Jefferson Airplane -White Rabbit-.Video Live Version Dolby Pro Logic II 384kbsmp4.mp4

"Go Ask Alice"
Jefferson Airplane Live Video Version
I downmixed this Audio using Dolby Pro Logic II 384kbs on track 1 and on Track 2 I downmixed with 7.1 ch. 1536kbs. The finished Woodstock Audio lists at 692kbs. I usually find that Track 2 sounds best played back through Home Theater system at a 5 channel Stereo setting. This depends on what your Audio/Home Theater/PC system is capable of.
I do not downmix to 7.1 to achieve Surround sound as the original Audio is 2 channel - hence the downmixing by 7.1 channel allows the Audio quality to upgrade through a higher (1536)kbs setting. I have included both versions as I felt they are both indicative of the meaning of the song.
This Video I dedicate to `All The Young Dudes' (Mott The Hoople) that hung out at The Nickle Bag arcade back in the 70's in Southport.
"White Rabbit" is a song from Jefferson Airplane's 1967 album `Surrealistic Pillow'. It was released as a single and became the band's second top ten success, peaking at #8 on the Billboard Hot 100. The song was ranked #478 on Rolling Stone's list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time, #87 on Rate Your Music's Top Singles of All Time, and appears on The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll.“White Rabbit” was written by Grace Slick while she was still with The Great Society. When that band broke up in 1966, Slick was invited to join Jefferson Airplane to replace their departed female singer Signe Toly Anderson, who left the band with the birth of her child. The first album Slick recorded with Jefferson Airplane was `Surrealistic Pillow', and Slick provided two songs from her previous group: her own “White Rabbit” and “Somebody to Love”, written by her brother-in-law Darby Slick and recorded under the title "Someone to Love" by The Great Society. Both songs became breakout successes for Jefferson Airplane and have ever since been associated with that band. One of Grace Slick's earliest songs, written during either late 1965 or early 1966, uses imagery found in the fantasy works of Lewis Carroll: 1865's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and its 1871 sequel Through the Looking-Glass, such as changing size after taking pills or drinking an unknown liquid. It is commonly thought that these are also references to the hallucinatory effects of psychedelic drugs, such as LSD and psilocybin mushrooms. Characters referenced include Alice, the hookah-smoking caterpillar, the White Knight, the Red Queen, and the Dormouse. For Slick and others in the 1960s, drugs were a part of mind-expanding and social experimentation. With its enigmatic lyrics, "White Rabbit" became one of the first songs to sneak drug references past censors on the radio. Even Marty Balin, Slick's eventual rival in Jefferson Airplane, regarded the song as a "masterpiece". In interviews, Slick has related that Alice in Wonderland was often read to her as a child and remained a vivid memory into her adult years. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal Slick mentioned that in addition to Alice in Wonderland her other inspiration for the song was "the bolero used by Miles Davis and Gil Evans on their 1960 album Sketches of Spain." The song is essentially one long crescendo similar to that of Ravel's famous Boléro. The music combined with the song's lyrics strongly suggests the sensory distortions experienced with hallucinogens, and the song was later used in pop culture to imply or accompany just such a state.
Interesting fact: `Go Ask Alice' is also 1971 novel about the life of a troubled teenage girl. It is written by Beatrice Sparks in the form of the diary of an anonymous teenage girl who becomes addicted to drugs.The diarist's name is never given in the book. The novel's title was taken from a line in the 1967 Grace Slick-penned Jefferson Airplane song "White Rabbit" ("go ask Alice/when she's ten feet tall"), which is itself a reference to a scene in Lewis Carroll's book Alice's Adventures In Wonderland where Alice eats a cookie that makes her grow large. Go Ask Alice is presented as an anti-drug testimonial But ironically achieved the exact opposite effect.
Interesting Fact 2: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0068644/ `Go Ask Alice' is also a Movie: Inadvertently, a 14-year-old girl in the late American 1960's is sucked into an odyssey of sex and drugs. She eventually seeks help. I was between 16 and 17 years old at the time. The early 70s were turbulent and the drug culture was making its way to small town America. Unfortunately, the movie, in my opinion, made the drug scene seem cool while the straight kids were portrayed as "geeky". I personally thought that Alice was the coolest person in the world! I think the film could have achieved more balance and probably been more effective as "drug prevention" material had it presented the straight kids in a more appealing light. While I cannot say that it was the catalyst to my own "issues", it certainly did fan flames that were smoldering. I rated it 9 because watching it is nostalgic and I do think it is a fair representation of the drug culture during that time in history. This era in American history can only be described as a time of experimental drug use by almost every young teen/adult, if you didn't use drugs and have your hair down to your a$$ you were considered a geek or narc. No Drug was off limits - so when Grace sings of `mushrooms' yes, even mushrooms made their way to the midwest suburbs/farm community as well. Green Beans/Qualuudes/reds/ and every type of LSD that you could possibly imagine was available at a phone call. Mr. Natural/Mickey Mouse/Window Pane/Purple Haze, Yes, they had perfect imprints of Micky Mouse on them! A very good film that depicts this time era's lifestyle was `Drug Store Cowboy' starring Matt Dillon.This manner of aquiring drugs was a national pasttime so to speak at that time, The 1960's hippies made drugs a popular pastime and I am sorry and very sad to remember all of my personal friends and everyone that died due to overdoses. Some of us survived and became wise and lead normal lives - extremely lucky to have survived this era with our hearts and minds and souls intact. Thank God for watching over me! I dedicate this to all those that made it and to all our friends that died of overdosing, whom we remember every day of our lives and miss them very much. I am not mentioning all this to glorify it, I am mentioning it as I sit here in remembrance of my friends that died due to a `popularity contest' so to speak. SO SAD.I mentioned Mott The Hoople earlier, this was one of my closest friends favorite songs, He died at the drive in overdosing on Reds in approx. 1974, I will remember him for the rest of my life. A very kind hearted Young Dude. He would stand up for his friends and speak out if they were being stabbed in the back. He was still in High School, and yes, I am in tears as I write this.


LYRICS:

"Go Ask Alice"

One pill makes you larger
And one pill makes you small
And the ones that mother gives you
Don't do anything at all
Go ask Alice
When she’s ten feet tall

And if you go chasing rabbits
And you know you're going to fall
Tell them a hookah smoking caterpillar has given you the call
Call Alice
When she was just small

When the men on the chess board
get up and tell you where to go
And you just had some kind of mushroom
And your mind is moving slow
Go ask Alice
I think she'll know

When logic and proportion
Have fallen sloppy dead
And the white knight is talking backwards
And the Red Queen's "Off with her head!"
Remember what the dormouse said

Feed your head
Feed your head

Session Video:
Frame Width: 480
Frame Height: 368
Data Rate: 3001kbps
Total Bitrate: 3498kbps
Frame Rate: 29 FPS

Audio: Track 1 Session Video:
Track I
Dolby Pro Logic II
Bit Rate: 384kbps
Channels 2(stereo)
Audio Sample Rate: 48 khz

Track: 2 Session Video:
7.1 ch mix
Bit Rate: 1536kbps
Audio Sample Rate: 48 khz