The cover of the Soundtrack Album for the Magic Christian appears prominently in the "Isn't it lily" video.
That's a very interesting movie. I was incorrect earlier when I said that the new video premiered on the Iamaphoney bogus YouTube page named after Mal Evans. It actually appeared a little earlier on http://www.youtube.com/user/lAMAPH0NEY, which is another bogus Iamaphoney site.
If you click that link above, you will see this background.
I believe that is Spahn ranch, the place where the Manson family resided in 1969, the site of the murder of Shorty Shea, and allegedly, the place where Iamaphoney left a suitcase for someone to find.
The Video log at http://www.youtube.com/user/lAMAPH0NEY, (note that the first letter is not an "I") also contains the trailer for the movie "The Magic Christian."
In addition to Ringo Starr and Peter Sellers, an interesting group of people worked on that movie.
1) Apple executive Dennis O'Dell
2) Spike Mulligan, who like Sellers was one of the Goons
3) Terry Southern, who is pictured on the Sgt. Pepper Cover
4) Christopher Lee, who is pictured on the Band on the Run Cover
5) Michael Aspel, also from the Band on the Run Cover
6) A couple Monty Python members Graham Chapman and John Cleese
7) Raquel Welch, who I believe was hosting Saturday Night Live the night when Lorne Michaels offered the Beatles $3000 to re-unite.
8) Thunderclap Newman formed by Pete Townsend and featuring future Wings guitarist Jimmy McCulloch. The original name for the song "Something In The Air" from the movie was actually "Revolution."
9) Director of Rosemary's Baby and star of "allofthemwitches" videos Roman Polanski
12 comments:
DR. ROBERT
Quite a few familiar faces floating around in here...
Terry Southern is but one interesting fellow to find in the middle of all...
TERRY SOUTHERN
In addition to his spot on the "Pepper" crowd cover, Southern also makes a cameo appearance in the 1976 film "The Man Who Fell to Earth," starring David Bowie.
THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH
Bowie was quite interested in Aleister Crowley and the occult at the time this film was made; the themes and lyrics in his "Station to Station" album (which itself was started and later rejected as a soundtrack to the film) are said to reflect this interest.
STATION TO STATION
"The Man Who Fell to Earth" in turn served as the inspiration for a bizarre fictional film called "Valis" in Philip K. Dick's quasi-autobiographical novel of the same title.
VALIS
VALIS is a strange book. Rotten Apple followers might be struck at its references to cyphers, secret Greek islands (Lemnos...Leslo?), subliminal messages buried in films (such as VALIS/The Man Who Fell to Earth itself), LPs of "Synchronistic Music", the third eye (or eye of Horus, Shiva), Cabala, Apostolic societies of Gnostic Christians, Extra-terrestrial communication, etc. John Lennon gets a mention in its pages along with Tim Leary. "Nothing is real" would be a fitting tagline for the cover!
Although the magical mystical musician that PKD (aka 'Horselover Fat') encounters during the course of the novel is supposedly based on David Bowie, one could not be blamed for seeing at least a few resemblances between this "Eric Lampton" and a post-Beatles Paul McCartney. The character's wife is named Linda, and the two collaborate with an odd individual (named Brent Mini, and supposedly based on Brian Eno) whose technological "wizardry" might also bring to mind the Beatles' own "Magic" Alex Mardas. It wouldn't be too difficult to imagine them working on songs for a "Magic Christian" film with a band of soundalikes like "Badfinger". ;)
As the novel progresses, we learn that this otherworldly couple aims at no less than bringing about the second (5th? 7th?) coming of Christ himself (herself?)...
(enter the theme of the secret "double"...)
In broadly general terms, the novel VALIS represents a fictionalized version of the real-life PKD's attempt to come to terms with a mystical vision he had in the March of 1974:
THE RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE of PHILIP K. DICK
The following is taken from his personal "Exegesis" writings, describing the transcendent event in question:
I am thinking back. Sitting with my eyes shut I am listening [in 1974] to "Strawberry Fields [Beatles song]." I get up. I open my eyes because the lyrics speak of "Going through life with eyes closed." I look toward the window. Light blinds me; my head suddenly aches. My eyes close and I see that strange strawberry ice cream pink. At the same instant knowledge is transferred to me.
[Exegesis entry c. 1977]
God talked to me through a Beatles tune ("Strawberry Fields")[...] A random assortment of trash blown by the wind, and there is God. Bits & pieces swept together to form a unity.
[1980]
[excerpts taken from Divine Invasions, a PKD biography by Laurence Stein, p.255]
An alien intelligence? God? Paul? Whatever it was, it came to him as a blast of pink light (Lily? Floyd?).
PKD would continue to write about this experience, obsessively, for the rest of his life. In January of 1980, he put together a brief plot synopsis for a (final?) novel entitled "The Acts of Paul."
[...in an alternate world where Christianity supposedly died out centuries ago] a scholar sets out to locate the "secret christians" who carry on the faith... [Divine Invasions p.266]
...or magic(k) christians, perhaps? "Heaven only knows!"
I AM THE EGGMAN
51. Ikhnaton wrote:
"...When the fledgling in the egg chirps in the egg,
Thou givest him breath therein to preserve him alive.
When thou has brought him together
To the point of bursting the egg,
He cometh forth from the egg,
To chirp with all his might.
He goeth about upon his two feet
When he hath come from therefrom.
How manifold are thy works!
They are hidden from before us,
O sole god, whose powers no other possesseth.
[...]
From Ikhnaton this knowledge passed to Moses, and from Moses to Elijah, the Immortal Man, who became Christ. But underneath all the names there is only one Immortal Man; and we are that man."
[Tractates: Cryptica Scriptura, reprinted in VALIS p. 240-1]
I AM HE AS YOU ARE HE AS YOU ARE ME AND WE ARE ALL TOGETHER
Crazy stuff, huh? Throw Polanski, the Stones, Anger, Manson and Crowley back into the mix and the trouble really starts brewing...
...I sincerely hope I'm not going insane. I'm afraid it's all too much.
The picture at the background of lAMAPH0NEY´s channel that you show is linked from the following URL: http://members.tripod.com/thebellhop/spahn2.JPG
Maybe he just grab the picture from a random site, but it looks like that site belongs to somebody called thebellhop. I found two sites belonging to thebellhop:
http://thebellhop.livejournal.com/
and
http://s13.photobucket.com/albums/a280/TheBellhop/?action=guestlogin (I don´t have an account there so I can´t enter the site)
Are they related or is just coincidence?
Anonymous,
Wow, thanks for the outstanding insights. I have a surface knowledge of most of your references, but you have given me the incentive to dig deeper.
Terry Southern also wrote the Novel "Candy" which was made into a film starring Ringo Starr and an equally interesting cast of characters.
C and Y
pmc27,
A quick peek at bellhop has me scratching my head. I'll check it out further.
I tried to access thebellhop photobucket page, but you need the password to log in (no being a member didn't work) so I dug around on the blog page to try and guess at the password...
however I don't think these are related... TheBellhop seems to be the Blog name for a girl who loves Disney Land and Ewoks. eh.
Zakk,
You wrote: TheBellhop seems to be the Blog name for a girl who loves Disney Land and Ewoks. eh.
...and Satan!
You know, like, she forwards things that, like, say "You must send this to 666 people." OMG
1974
According to a book written by May Pang called Loving John: The Untold Story about the time she spent as John Lennon’s girlfriend, John Lennon and Paul McCartney drop acid together one day in New York City in 1974 and decide to go visit David Bowie.
Bowie has just received the final mix of his latest album, Young Americans which includes two songs that John Lennon worked on. One was a reworking of The Beatles song, “Across the Universe,” and the other was to become Bowie’s first number one hit, “Fame,” co-written with Lennon. Bowie proudly plays the new album for his two Beatles heroes and they’re impressed. And so he plays it again. And again. And again. Eventually, McCartney excuses himself and bolts out the door, Lennon following quickly behind. Bowie’s drug of choice in the mid-1970s might explain his obsessiveness that day: mountains of cocaine.
An interesting side note: In The Beatles version of “Across The Universe”, the line “nothing’s gonna change my world” comes across as a sort of cosmic meditation on the divine perfection of the eternal now. In Bowie’s version, the same line becomes an expression of terrified desperation. This might be interpreted as the difference between psychedelics and coke, as well as the difference between the 60s and the 70s.
Paul McCartney on Drugs
LupaMorna
LupaMorna=?
pauL roMan
pauL raMon
pauL Maron
pauL Moran
pauL Manor
pauL naMor...
Was Born on 9th of november 1966.
Follow the light from the carnival and don't look back.
News before the end of march.
THE JOKER (preview)
The Beatles 1966 Interview
Dr. Edgar Mitchell
Dr. Edgar Mitchell is a graduate of MIT with a doctorate in aeronautics and astronautics, and is the founder of the Institute of Noetic Sciences. As an astronaut, he flew in Apollo missions 10, 14, and 16, and was the lunar module plot for Apollo 14. He has spent over 30 years studying human consciousness and paranormal phenomenon in the search of a common ground between science and spirit. He lives in Florida.
This might tangentially explain IAAP's repeated emphasis upon imagery from "2001: A Space Odyssey"...
THE QUANTUM HOLOGRAM
Dr. Mitchell's theory appears to place a great deal of importance upon "attention" and "intention"...
...concepts not too dissimilar from those found in the transcendental meditation taught by the Maharishi...or even the thelema magick of Aleister Crowley.
***
This is getting curiouser and curiouser as the days go by. Maybe there is something to PKD's VALIS after all?
Searchers find possible graves at Manson compound
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