by Francine Schwartz

Sometimes in the middle of a conversation, a song, a look - my mind takes me to another time, another life it seems, filled with vagabonds and minstrels, laughter and innocence, colors blending into moving streams, soft flowing skirts and hair, marijuana smoke spiraling upward into endless drifts of enlightment, and lovemaking that went on for days. It's all in soft focus of course. Memories often are. You know where I am by now, don't you? The sixties, where else? Even if you weren't there, you've heard, haven't you? It's true what you've heard. It really was an enchanted time. Against the backdrop of napalm and burning children in a jungle across the world, the flower children danced in the dream fiber of endless possibilities. It didn't last forever, nothing ever does. But it's great to remember sometimes.

I had missed the scene in San Francisco, the Summer of Love and all that. By the time I came out in '74 it was all over. Haight Street had iron bars on the windows. Mommy Fortuna's wasn't quite the same I was told. Nothing was. The hippies had left the parks, changed their clothes, and were moving into the disco and corporate scene. The stragglers on Haight and Ashbury wore tattered rags and forgotten smiles. They were burnt out and sad - smoldering ashes from a feast of light. The magic had gone away.

So when I got the Haight-Ashbury in the Sixties CD ROM from a friend, I popped it into the player and waited for the magic to come alive again. But that's not what happened. Rather than feeling like I was back there, I felt like I was looking at it from far away, from the far end of a telescope.

Haight-Ashbury in the Sixties is divided into three parts, cleverly stemming from the main screen's image of "Turn On, Tune In and Drop Out," Timothy Leary's enlightened advice to anyone listening. The "Turn On" section, which fills the entire "Haight" disc is all music video sequences based on Allen Cohen's original slide show about the era which he produced in San Francisco in the early '80's to commemorate the Summer of Love. (Cohen was the editor of the San Francisco Oracle, the "voice" of Haight Ashbury, from 1966 to 1968.) Tony Bove, who co-produced Haight-Ashbury in the Sixtieswith Cheryl Rhodes, told me that it was while sitting in the audience of one of those shows that he and Rhodes started drawing up concrete plans for the CD ROM.

The disc labeled "Ashbury" contains the "Tune In" reference section which gives the user the ability to listen to or view from the master cross-referenced play list of the show. Also on this disc is "Drop Out," an interactive game, which I'll talk more about later.

Starting with the music. Tony Bove talks about this CD ROM as being the first in a series of subsequent rock documentaries that his company, Rockument, Inc. will produce. But this one is entitled Haight-Ashbury in the Sixties so I figured the music on it would be complete, or at least close. But all we get here is Jefferson Airplane, Big Brother and the Holding Co., and the Grateful Dead (lots of cuts from these guys, I might mention). When I asked Bove why so few groups are represented, he explained that he wanted only the bands that really grew out of the actual Haight-Ashbury scene. And although he tried to include some of the others that did have their roots there - like Quicksilver and the Charlatans, he faced major licensing problems. Problems that proved to be immovable obstacles. In some cases the musicians said o.k., but the record companies (i.e. the lawyers who see musicians as a franchise) said no. As for the Grateful Dead - they figured the only way to make the deal financially feasible was for lots of their music to be used, which is exactly what happened.

In "Roll Your Own Show" you can create your own master playlist. If you're a Dead Head, you're in great shape. But if you're not, there's not much for you. It takes forever for the playlist to create itself, and if you really want to hear the music, you've got better options off the CD ROM. And incidentally, you can't fast forward through a selection on your master playlist.

The illustrations projected one after the other while the music played are often copies of the style of the time. I was thinking documentary. Why not use the real stuff? Bove explains that what he wanted was to bring the user the psychedelic experience. He brought in "new stuff, special effects" to do it. "Cohen is more the historian. I'm more entertainment based, explains Bove. "I didn't want a museum title." He points out that the Oracle used a layout that was totally "wierd" with an "anything goes" attitude. Words spiraled around the page, colors ran into each other. Bove figures he had the same kind of creative liberty to invoke the time in any way he thought would work - including creating brand new images. O.K., but why, if you're trying to evoke a time gone by, would you alter the images from the Oracle to give them a "new look and feel," which is exactly what they did, according to Bove, as quoted in the August '95 issue of Multimedia Producer But Bove gave me a good answer.

"Touching up (on the original Oracle illustrations) was necessary. They were were dirty, hard to look at." Originally printed on newsprint, which naturally yellows, Bove had them restored to full white, non-deteriorating paper. And then Bove told me something about the program design that I had not discovered on my own. In the "Turn On" portion of the set, any animation on color changing fast can be clicked. At that moment the show will stop and what you'll get is either a full page version of what you saw with text (from the Oracle), the digital video clip, or a combination of the two. Bove refers to these as "Tangents," intended as a "user surprise."

As for the photographs and film footage - they're real of course, but the people on them are not identified. Who was that? Who's talking? Ken Kesey? Ram Dass? What if you don't remember what they looked like or if you never knew?

Bove himself introduces various sections of the CD and explains briefly what the options are. But his voice is fuzzy as it fades in and out and his long-haired talking head is grainy, pale, and disturbing. In general the video images are patchy, unclear, some even have vertical lines running through them.

The interface is confusing. It's difficult to get from one place to another. No easy way to get back to square one, no easy way to get directions to where you're going or to know where you are. Is it supposed to be a reflection of the Haight in the sixties? A spiral path to enlightment? A maze that leads nowhere?

Tune In, Turn On, Drop Out. I found myself searching endlessly for the music and doing a lot of waiting while listening to the original Ragtime piano piece that Tom Constantin composed for this title. The style seemed inappropriate. Bove explained calmly that he had to do something while the computer was in dead time. As for Ragtime, Bove reminded me that psychedelic was not the only thing going on at the time. Not to forget about the Edwardian look that was surfacing, the Granny clothes, and the music of the Charlatans and Country Joe. Good answer.

In the same Multimedia Producer article mentioned earlier, Cohen, who was the key documentary scriptwriter and narrator as well as provider of original photos and illustrations, says, "The real intent of doing this was to bring the values of the Haight into the technology so that the truth will continue into the next century. People can immerse themselves through the CD ROM in what the 60's were like."

Well said, but for me that's exactly what was missing. What I got were occasional brush strokes, nuances, indications of what the 60's were like. No immersion. A big part of the problem was the quality of the sensual experience. For the music I wanted a a better sound system. For the visual - higher resolution video or print. For the feeling - well, that's the magic part. It's either there or it isn't.

You're given images and sounds from back then, but except for some voiceover sections by Raechael Donahue (wife of KMPX's Tom Donahue, who founded the first album-oriented FM radio station in San Francisco) and Cohen about what it was like back then, there's no personal link between now and then. I think Bove and Rhodes missed a great opportunity to bring in the voices of people from today who remember it all. Makes for a more provocative documentary. We're talking recent history after all. Lots of us are still around.

O.K., let's get to the game, the best part. The game is called "Drop Out". You've just arrived in the Haight. It's the sixties of course and you're looking for enlightment. In playing the game (played by 1 to 6 people) you gather enlightment points in four categories - food and shelter, hipness, spirituality, and love. You must collect at least 100 points in each category to be enlightened. When this happens, you get to experience the "enlightment sequence." Along the way you get little snippets of information (like the date that LSD was declared illegal by state edict - Oct. 6, 1966). This is done with an assemblage of straight text, illustration, music, film footage, and photographs. But here again you don't always know who you're seeing, or who is talking.

The little snippets of hippie life translated into statements of what you as a player are experiencing on your search for enlightment (and what you get or lose points for) are amusing. Things like "You take a sugar cube and spend 12 hours staring at yourself in the mirror." But the longer you play, the more often you'll run into the same sequence. Fortunately you can jump out quickly to make your next move. All you have to do is click on the image. But whenever a transition occurs you get a music riff and there's no escape. All you can do is wait it out.

I was determined to play the game until I won. I wanted to see the "enlightment sequence." I had heard about. It took me 40 minutes to get there and I was cutting out of sequences like crazy by then, not even waiting to see what they were about. (Next time I'm playing with someone else. It got pretty lonely.) So what happens when you get to the grand finish? I'll never tell. But the game is fun.

After talking with Bove it was clear that his visions for this title far surpass what he actually accomplished in this, his first Rockumentary. He's so full of love and admiration for his subject. A self-avowed hippie, he wanted to bring us the sixties - for real. He came pretty close. Maybe the only real fault of this CD ROM is that it's an unfinished piece. Lots of good ideas, but still a work in progress.

Maybe I should have gotten stoned. Maybe I did. See you next time.

Haight-Ashbury in the Sixties retails for $29.95.