Autumn 1967. Lake Avenue, St. James. Suffolk County, New York State. In a house in the woods, a bunch of young men are living together in ramshackle bohemian splendour – 20-year-old students, graduates and wannabe musicians with a phobia for the 9-5, their days are spent in endless jamming and dope smoking. No one has money for utilities so the house is large, cold and damp. The windows are covered in blankets, the walls are painted black. In the living room, someone has painted a mural of Jim Morrison depicted as a strutting lion.
Residents include Donald Roeser, wizard guitarist and part-time student at Stony Brook University and Allen Lanier, a keyboard player and guitarist in the process of extricating himself from the draft. Patently ill-equipped to fight the war in Vietnam, Allen is working as an apprentice editor on industrial films. When he goes AWOL, Jeff Latham takes over.
