Grass - Motion Picture Soundtrack
First published on sydneyis.com.au, Nov ‘00
Apparently in certain European countries, it’s legal to buy it, it’s legal to own it, it’s legal to sell it, and check this… if you get stopped by the cops it’s illegal for them to search you. But it does slow down your reactions, can make you dopey and doleful, and even send you into depression and intense paranoia. But on the down side, it can even make you enjoy late night foreign films on SBS. If you still ain’t ‘cool’, or you still ain’t ‘hip’, I’ll spell it out for you. I’m talking about the Ganja. The Skunk. The Buddha. The Chronic. The ‘Erb. I’m talking about Grass man, but if you’re straighter than six o’clock or a soon to be ex-American president, you may want to find an alternative means of scoring. The solution – bum a lift to the shops and pick up a copy of the soundtrack to Grass, the new Ron Mann documentary about to ‘hit’ cinemas. But leave your concerns at your front door, because in Australia, marijuana might not be legal to buy, own or sell – but CDs about it are.
The soundtrack to Grass is a collection of toking tributes spanning eight decades, which is pretty impressive in it’s own right. Running chronic-ologially from Cab Calloway’s 1930s jive joint ‘Reefer Man’, through the Small Faces 1960s acid laced ‘Itchycoo Park’, right up today with Method Man and Redman’s hip hop ode to being bent, ‘How High’. Stylistically the album is immensely diverse; Mississippi jazz, country, rock and rap all held together like superglue by their own particular drug of choice. Goes to show that Stevie Wonder and Paul McCartney were barking up the wrong tree thinking that pianos would be the solution of uniting different races ‘side-by-side’. It ain’t Doctor Martins boots neither – it’s drugs. Drugs don’t discriminate. Drugs know no colour – only green.
Giving an insight into the angle of the movie and serving as interludes are audio excerpts from the film, some of them funny, some of them preposterous, but all blatant pieces of over-hyped propaganda. Such as “Marijuana smoking, experts point out, can make a helpless addict of it’s victim within weeks, causing physical and moral ruin… and death.” Or one for the mums: “A Chicago mother watching her daughter die as an indirect result of marijuana addiction told officers that at least fifty of the girls were slaves to the narcotic, continuing addiction until they deteriorated mentally, become insane and turned to violent crime – and murder”.
I found myself campaigning under the ‘legalise it’ banner after such snippets, until Peter Tosh begins his case on track nine. I’m sorry, but I just ain’t buying the ‘Legalise it, don’t criticise it. Doctors smoke it, nurses smoke it… it’s good for athsma, it’s good for too-bah-coo-lo-sis’ argument from a rasta who’s practically living in slow motion because he’s been smoking pot before he learned to walk. Ditto to the Small Faces, who get a smiley stamp in the irony competition with: “You can miss out school, won’t that be cool, why go to learn the words of fools?” Er, to not become a deranged tripper and sing lines in the very same song like “I feel inclined to blow my mind get on off legal ducks with a bun.” Yeah, school sux man.
Keith Stroup from NORML (the National Organisation for the Reform of Marijuana Laws) proclaims in the liner notes that “if you like marijuana, you’ll love this album”, and he’s probably right. But for someone like myself who doesn’t know a bong from a bud and has never inhaled in his life (honest, ask me mum), I’m pleased to say that this soundtrack doesn’t isolate anyone who falls into the ‘it’s great to be straight’ brigade. Regardless of the topic, this is a great collection of songs spanning many decades that will have you grooving first before you start choppin’. And the best thing about it, it won’t make you want to eat the entire contents of your house after a few listens.