Freeform '68 or The Beginning Or the End?

Gary Lucas — Wed, 31 Dec 2025 23:07:25 +0000

Freeform '68 or The Beginning Or the End? Gary Lucas December 31, 2025 - 18:07

Topics

Tags

I recall buying the second Incredible String Band album, The 5000 Spirits or The Layers of the Onion, in early '68 purely because of the intriguing cover art by The Fool (Simon and Marijke, the Dutch design collective who painted the exterior of the Beatles' Apple boutique in London, Eric Clapton's psychedelic Gibson SG, etc.) On that same day, in that same purchase at Gerber Music in Syracuse, I picked up the latest Mothers' album, We're Only In It For the Money. I took them both home with me and, later that evening, invited my best friend, Walter Horn, over for a first listen.

Long-playing albums as discrete units of Artistic Statement had really come into their own the year before, and a first listen to the latest album by an artist you were already partial to--or a brand new album by an unknown artist you had taken a chance on/thrown down 5 bucks to get to know better—was a Major Event. It was a ritual best enjoyed in the company of like-minded friends. Get the album, take it home, peel the shrink-wrap, put it on the turntable, inhale or imbibe your favorite intoxicant if so inclined—I always chose the former—and LISTEN CLOSELY.

Cover art by The Fool

That night, both these albums blew our minds, to put it mildly.

I had already seen the Mothers live in Syracuse a few months earlier, and had been a fan of Frank Zappa's since hearing his first album with the Mothers, Freak Out!, in late '66. The Incredible String Band was a completely unknown quantity to me at the time; maybe one copy only (if that) of their first Elektra album had made it into the record department at Woolworths in downtown Syracuse, where the most esoteric rock (and a smattering of outsider folk and jazz releases of the era) were all lumped together in a couple of random bins labeled ROCK. Left-field, non-mainstream stuff mainly—like the first couple Holy Modal Rounders albums on Prestige, and anything on the crazed International Artists label, an indie label out of Texas offering psychedelic musique du jour such as Roky Erickson's 13th Floor Elevators, Red Krayola, and Bubble Puppy. But I'd never really heard any of this music at the time, save maybe a track or two over late-night FM radio in Syracuse, which would be WAER.

But that night we listened closely to just about the freshest, most exciting music I'd ever heard, by two very dissimilar artists. My friend Walter was similarly impressed. To this day, I still cite the 5000 Spirits album as my #1 Favorite when asked to compile a list of my all-time favorite albums—and I've never grown tired of listening to We're Only In It for the Money.

The flow of ideas and the flawless execution of them on both albums (though, in truth, they sound nothing alike) left pretty much everything we knew and loved as Great Music up to that point far behind in the dust.

The late '60s in music was like that.

Each new day brought a sonic advancement on what came before—a tiny revolution, or a Great Leap Forward, as to what music could be or represent. Music's power to cast a spell upon the listener was at its height. Music as both an enchanting chemical reaction in the brain and a creative force to be reckoned with.

The Dream is Over, though—"over a long time ago"—as Steely Dan sang.

These days, the sheer ubiquity of Music as Commodity—in effect, virtually the entire history of recorded music, most of it easily accessible and most of it available for nothing over the Net by a push of a button or a stroke of your computer key--like endless water flowing out of a tap—has rendered the numinous Power of Music for all intents and purposes null and void. (Read Heinrich Von Kleist's short story "St. Cecilia," or "The Power of Music" to get a flavor of what I'm driving at here in invoking the historically sacred potential of music to move mountains/topple dictators/change human consciousness. I wrote a song about this, actually, early on, entitled "Jericho," which urged the listeners/fellow musicians to "Make the walls fall down in Jericho!" Jeez, was I naive.)

Any artist attempting to rally the troops today with some kind of anthemic song statement—be it everything from a gentle evocation of the one-ness of humankind pace the Youngblood's "Get Together," to the absurdist mass sing-along WTF-does-it-all-mean rant of Dylan's "Rainy Day Women (Nos. 12 & 35)", i.e.; "Everybody Must Get Stoned"—is met with an indifferent shrug of the shoulders.

These days, Everything is Nothing...and Vice Versa.

Still, go back and check this Incredible String Band album below, which was greeted as the British Folk equivalent of Sgt. Pepper on its release in 1967. It still sounds as fresh as the day I picked it up on a whim--as does Zappa's We're Only In It for the Money. They both have a timeless aura surrounding them like an invisible force field. Although, hey, a cynical hipster could dismiss the ISB as "Hippie Music" and, in the case of Zappa, "Anti-Hippie Music."

I am not that cynical.

I'll give Zappa the last word:

“Information is not knowledge

Knowledge is not wisdom

Wisdom is not truth

Truth is not beauty

Beauty is not love

Love is not music

Music is the BEST"

zappa

Freeform '68 or The Beginning Or the End?

Add new comment