Video: Nesmith/Zappa Identity Switch

That is strange. I wonder if that is why Zappa contracted cancer & died so young.
I just watched the video. In the beginning, it looked like Zappa was lip synching. Then when it was Mike Nesmith's turn, it appeared that he was really speaking his lines.
What I found particularly interesting about this bit is that Zappa is so very calm, cool & collected throughout the segment. I have read that he was a genius. I have no doubt about that. I think that little bit was put together so that Mike Nesmith could poke fun at his own life. I have read elsewhere that he used to complain often about how ridiculous he felt being a part of the Monkees. He was a professional guitarist. I remember that people used to make fun of the Monkees. It was said that they couldn't actually play their instruments.

I just googled this article:

THE MONKEES • Pop Musicians

The Monkees were a made-for-TV musical group formed in 1965 when the producers Bob Rafelson and Bert Schneider advertised for band members in Variety. The next year the zany comedy TV show The Monkees debuted with the band's four members: drummer Micky Dolenz (b. 8 March 1945 in Los Angeles, California), bassist Peter Tork (b. 13 February 1942 in Washington, D.C.), guitarist Michael Nesmith (b. 30 December 1942 in Houston, Texas) and heartthrob singer Davy Jones (b. 30 December 1945 in Manchester, England). The show was a surprise hit and the Monkees became a pop phenomenon, releasing albums and even a movie (1968's Head). At first the band members did little more than sing on their albums, though later they began to play instruments and write some of their own songs. Their albums included The Monkees (1966) and Headquarters (1967), with hit singles including "Pleasant Valley Sunday," "I'm a Believer" (written by Neil Diamond) and "Last Train to Clarksville." The TV show ended in 1968 and Tork left the group the same year. Nesmith left in 1969 and by the end of 1970 The Monkees had fizzled out. The band regrouped without Nesmith in the 1980s and continue to make occasional appearances together. The Monkees also blazed a trail for future pre-fab bands like The Partridge Family and The Spice Girls.
Extra credit: It's true: Mike Nesmith's mother invented the office product Liquid Paper... Nesmith wrote the Linda Ronstadt hit "Different Drum"... Head was co-written by Jack Nicholson and included a brief appearance by Frank Zappa... In 1986 Tork, Jones and Dolenz released the reunion album Pool It!.

In that video Zappa and Nesmith don't destroy a new car, rather than an old-fashioned model, do they? That would be truly subversive, so they don't do it.

Frank Zappa was raised in a household that helped conduct the most vile, immoral and genocidal development of germ warfare, chemical warfare and psychochemical warfare using "mind altering drugs" to destroy people as weapons of mass destruction. He was just continuing the government-military contracts by promoting LSD, like Faul did in 1967, initiating the black propaganda pro-drugs campaign with his July 1966 much hyped and USA-UK media promoted album "Freak Out." The alubm is said to have influenced the Beatles "Sgt. Pepper" creation and concept. One could infer that Frank Zappa was being paid to be a CIA conduit with "youth appeal" to promote LSD to weaken and destroy the anti-war/leftist movements on campus and throughout the world.

This EDGEWOOD ARSENAL connection is just too much of a coincidence:

"During Zappa's earliest childhood, his father, a chemist and mathematician, worked at the Edgewood Arsenal chemical warfare facility at nearby Aberdeen Proving Ground. Due to the Zappa home's close proximity to the Arsenal, Zappa's father kept gas masks on hand in case of an accident. Evidently, this had a profound effect on the young Zappa; references to germs, germ warfare and other aspects of the "secret" defense industry occur throughout his work."

Then with the 1966/67 flood of the LSD weapon (that they had been using in the Vietnam War) against their own domestic U.S. population groups, comes Frank Zappa "Mothers" to the children targets:




In 1991 Frank Zappa, who described himself as a "conservative" became the US government-corporate liason officer in the Czech Republic, whose US ambassador was the Sgt. Pepper clues' right wing, pro-Vietnam War Republican politico/CIA "SHIRLEY TEMPLE BLACK." He had a friendship with right wing pro-globalization CIA scum Vaclev Havel, a "dissident" who became the leader of the NATO-joing "Czech Republic" as the U.S., like Hitler, broke apart the unified country of Czechoslovakia and soon installed a US military presence there.


From a website on the book Acid Dreams:

CIA sites
Washington, DC area CIA headquarters, where several hallucinogenic escapades and covert operations with LSD were plotted

Lexington, Kentucky CIA conducted extensive drug testing at the National Institutes of Mental Health Addiction Research Center

Read more about drug tests at Lexington, excerpted from the text. Montreal, Canada CIA contracted brainwashing and drug studies involving LSD and PCP at the Allain Memorial Hospital

Vacaville, California One of several prisons where the CIA tested drugs and behavior modification techniques

Manilla, Philippines Where the CIA stored LSD for covert warfare (AGAINST THE VIETNAMESE PEOPLE)

Atsugi Air Base, Japan Where Lee Harvey Oswald's Marine unit was given LSD

West Germany Where the CIA conducted LSD interrogations during the Cold war


Army sites

New York City, New York Army drug tests at the New York State Psychiatric Institute killed at least one human guinea pig

Edgewood Arsenal, Maryland Headquarters of the US Army Chemical Corps, where thousands of soldiers were given LSD, the superhallucinogen BZ, and other mind-altering drugs

Read more about BZ at Edgewood, excerpted from the text of Acid Dreams.

Ft. Bragg, North Carolina US soldiers were given LSD and told to perform tank drills and other military manuevers in the late 1950s

Ft. Benning, Georgia US soldiers perfomed war games under the influence of LSD in the late 1950s

Aberdeen Proving Ground, Maryland Where BZ-type weapons were developed for domestic crowd control purposes

Hey look what I found, Edgewood Arsenal Frank Zappa comes on right after fellow LSD pusher-Faul pretending to be Vivian Stanshall, in the same USA-UK government BBC 1968 special on TV where Billy Pepper-Vivian-Faul performs the psychedelic sneering-at-the-sheeple "Canyons of Your Mind":

[ftp]www.youtube.com/watch?v=TsKDGbCo--k&search=Frank%20Zappa[/ftp]

[ftp]www.jojoplace.org/Shoebox/Bonzo_Dog_Canyons.wmv [/ftp]

Load on all the emotionally laden key words you like, but it's still nothing more than a funny, perhaps vaudevillian number, nothing more.

Just doin' my part in that using language-descriptors-to-reflect-reality thing.

In the Canyons video, it's interesting how they mock the fans of rocks stars with them literally kneeling and crawling at the feet of a guitarist. Note also how Faul-Vivian picks his nose ---the same gesture he does for the Indian TV camera on the trip to Rishikesh, also on the JoJo website, an important clue. Faul-Vivian's sneering arrogance on camera also reminds me of what US Navy-Jim Morrison would do in concrets, some details of which are in the "Do the Doors affect you" thread.

Jojo, I was trying to convey how these Zappa/Bonzo/Monkees media presentations are orchestrated, with the tie-in to US military drugs operations, then exploding with the Vietnam War and the documented US policy of imposing drugs on its own citizens, briging the Opium War home in a way. So if you look at all these clues and physical connections it forms a coherent pattern that is much more than a simple Vaudevillian number. So I hope you'll reconsider that. Anyway isn't there something psychedelic in just the titile "Canyons of Your Mind." I remember an episode of Michael Moore's TV Nation where Ted Nugent on camera with their British correspondent tried to assert "there was nothing psychedelic about "Journey to the Center of Your Mind," no overtones of drugs at all!

From "I am the Walrus" wikipedia entry:

Frank Zappa and his band covered the song, and just before performing Zappa humorously stated "We're now about to do some severe damage to a Beatles song called I'am Der Walrus" [German clue?]. Zappa's cover version has yet to appear on an official release, although a clear audience recording has circulated on bootlegs.

In 2004, the rock band Styx performed a cover of the song at Eric Clapton's Crossroads Festival, where the song was received so well that it was the basis of a whole album of covers, 2005's The Big Bang Theory, as well as consistently being played by Styx during concert. Their cover reached the Top 10 in the Mediabase Classic Rock charts.

The German band Die Toten Hosen covered the song on their 1999 album "Crash Landing"

Ferris Bueller [directed and written by John Hughes who wrote Beatles-Nazi scientist cartoons in National Lampoon]: "I quote John Lennon: 'I don't believe in Beatles 'I just believe in me'. A good point there. After all, he was the Walrus. I could be the Walrus I'd still have to bum rides off of people."

beatlies that is so weird !

And when you see the end in sight
The beginning may arrive!
For those who look for meaning,
And form as they do facts,
We might tell you one thing
But we'd only take it back
Not back like in a box back
Not back like in a race,
Not back so we can keep it,
But back in time and space!
You say we're manufactured,
To that we all agree,
So make you choice and we'll rejoice
In never being free!

This could also be said about The Beatles ! Clues about past clues ?!

eyesbleed, I've heard of it. However, I've never seen it anywhere so that I could either rent it or buy it. Did you find it online ?
It does sound very interesting.

1. "Head" was written by the prefab four & nicholson on cannabis, but not lsd to my knowledge.

2. It's usually a good idea to hang on to old MST3k, as the rights issues with the films mean they could go out of print at any time.... I know my KTMAs aren't going on eBay...

Their weed intake at that time is pretty well known, sure, but I'd be surprised if they weren't doin' some acid also..... hell everybody was back then & HEAD is definately a very trippy movie.

All of my factory MST3K vhs's have been replaced by the matching dvd.... so considerin' that all they do is take up room & collect dust.... I need to get rid of'em. I wouldn't miss'em coz I have'em on dvd...... & I take real good care of my dvd's!
I don't have any episodes that haven't been officially released on dvd.
I'm just glad I bought the dvd of MST3K The Movie back when it was released coz that thing is fetchin' $125+ now on Ebay & Half,
& it keeps goin' up.

Conquest By Cannabinoids-A U.S. Army Pipe Dream

By: By FRED GARDNER on: 21.03.2007 [15:56 ]


(6988 bytes) [c]

The U.S. Army, in a search for "non-lethal incapacitating agents," tested cannabis-based drugs on GI volunteers throughout the 1960s according to James Ketchum, MD, the psychiatrist who led the classified research program at Edgewood Arsenal in Maryland. Ketchum retired as a colonel in 1976 and now lives in Santa Rosa. He has written a memoir, "Chemical Warfare: Secrets Almost Forgotten," in which he describes experiments conducted at Edgewood and staunchly defends the Army's ethical standards. In a talk to the Society of Cannabis Clinicians March 9 in Los Angeles, Ketchum recounted the Army's experiments with cannabinoid drugs.

Ketchum was a young captain finishing a residency at Walter Reed Army Hospital when he got assigned in 1961 to be the supervising psychiatrist at Edgewood Arsenal. The new president, John F. Kennedy, was enthusiastic about funding the search for non-lethal incapacitants (first authorized by Eisenhower in 1958). Camelot's ideal weapon: one that leaves the infrastructure intact and the population manageable.

The synthetic analog of THC tested by the Army in pursuit of this ideal, EA 2233, was developed by a chemist named Harry Pars employed by the Arthur D. Little company of Cambridge, Mass. It was a mixture of eight stereoisomers of the THC molecule (different arrangements of the same atoms). EA 2233 was ingested at strengths ranging from 10 to 60 micrograms per kilogram of body weight. Although its effects lasted up to 30 hours, they were not potent enough for military purposes. Ketchum excerpts an interview with a GI on EA 2233 in his book. The Responses are pretty much what you'd expect from someone who had ingested mucho THC being questoned by an unthreatening authority figure.

Q: How are you?

A: Pretty good, I guess.

Q: Pretty good?

A: Well, not so good maybe.

Q: You've got a big grin on your face.

A: Yeah. I don't know what I'm grinning about either....

Q: Suppose you had to get up and go to work now. How would you do?

A: I don't think I'd even care.

Q: Suppose the place was on fire?

A: I don't think it would be -it would seem funny.

Q: It would seem funny? Do you think you'd have the sense to get up and run out or do you think you'd just enjoy it?

A: I don't know. Fire doesn't seem to present any danger to me right now. Note the realism of the test subject and the scientist's flight of fancy.

Q: Can you think of anything now which would seem hazardous or worry you or are you just in a--

A: No. No. Everything just seems funny in the Army. Seems like everything somebody says, it sounds a little bit funny.

When the eight isomers of EA 2233 were isolated and purified in the years following 1964, they were tested by an Edgewood doctor named Fred Sidell (while Ketchum focused on more promising incapacitants, mainly an atropine derivative known as BZ, and LSD). Sidell found that two of the THC isomers caused such a dramatic drop in blood pressure that the lab stopped testing all of them. Ketchum still wonders if one of the two potent isomers would work as an incapacitant. He writes, "The finding that isomers 2 and 4 possessed uniquely powerful postural hypotensive effects that prevented standing without fainting led Sidell to discontinue testing out of an abundance of caution for the welfare of the subjects. It later occurred to me that this property, in an otherwise non-lethal compound, might be an ideal way to produce temporary inability to fight (or do much else) without toxicological danger to life." The dream lives on!

Ketchum's presentation to the pro-cannabis MDs was followed by a succinct chemistry lecture by Alexander T. Shulgin, PhD. It was Shulgin who gave Harry Pars the idea to synthesize nitrogen analogs of THC back at the start of the '60s. (Later in life Shulgin gained renown for designing "designer" drugs, including MDMA.) The session was organized and moderated by Tod Mikuriya, MD, the Berkeley psychiatrist who has a longstanding interest in the history of cannabis therapeutics.

Only a small fraction of Ketchum's work at Edgewood involved THC derviatives. Ketchum says he was motivated to write his memoir because the media has conflated the ethical, scientific drug studies conducted by the Army on knowing volunteers with the extremely kinky, unsafe drug studies conducted by the CIA on unwitting civilians. "Chemical Warfare: Secrets Almost Forgotten" is published by ChemBook, 2304 Fairbanks Drive, Santa Rosa, CA 95403. Learn more at forgottensecrets.net

A chapter of Ketchum's book is devoted to what is now called "informed consent." GIs considered Edgewood Arsenal good duty and volunteered eagerly for the two-month stint. Ketchum writes, "We never needed to browbeat, threaten or hint at repercussions for someone's unwillingness to participate in a drug test. Invariably, would-be volunteers inundated us with applications, year after year. An abundance of troops were obviously more than willing to jump through all the hoops required in order to make the list of accepted candidates. In fact, the ratio of the number of applicants to the number accepted increased progressively throughout the 1960s."

When Ketchum arrived at Edgewood in 1961 the detachment of test subjects consisted of 20 men. By 1963 it was 50. "Eventually a cohort of 60-80 arrived, requiring the prior review of as many as 300-500 applicants." Some 7,000 enlisted men took part in the program, most between 1961-70. "None, to my knowledge," writes Ketchum, "returned home with a significant injury or illness attributable to chemical exposure. Nevertheless, years later, a few former volunteers did claim that the testing had caused them to suffer from some malady." Those claims came from subjects exposed to agents other than good old EA 2233. Ketchum questions their validity, noting "None of the three careful follow-up studies found statistical evidence for any particular illness, and death rates were lower than expected for every drug tested, except for non-significant higher rates in those who received atropine or scopolamine."

The Society of Cannabis Clinicians was founded by Mikuriya in 2000 to provide a forum through which doctors monitoring cannabis use by California patients could share information. Twenty MDs attended the March 9 meeting, the first the society has held in LA... Ketchum and his staff at Edgewood Arsenal had no inkling that EA 2233 in low doses was therapeutic. "We weren't looking for benefit," he acknowledged... He mentioned that Hitler was so afraid of chemical weapons being used against him that he wouldn't authorize the use of thousands of tons of nerve gas the Nazis had synthesized and stockpiled.

Fred Gardner edits O'Shaughnessy's, the Journal of Cannabis in Clinical Practice (soon to have a presence on the web). He can be reached at fred@plebesite.com


www.counterpunch.org/gardner03212007.html