'Scanner Darkly'

Spying On Myself and Me

In the wake of 'Blade Runner', we were really into the writings of Philip K. Dick. Before the internet, information took a long time to circulate the world, and even then was all very uneven. You kind of had to hunt down books, read them, lend them and then discuss them. It's a far cry from the instantaneous superfluous opinion generation in the era of YouTube and Facebook.

We were particularly drawn to this book 'A Scanner Darkly' which depicted a near future where the drug culture kind of permeated everything and nobody seemed to be quite straight. The 1970s counter-culture vibe of the book stood in stark contrast to the protestations of a Reagan USA. And so we set out writing this song which largely describes the psychotic elements the book.

Had we been inundated with everybody's bloody opinions about Philip K. Dick like we are today with any particular topic on the internet, we may not have embarked on such a venture. We even added in gags of our own. I guess you had to be there to understand the dynamic.

In the 2000s, Robert Linklater made his rather interesting film based on the book and of course we were surprised that he chose to concentrate on the other details that we didn't put in the song. Maybe Barris was miscast. Maybe Charles Freck was miscast. Winona Ryder as Donna most certainly seemed miscast. It's a fun movie but we had already experienced the transmogrification of trying to make sense the book and then explaining it in another medium.

Anyway, this song comes from a time way before the internet made everything so overly explained.




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