Ant Trip Ceremony
24 Hours

In the world, there are millions of diseases. Among these, I feel compelled to remember two in particular today, both concerning the approach many of us have to music.

One is that strange form of madness that takes hold of you when you discover a great but unknown band and immediately think that this will be the band of your life, that one day they'll be successful, and you can say: "I was there when nobody knew Tizio while you weren't!" And after a short time, you'll tell everyone, "Ah, but you weren't there when Tizio was really good, now it's a bit too commercial!" despite Tizio still playing the same songs, despite Tizio was known only to you before, and now three more people know them, four at most. The other disease is perhaps even more serious, and I could even name a person with a website about the history of rock, but since at the beginning of this review I "ticked a box" where I stated, among other things, not to attack anyone personally under penalty of exclusion of my review (I don't know if it's ever happened), I'll just say that this makes you exaggerate the underground phenomena at the expense of the "commercial" ones that sell, and so it turns out that the Beatles are crap because they sell, the Pink Floyd too, as well as a million other bands. So? So I feel it is necessary to tell you that I too have suffered from such diseases, but I always try to rid myself of them, as I'm doing right now, with this review.

The band I'm about to talk to you about is Ant Trip Ceremony, a group of Californian hippies about whom little or nothing is known, who participated, like dozens of other bands, in the San Francisco acid-psychedelic movement.
Besides the splendid cover, I'd like to remind you that this record was impossible to find for a very long time, as the first and only pressing (until recently) was of only 300 copies, sold at the phantasmagorical price of 3 dollars each, and I bet even then whoever bought the record kept it well hidden, waiting for their boom, not knowing that shortly thereafter they would disappear into nothing.

But let's get to the record: what on earth do these Ant Trip Ceremony do to deserve a review in 2007, almost forty years after their only release? From what I've read, they were even considered as the Grateful Dead of the area at the time, as their wild concerts were attended by hundreds of kids in search of the "psychedelic escape" (unfortunately there is no testimony to all of this, but I trust in the treacherous music business capable of bringing out unreleased tracks and rarities from everywhere!). I usually don't do track by track reviews, due to the tediousness of such an operation, and in this case, I see even less utility since the sound of these "acid" bands cannot be described with 3 words per song.

The record, like many of that era, features covers and original compositions. Among the former, a fun and light-hearted Little Baby (a typical blues of the time) stands out, an unusual "Violets Of Dawn" by Eric Andersen, within which Stein's flute (the band's guitarist but a multi-instrumentalist in reality) enters, accompanying the sweet music of the others after a solo, and an essential and brilliant Hey Joe (a must for the time). Among the latter, "Four In The Morning" should be remembered, in a sense likened to "Hey Joe" for its ethereal character, within which Stein's flute again makes an appearance, this time accompanied by drums and guitar. A fun and almost western "Locomotive Lamp" that can only remind us of a solitary train in the midst of immense prairies. Finally, Elaborations, undoubtedly the flagship track of the whole lot, a long and convoluted psychedelic suite of over seven minutes where Steve (the founder of the band) accompanies us with his guitar tuned to make the sound resemble that of a sitar, whose notes intertwine beautifully with Stein's flute, even in the faster parts.

In short, if you love psychedelia, if you've listened a billion times to "Live/Dead", if you've worn out the vinyls of Jefferson Airplane, if your stereo can no longer take Quicksilver Messenger Service, give these mysterious hippies a chance, who knows, the next time you discover a fantastic and unknown band, you won't want to keep it all to yourself and give me a valuable suggestion.