Post-Woodstock, Videofreex blossomed into a collective, with eight other founding members. The group first occupied a Soho loft, where they put together a pilot for CBS about the turbulent times, featuring interviews with such figures as Yippie Abbie

The Videofreex, circa 1970, in their Soho loft. Standing (from left): Skip Blumberg, Chuck Kennedy, Davidson Gigliotti, Parry Teasdale, Mary Curtis Ratcliff, and David Cort. Seated (from left): Bart Friedman, Carol Vontobel, Nancy Cain, and Ann Woodward. (Photo by Bill Cox)

Hoffman and footage of Vietnam war protests and police brutality (it was summarily rejected by the network, though the head of programming called it “way ahead of its time”). The Freex then moved to upstate New York, where they lived in a 17-bedroom house until 1978, making more videos, running a pirate television station called Lanesville TV, and having a good time—“with and without the use of drugs,” says founding member Skip Blumberg, 64.

Blumberg, who now teaches film and video at Hofstra University, will be on hand Wednesday evening at a screening of Videofreex clips at the District of Columbia Arts Center in Adams Morgan. Joining him will be Eddie Becker, 60, a D.C.-based videographer who collaborated with the Freex, and Rhea Kennedy (an occasional contributor to this blog), 30, daughter of Chuck Kennedy, another founding member who passed away in 2004.

On the docket are excerpts from interviews with Hoffman and Black Panther Fred Hampton, as well as bits from Lanesville TV, including the Lanesville TV Newsbuggy. This segment shows a Videofreex member wheeling a baby buggy around town, interviewing locals about subjects ranging from feeding their pigs to their favorite yoga poses.

While the Videofreex’s work may look antiquated now, it was revolutionary in its day. “All of a sudden you could see interviews with crazy people with wild hair,” Becker says. “You didn’t see that on TV before; it was tightly controlled.” And Blumberg notes that though the group’s main goal was to have fun with the new medium, part of that fun involved serious goals, namely “to make the world a better place, to make it more fair, and to bring justice.”

For Kennedy, involvement with the Freex provides a link to her father and promotes her goal of restoring more of the group’s work. While the Video Data Bank has restored a number of Freex videos, there are hundreds, if not thousands, more in need of funding and attention. “It’s especially important to do this now, because the Videofreex are not immortal,” she says. “My dad’s already gone, and the other people who can tell us about the clips are not always going to be around, either.”

Blumberg is particularly glad for Kennedy’s involvement. “She’s going to be a Videofreek after I will be,” he says.

The "Videofreex Pirate TV Show Clip Screening" takes place Wednesday at 7 p.m. at the District of Columbia Arts Center, 2438 18th Street NW. To reserve tickets ($5 each), call (202) 462-7833 or e-mail info@dcartscenter.org. There will be an after-party at Sutra Lounge, 2406 18th St. NW.

Photo and video courtesy of the Videofreex.

"Trying to show a link between rock stars and drugs is like trying to make a link between mouths and tooth decay," writes R.U. Sirius—the nom de fume of 10 Zen Monkeys' Ken Goffman. This is but one of the many mangy comparisons that frontload Everybody Must Get Stoned: Rock Stars on Drugs*, and when you skim the book's list-heavy 200+ pages, tooth decay starts to sound like an attractive alternative. OK, maybe that's not entirely fair—there's some funny writing amid the run-on analogies, and a few of the anecdotes are worth their weight in angel dust. Hell, it'd probably make a nice coffee table book, if you're David Crosby.

To save you the buyer's remorse, here are our favorite factoids, trivia, apocrypha, or whatever:

• Pro-bullet goblin/chemical puritan Ted Nugent claims that his strategy for avoiding Vietnam service involved shooting meth and relieving himself in his pants. "[At the] army physical, Nugent was so sick that he passed out during his blood test.... And when it came time to give them some excrement, he got it all over his hands and arm." The most interesting part here is that the army requested a stool sample.
• Courtney Love on motherhood: "If there ever was a time when people should do drugs, it's when they're pregnant. Because it sucks." Ugh.
• Robert Hunter, in his 1984 "10 Commandments of Rock & Roll": "Destroy yourself physically and mentally and insist that all true brothers do likewise as an expression of unity."
• Some story about Grace Slick bringing Abbie Hoffman as a date to Nixon's White House with, like, many micrograms of LSD hidden under her fingernail (that's where they lose me, honestly) in the hopes of spiking Nixon's sweet tea. Mission Not Accomplished.
• John Lennon wrote "Come Together" for Timothy Leary's unsuccessful run against Ronald Reagan in California's 1968 gubernatorial race.
• Steely Dan took its name from a dildo in William Burroughs' Naked Lunch.

And that's about it. Save your $12.95 ($15.45 in Canada!) and spend it on one of the small baggies from your guy across the street.

*The worst example, as Mike Riggs has rightly observed, comes two paragraphs to the south: "And so, like the proverbial girl with her finger in the dike while ripped to the tits on X, Vitamin K, and a couple of Vicodin while trying to play guitar during a guest appearance on Ellen, I have attempted to take a vast ocean of rock-and-roll drug data and reduce it down to a book form that you can be amused, upset, offended, and/or informed by."