Come and gone

Heather and Aly were in town for a week on a mini-vacaton, arriving on the 22nd and leaving on the 28th. It was a busy time for the two of them. They first went out to the Southlands shopping mall where the tornado hit a few weeks back to do some shopping for craft supplies, but mostly just to see it -- Heather wasn't aware of its existence till she saw a report on the tornado. Wednesday it was downtown for lunch at the Wynkoop Brewpub followed by a visit to the Psychedelic Experience at the Denver Art Museum (more in a moment). The next day was spent at Elitch's, at least until the rains began. Friday was a rest day. Saturday was a visit to the Renaissance Festival. Sunday saw them at Mike's brother's place in Castle Rock for dinner. Monday had a quick visit to Tish's apartment in Westminster before hitting the road for Albuquerque. It was a busy few days

I found the Psychedelic Experience a lot of fun and terribly nostalgic. Over 300 posters from the '65 to '71 were on display, but unfortunately could not be photographed as all are copyrighted. At least that was t he reason a guard gave me after snapping one shot which he didn't ask me to delete. For the most part, my enjoyment was more in the bands being advertised than the posters themselves. One item shown, the cover of first issue of The Oracle, an art-work in its own right, had me kicking myself again for not keeping my copy of the magazine when the family moved from San Mateo to South San Francisco back in '72. Many of the posters were familiar though I never owned any myself. You couldn't help seeing them in the record shops of the time. In addition to the posters were two video screens, one showing a loop of the Jefferson Airplane performing three songs, the other showing scenes from the Human Be-In at the Polo Fields in Golden Gate Park with Blue Cheer performing.

In a related exhibit you could try your hand at creating a poster or a light show (with liquids), listen to some of the music of the period and sit down in a hippie pad. They also had something called the Wayback Machine where you could record your experiences from back in the day.

Rich had a small collection of posters which included one for the Steve Miller Band advertising their Children of the Future album-related performance. It had an overlay of color-keyed images which, when red, blue green and yellow lights were individually and quickly played over them, would appear to move. He had a set of dichroic spot lamps controlled by a box of micro-switches. That set-up kept us busy for hours as we watched the images animate while playing the switches. Tish managed to catch a few seconds of the display of that and other color-keyed posters on her cell phone. The Steve Miller poster is on the left. The video quality is clearly poor, but you can see it here.