Word: stereos
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...commences Big Dreams (Pantheon; 546 pages; $24), which records a long meander around California. Wistfully, lightly, the author recollects arriving in San Francisco as a 25-year-old in 1969. "In the Haight-Ashbury, I rented a cheap flat and furnished it a la mode with a massive stereo and a mattress on the floor. Something new and exciting seemed to enter my orbit almost daily -- seven-grain bread, Zen meditation, the pungent smell of eucalyptus leaves. There was an earthquake, 4.7 on the Richter scale ... And one night at the Fillmore Auditorium, while Janis Joplin was wailing on stage...
...first, the faint buzzing blends in with the crisp notes and trills of Glenn Gould's recording of Bach's "Prelude in C Minor." Perhaps the tape is a bad copy, or the stereo is acting up again. Then the distracting noise grows louder, more insistent, until it can no longer be dismissed as a mechanical error. In fact, it is Gould singing along with his own performance as he always did on the stage and in the recording studio. Throughout his search for technical perfection, he hummed along audibly and slightly off-key. In many ways the odd combination...
...floor of A (with a conveniently placed bedroom window that points directly toward the Pool Theatre) has suggested that if these drama types in B-entry don't start being more considerate about smoking in public walk-ways and setting off fire alarms that he might start blasting his stereo during Pool Theater performances...
...Drop of a Hat and At the Drop of Another Hat. They toured throughout the '60s, with Flanders providing dry commentary and lead vocals and Swann at the keyboard, adding his thin but enthusiastic tenor to such whimsy as The Gasman Cometh, Song of Reproduction (a jab at stereo enthusiasts) and The Hippopotamus Song, an ode to "mud, mud, glorious mud" that somehow became a plea for international peace, complete with a verse in Russian delivered by Swann...
...your cruddy TV the effect of that ominous shot of the house looming over her was somewhat diminished by the tiny scale and the foggy reproduction of the original print, not to mention the two empty beer cans blocking your view and the sound of your roomate's stereo blending with the sound-track. There is a rare opportunity to see this film as it was meant to be seen next Wednesday night at the Brittle, and trust me, this is one of those films that uses the space of the darkened movie theatre and the scale of the movie...