embryonic journey in movies

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Embryonic Journey by Jefferson Airplane

Songfacts®:

• This song is an acoustic instrumental showcasing guitarist Jorma Kaukonen's formidable fingerpicking style. According to the album's liner notes, Kaukonen composed the tune in 1962 as part of a guitar workshop in Santa Clara and included it on Surrealistic Pillow at the band's behest. >> Suggestion credit : Mark - Hot Springs, CA
• In "Embryonic Journey," Jorma Kaukonen captures optimism in an instrumental. "I wish I could tell you how that came to pass," he told Mojo magazine. "I was obviously in an in-the-moment process that I was able to capture it as it happened. I was fooling around in a drop D tuning in a workshop I was giving. A friend said 'you oughta check that out.' So I made it into a song. It just made sense to me."
• "Embryonic Journey" plays at the end of the credits for the 1980 documentary Berkeley in the Sixties . Other uses of the song in movies include: 1982 dramedy Purple Haze 1999 drama A Walk on the Moon 2002 sports drama The Rookie "Embryonic Journey" also played in the final Friends episode (titled "The Last One"), and in Ken Burns' 2017 TV documentary series The Vietnam War .
• More songs from Jefferson Airplane
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• More songs from 1967
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Comments: 4

• Johann from Buenos Aires Fact: this melancholic song sounds on the last scene of the sitcom "Friends", as the camera pans through the empty apartment.
• Airplane Fan from St Petersburg Hi all, Does anyone know what guitar Jorma used to play Embryonic Journey? Thanks in advance.
• Apsa from Africa Brilliant finger-picking guitar playing. I heard that it actually was Rick Jarrard himself (RCA producer) who insisted for it to be included in the LP. Because he was too impressed.
• Kerry G. from Detroit Rock City, Mi To drive just werever with my head out the window, with the wind in my hair, listening to this song, is just truly magic.

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The Enduring Mystery of Jefferson Airplane’s ‘Surrealistic Pillow’

The ingredient that makes jefferson airplane's "surrealistic pillow" such a classic is a name many know, but one you wouldn't likely expect..

Long before the word “unplugged” became part of our common vernacular, an evocative instrumental, barely under two minutes long appeared on Jefferson Airplane ’s 1967 opus Surrealistic Pillow . The first piece of music guitarist Jorma Kaukonen ever wrote, “Embryonic Journey” was a six-string meditation that encapsulated the mood of the 1960s as powerfully as any song of that era (with or without lyrics).

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“ ‘Embryonic Journey’ made me sit up and take notice of Jorma’s remarkable acoustic playing,” exclaimed former Captain Beefheart guitarist Gary Lucas . “It is one of the most crystalline, beautiful compositions ever, right up there with John Fahey at his best.”

Blending modal sitar-inspired raga riffs with the Piedmont finger-picking style of Reverend Gary Davis, Kaukonen’s tune quickly became a favorite of DJs back in the days of free-form FM radio, who regularly employed it as either a lead-in or chaser to the news of the day, most of it bad, grim reports of inner-city riots or the escalating war in Vietnam. Fifty years later, that piece of music has been lodged in our collective consciousness.

Released on February 1, 1967, the Airplane’s second album (and the first to showcase Grace Slick , who replaced Signe Anderson, a recent mother who left the band to care for her baby) contained two of their greatest hits: “Somebody To Love,” which featured Slick’s gale-force vocals and Kaukonen’s howling guitar as well as the creeping, claustrophobic bolero, “White Rabbit,” complete with a Lewis Carroll-inspired lyric built on the insistent pulse of Jack Casady ’s bass.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YSHQuQILkY?list=PLVPGzOHIIgz_PYsW0wurklbMPdL_HIGYa&w=560&h=315]

“Jack falls somewhere between John Entwistle and [Motown session bassist] James Jamerson,” asserts Victor Krummenacher, bassist with Santa Cruz rock stalwarts Camper Van Beethoven . “He’s more accurate than McCartney, but not as melodic. He’s got a strong groove and is good with a fast fill. He knows how to propel the music in interesting ways. Jack knows his job and doesn’t get in the way, which is admirable.”

Before performing at the idyllic Monterey Pop Festival (June 16-18 ,  1967) where the band played an explosive set to the first mass-gathering of the mushrooming counter-culture, the Airplane appeared on American Bandstand on June 3. The show’s host, “America’s Oldest Teenager,” Dick Clark informed his teenybopper audience that there was “a whole new scene [happening] in San Francisco” before he awkwardly attempted to interview the band, who, donning a variety of sunglasses, stood before the image of a creepy old Victorian mansion that resembled the run-down residence of Norman Bates in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho .

Clad in a black hoodie, Grace Slick looked like a menacing cult den-mother while Casady smirked a Cheshire cat smile as he played, entangled in a spider-web of guitar cables. During “White Rabbit” the camera intermittently cut between upside down shots of the band and a slow-spurting lava lamp.

But it’s Paul Kantner ’s casual reply to Clark’s question of whether parents have any reason to fear the recent trends amongst America’s youth that still stands out today as a telling moment of the Summer of Love. “I think so,” Kanter answered. “Their children are doing things that they don’t understand.”

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKtJ0XTwgTE&w=560&h=315]

Although the media generally fixated on Slick, listening to the Airplane one had to wonder who actually was the lead singer of the band.

At any moment there could be three—Marty Balin, Grace Slick, Paul Kantner—or four, as Kaukonen would join in from time to time, as well as offering the occasional songwriting gem like “Good Shepherd” (from 1969’s Volunteers ). Their voices would swoop and weave, circling, chasing each other, until ultimately coming together like a ragged Wagnerian choir. Meanwhile, Kaukonen’s snaky lead guitar smoldered with blues and stinging tremolo overtones that threatened to obliterate the song altogether.

Were Kaukonen’s improvisations, like many psychedelic guitarists of the day, inspired by the modal jazz of John Coltrane and the mesmerizing ragas played by the Bengali sitar master Ravi Shankar?

“Oh, absolutely,” Kaukonen said in a recent interview. “We just didn’t know that much about harmony at the time. Back in the ’60s when anyone wanted to play raga they just smoked a bunch of pot and started playing away. But now you’ve got a guy like Derek Trucks. When he wanted to play raga, he went to India and studied for a year.”

“Jorma is one of the finest exemplars of the San Francisco raga style of electric guitar playing in terms of his overall attack and modal scale approach,” Gary Lucas explained. “The nearest contemporary comparison at the time would be Mike Bloomfield on Paul Butterfield’s East-West . Bringing it geographically closer would be John Cippolina [the prodigious guitarist with Quicksilver Messenger Service] with ‘The Fool.’ All were adept at using waves of sustained feedback while brushing neighboring sympathetic open strings adjacent to the primary articulated lead string as drone generators.”

“But the key ingredient that gives them all that raga sound is their signature vibrato in the fingers of the left hand which causes the picked string to sing like the keening wailing human voice of the ghazal or quawalli singers of India and Pakistan. In Jorma’s case, his tone and attack is uniquely singular and always unmistakably his. You would never mistake him for any other guitarist but Jorma.”

Speaking of guitar innovators, the unsolved mystery of Jerry Garcia ’s role in the making of Surrealistic Pillow still looms large to this day. I now hand the reins over to Oliver Trager , author of The American Book of the Dead , an obsessive encyclopedia of the Grateful Dead’s sprawling legacy, to help fill in the cracks of this long-time enigma:

“The first time many of us ever heard the name Jerry Garcia was on the back LP cover of  Surrealistic Pillow  where he was acknowledged as ‘Musical and Spiritual Adviser.’ In listening to the album today, Jerry’s touch can be heard all over it. Songs such as ‘Today’ and ‘How Do You Feel?’ are imbued with an alternately sweet and autumnal hopeful melancholia that the Dead would capture on their Aoxomoxoa – era material (think ‘Mountains of the Moon’ and ‘Rosemary’). Jerry’s sensibility of what a song could sound like and what an album should be was a gentle force on the nascent San Francisco scene and sound, one that endured for a solid three decades.”

Haight Ashbury’s benevolent guru, “Captain Trips,” as Jerry was once known, is said to have named the album when he spontaneously quipped that one of the album’s tracks was “surrealistic as a pillow.”

O.K., it’s time, as they say, to “give the drummer some.”

The first sound you hear on Surrealistic Pillow is the reverb-drenched thunder of Spencer Dryden ’s drums pounding out a respectable Bo Diddley rhythm on Marty Balin’s “She Has Funny Cars.” Barry Melton, a.k.a., “The Fish,” lead guitarist with Country Joe & the Fish, recalls his old friend and occasional jam partner Dryden: “He was an extraordinary musician. Spencer had an extraordinary feel for ‘the groove,’ and when he was on, he would find it instantly. I wanted to tell him to cut back on his drinking, but it was obvious that he could never lose his bearings no matter how much he consumed. The ‘feel’ or ‘the groove’ was the most important thing about music to Spencer; and he could talk about it for hours. He knew where it was and how to get there.”

Beyond the hits, Surrealistic Pillow offered a wide assortment of songs strung together like a bright glittering chunky necklace of love beads. Written by the tragic Skip Spence , the Airplane’s drummer who jumped ship to form the fabled but doomed Moby Grape, “My Best Friend” evoked the Mamas and the Papas’ lilting sound as Slick and Balin’s vocals volleyed playfully back and forth on the song’s coda.

“Today” is a soul-searching ballad that featured Marty Balin, along with sweet harmonies from Slick and Kanter and a dusting of (the phantom guest star) Jerry Garcia’s sparkling lead guitar.

The introspective “Comin’ Back to Me” is a perfect example of ’60s-style mind-melting musical meandering. Following this momentary bout of belly-button gazing, “3/5’s of a Mile in 10 Seconds,” as its title (randomly inspired by a newspaper headline seen by Balin) suggests, smokes like a patch of freshly laid rubber, bursting with the kind of fire and edge that was previously the domain of Brit invasion bands like the Stones, Kinks and the Who.

Another sweet, easy-grooving Mamas and the Papas-style folk-rocker, complete with an echo-drenched recorder tootled by Slick, “How Do You Feel” seemed to pose a gentle reply to Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone,” when Dylan crowed “How does it feel?” And speaking of Dylan, the influence of his fractured poetry on “Subterranean Homesick Blues” is all over the abstract lyrics in “Plastic Fantastic Lover.”

Play Surrealistic Pillow loud and in its entirety. It unfolds from song to song like a strange flower whose aural perfume continues to intoxicate 50 years on.

• SEE ALSO : Will Keen On Playing Vladimir Putin On Broadway in ‘Patriots’

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Acid daze and revolution: Jefferson Airplane's long summer of love

They wowed Woodstock, got attacked at Altamont and blew minds at Monterey. The rest of the time they made era-defining records, fried their brains on acid, and shagged each other

“Sex, drugs, rock’n’roll, freedom, art, literature, poetry, Haight Street – it was just Heaven on Earth.”

Jefferson Airplane guitarist Paul Kantner’s description of San Francisco in the mid-60s is also what Jefferson Airplane represented musically. They were the sound of the city’s psychedelic experience and, more specifically, the soundtrack to 1967’s Summer Of Love, courtesy of two major hits: the acid-fuelled White Rabbit and Somebody To Love , a timeless hymn for hippies everywhere – ‘When the truth is found to be lies/And all the joy within you dies/Don’t you want somebody to love?’ .

It wasn’t just the chemicals inside the band members. It was also the chemistry between them, epitomised by the contrasting dynamics of the two singers: the exquisite, yearning vocals of Marty Balin, and the imperious, strident tones of Grace Slick . “We had this wild, intense chemistry between us,” Balin says. “Most people thought we were married or having this great affair. But it was just on stage.”

Slick confirms this in her own inimitable style. “Marty was remote off stage. He was just not real chummy. He was the only one in the band I didn’t screw.”

Balin was the one who guided Jefferson Airplane to the runway – albeit prior to Slick. He had released a couple of unsuccessful pop singles in the early 60s and been in a local folk band called the Town Criers. When he heard The Byrds’ Mr Tambourine Man he started envisaging a band that would be a cross between amplified folk and The Beatles .

There was a certain blind intuition involved in putting the band together. Balin had never heard Kantner play, but when he saw this long-haired guy carrying a 12-string and a banjo he walked straight up to him and suggested they form a band. Similarly, when he came across Skip Spence sitting in a club, he decided instantly that he was the band’s drummer. Spence had never played drums, he was a guitarist, but Balin persuaded him to swap his plectrum for a pair of sticks.

They still needed another guitarist. Kantner had his eye on Jorma Kaukonen, who was making a reputation for himself as a solo performer around the clubs. Kaukonen needed more persuasion however. “I was kinda reluctant,” he recalls. “I’d never played in a band before. Plus these guys were not into what I called pure music. Which I know is baloney now, but that’s what I thought at the time. So it wasn’t until I started hanging out with them and that it became apparent something was happening.”

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However, Kaukonen was not enamoured with the bass player. And when he discovered that his high-school buddy back in Washington DC, Jack Casady, had started playing bass, he lured him over to California. “When Jorma told me about this group he was joining, I said: ‘You? The purist?’” says Casady, who had just finished his college thesis on child ballads and the folk music tradition. “But he sounded really enthusiastic about it, and I decided to go out and give it a try.”

Balin and Kantner had already decided they needed a female voice, and folk singer Signe Anderson’s rich, powerful tones fitted the bill perfectly. It was Kaukonen who came up with the name Jefferson Airplane. Everybody else laughed when he suggested it, but when everybody else they told laughed as well they decided to go with it.

The band made their debut at the Matrix Club, owned by Balin and some of his more entrepreneurial mates, and soon became regular fixtures on the thriving San Francisco live scene which revolved around three of the city’s venerable ballrooms: the Fillmore, the Avalon and the Carousel.

Jefferson Airplane were not the first psychedelic band in San Francisco – Janis Joplin was already making waves in Big Brother & The Holding Company, The Grateful Dead were gradually getting their act together – but they had a musical focus and a sense of purpose that set them apart. And they were the first to land a record contract – with the ultra-straight RCA Records for an advance of $25,000, five times the going rate.

Jefferson Airplane Takes Off , released in September 1966, had a modern folk feel to it, in a jangly, Byrdsy way. It was dominated by Balin’s expansive ballads – he wrote or co-wrote eight of the 11 tracks – and there was little sign of the influence of LSD unless you listened closely.

RCA didn’t until the record came out. But when they heard Running ’Round This World , with its lyric, ‘The nights I’ve spent with you have been fantastic trips’, they got very hot under their starched collars. It was clearly an incitement to sex and/or drugs. The record pressing plant was halted and the was track pulled. RCA then listened to the rest of the album, and demanded alterations to the lyrics of two other songs. But Jefferson Airplane would get their revenge.

Meanwhile, there were more important matters to attend to. One day, they got to a gig to discover that Skip Spence had decided to go to Mexico instead. That wasn’t too serious; his replacement, Spencer Dryden, was a proper drummer. But then Signe Anderson started imposing travel restrictions on the group. Or as Balin puts it: “She got pregnant and she had a crazy husband and didn’t want to move outside the city.”

There were only two other girl singers in San Francisco: Janis Joplin and the well-bred Grace Slick who had been working as a model in the couturier department of I Magnin’s department store before forming a band called The Great Society.

“We formed the band after we went to see Airplane one night,” Slick relates, “and I thought: ‘They’re making more than me and they only work two hours a night and they get to drink and smoke dope’. My mother had been a singer, and I thought: ‘I can do that’. My husband had a set of drums at his parents’ house, so it was: ‘You be the drummer’. And his brother Darby had a guitar. But compared to Jack and Jorma we were amateur hour.”

Slick accepted immediately the offer to board the Airplane. In fact The Great Society were disintegrating – along with her marriage. Along with her voice and model deportment, she brought two songs that would enable Jefferson Airplane to take off: Somebody To Love , written by her brother-in-law Darby one night on an acid trip after being dumped by his girlfriend, and her own White Rabbit .

Not that she envisaged her Alice In Wonderland -based fable as a hit. “I wasn’t even thinking of hits. I was just so tired of all the damn love songs. I was just trying to up the possibilities.”

For the record, the dormouse never actually said ‘Feed your head’, did he?

“No, I just made that up.”

Both songs were among the highlights of 1966’s Surrealistic Pillow , Airplane’s second and finest album. It features some of the sweetest songs they ever wrote – Today , My Best Friend , How Do You Feel? – with some of their most ferocious: 3/5ths Of A Mile In 10 Seconds (the $65 that ‘make a poor man holler’ is a comment on the price of a kilo of marijuana) and Plastic Fantastic Lover . Suddenly the whole band were firing, individually and collectively. The Airplane were flying high.

“That was the thing I liked about it,” says Slick. “It was like a smorgasbord. Jorma and Jack were more blues oriented; Paul was 12-string big, grand, Wagnerian cosmic political folk; I’m kind of dark and sarcastic and semi-classical; and Marty was a great love/pop song writer. So you got four for the price of one. And my way of treating stuff is different from Marty’s. And so on.”

About the only common influence was LSD. (There are accounts of the band throwing bagfuls of acid tabs into the audience like M&Ms; LSD was not actually made illegal until late 1966). So it seemed only natural that their next album should be the sound of an acid trip. After Bathing At Baxters has been described by Paul Kantner as “pure LSD among 13 other things”. Nobody can remember what the 13 other things were, but Grace Slick has a memory of “Jack recording a bass part in this huge, gorgeous acoustic room at RCA’s Hollywood studios, and Jorma riding into the studio on his motorbike. Meanwhile there are six guys in the corner sucking on a nitrous oxide cylinder. That’s After Bathing At Baxters .”

Given unlimited studio time by a record company who thought they were going to get Son Of Surrealistic Pillow , the band took full advantage, demanding to produce themselves. Kaukonen and and Casady regard it as their breakthrough album. “We started to learn how to do a lot of stuff with electric guitars – feedback and stuff,” Kaukonen says. “Nowadays every kid learns this as part of their basic guitar vocabulary. But back then it was all different and new. I remember the first time my guitar fed back with a sustained note it was, ‘Wow, really cool’.”

The 12-second guitar wail that opens the album is a defiant portent of the band’s wilful determination to boldly go where no commercially successful band had dared to go before. Unfortunately, amid the jamboree of distorted bass, spacey jams and incomprehensible lyrics no one remembered to bring along any melodies. Marty Balin, who should have provided a few, decided to sit this record out, complaining that he was unable to communicate with the others who were “too stoned out”.

He was also miffed at the growing media perception of the band as Grace Slick & The Jefferson Airplane. Watching footage of the band with the camera zeroing in on Slick while Balin is singing, you can see his point. To be fair, Slick never claimed to be any kind of band leader, but she said what she thought. She thought Balin was “mysterious. He would occasionally just not be there.”

Even when Balin was there he could be upstaged by Slick at any moment. Like the time she blacked up for an appearance on the Smothers Brothers’ TV show without telling anyone: “They sent me to make-up, and there was every colour known to man on this tray. Including black. And I had this white outfit on, and I thought, ‘Aoow yeah!’. But the thing was, because of my features I didn’t look black. I looked like some Indian woman. The band just looked at me and went: ‘Oh God.’”

To the relief of the record company, the next album was mellower than its acid-fried predecessor. Relatively. Balin was back on board. Kantner’s writing was taking on a more strident quality, particularly on the album’s stirring title track, Crown Of Creation . Slick was having fun at the expense of drummer Spencer Dryden who’d just turned 30 (“He was the most child-like of all of us”), as well as the male psyche on Greasy Heart – ‘Girls, wonder why he wants some more when he’s just had some?’ . By now it was 1968 and Jefferson Airplane were rolling with the punches.

Politically they upped their profile by playing a charity show for Robert Kennedy, a few months before his assassination. They also raised their avant-garde profile by playing a rooftop concert in New York (a year before the Beatles did the same thing in London) which was filmed by Jean Luc Godard and D.A. Pennebaker, and Balin managed to get himself arrested by the cops when they came to break it up.

The Airplane had several run-ins with the law – not surprisingly, as the authorities correctly believed them to be to the left of Chairman Mao. Some of this was self-inflicted – like when Casady gallantly agreed to test-drive a new drug called STP. An hallucinogenic first synthesised by Alexander Shulgin, STP was stronger than LSD and unfortunately the manufacturers were still have problems figuring the correct dosage. Casady was arrested after being found naked on Santa Cruz Beach, drawing pictures in the sand.

Ohio police seemed have a particular problem with the Airplane, busting them virtually every time they crossed the State line. This could have had something to do with an earlier fracas (caused, as usual, after security started beating up fans and the band started hitting the security) when Kantner spiked the police officers’ drinks while they were laboriously being bailed. Slick can still remember riding back to the hotel and chuckling: “About now they’re gonna be wondering what’s hit them.”

So a European tour with The Doors provided some light relief. As well as two shows at London’s Roundhouse , the Airplane also played the Isle of Wight Festival a year before it turned into a mega-event, and a free gig on Parliament Hill Fields in London.

If Slick was becoming blasé about Airplane’s drug intake, Jim Morrison ’s was a revelation: “He basically used himself as a lab rat. He was trying to find out how far you could fuck the human mind up. I remember walking down the street in Amsterdam with him, and kids were running up to us and giving us drugs. I’d politely decline, or take a joint to save for later, but Jim took everything they gave him. That night he came on stage looking like a pinwheel. They had to take him to the hospital afterward he was so fucked up.”

That didn’t stop Slick adding Morrison to her portfolio. She can’t remember which city it was, although she can recall the room décor.

On stage Jefferson Airplane cut the studio crap and spread their wings in a different way, which they caught successfully on the Bless Its Pointed Little Head live album in 1969. Balin remembers that Kaukonen started it: “He just took off one night and it was amazing. The next night he did it again, and this time we all joined in; you’d have this subconscious communication on acid.”

The next studio album, Volunteers , took a more overtly political turn, and Kantner found some grist for his increasingly anthemic songs. The swirling harmonies on the seemingly benign We Can Be Together could not disguise the recurring phrase ‘Up against the wall, motherfuckers’ . RCA Records were apoplectic, Airplane were adamant – and, after a three-week stand-off, they prevailed.

Even Balin’s idea for the album’s title track – which came to him when he was woken by the sound of a noisy garbage truck which had ‘Volunteers Of America’ emblazoned down the side – was hijacked by Kantner for a rallying call to the counter culture.

“I have to say that when it got more political it kind of lost certain members of the band,” says Casady, who found solace in a side project with Kaukonen called Hot Tuna, who frequently opened for the Airplane at concerts.

Musically the Airplane were by now getting heavier. “We were being influenced by some of the bands around us,” says Casady. “Cream had come over and opened up all kinds of possibilities. And I became good buddies with Mitch Mitchell of the Jimi Hendrix Experience, and ended up playing on a track on the Electric Ladyland album.”

But neither Casady nor Kaukonen was ready to leave Jefferson Airplane yet. In fact We Can Be Together remains one of Kaukonen’s favourite songs.“You’re not gonna believe this but I’ve completely forgotten what the lyrics were about,” he says. “It was the beauty of the music. A lot of the time we’d be playing away and I wouldn’t even hear what Paul was singing.”

Balin, though, had had enough. He quit after Volunteers was released, citing Janis Joplin’s death as the reason. “It was dark times,” he told Airplane biographer Jeff Tamarkin. “Everybody was doing so much drugs. Cocaine was a big deal at that time, and I couldn’t talk with people who had an answer for every goddam thing, rationalising everything that happened. And I thought it made the music tight and constrictive. So after Janis died I thought, I’m not going to go on stage and play that kind of music.” There is a general consensus among the band that Volunteers is the last ‘real’ Jefferson Airplane album.

Spencer Dryden was also feeling the pace and was replaced by young hotshot drummer Joey Covington (Dryden died of lung cancer at the beginning of 2005).

Balin was not replaced as such. Instead the band brought in Papa John Creach, a tall, thin, black, white-haired (what there was of it) 53-year-old jazz and blues fiddle player. “The point was, he was an incredible showman as well as a great musician,” says Casady, who also lured him into Hot Tuna.

Jefferson Airplane released two more studio albums, Bark and Long John Silver , both of which have their moments. Kantner’s polemic was now taking on cosmic dimensions with the epic-sounding Have You Seen The Saucers? and When The Earth Moves Again . In contrast there’s the sublime, in-the-groove Pretty As You Feel that was edited down from a 30-minute jam that included Carlos Santana. “That was just a bunch of us in the studio,” Kaukonen says. “Luckily the tape was rolling, and Joey Covington wrote a song around it.”

And Kaukonen’s best Airplane song – apart from the stunning instrumental vignette Embryonic Journey , on Surrealistic Pillow – is definitely the wistful, restless Third Week In The Chelsea , about the ennui of life of the road. “It’s a nice song, even if I say so myself,” he agrees. “And Grace did a fine job on it too. I guess the pressure was beginning to tell on me by then.”

The Airplane taxied in and ground to a halt in late 1972, although there was the inevitable live album, 30 Seconds Over Winterland , the following year. Slick had decided to sample parenthood with Kantner, and, as she put it at the time: “It’s hard to babysit while you’re hallucinating.”

Casady and Kaukonen decided to devote all their energies to Hot Tuna. “The chemistry that made Jefferson Airplane great was a loose and fragile thing. You can look back on it and think, well maybe we should have done this or that. But we didn’t. I’m still playing with Jorma now – we’ve been together for 46 years – and there’s a great chemistry between us and the rest of the band. But that magical chemistry we had in Jefferson Airplane is very hard to recapture.”

And are they as wild as they used to be? “The only drugs we compare these days,” says Casady, “are cholesterol medications.”

This article originally appeared in Classic Rock 84, in September 2005

Hugh Fielder has been writing about music for 47 years. Actually 58 if you include the essay he wrote about the Rolling Stones in exchange for taking time off school to see them at the Ipswich Gaumont in 1964. He was news editor of Sounds magazine from 1975 to 1992 and editor of Tower Records Top magazine from 1992 to 2001. Since then he has been freelance. He has interviewed the great, the good and the not so good and written books about some of them. His favourite possession is a piece of columnar basalt he brought back from Iceland.

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Embryonic Journey

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In the Womb (2005), by Toby Mcdonald and National Geographic Channel

Written, produced, and directed by Toby Mcdonald, the 2005 National Geographic Channel film In the Womb uses the most recent technology to provide an intricate glimpse into the prenatal world. The technologies used, which include advanced photography, computer graphics, and 4-D ultrasound imaging, help to realistically illustrate the process of development and to answer questions about the rarely seen development of a human being. The following description of the images and narrative of the film captures the major points of In the Womb , and of embryonic and fetal development, as they are seen at the outset of the twenty-first century, depicted in only 100 minutes.

In the Womb opens with a glimpse of the mature fetus moments before she is ready to emerge into the outside world. The narrator explains that at this final stage, she is equipped with all of the faculties necessary for full function outside the womb. The main focus of the film, however, is the journey leading up to these final moments, a journey that begins with just a single cell. This journey is viewed intermittently throughout the film using 3-D and 4-D ultrasound scanning techniques which show the baby moving. 4-D refers to a string of 3-D images taken in real time (time is the fourth dimension), thus creating a movie of in utero events. In addition, the process is simulated by computer imaging based on observations, giving a vivid portrayal of embryonic and fetal development.

The developmental narrative begins with millions of swimming sperm, and an explanation of their unique purpose—carrying the father’s genetic information to the moment of conception. The sperm are produced in a man’s testes, and their quality depends on his lifestyle choices; they tend to be damaged by the consumption of various drugs and by heat, and stimulated by the consumption of coffee. A single sperm is filmed swimming across a black landscape, which accentuates the rapid, intricate movements of its tail. The tail’s flexibility allows the sperm to progress approximately a tenth of an inch per minute. Millions of sperm are filmed as they appear in the vagina, many of them dead on their sides, with the vast crowd in the middle swimming toward the uterus, the fallopian tubes, and the egg, which looks like a moon-like orb nestled among its protective agents. This egg, like all her others, was formed during the mother’s own time in the womb and has resided in her body ever since.

The film suggests that in order to find the egg, the sperm “sniff it out” using their figurative sense of smell. A graphical simulation shows the sperm traveling toward the awaiting egg, and one of them penetrating its outer layer. The bigger picture, in which the rest of the sperm are permanently shut out upon fertilization, is filmed. Another graphical simulation follows, illustrating the fusion of the father’s and the mother’s genetic material at the moment of conception. The narrator notes that this particular genetic combination has never before existed, and will never be duplicated in another human being.

DNA, which carries the organism’s genetic information and is bundled in the chromosomes, is depicted as a long, energetic helix that carries the more than 20,000 genes that make up an average human. These genes are responsible for various characteristics and are determined by parental contributions. They are absolutely crucial to the development of new life. The various physical effects of genetic information are illustrated in the display of various shapes of eyes, noses, hair, and other features. The great variability of genetic effects on appearance is depicted by the morphing of a face to show a variety of characteristics, both male and female. It is noted, however, that while the parents contribute equal amounts of genetic information, it is the DNA from the sperm that determines the child’s sex, via its twenty-third chromosome, which is either an X or a Y. The genes contributed by the parents largely predetermine the child’s appearance and much of the child’s personality and predisposition for certain diseases.

After the illustration and explanation of fertilization, a description of the fertilized egg’s journey toward the uterus is accompanied by film footage of the process. As it sails along the fallopian tube on the first day of its journey, the single cell divides into two identical cells. Cell division continues and by the fifth day, the resulting ball of cells is made up of about 100 cells and is called a blastocyst. At this stage, the blastocyst will split into two groups of cells: the outer layer prepares to become the placenta, umbilical cord and fetal membranes, and the inner layer prepares to become the embryo itself. The cells making up the inner part of the blastula are stem cells, and have the ability to differentiate into all of the different types of cells that make up the human body. One week after fertilization, the blastula reaches the uterus, where it will start to develop into a new human being.

Three weeks into gestation, In the Womb simulates the embryo folding inward and elongating as the basic body plan is determined. An actual embryo at this stage is shown and a basic spine is visible. The top of the embryo, destined to become the head and brain, is indicated; this region has already begun to generate nerve cells by the fifteenth day of the pregnancy. These nerve cells will proliferate and eventually become the brain and the central nervous system. The heart forms soon after this, and twenty-two days after conception, begins to beat. This movement is initiated by a single heart cell which begins to beat and induces the cells around it to beat to the same rhythm. Close-up filming shows this pulse as heart cells proliferate and the organ continues to form. With the formation of the heart come thin veins and early blood cells responsible for transporting oxygen and nutrients; the blood in these veins moves to the beat of the heart. During the early stages of development the heart beats relatively independently, though its function will later be carefully regulated by the brain.

By the time the embryo is four weeks old, preliminary eyes have appeared on her head. These look like dark spots on a pale landscape of surrounding tissue on which the early contours of the forehead, nose, mouth, and other parts of the mature face can be seen. In addition, arm and leg buds emerge. The narrator mentions that even though thirty days have passed since conception, the embryo is almost indistinguishable from the embryos of other mammals.

The changes taking place in the embryo’s morphology over the following few weeks are shown through film progression. The face plates move in to better define facial features, arms and legs continue to take shape, and the head becomes more clearly defined. At six weeks, the embryo is about an inch long, has a firmly rooted and visible umbilical cord, and the outline of her fingers can be distinguished as well. The eyes have developed by leaps and bounds, although they are not yet concealed by eyelids. The nostrils are now visible, wide-set beneath the eyes on a head that is giant in relation to the size of the body. By the end of eight weeks of gestation, the embryo is called a fetus and is no longer dependent on the yolk sac that nourished it during the embryonic stage of development. The yolk sac, a balloon-like structure of tissue with visible veins, vanishes at this point and the fetus becomes solely dependent on the umbilical cord rooted in the placenta, and thus on the mother’s blood for nutrition. A close examination of the placenta reveals intricate blood vessels transporting the nutrients necessary for the embryo’s growth, while keeping out many of the toxins present in the mother’s own blood. Despite the placenta’s effectiveness, substances like drugs and alcohol cannot be completely be filtered out, and it’s up to the mother to limit her consumption of them.

By nine weeks, the nervous system has developed dramatically and starts to allow the fetus to move. Although this movement, shown through computer simulation, is not yet connected to the brain, it promotes agility and further growth. After this point, the body will gradually come under the control of the brain. This change also has the effect of regulating heart rate, which may increase to more than 150 beats per minute before cerebral regulation.

A standard ultrasound is performed at the Create Health Clinic in London at the conclusion of the first trimester, and the narrator explains how ultrasound waves function to create the image on the screen. While a physician explains the various tests that can be done at this stage of pregnancy using ultrasound, the baby’s heart can be seen contracting and expanding in the moving image. A step beyond standard ultrasound is the 4-D scan, which shows the three-dimensional fetus moving in real time. This tool allows for even more accurate evaluation of the fetus’s health and development. It shows everything from the fetus moving her arms to yawning or playing with her nose. Four-dimensional scans of various babies at different stages of development greatly expand the amount of detail that is visible to the world outside the womb. The narrator also notes that this first ultrasound scan is the first opportunity to ascertain the number of fetuses present in the womb.

Four-dimensional scans also allow us to see the preliminary steps of a baby’s literal first steps. These are manifested in scans of eleven- and twelve-week-old fetuses kicking and pushing off the walls of the uterus as they exercise the use of their appendages. This movement is called the stepping reflex, and it is controlled by the fetus’s nervous system. The five weeks leading up to this point, weeks six through eleven, are considered to be the period in which the fetus undergoes the most dramatic transformations in its developmental journey. By the end of the eleventh week, all organs have formed, but the fetus is still tiny—about three inches long—and thus must grow significantly before it can be viable. Sex is also determined at this point, and the sex organs produce hormones that further regulate the sexual development of the fetus. Miscarriage beyond this point is far less likely than during the first three months of pregnancy, since the fetus is more stable.

As time goes on, the fetus looks more and more human, and her senses sharpen further. Simulation reveals highly developed hands and the hardening (ossification) of bones beneath the semi-transparent skin. The face looks far more “human” as well, with the eyes now closer together and the nose and mouth more defined. By this time, the brain controls most of the body–including the heart–through the central nervous system. Aside from seeing the heart, a Doppler probe is also used to hear what the fetus’ heart sounds like. It beats at a frantic 146 beats per minute, which the physician indicates is a healthy pace for a fetus this age. At four months, she not only has control of her heart rate, but she also begins to respond to physical stimuli and to move around a lot. She has also begun to develop proprioception, which is the awareness of the body’s position in its surroundings. She is shown feeling the sides of the womb and grasping at different parts of her body. Four-dimensional images of twins also reveal how interactive they are with each other; identical twins, however, interact much more than do fraternal twins, who have a membrane separating them. This membrane is also visible with this more detailed scanning tool.

Eighteen weeks after conception, fetal movements become readily detectable to the mother. In addition, the fetus starts digesting amniotic fluid as her digestive system begins preparation for the outside world. Another preparation has been revealed by 4-D scans, where the fetus can be seen practicing the blinking reflex. Soon, she will even have her own fingerprints. At the conclusion of the second trimester, the fetus is fully formed but still needs to experience dramatic growth and to develop her senses. The film states that at this stage, she begins to taste flavors from her mother’s food, and to hear the sounds that surround her cocoon, including the tone and cadence of her mother’s voice. Comfort with her mother’s various sense-inducing habits may even prove conducive to more healthy development once the baby has been born.

In the Womb also notes that, as well as providing a preliminary basis for diagnosis of complications, ultrasound scans also promote the development of parental attachment to the yet-unborn child. Ultrasound is thought to enhance the relationship of the child with the parents, both in infancy and later in life. At twenty-four weeks, this relationship could begin prematurely, for it is at this point that a baby could survive outside of the womb; though still small and underdeveloped, with appropriate intensive care, she could be considered viable. The greatest complications may arise due to the premature lungs, since the lungs only fully develop near the conclusion of the pregnancy and are filled with amniotic fluid until breathing begins.

The eyes, which have been fully developed since the middle of the pregnancy, cannot see yet but are adorned with eyelashes by the twenty-fifth week. Babies are usually born with lighter-colored eyes than they will have later; babies of Caucasian descent are often born with blue eyes, while babies of Asian or African descent first have darker brown eyes. These colors will often change or deepen during the first few months of life, as the pigments in the eyes are exposed to light, which is absent in the womb. In the darkness of the womb, babies in their final trimester spend most of their time sleeping soundly. When they are awake, however, fetuses are often active, practicing their reflexes in response to provocations from outside the womb. These include the startle reflex, when the fetus flings her arms out and over her head, and the swallowing and sucking process, crucial to nutrition outside of the womb. The latter may be manifested in thumb sucking, which is thought to be strongly correlated with handedness during a person’s life.

The placenta not only conducts oxygen, nutrients, and flavors to the fetus, but it may also conduct the mother’s mood. The fear or anxiety that a mother might experience cascade through, eventually causing the baby’s heart to beat faster as well. Serious and sustained stress or anxiety have been found to result in stress in the child and a higher risk for stress-related physical and mental health complications. Past twenty-six weeks the fetus concentrates almost solely on growth; despite this, serious issues might arise even before birth. In the Womb shows Dr. Kypros Nicolaides of King’s College Hospital in London diagnosing and performing in utero surgery on a fetus whose intestines are obstructing lung growth. He performs this delicate surgery with the help of a fetuscope, which allows him to see inside the womb and is also used as a tool in the surgery itself. Nicolaides’ technique for treating this particular disorder has been met with a 50% increase in the survival rate of his prenatal patients.

The last two months of pregnancy see the final steps toward a healthy birth. During this time, the fetus develops a layer of insulating fat and has even been found to develop consciousness and memory. The fetus may remember and respond to familiar sounds such as her mother’s voice or even her parents’ favorite music. If the fetus recognizes music, she might even move in rhythm. Fast music has been found to stimulate and excite the fetus, which seems to be almost dancing in the womb, while classical music will often have a calming effect. The development of all of these complex functions prior to birth has also led some experts to posit that, developmentally, birth is not as significant as was previously assumed. This is because the brain of a maturing fetus is almost identical to that of a newborn. This similarity is particularly striking considering the sighting of rapid eye movement (REM) in 4-D scans, since these are indicative of dreaming. From thirty-five weeks on, the fetus could be fully functional and self-supporting (aside from its need for external nutrition and warmth).

The film notes that though it is not yet certain what sets off delivery, the maturation of the lungs may play a key role. When mature, the lungs release a protein that affects the hormone production of the placenta, reducing progesterone production and initiating the production of oxytocin, which in turn triggers uterine contractions and inhibition of memory. These are useful when the cervix undergoes extreme widening—approximately 10 cm—as it conveys the baby’s large head out into the world.

In the Womb has now gone full-circle, arriving again at the time of delivery. To ease the pain of delivery and risks of complication, the mother in the movie delivers standing up and leaning forward with her legs spread apart slightly. During this time, the baby releases large quantities of adrenalin, which keeps the heart pumping fast and prepares the lungs to take their first breathes of air. Soon, the baby’s head crowns and is followed by the rest of the body. As soon as the baby has emerged, it starts crying as its lungs fill with oxygen and it is exposed to the light and cold of the outside world. The placenta, now unnecessary, detaches from the uterus and exits the mother’s body through the birth canal. In the Womb reviews the entire process of the pregnancy and highlights the grand achievement that is transformation from a single cell into an entirely new individual. The newly born baby depends on adults for warmth and nutrition, although all other functions rest solely in her tiny hands.

• In the Womb . DVD. Directed by Toby Macdonald. National Geographic Channel, 6 March 2005, USA: Time Warner Home Video. (Accessed May 2, 2010).

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Jefferson Airplane’s Kaukonen is still on embryonic journey

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LOS ANGELES (AP) — Long before he wrote and recorded the Jefferson Airplane classic “Embryonic Journey,” Jorma Kaukonen was on a decades-long journey of discovery of his own.

From shy, sometimes bullied upper-class son of a globe-trotting U.S. diplomat in post-colonial Pakistan, Kaukonen would evolve into a hard-drinking, hell-raising teenager racing his motorcycle through the streets of the Philippines in the mid-1950s.

Then it was on to a Jesuit university to study Aristotelian logic and other lofty subjects when not playing lead guitar for the Jefferson Airplane, a band he co-founded with Marty Balin, Jack Casady and others and that helped bring psychedelic sounds to the forefront of music.

Oh, and in his spare time Kaukonen would co-found another iconic band, Hot Tuna, which is still recording and touring 48 years later.

“It’s really funny, it’s hard to rate one’s own life” the 77-year-old guitarist says, smiling broadly as he reflects on how an embassy brat turned intellectual academic seemed to morph so easily into a rock star in 1967’s Summer of Love San Francisco.

“But all things considered, I have had a pretty interesting life,” adds the friendly self-effacing Kaukonen as he relaxes in a deserted VIP section of Hollywood’s El Rey Theatre hours before taking the stage for that night’s sold-out Hot Tuna show.

He lays out much of that life in the just-published memoir “Been So Long: My Life & Music” (St. Martin’s Press).

A quick, engaging read at 288 pages, his prose is followed by the lyrics to dozens of songs he’s composed over the past 50 years as well as a five-song CD tucked in between the final two pages. The latter includes Hot Tuna chestnuts like “Been So Long,” River of Time” and “In My Dreams,” a selection that seamlessly connects with the prose that precede them.

It’s a book that’s been generally well received, although Kaukonen acknowledges some have complained it doesn’t contain enough Jefferson Airplane photos or anecdotes along the lines of, “What’s Grace Slick really like?”

Slick, one of the band’s principal vocalists, wrote the book’s forward, which somewhat answers that question. But raising it seems to annoy Kaukonen slightly.

“The Airplane is a huge part of my life. I don’t trivialize it on any level. But it was A PART of my life and it has to fit into the scheme of things,” he says emphatically.

Then, regaining the jovial attitude Slick says she remembers him best for, he adds impishly, “If they continue to complain, I go, ‘Write your own book.’”

What “Been So Long” clearly describes is a love affair with the guitar that began when a 14-year-old persuaded his father, Jorma Sr., to buy him a Gibson Sunburst J-45 acoustic and then pretty much never put it down.

Eventually he would start writing songs, and although Kaukonen maintains he’s not a prolific musician his body of work would argue otherwise: Six classic Jefferson Airplane albums in the 1960s and early ‘70s followed by nearly two dozen Hot Tuna albums and more than a dozen solo projects.

“It’s kind of like learning the guitar,” he says when pressed on the dichotomy. “You start out learning how to play and maybe you get a song or two and you get to do an open mike. And then pretty soon you have enough for a set, and if you keep adding you have a show. And if you live long enough you have a body of work.”

His once brown hair has turned mostly gray and receded some over the years, but Kaukonen, dressed in black jeans and T-shirt, looks fit and younger than his years.

Once also a heavy drinker — and coming of age in the ‘60s a recreational drug user — he says he’s given up such indulgences.

“I abused my party privileges,” he explains with a chuckle.

When he got his first guitar early idols were Buddy Holly and Ricky Nelson, but in college he found himself exposed not only to Aristotelian logic but also folk, blues, bluegrass and gospel. And, perhaps most importantly, to the frenetic finger-picking style of the great bluesman the Rev. Gary Davis.

By the time Jefferson Airplane’s breakthrough album, “Surrealistic Pillow,” was released in 1967 Kaukonen had earned his degree in sociology from Santa Clara University and his finger-picking style was now creating electric-guitar sounds pretty much unheard of in rock music.

The album was anchored by soaring vocals from Slick and Balin, Kaukonen’s transcendent guitar passages and Casady’s thundering bass lines on songs like White Rabbit” and “Somebody to Love.” And, in the middle, was a brief but achingly beautiful acoustic-guitar instrumental called “Embryonic Journey.”

“I thought he was out of his mind,” Kaukonen says of his reaction when record producer Rick Jarrard heard him playing it during a break and insisted it go on the album. It remains a fan favorite to this day, and Kaukonen adds, “I owe him a big debt of gratitude.”

By 1970 he and Casady, a friend since childhood, had begun to tire of the Airplane’s more rigid musical structure and formed Hot Tuna, an ever-changing ensemble dedicated to a range of music from blues to jazz to Americana. After they complete a tour this fall that’s taking them across the country they plan another album.

And there is Fur Peace Ranch, the guitar camp Kaukonen founded 20 years ago in the foothills of Ohio’s Appalachian Mountains, where he lives with his wife and daughter. Workshops, which fill up months in advance, have brought in instructors like Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Arlo Guthrie and Guy Clarke.

“One of the things people occasionally ask me is if I think about retiring, and my sort of off-the-cuff answer is, ‘Why,” Kaukonen jokes. “So I’ll have more time to play the guitar?”

“The reality of the situation is that I still really love to do it. I love playing for an audience. And for me to keep my playing at a level that pleases me I need to perform.”

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EMBRYONIC JOURNEY: INTO THE LIGHT WITH JEFFERSON AIRPLANE’S JORMA KAUKONEN

Jorma Kaukonen – founding member of Jefferson Airplane, co-founder of Hot Tuna, teacher, archivist, brilliant rock, folk and blues guitarist, and tinkerer extraordinaire – charts his journey, so far, in a new memoir, and hits the road for more music at 77

Guitarist and songwriter Jorma Kaukonen has long been in the spotlight–as a 1950s high-schooler playing blues in Washington, D.C. clubs and later as a founding member of Jefferson Airplane. In 1969, Kaukonen launched Hot Tuna, a band that played both raucous rock and traditional blues, with Airplane band mate, bassist Jack Casady; over the last four-plus decades, he has also gone on to pick out successful solo projects and assemble acclaimed touring bands. Hitting the road again this month—his motor revved by a new memoir, due out tomorrow —the ever-curious Kaukonen is looking back and ahead at the same time.

What is it that makes us who and what we are? If I truly knew, I wouldn’t have to write this book. I’ve got some suspicions though. Our first moments of existence grow in the darkness of our mother’s womb. At some point the moment comes when we venture from darkness to the light of the world. It seems that we have been waiting for a long time. My first memories of light in the world seem to be about two or three years of age, and I remember this because that light came to me in the form of my mother’s song. When Mom was at home doing whatever chores awaited her, she would always sing, and if she wasn’t singing, the radio was on and song would fill the room. Music seemed to me to be the reward for being alive. To me, nothing has the power to evoke a place in time like music. It stirs memory in a singular way that is unmatched.

  So opens Jorma Kaukonen’s new autobiography, Been So Long . He goes on in that preface to describe his early musical worlds, from practicing for his junior high piano recitals to working out open-mike renditions with friends Janis Joplin and Jerry Garcia. In describing those first times on stage, Kaukonen says he loved performing, professing, “I was nervous and excited, but not afraid. For someone who was intrinsically shy as I was, this gave me a way to communicate on a primal level.”

That primal level has long been available to avowed “Jorma” fans: from the snaking, sitar-like, guitar run that follows Casady’s thrumming bassline at the opening of Jefferson Airplane’s 1966 “White Rabbit” and on throughout each decade of Hot Tuna.

Here is the Airplane, on the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour in 1967:

Kaukonen’s impassioned finger-picking style earned him a 2002 Grammy nomination for “Blue Country Heart”, a top-charting folk album that re-connected both Kaukonen and his audience to the music of country stars Jimmy Rodgers, Jimmy Davis, Gene Autry and The Delmore Brothers, stand-outs from the 1930s and 1940s who first caught Kaukonen’s ear as a kid.

Now, at 77, Kaukonen still plays “out” nearly 80-some times a year, and whenever he’s not touring he shares his musicianship in retreats and performances he hosts on his Southeast Ohio Fur Peace Ranch. The Ranch has been developed by he and his wife Vanessa since the early 1990s, a time when Kaukonen reveals in Been So Long he was struggling with aging parents and staying clear of drugs and alcohol. The property had been left to an old pal from his San Francisco days and was, as Kaukonen recounts, a “fur piece from anywhere.” In a call last week, he described discovering the 126-acre spread as “nothing but poison ivy and multiflora rose, which is Br’er Rabbit’s briar patch, and an old dilapidated A-frame. Because I always liked teaching, I thought my wife and I could build a music school there. It took time, and we’ve built a place that now has a museum [called “The Psylodelic Gallery” containing 1960s-centered artwork, clothing and exhibits, all housed in a grain silo], a theater [the 200-seat Station Concert Hall], a restaurant and all kinds of stuff. What it really is, though, is a community of like-minded spirits of all ages, that all love music. It just feels good to do what we do there.”

Among Kaukonen’s Fur Peace Ranch “instructors” are his former bandmates and fellow musical contemporaries, including G.E. Smith, Arlo Guthrie, Oteil Burbridge, Steve Kimock, Warren Haynes–the list goes on–and, of course, Jack Casady. Musical guests at the Ranch are also a folk, soul and blues who’s who; upcoming sold-out shows are set to feature Moonalice, Gretchen Peters and Tom Paxton, Bettye Lavette, Hubby Jenkins and Magic Dick with Shun Ng. In describing the setting, Kaukonen added, “We’re about twenty miles from the University of Ohio in Athens, and that makes it not as xenophobic as it otherwise might be; it’s not deep country as I know it—I can still hear the highway—but it’s deep country to city people.”

The highway is a draw to Kaukonen; he feels he would have been a truck driver had he not been a musician. Both in his book and on our call, he described the bliss he feels while on wheels. As hot-rod minded as he’s ever been, Kaukonen currently rides a 2016 CVO Breakout Harley-Davidson and drives a pick-up with a Cummins turbo diesel.

“I’ve been a gearhead since I was a kid”, Kaukonen explained. “It’s always been important to me to have horsepower.”

That love of power and precision is evident throughout Been So Long , not only in recounting his motorcycles and automobiles, but also conveying his guitar gear–from his first Gibson Sunburst J-45 in 1956 to the specs of the Martin Jorma M-30 he plays today. In one three-page sequence of the book, Kaukonen details learning the basics of finger-picking–“the thumb plays quarter notes and the fingers play the melody, typically eighth notes”–and then rebuilds a Triumph 650cc motorcycle so he can buy a new guitar. Kaukonen’s drive for precision can also be seen in his playing and his teaching, with much of that expertise available freely online in countless live videos.

In re-capping Been So Long , Kaukonen says, “My publisher would have been happier if I had more stories about Jerry and Janis and that kind of stuff. What I told them was, ‘Look, we’re having this conversation because I have visibility as an artist. All these people were just my buddies. It wasn’t like I was a fan, saying, ‘Wow, I got to hang out with Janis backstage.’ To me, it was just another day.” In the book’s Afterword, Casady–who first connected with Kaukonen as neighborhood friends in 1956–writes, “You would think I would know something about someone during all this time, and perhaps I do somewhat. I have been drawn to Jorma’s ability to tell a story and put so many to song. However, here is the chance for me to absorb some of the deep aspects to this man’s life and feelings, from childhood to present.”

All that said, Kaukonen does delve into certain “rock god” experiences in detail, such as discovering cocaine at The Monterey Pop Festival, courtesy of Owsley Stanley; playing at Woodstock and providing what Grace Slick proclaimed “Morning Maniac Music”; living at The Airplane’s infamous Fulton Street mansion; flying to Washington, D.C. in a Lear Jet for a Bobby Kennedy fundraiser; pulling Slick out of her Doyle Drive car crash (they were racing–she in her Mercedes and he in his Lotus Elan); his thinking of amphetamines as “a working drug” and finding the gregarious Garcia happily smoking opium in a closet.

As Casady suggests, the most satisfying parts of the book are Kaukonen’s insight to his growing up abroad, the son of an American diplomat; his learning to avoid conflict at home, how that came to haunt him as he “grew up”; and his musical influences and how they came into his life. Those remembrances are the core of Been So Long , and much of his personal storyline is already in place by the time Kaukonen reaches Antioch College in 1959 as a motorcycle-riding, blues and folk-influenced, socially-conscious wild-child. Having kept a journal for decades and looking back on the book, Kaukonen said last week, “I just couldn’t get everything in there.”

One of the things “not in there” is Kaukonen’s vision; he needs and wears glasses, but never on stage. When asked what he sees when going on stage, Kaukonen answered, “You go from the dark into the light, it’s like moving into a parallel universe. There’s another thing–I’m blind as a bat without my glasses and have worn glasses since I was 12 for everything that requires seeing, like driving. But I’ve never worn them on stage because, God forbid, I make eye contact with someone and forget what I’m doing, where I’m going and what I’m in the middle of.” Kaukonen also omits discussing his gold-capped front tooth, the remnant of an early Airplane-era skating accident originally covered by a white cap, but then knocked out by his ex-wife who was practicing her sparring in the studio one night: “She was practicing an overhand combination–like she needed to be doing that–and her right hand clipped the cap and the tooth came off. When you lose a tooth in that part of your mouth, it’s like you drop 80 points off your IQ. I never liked how the white cap felt and wanted one in gold instead. The dentist said, ‘You’re going to look horrible’; I said, ‘That’s what I want’, and it’s been there ever since.”

Despite not seeing his audience clearly–and being able to, potentially, scare them with a smile–Kaukonen takes the musician/listener relationship seriously. He explained that when he started, “In the folk theaters in San Jose, the lights stayed on because they had espresso machines and bars, so people had to see what they were doing; you were in a room with a bunch of people and there was a feeling of being part of a dialogue. I have always felt a responsibility–I think all of us that are fortunate to have an audience–have a responsibility to give them the best of us at any given time. I’ve gotten to a place in my life where I don’t have train wrecks. I do the best I can in the moment to communicate with that particular audience–that means being a stickler for what I do with the guitar and being as honest and clear as I can with my voice.”

For better or for worse, music has always been my beacon and I have followed it most of the time. The sounds of music in general and the guitar in particular have always pierced my night with a welcome glow. The feeling of the guitar on my lap and my hand on the neck has always surrounded me in a protective armor of tranquility. After all these years, the feeling is stronger than ever. The light brought me out of the darkness and into the world, and at some point I will follow the last light and it will take me home. I’m definitely not in a hurry for that journey. – Jorma Kaukonen, “Been So Long”

In His Own Words

Jorma looks back at San Francisco of the early 1960s

Recorded August 7, 2018

PKM: What brought together San Francisco’s psychedelic 1960s scene?

Jorma Kaukonen: It’s absurd to say today because it’s now so ridiculously expensive, but San Francisco in the early Sixties was a cheap place to live. My first apartment in San Francisco was a three-floor walk up on Divisadero Street in the Western Addition–a three-room apartment with a garage; it was like $80 a month. Artists gravitated to San Francisco because they could afford to live there; that was the draw–you could live cheap, and there were a lot of second-hand stores, a lot of cool stuff; that and there was the romantic cachét of the Barbary Coast, the pubs, the cable cars, the beatniks and all that.

What happened for us had been brewing in the witch’s cauldron for a number of years. I came because I was in love with the beat scene–or, more accurately, what I perceived what the beat seemed to be, because I’d never been to San Francisco before and I had never actually seen it. I had read this and that–Kerouac, Burroughs–it was really enticing to me, on every level.

I wanted to go to the University of San Francisco; my grades weren’t good enough and I ended up at Santa Clara University [outside of San Jose]. It was just one of those things it was meant to be. Our little folk scene in San Jose [David Crosby, Jerry Garcia, Paul Kantner, Janis Joplin, Steve Talbott, Tom Hobson, Mike Wilhelm] ruled for a while, but San Jose in those days was this two-bit town with a couple of universities in it; San Francisco was where the action was.

I graduated college in ’65; that was the year that Kantner moved to San Francisco, and because he does, I wind up getting called into play. My scene moved from being a big fish in a small pond in the San Jose/Santa Clara area to being a non-entity for a while in San Francisco, but thanks to Paul, who had already met Marty [Balin] and Signe [Anderson], what would become The Airplane was already in the mix. Again, it was just one of those things it was meant to be.

[In Been So Long , Kaukonen describes that first meeting with his soon-to-be bandmates at The Matrix in San Francisco and plugging into Ken Kesey’s Maestro Echoplex EP-2, an electronic effects unit being used at The Acid Tests. That “just plain fun”, as Kaukonen remembers it, caused him to tell Kantner to “Count me in…at least for a little while.” He still has no explanation of how Kesey came to be there that night and why Kesey happened to have that effects unit with him.]

Jorma continues his thought…

You can’t drop the acid thing out of the San Francisco equation. Acid was not a drug I was particularly fond of. It lasted so long and I just couldn’t play on it. The whole Merry Prankster scene, like The Acid Test stuff, was a little bit frightening to me on some level. But even back then, I recognized that what was happening as a result of what they were doing was really important; there were major changes happening in our culture in San Francisco.

And I’m not an expert on this, but by the time the rest of America, the rest of the world, became aware of what we were doing in San Francisco, that really integral artistic community where everybody knew each other, regardless of what kind of an artist they were–graphic, spoken word, musician, whatever–had already started to dissipate.

As soon as “it” hit Look , Life or Time , or whatever magazine had the first thing about the pre-Summer of Love and then the Summer of Love, people started to come from all over the place. Now you had a town full of homeless people. Things got different, fast; the nurturing, artistic scene that was so real, and so important to all of us, was already gone. Interestingly enough, when you look back–and when you think of how short that scene was–it has very long legs today.

PKM: Who would you like to see again from those days?

Jorma Kaukonen: George Hunter from The Charlatans! It’s hard to imagine what would have happened had not The Charlatans gone to Virginia City [Nevada, in June 1965] and started their scene there at The Red Dog Saloon. When they came back to San Francisco that fall, they played some of the first Family Dog shows at Longshoreman’s Hall.

The Charlatans: “The Shadow Knows”:

You look back at all this history that people are still so excited about and you always kinda rewrite it in your own light. What was the role of The Jefferson Airplane? What exactly was the psychedelic era? All that. After I saw the Rockin’ at the Red Dog documentary, I realized that The Charlatans–Dan Hicks, Mike Wilhelm, George and all those guys–they started that entire hippie-dance-hall scene. They had the clothes, the poster art, Owsley’s acid. I’d love to see George again, just because I want to see what he looks like today.

[A witches’ cauldron, The Pranksters, The Charlatans and The Warlocks–the latter later to become better known as the Grateful Dead–such a conjuring confluence of names and imagery all in one place; San Francisco didn’t stand a chance. And, yes, we at PKM reached out to The Charlatans’ George Hunter, by way of Ben Marks of Collectors Weekly and The Rock Poster Society, and are connecting him to Jorma Kaukonen. To see Kaukonen’s tour schedule, click here. ]

Friends, I am just taken aback by the consistency of the state-of.the-art quality of yours re the contributions as published here. Thanx !!! Truly! ZP, living in Europe

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What Happened to Kris Kristofferson? Health Journey Explored

By Apoorv Rastogi

Kris Kristofferson is in the headlines after making a miraculous recovery from his health issues. The Highwaymen singer officially retired from music during the COVID-19 pandemic but made it clear that his decision has nothing to do with his medical condition. Nevertheless, his health journey has left some of his fans wondering what happened to Kris Kristofferson .

Here is a guide to Kris Kristofferson’s recent medical developments.

Kris Kristofferson’s health journey explained

The first recorded instance of Kris Kristofferson encountering a serious medical issue dates back to 2006. At that time, he was busy filming for the movie Disappearances.

The songwriter had been suffering from acute memory loss ever since that year. In order to understand his condition, Kristofferson’s medical team conducted tests and came to the conclusion that the singer either had Alzheimer’s disease or dementia. As per Taste of Country , the reasoning given for what had happened to Kris Kristofferson was that he had sustained multiple injuries to his head in his younger days from activities like football and boxing.

Nevertheless, Kris Kristofferson’s Alzheimer’s evaluation ended up being the result of a misdiagnosis. The real reason behind his deteriorating health was caught much later in 2016 when a tick-borne angle to his issues was discovered. Kristofferson was tested for Lyme disease, for which he ended up testing positive.

While speaking to Lyme Times , Kristofferson’s wife, Lisa Meyers, revealed that the disease took a heavy toll on her husband’s health. In addition, the musician battled multiple ailments, including sleep apnea, knee pains, arrhythmias, and anemia, in between contracting the infection and its subsequent treatment.

According to a September 2023 report by Radar Online , a friend of Kristofferson has claimed that the accredited singer is currently experiencing his last days. However, Kristofferson did make a thundering appearance earlier at last year’s Hollywood Bowl. He shared the stage with the evergreen Rosanne Cash.

How old is Kris Kristofferson?

Born in 1936 in Brownsville, Texas, Kris Kristofferson is currently a member of the octogenarian club at age 87.

The multi-talented artist served in the military during the 1960s before venturing to Nashville to further his music career. Kristofferson’s legacy finally received official recognition in 2004 with an inclusion in the Country Music Hall of Fame.

Kris Kristofferson has stayed away from the media spotlight in recent years. The veteran rockstar leads a quiet life with his wife, having hung up his guitar during the COVID-19 pandemic.

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How old was daisy ridley in every star wars sequel trilogy movie.

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Star Wars: Rey's 15 Best Quotes

Every star wars lego set that released today, the 10 best star wars tv episodes of all time.

• Daisy Ridley began her Star Wars journey at a young age, growing alongside her character, Rey Skywalker.
• Ridley began portraying Rey when she was just 22 years old, and her most recent appearance was at age 27.
• Ridley's portrayal of Rey in the sequel trilogy was emotional and impactful, making her future return in New Jedi Order exciting.

Daisy Ridley had her big break as an actor by playing Rey Skywalker in the Star Wars sequel trilogy, and she did so at a very young age. Rey was the central figure of the sequel trilogy, and it's hard to overstate just how important she was to Star Wars , and how important Ridley was to her. Ridley had some great moments as Rey , and she expertly brought the character to life. Rey has also had a big effect on her, though, and thanks to the upcoming New Jedi Order movie , which Ridley is set to star in, she can continue to shape Rey at every age.

Ridley was born on April 10, 1992 in London, England. She had been acting consistently since 2012 in several short films and television series, but the Star Wars movies gave her a definitive breakthrough role. While she was acting in films and shows set outside of the galaxy far, far away throughout her time in the sequel trilogy, and she has starred in several major projects since her last appearance as Rey, Star Wars has been the biggest and most consistent part of Ridley's career. She took on the role at a very young age, and she grew alongside Rey through the years.

As the hero of Star Wars' sequel trilogy, Rey came quite a long way in three films. We look back at the most important quotes from her journey.

Daisy Ridley Was 23 Years Old When Her Star Wars Journey Began

Star wars: the force awakens was released on december 18, 2015.

Ridley's first foray into the Star Wars galaxy was in Star Wars: The Force Awakens . In that film, audiences were first introduced to Rey, who began her time in the Skywalker saga as an orphaned junker on the desert planet of Jakku. Filming for The Force Awakens lasted from May to November 2014, meaning Ridley was 22 years old in her scenes and 23 years old when The Force Awakens was released on December 18, 2015 . Rey was still very naive and inexperienced in that movie, which was a major part of her character arc, and Ridley's young age certainly helped her convey that.

Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens

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Ridley's young age wasn't entirely a benefit, though. She has since spoken about how much pressure she felt from becoming the face of an entire trilogy of Star Wars while still in her early 20s. Ridley even suffered from a leaky gut due to stress and the massive jump in fame she experienced. Additionally, Ridley experienced undue hate from viewers who didn't want a woman to be the main figure of Star Wars throughout her time as Rey, which certainly didn't help with her stress. Luckily, Ridley learned to manage the stress of the role and the franchise before her next outing as Rey.

Daisy Ridley Was 25 Years Old When The Last Jedi Released

Star wars: the last jedi was released on december 15, 2017.

After a brief period, Ridley took up her lightsaber once again for Star Wars: The Last Jedi . Principal photography for The Last Jedi lasted from February to July 2016, which meant that Ridley was 23 at the start of filming and 24 when it ended, and he was 25 years old when the movie was released on December 15, 2017 . While the turnaround between The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi was brief, there was clearly enough time for Ridley to learn to live in her role. Even though her journey was still underway, Ridley expertly showed how much Rey grew in The Last Jedi .

Star Wars: Episode VIII - The Last Jedi

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Ridley's most recent appearance as Rey in live-action came in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker , which also served as the end of the Skywalker saga. Filming lasted from August 2018 to February 2019, so Ridley was 26 when the movie was filmed and 27 when it was released on December 20, 2019 . The Rise of Skywalker saw Rey truly come into her element and be worthy of the Skywalker legacy, but it also saw Ridley at her best. By the time filming began, Ridley was a much more experienced actor, having appeared in films like Murder on the Orient Express and Ophelia .

Star Wars: Episode IX- The Rise of Skywalker

Rey and Daisy Ridley's portrayal of her were some of the best parts of the entire Star Wars sequel trilogy. Audiences got to follow her through epic highs and tragic lows, and Ridley was absolutely masterful in showing Rey's reaction to those moments. She was the emotional core of the sequel trilogy, and her acting skills made those pivotal moments truly impactful. The fact that Daisy Ridley has chosen to continue playing Rey in the Star Wars franchise as she grows older and wiser in New Jedi Order is extremely exciting.

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'Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem': Release Date, Trailer, and Everything We Know So Far

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It’s crazy to believe just how iconic the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles have become worldwide, but at the same time, how couldn’t they with an awesome name like that? Starting from humble beginnings as a comic book series in the mid-1980s, they were originally created by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird . In the decades since the TMNT franchise has shown very little sign of its popularity slowing down anytime soon. Our pizza-loving heroes have made their influential mark on pop culture across numerous TV shows, as action figures, in many video games, and in plenty of films too! Speaking of the films, it’s been a very interesting journey for TMNT on the big screen. After first appearing in a live-action trilogy in the early 1990s, they made the jump to animation in 2007. Only a few years later in 2014, they went back to live-action again for another two films. Now in 2023, they’re returned once again for a brand-new animated adventure! It’s called Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem . First announced in June 2020 , details on this new entry in the TMNT film franchise had been relatively quiet with only a few tidbits of information being teased. Until now, that is! There’s been many exciting updates recently revealed about the highly anticipated animated film, so there’s never been a better time to share them all in one dedicated space. Keep reading below to find out everything we know so far about Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem ! Editor's Note: This article was updated on July 22, 2023.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem

The film follows the Turtle brothers as they work to earn the love of New York City while facing down an army of mutants.

Related: 'Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem' Poster Arrives With Style

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem is currently scheduled to debut in theaters on Wednesday, August 2, 2023 . The film was previously scheduled for August 4, but turtle fans should be happy with the earlier release date. This will likely be a theater-exclusive debut, with a digital release date announced further down the line. Tickets for the movie are now on sale , so hurry up and grab yours!

Yes, there is! This very first teaser trailer for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem was just released on March 6. It doesn’t give away too much about the story, however it does a great job of giving us our first looks at the titular heroes and some of the supporting characters. Seth Rogen , being one of the producers on this new film, wanted to place a larger focus on the "teenage" aspect of the titular turtles . Fortunately, it seems like that was the right call to make as the trailer wonderfully showcases their strong brotherly bond and upbeat energy. Leonardo, Donatello, Raphael, and Michelangelo look like they’re always having a blast together, whether they’re just hanging out or trying to be heroes. Apart from the turtles, we briefly get to see Master Splinter, plus a few different villains from TMNT’s rogues’ gallery such as Bebop and Rocksteady. We also get a fun introduction to reporter April O’Neil, who will likely play a big part in helping the turtles become famous and save the city.

The trailer also highlights the stellar animation style of the film, sharing sketch-like qualities similar to Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse . It feels very much like a comic book coming to life and suits this world well based on what we’ve seen so far.

The first full trailer (seen above) leans heavily into the "Mutant Mayhem" as we not only get more of the turtles and Splinter, but we see how the rest of the mutants in New York play a role in the film. On July 18, we also get a new video from Mutant Mayhem , showing the Turtles' origin story, with Splinter narrating how he first found them, how they were transformed by the ooze, and how they became a family. See it here:

On July 21, a new sneak peek clip from Mutant Mayhem was released, showing Splinter catching the turtles trying to sneak back into their home after they caught a movie... with humans. Here it is:

The official synopsis for this new TMNT film reads as follows:

After years of being sheltered from the human world, the Turtles set out to win the hearts of New Yorkers and be accepted as normal teenagers through heroic acts. Their new friend April O’Neil helps them take on a notorious crime syndicate, but they soon get in over their heads when an army of mutants is unleashed upon them.

The synopsis confirms that this new film will offer a fresh take on the TMNT story, essentially serving as a reboot to the series . The four brothers will be newcomers to the hero game, needing to prove their worth to the people of New York. What remains vague though is who the film’s central villain will be. A “notorious crime syndicate” could indicate franchise mainstays like the Foot Clan being the Turtles’ main opponent this time around. That said, many villains have been confirmed to be in the film thanks to casting details (more on that later!), so it will be intriguing to see how events unfold. Either way, the young heroes will certainly have their work cut out for them as they try to protect the city.

Related: ‘TMNT’ Experience Lets Fans Explore the Turtles Sewer Lair Ahead of ‘Mutant Mayhem'

Behind the scenes, Jeff Rowe is serving as the director of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem. This will be his solo directorial debut after previously co-writing the 2021 animated film, The Mitchells vs. the Machines . He has also previously written for animated shows such as Gravity Falls and Disenchantment . The screenplay has been written by Brendan O'Brien ( Neighbours ).

Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg are two of the producers of the film. The duo has worked together on numerous film and TV productions across the board as writers, directors, and producers. Most recently as producers, they have worked on TV shows such as The Boys , Invincible , and Pam and Tommy , as well as films such as Long Shot and Good Boys . Additionally, James Warner serves as a third producer on the film. He is currently the president of Point Grey Pictures, the film and television production company founded by Rogen and Goldberg.

When Describing their new take on the Heroes in a Half-Shell, Rogen said ,

The film itself is permeated with this teenage energy – where you don’t stay in the lines, and you’re pushing harder on the stuff that you like, and you’re impressionably scribbling in the background, It needed to capture that – we can never have boring scenes, because the movie itself just seems to be crackling with energy.

To usher in this new cinematic era for the franchise, an all-star cast of stars has been assembled to lend their voices to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem. The impressively stacked cast list of TMNT: Mutant Mayhem includes Nicolas Cantu as Leonardo, Micah Abbey as Donatello, Shamon Brown Jr. as Michelangelo, Brady Noon as Raphael, Jackie Chan as Master Splinter, and Ayo Edebiri as April O’Neil. Also appearing are Seth Rogen as Bebop, John Cena as Rocksteady, Hannibal Buress as Genghis Frog, Rose Byrne as Leatherhead, Ice Cube as Superfly, Post Malone as Ray Fillet, Paul Rudd as Mondo Gecko, Maya Rudolph as Cynthia Utrom, Natasia Demetriou as Wingnut, and, last but not least, Giancarlo Esposito as Baxter Stockman.

There are going to be a lot of beloved TMNT characters in this film to say the very least! However, there are two names that are surprisingly missing from the list. There’s no mention of the Turtles’ archenemy, Shredder, or their human ally, vigilante Casey Jones…maybe they can be introduced in a potential sequel? Only time will tell if Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem can win over critics and fans alike. With an awesome creative team and cast behind it though, let’s hope fortune favors our favorite team of turtles!

• Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem (2023)

• Action/Adventure
• Children's/Family
• Documentary/Reality
• Amazon Prime Video

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‘Security,’ a Mall Movie Starring Antonio Banderas, Refuses To Vacate The Netflix Top 10

Where to stream:.

• Security (2017)
• Antonio Banderas

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Do you recall the last time you saw a contemporary-set movie with a major scene in a mall? Though there are still plenty of malls in America (and of America ), in many areas they’re not exactly the bustling retail hubs they once were, reflected in the fact that they tend to appear in movies most prominently to broadly evoke the 1980s, especially in superhero movies like Wonder Woman 1984 (which opens on a Superman II -esque mall scene) or X-Men: Apocalypse (which cut down a longer mall montage for time, much to fans’ dismay). For the most part, this is the kind of gradual, society-reflecting shift that might not gather much notice; mall scenes tended to be most prominent in teen movies, anyway. But maybe viewers have been feeling that absence more acutely than anyone expected, because the little-known 2017 action thriller Security , set almost entirely inside a mall, has vaulted into the Netflix Top 10 .

It’s not unusual for a straightforward action movie with a recognizable brand-name lead – in this case, Antonio Banderas, with a side of disengaged Ben Kingsley – to make a bigger splash on Netflix than it did in theaters. But Security is notable because this isn’t a forgotten post-millennial theatrical release finding a second life as newly licensed streamer content, just as movies did on cable in the past. Despite its mall setting, the movie didn’t ride the brief, strange wave of mall-cop movies that appeared in theaters back in 2009; it’s a 2017 movie that was barely released in theaters at all. In fact, it hit Netflix its year of release, though it’s unclear as to whether it’s been on the service the whole time, virtually undiscovered. It creates a sensation not unlike walking through your nearest mall for the first time in a while: Wait, was this always here?

As far as mall movies go, Security isn’t an especially impressive evocation of shiny, centralized consumer culture. It’s basically a straight-faced cross between those 2009 mall comedies, Paul Blart: Mall Cop and Observe and Report . From Blart , it takes the general idea of putting a Die Hard situation in a shopping center, with a bunch of gun-toting villains matched against mall-employee underdogs. It also (probably unintentionally) inverts Observe , in that instead of a security guard who is dangerously overzealous and incompetent in his thwarted desire to be a real cop, the movie gives us Eddie Deacon (Banderas), an overqualified military man who takes a mall-security gig out of desperation. He’s then forced into action when a young girl (Katherine Mary de la Rocha), a witness in an organized crime case, seeks refuge in the mall after-hours, following an ambush on the U.S. Marshals escorting her to the trial.

So yeah, Die Hard ’s limited-location cat-and-mouse with a few of Taken ’s older-guy-ass-kicking-in-defense-of-the-youth moves. The most surprising thing about Security is how it veers into mall-cop antics introducing the rest of the security team – the dopey, overconfident leader; the nerdy coward; the mouthy but tough broad; the earnestly helpful guy – and then goes on to treat those characters with relative dignity, rather than turning them into canon fodder. I mean, they are that, too; Banderas certainly isn’t the one who’s going to get killed in the first hour to raise the stakes. But there’s something weirdly novel about watching sitcom-level characters actually figure out how to fortify the defenses in their workplace, and eliminates the slasher-movie efficiency that action heroes sometimes take on when they become one-man armies.

Security is watchable, forgettable, mostly predictable stuff, but the area where it most noticeably falls down is finding some kind of point of view on an institution that hasn’t been thriving in recent years. Paul Blart puts its blinders on, turning the mall into a sitcom playground, subject of semi-ironic but lovingly photographed neat stuff, befitting the product-placement-loving Happy Madison productions. (It’s a shock that Adam Sandler hasn’t yet produced a movie where a C-list comedian gets sucked into a catalog.) Observe and Report relocates Taxi Driver from the streets of New York to the mall corridors of New Mexico, finding them just as hospitable a cesspool to pollute the human psyche. (Weirdly, Security implies that Eddie, like Seth Rogen’s character in Observe and Report , might have problems with his psych evaluation, though Eddie seems relatively restrained for a lone-wolf action hero.)

Perhaps the most famous mall-set movie, the original Dawn of the Dead from 1978, is a landmark satire of consumerist instincts. By comparison, Security is more like the Dawn of the Dead from 2004, a mall movie with nothing to say about its setting beyond its logistical advantages when fighting off a pack of marauding bad guys (be they zombies or utterly expendable henchmen). This one doesn’t even use a particularly convincing mall set; the exterior shots look much bigger than the interiors, the ceilings don’t seem to be high enough, and the characters seem to be constantly rounding the same handful of corners. There’s no sense of whether this is a mall where lots of people go, a mall where people used to go, or something on the downslope in between the two.

Of course, that doesn’t much affect the story of Antonio Banderas dispatching heavily armed gang members, or his colleagues forging makeshift weapons from the raw materials of commerce. Or at least, not beyond the subtext that the mall-security employees are actually being called upon to protect something real, rather than the illusion of community. Lots of activity that once happened at malls has now been transferred online – not just shopping, but the capturing of cultural ephemera not designed to have much lasting impact beyond momentary distraction. In the mall of Netflix, Security feels like something they found in the back and were surprised to see belatedly flying off the shelves.

Jesse Hassenger ( @rockmarooned ) is a writer living in Brooklyn. He’s a regular contributor to The A.V. Club, Polygon, and The Week, among others. He podcasts at www.sportsalcohol.com , too.

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‘Sight’ highlights the journey and faith of an Asian American medical hero who helped the blind see

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When Dr. Ming Wang came to the United States in 1982 at 21 years old, he had nothing but $50 and a Chinese-to-English translation book. He had just survived the violent cultural revolution in China — including the loss of a dear friend — during which the government had shut down most of the universities in the country.

We see this and much more in flashbacks throughout the movie “Sight,” which is based on Dr. Wang’s autobiography “From Darkness to Sight” and opens this weekend. In it, Dr. Wang (played by Terry Chen) ends up earning medical doctorates from Harvard and MIT (graduating magna cum laude from the latter), while also earning a PhD (laser physics, University of Maryland). He discovers a new way to potentially help blind people see — using an amniotic membrane contact lens if you want to get technical — as he and his medical partner Dr. Misha Bartnovsky (played by Greg Kinnear) embark on a mission to help orphans regain their sight.

The National Library of Medicine estimates that over the last 25 years, more than 20 million eyes were treated with laser eye surgery. Dr. Wang’s pioneering medical technique has restored the eyesight of millions around the world. As one of the leading experts in the field, Dr. Wang’s impact and philanthropy have been recognized in his home state of Tennessee, but his story may not be as widely known. As Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month continues, Wang, who also executive-produced the film, wants to contribute to the storytelling tapestry of this country.

“My main motivation? Asian American stories are not told in American mainstream media too often. Authentic representation is a rare occurrence. I wanted to encourage Asian Americans, Chinese Americans and all immigrants to tell our story,” says Wang. “I will say, though, it’s a humbling experience.”

Chen, a Canadian actor, was not only struck by Dr. Wang’s medical accomplishments, but also by the general and specific nature of his tale.

“It had nothing to do with kung fu or martial arts. It had nothing to do with being a gang member or any of the other tropes Hollywood has tripped over. And it also spoke to a larger swath of the immigrant story and the larger diaspora that exists outside of Asia,” says Chen.

Directed by Andrew Hyatt, and also starring Ben Wang, Fionnula Flanagan and Natasha Mumba, the film had the benefit of having Dr. Wang on the set. He was there to help consult on the technical jargon and operating room scenes, but many in the crew took advantage of his presence to ask for advice on medical issues. It was a welcome assurance on a 2020 set that was in the midst of working through a pandemic.

“Dr. Wang was a great resource to have,” says Kinnear. “This is the first movie that I did, that many of us did, after COVID. I kind of had a little bit of hesitation about the journey, but I felt like when I read Dr. Wang’s story, it put everything into perspective very quickly.”

The inspirational nature of the story may have even helped the mood on the set as well.

“When you finally go and you meet everybody and they slowly peel down their masks ... I have to say that in the case of this film, [the substance of the story] did trickle down. There was an inspiring good feeling on the set,” says Kinnear.

In the film, Dr. Wang tries to restore the sight of a young girl named Kajal (Mia Swaminathan) who is brought to his clinic by a nun ( Flanagan). It is one of the many touches in the film that put faith at the center of Dr. Wang’s struggles and his triumphs. This particular case is one that led to his revelation about using the placenta to create his curative lens, but it was also a case/client that tested his resolve.

“The reason that Kajal was chosen [to be the central case in the film] was because it was a very challenging case. Her injury was so severe that I had to dig deep to find a solution,” says Dr. Wang. “People say there’s no common ground between science and faith. Fortunately, I didn’t give up and as a Christian I kept praying.”

Angel Studios, known for its faith-based films, is distributing “Sight.” But its story of Dr. Wang’s past and his desire to help uplift blind orphans are themes that are just as prominent in the film.

“I think the message of the film is about freedom and faith,” says Dr. Wang. “‘Sight’ is a movie that reminds us how precious freedom is. How much we need to appreciate America. It may just take the story of an immigrant who did not have freedom to remind us how blessed we are.”

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