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It's a slight string that ties together Tom Snyder's Electric Kool-Aid Talk Show, Shout! Factory's latest installment from the vaults of Snyder's late-night '70s talk show. Given the title and the principals involved—the Grateful Dead, author Tom Wolfe and LSD-icon Timothy Leary—one might think that Electric Kool-Aid would be a celebration of all things gonzo '60s. Surprisingly, save for the Dead, it's just comes across as an oddly disjointed collection of interviews. When you boil the meat from the bone, the topics that season Kool-Aid's stock are the Dead (natch), astronauts and late-'70s current affairs (Wolfe), and the evils of drugs (Leary). It's not exactly a recipe for longhair love and gettin' your LSD freak on.
First up are the Dead from a 1981 appearance, and they serve as Electric Kool-Aid's soul. The segment features three different interview settings (Jerry Garcia/Cuckoo's Nest author and Kool-Aid subject Ken Kesey, Garcia/Bob Weir, and finally Garcia/Weir/Mickey Hart/Bill Kreutzmann) with a congenial Snyder fawning over the band and their drug-laced legacy. In reflection, it feels a bit sycophantic given the borderline hostility/disdain Snyder later displays for Leary.
Watching Garcia is a wistful experience. He's in full "shaggy" mode, having the ability to be lucid and spacey. It's striking to see Garcia appear so vibrant and alive given the weary veteran state that seemed to possess his being the last decade of his life. The interviews are otherwise noteworthy for a laugh-worthy bad makeup job on Weir (it looks like he's wearing rouge) and watching Hart hog answers from his more interesting bandmates. As far as the tunes go, the Dead perform a solid full-band four-song acoustic set inter-spliced throughout their segment ("On the Road Again," "Dire Wolf," "Deep Elem Blues," and "Cassidy"). Garcia's engaging picking is on display, even if his voice is a bit shakier than his usual trademark reed.
If only Kool-Aid's other three segments (two with Wolfe and one with Leary) were as likeable as the Dead's. The two Tom Wolfe segments, in context of Kool-Aid's title, just come across as an odd placement, since Wolfe's own book Electric Kool-Aid Test isn't even brought up once in either interview. In an appearance from 1979, Wolfe talks about writing The Right Stuff, and the fraternity of sky pilots, which leads into a long discussion about airline pilots in which both host and guest try to make clever jokes and anecdotes, only to entertain one another. In the other Wolfe appearance (from 1980), he's promoting In Our Time (a send-up of the social mores of the late '70s) and manages to come across in his meticulously color-coordinated suits as even more smug than in the preceding interview. There's no doubting Wolfe's intellect, but it seems to be a haughty, classist air he exhales.
Finally, there is the Timothy Leary interview—by far the most bizarre and the briefest. Leary was on the show in 1981 to promote his then tour of colleges in which he would debate his historical nemesis G. Gordon Liddy. Armed with a madcap smile, Leary comes across as odd and burned out, and the interview isn't particularly insightful. Snyder plays the role of inquisitor somewhat and he simultaneously pokes fun at Leary, while also trying to get Leary to take responsibility for the darker societal results of his role in promoting LSD. It's a strange position for host and interviewee, and as Leary states, "[You] have to keep score there." In the end, Leary's right—if you stack up the acid casualties versus the Vietnam body bags, which caused the greater human suffering? Ultimately, as a cultural artifact Kool-Aid is somewhat interesting, albeit quite misguided.
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