VLVL Mucho and "The Natch"

[jbor]

Mucho meets up with Zoyd in "real time", referring to the day that he and
the baby dropped by after the drug bust, sometime in 1970-1. In yet another
reinvention of himself, Mucho is a born-again anti-drug crusader: "The
Natch" (311) he preaches about is a natural high. (He preaches about it to
the point of being "a source of rectal discomfort on the subject"; i.e. he's
a pain in the ass and this is yet another example in _Vineland_ of Pynchon
playing around with register, tone and lexis, recasting a slang expression
in deliberately excessive formal language, trying for humour -- and failing
miserably -- but that's a separate issue.)

The conversation between Zoyd and Mucho restates in a fairly straightforward
way the novel's central theme of how the 60's counterculture or "Movement"
was co-opted (from within and without) and ultimately failed.

    "They just let us forget. Give us too much to process, fill up every
    minute, keep us distracted, it's what the Tube is for, and though it
    kills me to say it, it's what rock and roll is becoming -- just another
    way to claim our attention [...]"
      "And they never forgave us." Mucho went to the stereo and put on The
    Best of Sam Cooke, volumes 1 and 2, and then they sat together and
    listened, both of them this time, to the sermon, one they knew and
    felt their hearts comforted by, though outside spread the lampless
    wastes, the unseen paybacks, the heartless power of the scabland
    garrison state the green free America of their childhoods even then
    was turning into. (314)

It's one of the more poignant moments in the text, and a key passage for
some critics who try to separate the "scabland garrison state" passage from
its context. NB that Mucho's post-mortem is echoed later by Isaiah (373).

Of course, Mucho himself, like the rest of the '60s crew depicted in the
novel, has already been conspicuously implicated in the degradation and
collapse of "the Movement". As a record producer (and drug distributor) he's
one of a swag of opportunistic entrepreneurs responsible for diverting the
"revolutionary" potential of '60s rock music and the youth culture
associated with it by promoting (and profiting handsomely from) novelty acts
and cheap parodies. For example:

ca. 1967

    The jukebox played the Doors, Jimi Hendrix, Jefferson Airplane,
    Country Joe and the Fish. [...]
      "It's the Revolution, girl -- can't you feel it?" (117)
    
    "Feels right, DL. Like we're really going to change the world
    this time." [...] Revolution all around them, jukebox solidarity
                                                        (118)

ca. 1968-9

    Indolent Records had rapidly become known for its unusual choices
    of artists and repertoires. Mucho was one of the very first to
    audition, but not, he was later to add hastily, to call back,
    fledgling musician Charles Manson. He almost signed Wild Man
    Fischer, and Tiny Tim too, but others got to them first. (309)

That the label did sign up Zoyd's band in "the baroque, or ripe, phase of
L.A.'s relationship with rock and roll" when "critical abilities lapsed"
doesn't actually say much for their music either:

    For one demented season the town lost its ear, and talent was signed
    that in other times would have kept on wandering in the desert, and
    in what oases they found, played toilets. (283-4)

best

PS Occurrences of the phrase "the natch" in the novel: each time meaning
"natural high":

1.    on Page 259: 
"... How could we lose track like that, about what was real? All that time
we made ourselves stay on the natch? might as well have been dropping Purple
Owsley for all the good it did." She shook her head, looked down ..."
2.    on Page 303: 
"... a kid to look after now, no choice, I had to turn into a straight
citizen and go on the natch anymore, no time for these hardened criminal
drug dealers I used to hang out with, I'm totally reformed, man." "Yeah,
..."
3.    on Page 308: 
"... here out over the City and Bay, especially at night, were psychedelic
even if you happened to be on the natch, as Trillium reminded them, heading
out the door presently with a busload of costumed young folks who'd all met
and ..."
4.    on Page 311: 
"... to him, only announced in a robotized oracular voice, "Why brothers,
the new trip, the only true trip, is The Natch, and being on it." "Aw," said
the dopers, the speech balloon emerging from their tailpipe as they rolled
away. Though ..."

(The sentence from p. 303 seems to be in need of editing.)