Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
SEVEN DEGREES OF WAVY GRAVY
“You, too, can be sucked up in the tornado of talent.”
—Wavy Gravy
You might have played the trivia game Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. The idea is that
any actor can be linked via film roles to actor Kevin Bacon. Although the college
students who came up with the game back in 1994 picked Bacon for their demon-
stration of the “it's a small world” phenomenon because his name rhymed with the
stage play
Six Degrees of Separation,
they might have made the game quicker by
using Wavy Gravy. Here are just a few of the stellar somebodies the court jester of
counterculture is related to:
•
Lenny Bruce:
Before Lenny became a stand-up comedian in his own right,
he served as road manager for Wavy Gravy.
•
Harrison Ford:
Wavy, who taught improv to contract players at Columbia
Pictures, counts Harrison as one of his former students.
•
The Grateful Dead:
Not only did the band donate the camp's awesome
sound system (it allows Wavy Gravy to blast the children out of bed each
morning with Jimi Hendrix's version of “The Star-Spangled Banner”), but
Mickey Hart, the band's drummer, often shows up at Camp Winnarainbow
to teach the fine art of tom-tom making.
•
B. B. King:
When he was born, Wavy's parents named him Hugh Romney.
But, while doing a comedy show for B. B. King in 1969, it was the King of
Blues himself who bequeathed Wavy the nickname he still uses today.
•
Tom Wolfe:
Wavy provided the name for Wolfe's first novel,
The Electric
Kool-Aid Acid Test,
about the psychedelic sixties. While traveling with Ken
Kesey's Merry Pranksters, Wavy started calling LSD “electric kool-aid,”
