Fowlie (1908-1998) in North Carolina, and still find it interesting and helpful, not only about Marcel Proust -- one of the great and enduring global authors -- but also in its observations about art and writing. Some brief samples follow.

"A literary work is not a copy of life, but the development and . . . deepening of an original intuition. The permanent law of all art is the necessity of choosing . . ." (p. 7).

"If a novel is looked upon as a creation . . . it will inevitably call to mind the analogy with the Creation of the world." (p. 8).

"The artist does not rival the universe, he [or she] is a universe unto himself [or herself] . . . The creation of the novelist, according to one of Marcel Proust's most cherished beliefs, is more 'real' than life . . ." (p. 15). 

"An artist expresses not only himself [or herself], but hundreds of ancestors, the dead who find their spokesman in him [or her]." Because of this, the conscious, psychically aware artist will oftentimes be creating with a certain gravitas.

"The Book ends by becoming, in the language of the poet [Mallarmé], an instrument of the spirit . . . in which the smallest detail has some meaning." (pp. 35-36).

"[Henri] Bergson's distinction between two egos, the social ego (le moi social) with its discursive knowledge, and the real ego (le moi profound) which is intuitive and and continuous, residing below the social self, will be brilliantly illustrated in Proustian psychology." (p. 37).

"[The poet Charles] Baudelaire and Proust were both deeply and persistently conscious of the vanity of man's ambitions, of most . . . achievements and even of . . . existence, and yet their work retains and consecrates the poetry, the magic  and the beauty of certain moments of life." (p. 40).

In Proust, "the  principle becomes clear to the narrator that the past which seems lost because it is time elapsed is not lost. It is within us, and ready, under the appropriate circumstances and the appropriate stimuli to return as the present . . . Time is constantly destroying the present. But memory is able to restore the past . . ." (p. 55).

And: "A lifetime is required to understand life" (p. 84) -- or even a substantial part of it. In a strange sense, life's past moments become more important in the act of remembering them, funding them with deeper meaning than could have been understood the first time around.

D'accord. Today's Rune: Signals. 

Margarethe von Trotta: 'Hannah Arendt' (2012)

Margarethe von Trotta's Hannah Arendt (2012) focuses on the deep 20th century thinker (pronounced more like "Errant" or "Aren't" than "Ah-Rent") around the time (early 1960s) of Adolf Eichman's trial -- and execution -- in Israel. 

With her articles on the Eichmann trial and the resulting book, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (1963), Arendt's ideas at the time aroused heated controversy because of their multilayered complexity. Specifically at one point, she argues that some Jews were complicit in facilitating the evils of the Holocaust through their cooperation with Nazis. The movie covers all of this ground very well, including the hatred from others which she had to contend with.   

Many people nowadays know at least some of Hannah Arendt's ideas, with or without her name attached to them, such as "the banality of evil:" evil acts made easy by a widespread, bureaucratic, impersonal evasion of responsibility. Pass the buck. It's not my department. I didn't know. I was just following orders, rules, protocol. Sorry, I cannot recall . . .   

It took me about twenty minutes to get into sync with Hannah Arendt's pacing and field of characters; once in, I was all in. 

The meticulous 1960s details of a working intellectual and her circle of friends, assistants and critics -- plus her living and working spaces -- are all excellent, as are the actors: especially Barbara Sukowa as Hannah Arendt and Axel Milberg as Heinrich Blücher, Hannah's anti-Stalinist communist philosopher-poet professor husband. 

Among several other important characters, keep an eye out for Martin Heidegger, the philosopher -- an early paramour and, for at least a time, Nazi sympathizer -- and American writer-friend Mary McCarthy. 

Today's Rune: Partnership.   

The Mystery of Madelaine

I keep coming across things related to Belgian singer song-writer Sœur Sourire / Sister Smile, aka "The Singing Nun," aka Sœur Luc Gabrielle, i.e. Jeanine Deckers (1933-1985). She's the one who had an international mega-hit with "Dominique," which she wrote and performed in the early 1960s. The excitement continued right through the 1960s, and indeed, "Dominique" makes an appearance on the AMC series Mad Men, which is set in the 1960s.

Given the popularity of the idea of the singing nun, combined with the catchy "Dominique" and a few other perky-sounding songs, spin-offs seem to have abounded. Debbie Reynolds starred in Henry Koster's (final) film, The Singing Nun (1965) -- which also featured Ricardo Montalbán, Katharine Ross, Chad Everett and Agnes Morehead -- while Sally Field starred in The Flying Nun (1967-1970).

Whereupon we come to "Madelaine." Who was and/or is she?  I came across this record from 1963: Sister Adele / Dominique / Ten Other Songs Sung by Madelaine (Diplomat Records 2303). The cover shows a semi-concealed woman in nun's habit apparently playing an acoustic guitar, smiling, sitting across from four kids dressed in vaguely exotic outfits seated on benches, set somewhere on the edge of a wooded area that looks like the backdrop for a Godard film. There are no song credits, and there's no explanation of who the singer is. On the back cover, there is this: FINE RECORDS NEED NOT BE EXPENSIVE.

The more typical spellings of "the singer's" name would be Madeleine or Madeline, derived from Mary Magdalene. Did "Madelaine" really exist as a person, or was this a quick money-making scheme to cash in on Sister Smile's success? After all, given the record design of this "album," how would anyone in the general listening public have known the difference? Somebody did the vocals. Your thoughts? 

Today's Rune: Fertility.      

Wong Kar-wai: In the Mood for Love (2000)

With Wong Kar-wai's In the Mood for Love / 花樣年華 (2000), one is bestowed a vision of a way of life in 1962-1963 Hong Kong -- sort of like a miniature Hong Kong Mad Men. Luxuriate in excellent attire, slow-moving scenes, morsels of food, smoking and social mores played out in mostly tight spaces. It's a gorgeous film.  And it's a sort of homage in the use of color and camera to a Jean-Luc Godard film of the actual 1962-1963 time frame -- such as Godard's Le Mépris (1963). The marriage of music, camera movement and scene approaches perfection.   

In the Mood for Love focuses on the strange friendship and understated romance of Mr. Chow (Tony Leung) and Mrs. Chan (Maggie Cheung). We hear but never see in full Mrs. Chow or Mr. Chan -- they in turn are too busy "seeing" each other offscreen. We do see, partly for comic relief, co-workers and fellow apartment dwellers ranging from Mrs. Suen (Rebecca Pan) and Mr. Koo (Chan Man-Lei), who is often drunk, to Mr. Ho (Lai Chen), who has a wife and a girlfriend competing for his time away from work.  

Today's Rune: Journey. 

Suor Sorriso / Sister Smile

Bold is a good word for Roger Deutsch's Suor Sorriso / Sister Smile (2001), an Italian language film based on the life arc of Jeanne-Paule (Jeanine) Marie Deckers, aka Sœur Luc-Gabriel, aka Sœur Sourire.

Sister Smile takes the original "Singing Nun" (played by Ginevra Colonna) out of Belgium and moves her decades forward in time, dropping her into Italy at the turn of the latest century.  Despite a framing narrator, the film never explains why. Kind of crazy cool that way.

My initial response: Sister Smile feels in tone like some kind of almost demented blend of Rosemary's Baby (1968), The Exorcist (1973) and The Wicker Man (1973). Medievalish, something eerie suspended between an Andy Warhol and a David Lynch movie, with odd production values also looming somewhere in between, a psychological-spiritual disaster-quest played out on the astral plane. 

Trippy and memorable, just not for "family night."

Today's Rune: Strength.   

Sœur Sourir: The Singing Nun

Back in Saxapahaw, North Carolina, at my parents' place while looking through books, I came across a small sheaf of facsimile watercolors created by Sœur Sourir.  The images, sort of like pen and ink drawings with a light wash of color, triggered a rush of memories from early childhood, starting with the echo of Sœur Sourir's super-mega-radio-hit "Dominique" and proceeding through my Aunt Denise's recounting of her student exchange experiences in Argentina; my two sisters singing and playing; and closely related matters like acoustic guitars, AM radio, small portable record players and reel-to-reel tapes.  

The Singing Nun, the Flying Nun, Patty Duke, all sorts of things are now floating back into the mind's eye.




Eventually I was curious to ask: what ever happened to Sœur Sourir / Sister Smile?  

That strange tale, my friends, will be the subject of another post soon to come. 

Today's Rune: Breakthrough.    
  

"JFK in Fort Worth: A Lasting Impression"

A larger exhibit than covered in the last post is "JFK in Fort Worth: A Lasting Impression" at the Fort Worth Library downtown. First of all, the library itself is impressive, its architectural spaces, staff and services. As for the JFK exhibit, also well worth a good look. Lots of photos and artifacts from 1963 and beyond, including many JFK-related things I'd never seen before, anywhere.  

"JFK in Fort Worth: A Lasting Impression" includes plenty of Oswald items, and various other local details of interest. 

There's more on Hotel Texas, too. Details like this: people kept calling the hotel during the Kennedys' stay, apparently hoping that John or Jackie would pick up and say hi. 

Artifacts included in the "JFK in Fort Worth: A Lasting Impression" exhibit include this stuff from Hotel Texas (now Hilton Fort Worth). Mad Men mania!

Bob Schieffer will speak in November. Fifty years ago covering the Fort Worth visit and subsequent events in Dallas, he found himself giving Margeurite Oswald a ride from the first city to the second. Odd anti-scoops like that abounded.

Today's Rune: Signals. 

Hotel Texas: JFK in Fort Worth, 1963

Up close and personal at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art in Fort Worth, Texas, USA.  Specifically, I checked out the new Hotel Texas exhibit and picked up a copy of its accompanying book -- Hotel Texas: An Art Exhibition for the President and Mrs. John F. Kennedy (2013). 

When the Kennedys stayed in a suite (Room 850) at Hotel Texas (now Hilton Fort Worth), they discovered -- on the morning of the assassination -- that their quarters had been fully decorated with original works of art specifically deployed for their stay. 

One of the pieces that sticks out is Pablo Picasso's all-blackened bronze Angry Owl sculpture from the early 1950s. Another little bronze: Eros Pellini's Girl from Lombardia (late 1950s). And let's not forget Marsden Hartley's Sombrero with Gloves 1936 oil painting.

It's a small, interesting exhibit.  

Today's Date: Journey. 

Tar Heel Nation 3: Maceo Parker

"Pass the Peas!" Maceo Parker (b. February 14, 1943, in Kinston, North Carolina), sax player and all-around cool musician, comes from a family of musicians -- including older brother Kellis Parker (trombone) and younger brother Melvin (drums). All three played in Kinston (Blue Notes, Junior Blue Notes, Mighty Blue Notes) and all three went on to college, the two younger brothers to North Carolina A & T (Agricultural and Technical) in Greensboro in 1961 and 1962 respectively and Kellis via the very first small wave of students to desegregate and begin integrating the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1960. (In case you were wondering, it took nearby Duke University until 1963 to desegregate -- so we're just fifty years on as of this posting).

The younger Parker brothers were hired by James Brown -- a whole story in its own right. 

I came to know about Maceo Parker through listening to James Brown & co. recordings -- records, cassette tapes, eventually CDs, whatever was at hand at the time, beginning in my later teens. Try like I did a long version of "Cold Sweat" (1967) and hear JB rapping in 1960s' style: "Put 'em where it's at now. . . Let 'em have it!  Blow your horn! Blow your horn, Maceo! . . . Get it!" The name Maceo stood out (Spanish-traced name for "gift of God") -- making me want to know more.   

This fall, Maceo Parker will be touring in countries like Argentina and the Czech Republic, but he can also be experienced live in Tar Heel Land. Where and when? Memorial Hall at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (where I saw my first formal jazz performance as a teen) on Friday, September 27, 2013, with George Clinton & Parliament Funkadelic. Here's a link formore details. From the promotional:

'It’s hard to tell which came first, Maceo Parker or the funk. Maceo got his start with James Brown, and for over 20 years he has been building a new funk empire, fresh and stylistically diverse. In his blistering solo career, he navigates deftly between Brown’s 1960s soul and George Clinton’s 1970s freaky funk, while also exploring mellow jazz and hip-hop.' 

Can you dig? If all else fails, you can get yourself a brand new bag.

Sources include:

Markus Gruber documentary, My First Name is Maceo (2003, 2004 DVD).

Maceo Parker, 98% Funky Stuff: My Life in Music (Chicago Review Press, 2013), especially pages 41-53. 

Today's Rune: Breakthrough. 

Orson Welles: Le Procès / The Trial (Take II)

Orson Welles: Le Procès / The Trial (1962). It feels like many things. Is it Theatre of the Absurd? Existentialism? A cousin to Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot?

Is Orson Welles' Le Procès / The Trial a work of Surrealism? A horror film? 

Science fiction? Dreamscape? A parable? 

It feels like all of the above. Le Procès -- "The Process" -- gives a better grok of the story than "The Trial," i.e., the English language title for Kafka's novel and Welles' adaptation. There really is no trial in the sense of "courtroom drama." 

But: Josef K and the "process" of falling into the bizarre clutches of bureaucracy? 

Le Procès / The Trial features several memorable characters, many like "Bond girls" on the astral plane, including Orson Welles' "estranged" wife Paoli Mori as The Archivist; Jeanne Moreau, Elsa Martinelli, Suzanne Flon, Romy Schneider and Naydra Shore. 

To complete the Bond connection, Michael Lonsdale (The Priest) resurfaces as Drax in Moonraker (1979). 

Today's Rune: Joy.    

Orson Welles: Le Procès / The Trial (Take I)

The visuals alone make Orson Welles' Le Procès / The Trial (1962) worth exploring. This cinematic accomplishment, a force of imagination and will, is stunning.  

Based on Franz Kafka's Der Process (first published in 1925 but drafted during the Great War of 1914-1918).

This nightmarish workplace was a real one. Welles found it and filmed it, with Anthony Perkins walking through the middle of an interior field of typing. Happy Labor Day!

Love in the middle of a paper hoard. Leni (Romy Schneider) and Josef K (Anthony Perkins).

Josef K, like many of his fellow countrymen then or now, doesn't seem to know if he's coming or going. . . Here, he finds himself outside the Big Room. The Lady or the Tiger?

Today's Rune: Partnership. 

Mystic Chords of Memory

The March on Washington at Fifty. Where are we going, where have we been? The world, that is. Our world.

Check out "Los liberadores de la conciencia" above. What, no women? We'll consider that in another post. But these four men -- attacked, mocked, ridiculed, three out of four jailed or imprisoned, three out of four assassinated by other men -- stay with us like the Donovan song, "The Hurdy Gurdy Man." I for one am thankful for their efforts and their vision and their example:

Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865)
Mohandas "Mahatma" Gandhi (1869-1948)
Nelson Mandela (1918-present)
Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929-1968)

Of course there are and have been many others, men and women, with sympatico beliefs, yet these particular men stand out appropriately on this date in 2013, exactly fifty years after King's "I Have a Dream" speech at the Great March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.   

Today's Rune: Fertility. 

The Seventh Floor

Checked out the Seventh Floor over in Dallas. That is, the Seventh Floor of The Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza, in the run-up to the 50th anniversay of the JFK assassination. The space reminds me of Andy Warhol and The Factory. I can imagine a lot of cultural events happening here in the near future, one floor above the Oswald perch and the main historical display area. 

  
Whereas the Sixth Floor was jammed with people from all over the place, the Seventh Floor remains underdiscovered and underexplored so far.

In the past, there have been special displays on the Seventh Floor, even when the whole thing wasn't opened up yet. I saw a Jack Ruby display, for instance, a couple years ago, that included his infamous hat from 1963.

Here's a link to the museum in case you're interested in more details.  

Today's Rune: Breakthrough.   

The Fifty Year March

Fifty years on, the People's Republic of China and a divided Korea are still here. Vietnam reunited, Germany reunited, a post-Soviet world. Landing on the Moon, Mission to Mars. The USA is still here. France is still here. The Irish Troubles are over, more or less. Independent Armenia. Arab Spring. Middle East troubles -- still here. James Bond and the Rolling Stones -- still here. Civil Rights reforms -- still ongoing. Wars -- ongoing. Copy machines. Scanners. Wireless communications. Climate change. First African American President. First Jesuit Pope, and from Latin America. The Fifty Year March continues.

Today's Rune: Journey.  

The Feminine Mystique at Fifty

A lot of "big stuff" happened in 1963 -- including, on this exact date fifty years ago, the publication of Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique. Can you dig?

Besides boldly challenging the largely accepted "mainstream" status quo of its time and place, The Feminine Mystique drew a lot of "backlash." From supporters of the status quo. From reactionaries -- those who thought the status quo too "wild." And from critics who thought (or think) it too egocentric, or too ethnocentric, or too neglectful of socioeconiomic "aspects," or of race, of sexual orientation. . . and so on.

Regardless of incoming (and ongoing-incoming) flak, a cool book. 

Today's Rune: Defense.

p.s. On the wartime origin of "flak:" it's German -- "Fliegerabwehrkanone," anti-aircraft artillery, ack-ack, dating from the Great War of 1914-1918 aka The First World War aka World War One. In case anyone's forgotten what "aka" stands for, it's for "also known as."         

Four Banana, Three Banana, Two Banana, One

Just finished checking out "Electrical Bananas," a chapter in John McMillian's Smoking Typewriters: The Sixties Underground Press and the Rise of Alternative Media in America (Oxford University Press, 2011).

McMillian starts off the chapter with Sara Davidson's observant coverage of New York City in mid-1967: " . . . especially noteworthy for Davidson was the sight of a young hippie in a wizard hat selling bananas on an East Village corner. They were going for ten cents each, with a three-cent deposit on the skins" (page 66).

Reports were circulating at the time, describing the hallucinatory effects of smoking dried banana peels. . .

As in: Gone fishing, gone bananas . . .  

McMillian follows various leads as to the origin of the idea of smoking banana peels, and looks at contributions ranging from a 1963 article through Country Joe & the Fish, and Donovan, with even a footnote about The Velvet Underground and Nico (including Andy Warhol's banana cover), all circa 1966-1967. 

But how did this notion spread from there? The subtitle for "Electrical Bananas" suggests an answer with "The Underground Press and the Great Banana Hoax of 1967."

Beyond that, semiotic bananas must have been part of the Zeitgeist, the spirit-ghost of the high-time. Because there are other examples, even beyond the main scope of McMillian's study, moving from 1967 into 1968 (The Banana Splits TV series, Juanita Banana) right into 1971 (Woody Allen's Bananas) and probably right into the
21st century . . . 

If this theme song for The Banana Splits doesn't sound trippy, I'm not sure what does:

Tra la la, la la la la.

Four banana, three banana, two banana, one.
All bananas playing in the bright blue sun.
Flippin' like a pancake, poppin' like a cork
Fleagle, Bingo, Drooper and Snork. . .

Today's Rune: Signals.