Alan Watts—This Is It
Re-issued on CD by Locust Music
Best known for his candlelight radio ramblings and Eastern mysticisms, Alan Watts also brought the world what can arguably be called the first on purpose psychedelic record. This Is It—Alan Watts and Friends in a Spontaneous Musical Happening—was recorded on a houseboat in Sausalitio, California in 1962 with the help of Vortex-er Henry Jacobs, Chet Baker/Harry Partch-collaborator William Loughborough, and a few other "with-it" types from around the Bay Area. Possessing an aural intensity that makes the Summer of Love hit parade sound like the Chipmunks, Watts' predilection for "the expression of completely spontaneous movement" through dancing, singing, howling, babbling, jumping, groaning, and wailing often leads him into a metal mouth maelstrom that prefigures late-60s tribalists like the Nihilist Spasm Band, Cro Magnon, and Intersystems—lots of primal screaming, aum chanting, bongo beating, and tape effects. No doubt a direct result of Watts' recent dabbling with LSD—he had visited Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert at Harvard and written a book called The Joyous Cosmology about the experience—the recording, in the words of Watts himself, "makes no claim to be Art, Music, or even Therapy." "We are listening-in," he tells us, "To a group of friends, who had no thought at the time of performing for an audience." Which is a good thing, as it is doubtful that there was much demand in 1962 for a recording of a half dozen lit-up, bearded intellectuals banging on drums and chanting nonsensical syllables. Which, as Watts would likely explain, is exactly the point. Acceptance would only rationalize "the art of pure nonsense." Or as he so succinctly put it, "It can only be done for ITs own sake."
Originally published in Ugly Things