"At last Kesey returns with the last to be rescued, Mary Microgram, looking like a countryside after a long and fierce war, and Kesey says let's haul ass out of here." -- excerpt from Tom Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.
Before Denise Kaufman was an Ace of Cup, she was Merry Prankster Mary Microgram read above having survived a Beatles concert. The Merry Pranksters were not a musical group but were rather a mix of post-Beat and proto-hippie disciples, followers, hangers-on of author Ken Kesey, a best-selling author who had turned his back on the literary world to spread the gospel of the casual use of mind-expanding drugs (mostly LSD) and, more generally, a greater freedom. After a criss-cross of the United States by The Merry Pranksters in the DayGlo painted school bus Furthur, the Pranksters put on happenings known as Acid Tests where communal drug-taking was supplemented with light shows, live music, film projections and any other component of a multimedia event.
The Merry Pranksters were self-sufficient amateurs. They were their own mechanics, sound engineers, event organizers, publicists, publishers, printers, artists, navigators, musicians, circus performers, drug-takers, trip guides, nurses, fugitives, cinematographers, zealots, drivers, recruiters and doom spellers. Their amateurism was the point (Kesey referred to himself as the "non-navigator") and their naivete had a regional influence on art, music, film, sexual mores, drug taking and concert-going of the late-sixties and a national influence on the greater story of 60s America. Kesey released The Acid Test in 1966 on the single-use Sound City label. The (non-)record chronicles The Sound City Acid Test and the kind of atmospheric sound collages, feedback, "music", monologues and raps that would characterize a Prankster event as the collective pursued the ultimate LSD experience.
Here is Ken Kesey (and The Merry Pranksters's) discography:
The Acid Test
The Acid Test Reels (compilation album)
"Telstar Sound Collage" by The Merry Pranksters
Acid Test Graduation Ceremony 1966
Ken Kesey & Mountain Girl Interview
Pass the Headphones!!
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