If I saw the movie "Shampoo", it barely registered as it was so far removed from my version of reality, moving as I did through the sixties in a place very different from Belair or Beverly Hills or even Hollywood. But Pauline Keal saw the movie and wrote about it (and is cited as "Pauline Kael wrote that 'watching Shampoo, one is amazed that [era] ever existed at all'(606)") and naturally neo-con journals continue to write about '60s nostalgic movie soundtracks and what they represent in this modern day and age: "Nothing is more natural than allowing memory to replace truth with nostalgia," is offered as openers.

I guess I'm saying I'm surprised that Hollywood intelligentsia even noticed the sixties were happening at all and were never terribly successful in representing the era except from their own self-absorbed and well-funded point of view. What I mean to say is, they were making movies about themselves and trying to foist their loser images off as representing every nook and cranny of an era. That they happened to buy some records along the way and pay for the rights to use the music in an overanalyzed going into it and overanlyzed after viewing it soundtrack, so what? Who in their right minds would take "Plastic Fantasic Lover" seriously -- it sounded like the guy who wrote it was coming down from bad acid and woke up in love with his vacuum cleaner. And actually that might account for his very high voice.  ¶ 7/04/2006 09:38:00 AM