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Wednesday, April 02, 2014

Pink Floyd in It's so far out it's straight down



Granada Television produced this fascinating TV time capsule “It’s So Far Out It’s Straight Down” as a special part of their Scene at 6:30 series. The program focused on the young counterculture / hippie scene in London and features Miles, the Indica Gallery and the editorial board of The International Times underground newspaper. Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso and Lawrence Ferlinghetti are seen at the International Poetry Incarnation and we are taken to The UFO Club where Syd Barrett and the Pink Floyd are playing a live version of “Interstellar Overdrive” (Also heard on the soundtrack is an early version of their “Matilda Mother,” then called “Percy The Ratcatcher” and “It Can’t Happen Here” by The Mothers of Invention).

Paul McCartney is a talking head interviewee (although not framed as such) in the studio, intelligently discussing the nascent underground scene:
If you don’t know anything about it [the counterculture], you can sort of trust that it’s probably gonna be all right and it’s probably not that bad because it’s human beings doing it, and you know vaguely what human beings do. And they’re probably going to think of it nearly the same way you would in that situation.
The straights should welcome the underground because it stands for freedom… It’s not strange it’s just new, it’s not weird, it’s just what’s going on around.
“It’s So Far Out It’s Straight Down” was broadcast in March of 1967. The film focuses on performance (happenings) and The International Times, described by one of its members as communication media. The network element of this film, "to be part of something that has a common bond"is striking in the age of digital networked media. With words "beginning to become obsolete" and posters as the next form of mass communication.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

This seems so familiar. Where have I read this before? Oh, yesterday on Dangerous Minds!

James Barrett said...

So true. I often learn of things from Dangerous Minds. I did change a little of the text but otherwise it is from there.

Dangerous Minds is one of the best sites on the Net and I often link back to them from anything I use, but in this case I failed to. Bad me.