Horrible Music in the Clubs

Yes and this is why I came to this board. This was very typical in both 60s TV and films. Shows like 'The Munsters' did show case new acts but this was rare (outside of the Monkees). Newman has a new following amongst the younger 'hip set' these days but back then, his 'audience' was primarily more mature adults.
They wouldn't have tolerated harder rock (not that any of this could be considered 'rock'). There was also an expense tied to using rock/pop songs of that era and the 'sell out' label could be instant death for any rock and roll band that was concerned about its image.
For as long as I can remember I've been cringing over scenes like the one in this movie. I'm an old man now but my tastes haven't changed dramatically over the years.
As far as the long haired guitar band with horns from nowhere - yeah, I was wondering about that too.Maybe the music was dubbed in after some snag with a record co. whatever. It was the 'Napster' legal issue of the day. For a second there I thought the one dude looked like Brian Jones late of the Stones.
Another cringe worthy part of film making/tv during the 60s was the 'hippy' wardrobe/hair. Nothing like seeing some 30 year old with a heavy beard in a blonde womans wig, shaggy vest and striped pull over shirt to make your head spin. Sonny Bono, RIP, was the only 'rock and roller' that actually dressed that way - it was 'him' but he always appeared to me to be one of these studio made types. Kids back then were more likely to spend their $ on albums or concerts rather than Paul Newman flix so the studios/producers/directors knew their market. Besides, do you think Lauren Bacall would have anything to do with a movie that played Jefferson Airplanes/insert almost any long haired bands music ?? Don't think Newman was a big rocker either.

This unfortunately was fairly typical of Hollywood's portrayal of the club scene in the early and mid-'60s – they tried to capture the "look," but the sound was way off.

I didn't mind it though, because this film has its own quirky charm and that's part of it. "Harper" is sort of wedged between the cocktail circuit of the early part of the decade and the counterculture part of the latter half. It's both hip and square.

They didn't even bother to plug the guitars in. I think they always planned to dub in other music.

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Yes, Hollywood was totally clueless about almost anything to do with rock, youth, the emerging counter culture, etc. Of course they were a bunch of old men, so what could they know?

My nominee for "Worst Hollywood Hippies" is the gang that appears toward the end of With Six You Get Eggroll (Doris Day's last film),when the movie switches gears from a mild family drama to a total farce. They seem to be the gang of idiotic bikers from the Beach Blanket films with long haired fright wigs on. Oddly, in this fi, I lm the club scene is hip enough to feature a real rocking performance by the Grassroots. In fact I thought, "What is Doris Day doing in a club like this?"

I know this is a very late response, but the simple fact of the matter is that the studios could not, or did not want to, pay for decent music. This is a common theme (musically) with movies and television from the mid-sixties; horrible imitations of the popular music of the day.

One never gets used to it.

Watta ya lookn here for?

Whenever I hear source music, particularly from the '60s and early '70s, from the likes of composers like Jerry Goldsmith, Morton Stevens, or Jerry Fielding I often get the impression that they are lampooning the then-popular rock music with some wild, over-the-top compositions. I usually notice this when listening to said cues on a stand-alone listen.

I believe that these middle-aged guys, while hip in their own way and time period, didn't think much of the "Yeah Yeah Yeah" school of musical composition. Goldsmith's FLINT source music is a good example, as is Fielding's "Psychedelic Blues Rock Freak Out Music" from The Mechanic. After all, rock music (R.I.P.) was the bane of these guys' existence, was it not?

It's great stuff. I always wanted to live in a world where I could switch on the radio, get the last few sentences of a "News Flash" and then have an instrumental source cue from the likes of Lalo Schifrin smoothly making its way through the room.

In the '60s, there was that "generation gap." Now with fifty years of rock music in the pop culture memory, three of four generations have been immersed in and become familiar with rock, and now rap and techno.

Nowadays, it might be hard to imagine the culture conflict that existed during Elvis and the Beatles' heyday, but for every "A Hard Day's Night" that reached the top of the charts, there was an "Everybody Loves Somebody" and "Please Release Me" to take its place. There was enough of an "older" audience that still bought records and they would occasionally make their (sales) presence known.