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UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Thursday, September 28, 1967
Hippie music releases tension at KU
By Maggie Ogilvie Kansan Staff Reporter
A psychedelic light show, like the subconscious, is something that cannot be expressed in words, "only in line, color and feeling."
"It has to say more than 'It's a dance,'" explained the hippie artist who first advertised light shows and rock blasts with his psychedelic posters. He was one of the surrealists who influenced the dance which is more than a dance, the dance which expresses the subconscious.
Call it the chingaling, the boogaloo, or the skate, but it is an innovation of writhing, lights, and emotional freedom that is making local night spots look more and more like West Coast "happenings." Students are learning the hippie "relaxation theory."
'Trip' here different
Were they in California, probably 80 per cent would be high on drugs, but here the experience is included by loudness, beer, and the beat. Alienation, fear, and inhibition break down; energy and creativity come out. Crowds are united, the way 10,000 took an "electronic trip" at the three-day "Trips Festival" in San Francisco last year.
Individuals "rediscover their own movement and rediscover themselves," said a dance teacher in the Bay Area. She also pointed out young adults become like children who "never walk if they can run or skip."
There are reasons why the newest sense-stimulating sounds and motions are first popularized in the permissive Haight-Ashbury culture.
Howard Rosenfeld, professor of psychology, who recently returned from San Francisco, noticed there is more physical activity and social mobility on the West Coast. And there are many "dispossessed" emigrants among the 1500 people who move there every day. They contribute to what he saw as a "new morality that is even blase about topless shows."
Miss Sherbon comments
Elizabeth Sherbon, advisor of Tau Sigma honorary dance fraternity, said young people have always done things to shock their elders. However, the history of ballroom dancing proves, Miss Sherbon said, imagination and interpretation are the forerunners of theme and variation in music.
"Out of this experimentation, some valid things remain. Dances are made to do, not to watch."
KU students are "usually pretty straight" and have "good musical tastes," observes Craig Wilson, Prairie Village sophomore and leader of the "Shadows." He likes to play here because "the audience is very receptive and very genuine." He has noticed the dancers copy others and retain certain steps they like, trying to make themselves look graceful or "cool."
"A bit of real soul"
Eric Kraft, Shawnee Mission sophomore and leader of the "Kraft Music Haul," thinks local
Official Bulletin
TODAY
Graduate Study Abroad Open Meeting, 4:30 p.m. Forum Room, Union. Fulbright, Foreign Government and KU Direct Exchange Grants.
audiences "have quite a bit of real soul, and are friendlier at their clubs" than elsewhere in Kansas.
TOMORROW
Muslim Society. 2:30 p.m. Kansas University. Painter. Popular Film. "Sarebabas." 7 & 8:30 p.m. Dyce Auditorium.
TOMORROW
Mike Waugh, leader of the "Renegades" who played at KU Friday, gets into the act with his audience, admitting, "It turns my feet on." He says the crowd would just as soon see the band moving, and he likes to "watch the girls" while performing. Waugh might agree with a California guitarist who has said "there is a real bond between the musicians and the audience."
Waugh said he has to play more soul in Missouri, and Kraft commented while rhythm and blues and hard rock is most popular here, Wichita demands straight "Top 40." The California combination of rock and blues-folk and country-Indian raga is spreading to this area about six months after it originates. The East Coast is about the same time span ahead of this region, but slightly behind the West Coast.
Local groups record
Get ready for the "Funky Broadway" close behind a song by that name now popular here.
The particular local groups mentioned have written and recorded, doing extensive traveling. But many of the 1,500 comparably un-trained San Francisco groups prefer not to play for out-of-towners who are not "open" to them. The lead guitarist for the "Grateful Dead," a top member of the hippie cult, has said he does not believe the live sound and excitement can be recorded.
Hippie light show innovations,
such as strobe lights, are used only moderately in this area. Usually lighting effects are limited to flashing lights synchronized to a drum beat and atmospheric lighting on the stage dimmed for slow music and alternately flashed for fast.
Nothing here can compare with the Fillmore Auditorium or the Avalon ballroom, but Lawrence has had go-go girls on occasion. The Village Green employed a Playboy bunny who danced to a jukebox on a draped table last spring. She is returning this week.
She attracted an all-male Wednesday night crowd for the first two weeks. Manager Fred Johnson noticed after each full house had emptied, every chair was turned toward the stage—"They just sat and gaped." Johnson was pleased when the stags started bringing dates, but noted they did not dance much, perhaps, he said, because the dancer was not an outgoing entertainer.
KU likes short songs
KU crowds don't want long performances, Johnson said, referring to the Percy Sledge audience at the Red Dog last week which he thought got a little tired. Most California bands, by contrast, play each song for 15-45 minutes, developing different rhythms and moods hoping to completely involve the audience and offer them a varied experience.
Often both entertainer and dancer do whatever the music inspires them to do. Among hip- pies, it might be the "freak out," which has been described as "doing your thing to music." The lead singer with a group called the "Eighth-Penny Matter," does a ten-minute act called "Acid Rock" to interpret a psychedelic experience.
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