My Fair & Frantic Hollywood
By Earl Leaf
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MONDO MOD. The big cool now in this Baghdad on the Pacific are the Freak Outs, happenings which are a chop suey of Mardi Gras carnival, Beaux Arts ball, serenity frat initiation. Babylonian revel and New Year's Eve celebration. Goers wear their freakiest clads, junk jewelry, hairdos and makeup, with pop art designs painted on faces and bods. Anything resembling conventional Halloween costumes, however, is considered campy and too taboo.
This craze started as house parties grooving to the awesome bedlam of Frank Zappa's Verve-MGM album, "Freak Out," by the Mothers of Invention, five bearded long-hairs who emit sounds worse than music, different than Lawrence Welk, better than static and higher than low. Now the public Freak Outs have grown so big that Dodger Stadium may be the next scene.
Instant insanity erupts when the Mothers begin to squirt their roaring, howling, wailing noises. Moving op-art lights bathe the people and the place. Dancing revelers scream, blow their minds and freak out in cyclonic, convulsive exhilaration. What a kicky release of pent-up tensions, angers and frustrations! Freak Outs are more soothing to the soul and healing to psyched-up emotions than the currently popular teenage riots could ever be. And they have the added fringe benefit that nobody gets busted.
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