Citizens for Interplanetary Activity
Experimental Rock from The Haight-Ashbury Scene
Citizens for Interplanetary Activity
Side-long free-form jam made by an obscure American collective in the psychedelic '60s. Some tasty jazz moves via the piano and a quasi- "mystical vibe" at the start. Messy and freeform, for sure, but good.
Poster courtesy of Concert Poster Gallery
Citizens for Interplanetary Activity (C.I.A.) were a very obscure San Francisco experimental/psychedelic group active in the mid-to-late 1960s.
The group formed in San Francisco around 1966 and was part of the Bay Area underground scene. They appeared on bills with groups such as Big Brother & the Holding Company and Love, and performed at places including the Rock Garden and the New Orleans House in Berkeley.
Their most significant surviving work is the soundtrack to Yayoi Kusama’s 1967 underground film Kusama’s Self-Obliteration. The music was recorded in New York in September 1967 and was created specifically for the film.
The recording was essentially an improvised soundtrack rather than a conventional studio album. The band watched the film and improvised the score during a subsequent viewing.
Known personnel included Win Hardy on guitar, Paul Kilb on piano, and Ted Berk on chanting and words, although documentation of the complete lineup is surprisingly thin.
What's particularly interesting is that the band and Self-Obliteration are essentially inseparable. C.I.A.’s music wasn't simply added to the film afterward—the soundtrack was created specifically for Kusama’s film and became part of the work itself.
Musically, it is some pretty wild stuff for 1967: extended drones, chanting, percussion, distorted guitar, organ, and free-form psychedelic improvisation. It remains a fascinating artifact of the experimental underground of the period.
There's a couple of other interesting historical connections.
The event was held in honor of C.I.A. (Citizens for Interplanetary Activity), involving The Diggers, San Francisco Mime Troupe and others. So they were connected to the broader experimental/counterculture scene beyond simply being a psychedelic band.
A forgotten San Francisco band records an improvised soundtrack for a 1967 underground Kusama film; the recording disappears for more than three decades; then a tiny independent label De Stijl digs it up and gives it a physical release in 2001. De Stijl was a small, independent American record label run by Pete Nolan, based in Minneapolis.
Sourced From: Arcane Candy and De Stijl catalog
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ान्ति εἰρηνικός سلام 和平 ☮︎ शांति 평화 ſíot͡ʃáin ሰላም pax