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Rating: "What a lovely sort of Death" states Peter... Peter is a television director who is coming to terms with the awareness of the changes happening in the world, and the catalyst that brings him to the brink is the impending divorce requested by his wife Sally. With the help of his friend John, he decides to embark on a fatal journey into the depths of LSD. From the initial warmth that spreads, Peter is catapulted into a fantastic world of extrasensory perceptions, kaleidoscopic colors that seem to come to life, and experiences of encounters with characters straight out of Tolkien's "The Hobbit." A beautiful blonde goddess appears to him, leading him through the sensation of death, which terrifies him, and while out of body, he witnesses his own funeral and comes face to face with a friend, Judge Max, who is judging him for his commercial work and the waste of his talent. At this point, completely out of control, he flees from his friend John's house (whom he believes to be dead) to awaken happily with his lover Glenn, who announces how difficult it is to face tomorrow.
All this in 1967.
The soundtrack is entrusted to the Electric Flag, a group born from the intentions of guitarist Mike Bloomfield (just out of the Paul Butterfield Blues Band) to assemble a small orchestra capable of blending all the music of the American tradition (so much so that the first provisional name is An American Band), from blues to country, from ragtime to folk, from funk to soul, all with the new psychedelic dress that was taking shape at that time. The formation that creates this soundtrack (also participating in the Monterey Pop Festival) consists of musicians from the Chicago blues scene, including, besides Bloomfield, the singer Nick Gravenites, the keyboardist Nick Goldberg, the bassist Harvey Brooks, and the talented drummer Buddy Miles. Supported by an excellent horn section, they move to San Francisco (where else) and begin working on this album. As in Bloomfield's best intentions, a perfect sound carpet for the development of the film's plot comes to life, where the band tends to perfectly underline what happens to the protagonist, traveling from the conscious immersion in the acid of the initial "Peter's Trip" to the exit with the funky "Gettin' Hard", a track that handles and pays homage very closely to that "Hoochie Coochie Man" by Muddy Waters. The journey unfolds masterfully among small hallucinogenic pearls like "M-23" or "Flash, Bam, Pow" (of which a small excerpt is also heard in "Easy Ryder"), perfect for Peter's liquid visions or moments of greater compositional fury like in "Fine Jung Thing", a sort of hyper-jazz that accompanies him into the darkest depths of his journey. Many fragments and portions are exclusively for cinematic commentary, but from which emerge Jimi Hendrix, the "Barrettian" Floyd, the warm wind of the West Coast. The flower-power and the Hell's Angels, all in a turmoil of noise and anguish. Last chapters worth a few words are the sparkling splendor of "Peter Gets Off" and the incredible synthesizer work of Paul Beaver for "Synesthesia" which foreshadows Bowie's "The Man Who Fell to Earth" by a few years. It is also often indicated as the first "rock" album (or one of the very first) to have used the Moog.
I think that’s enough to spark curiosity.
P.S.: last technical note on the film (and not a trivial one)...
The Trip (Il Serpente di Fuoco) - 1967
Director: Roger Corman
Screenplay: Jack Nicholson
Cast: Peter (Henry Fonda)
Sally (Susan Strasberg)
John (Bruce Dern)
Max (Dennis Hopper)
Glenn (Sally Sachse)
Tracklist
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