But they were good, even if I never hear about them any more. Matter of fact, their last recording I have is an old vinyl LP by some members of the group, calling themselves Hot Tuna (but since I wrote this I got a new CD). Just fine, and with a much better sense of humor than the heavy tripping stuff dished up by Grace Slick; like Crown of Creation. I seem to remember she even gave her child a pretentious name in that vein... poor baby. We thought Gracie, walking around the Concertgebouw while communicating with a wireless mike, very rare in those days, a weirdo freak (eng wijf) anyway. But they did have my next-to-one favorite bass player.

The photographs above were made at their first performance in the Amsterdam Concertgebouw, 1968. I have never been able to do much with them, let alone selling; those picture editors want close-ups. It's only while I was scanning them that I finally discovered they're the only impressions of their show I've ever seen that did it some justice. Privately, I'm utterly convinced that this was the inspiration for Stanley Kubrick's 2001 trip sequence. (He's not around any more to deny it, so that's pretty safe.) But if you want to tell me they inspired Georg Friedrich Händel's Royal Fireworks music as well... I'm extremely doubtful.

The second time was at the Holland Pop Festival, held two or three years later at Kralingen, near Rotterdam. Their light show, still very important, didn't get half a chance in the light used for the 25ASA Gevaert negative film that was used by the army of cinematographers. But they seemed to be used to that and even started chanting a special number Turn Of the Lights. After which successful performance I grabbed my chance:

You think they're not close enough? Blurred, even?
My congratulations: You've got as much taste as a 1970s picture editor!







SEARCH this site or the Web





copyright notice
all material on this site, except where noted
copyright © by , curaçao
reproduction in any form for any purpose is prohibited
without prior consent in writing