CAN YOU PASS THE ACID TEST?

Purple Haze was in my brain, lately things don't seem the same...

Jimi Hendrix brought the thrills and spills of the LSD experience into shag-carpeted rec rooms across America, playing a brand new, wildly improvisational electric music some enterprising cub reporter labeled "acid rock." Like it or not, acid played a huge role in the counterculture, and eventually undermined the dominant mainstream culture. Or did it? Here's Jimi playing "Purple Haze" at Woodstock.

'Scuse me while I kiss the sky...

She's a witch of trouble in electric blue, in her own mad mind she's in love with you...Psychedelia from the Cream. The surrealist lyrics and lurid, luminous album cover clearly reflected the acid experience. Eric Clapton's guitar glimmered with a lysergic light, and many an innocent lad learned the glorious riff of "Sunshine of Your Love" without the slightest clue about Albert Hoffman's remarkable discovery in a Swiss lab back in 1938. The trickle down had begun, and illuminated artists and musicians of the counterculture were ambassadors of a strange new country that filtered through the tiny transistor radios of Rapid City and Buffalo, of Long Beach and Beaverton, a viral contagion of earth-shaking import. Were they heroes, Argonauts of the Shining Realm, or were they just Pied Pipers leading the country's youth astray? To a lot of us, the choice seemed simple at the time: the music and fun of the Beatles, or the drag-ass rules and regulations of crew-cut Chamber of Commerce jarheads offering fear and guilt and one-way tickets to Nam. Forget it. Many kids in shag-carpeted rec rooms or poster-festooned bedrooms across the USA opted for the hippie freak show, as advertised in pop and rock music, and said goodbye to all that. Chuck you, Farley. What role did this chemical play? What role did this tasteless, odorless compound play in shifting the zeitgeist or causing it to burst into a riot of flowers? Even those that didn't drop acid--or smoke dope, or eat magic mushrooms--were affected by the new lifestyles and attitudes that were somehow linked to the stuff.

The Pink Panther must have dropped acid in this cartoon. At the very least, the psychedelic artwork associated with the LSD experience influenced the animators. Acid had a widespread impact on the mainstream culture, and affected not only art but music, advertising, hairstyles, and social and sexual mores.

In the interest of keeping things weird, we've decided to explore the psychedelic phenomenon that unites this drug-addled panther with such luminaries as Ken Kesey, Jimi Hendrix, and The Beatles--not to mention Cary Grant and Groucho Marx. In this puritanical age, with the no-fun fundamentalists trying to control everyone's private lives, and with so many unfortunate druggies and failed seekers crashing and burning like vehicles on the road out of Baghdad, it might seem strange--or even irresponsible--to look into the strongest mind-altering drug known to man, Lysergic acid diethylamide, or LSD.


This next clip explores the "acid tests" put on by Ken Kesey and his merry band, The Merry Pranksters. Kesey, the celebrated author of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest," the quintessential 1960s novel of man against heartless authority, was a student at Stanford when he signed up for psych experiments conducted by the US government. Among other hallucinogens, Kesey was administered LSD. Soon afterward, he secured some of the drug and turned on his friends. Before long, the party spilled out of the Stanford enclave of Perry Lane and into the streets, fueled by acid and an almost missionary zeal. The acid tests were conducted in the Bay Area, and participants were given "electric Kool Aid" dosed with LSD in a highly psychedelic environment with colored light shows and music provided by the house band, The Grateful Dead.



Without any more government acid to fuel their hi-jinks, the early explorers used acid synthesized by a number of hippie chemists, the most famous being a genius level scientist named Augustus Stanley Owsley, or simply Owsley. He was legendary for the purity and strength of his product, which included the holy grail of early LSD, Orange Sunshine. Owsley was honored in this song by the rock band Steely Dan, "Kid Charlemagne."

While the music played you worked by candlelight
Those San Francisco nights
You were the best in town
Just by chance you crossed the diamond with the pearl
You turned it on the world
Thats when you turned the world around
Did you feel like jesus?
Did you realize
That you were a champion in their eyes?
On the hill the stuff was laced with kerosene
But yours was kitchen clean
Everyone stopped to stare at your technicolor motor home...

A shot of the Kesey bus


Here is a segment of the BBC documentary, "Beyond Within." It's a good solid background on the subject, and well worth checking out. Resourceful readers will have no problem finding part two.


from "Power and Control: LSD in the Sixties," by Aron Ranen. A little more irreverent, but an interesting doc nonetheless. Reminds us that the drug was first explored not as an agent of consciousness expansion at all, but as a weapon by the CIA.

Disclaimer: As much as we adhere to the principals of a free society in which adults direct their own lives, LSD is a Schedule I substance under the Controlled Substances Act, and as such is illegal. Personally, we don't recommend LSD anymore than we recommend Kentucky Sour Mash Whiskey or cigarettes.

GO ASK ELLIS

Not long ago, major league baseball player Dock Ellis passed away. His best season was 1971, when he won 19 games for the World Series champion Pirates and was the starting pitcher for the National League in the All-Star Game. Ellis is probably best known for pitching a no-hitter while under the influence of LSD in 1970.

He didn't plan it that way. Ellis had been hanging out with friends in LA and was under the impression he had the day off when he ingested the powerful psychedelic.

"I was in Los Angeles, and the team was playing in San Diego, but I didn't know it. I had taken LSD..... I thought it was an off-day, that's how come I had it in me. I took the LSD at noon." At 1pm, his girlfriend and trip partner looked at the paper and said, "Dock, you're pitching today!"

Ellis boarded a shuttle flight to the ballpark and threw a no-hitter despite not being able to feel the ball or clearly see the batter or catcher.

"I can only remember bits and pieces of the game," Ellis recalled. "I was psyched. I had a feeling of euphoria. I was zeroed in on the glove, but I didn't hit the glove too much. I remember hitting a couple of batters and the bases were loaded two or three times. The ball was small sometimes, the ball was large sometimes, sometimes I saw the catcher, sometimes I didn't. Sometimes I tried to stare the hitter down and throw while I was looking at him. I chewed my gum until it turned to powder. They say I had about three to four fielding chances. I remember diving out of the way of a ball I thought was a line drive. I jumped, but the ball wasn't hit hard and never reached me."

autographed ball: Dock Ellis, No Hitter 6-12-70

The dubious achievement inspired several songs, including "Dock Ellis" by Barbara Manning (performed by SF Seals), "Dock Ellis No-No" by Chuck Brodsky, and "America's Favorite Pastime" by folk singer by Todd Snider.

Listen to "America's Favorite Pastime" by Todd Snider, click the button below:

Listen to "Dock Ellis" by SF Seals, by clicking here:


Dock Ellis, American Hero

GREATEST, GRATEFUL & STILL DEAD

What a long strange trip, indeed. The New York Times published an article a couple days ago settling things forever and silencing all debate by announcing, once and for all, that the greatest Grateful Dead concert--according to Ben Ratlif, anyway, and others he claims to have spoken with--took place on May 8th, 1978. End of story. The journal of record has spoken. The story barely made a beep, and the world of news quickly returned to its tales of war and collapsing economies, mothers killing children, fathers killing mothers, pirates kidnapping sea captains, and seemingly normal people killing huge numbers of random strangers or loved ones before turning their guns upon themselves. Stories about the ungrateful dead, you might say.

1966: at the old place on Ashbury, just before the party spilled into the streets

Of course, all musical lists are suspect; the value of music is felt in the heart of every listener and should not be left to New York Times, the trainspotting music geeks, or even the Nicks--Hornby and Harcourt. And don't leave it to the Deadheads. They're a funny bunch, whichever vintage, and they've been trading thousands of recordings for decades and are simply too close to the thing to see it clearly. (Like the old joke: what do Deadheads say when the dope runs out? "This music sucks!" Well, it doesn't suck, not all of it, but you get my point) It would be like asking an Eskimo (Inuit, sorry) about snowflakes. No, you don't want to commit your life to the damn thing. You, with your short attention span, want an overview.

Anyway, here are some unusual Grateful Dead clips. The opening segment comes from Playboy After Dark, and listening to the skeezy pajama king Hugh Hefner "rap" with Jerry Garcia brings to mind the writer from the Times dissecting Dead shows for relative merit. You don't need to ingest psychedelic drugs to catch a glimpse of Hef as a lizard of the lounge variety, but I'm sure the bandmembers popped their pills anyway and the entire affair has a surreal quality that Thorazine and orange juice might not bring you down from. In fact, you might not be able to shake this hallucination until you escape the Playboy rabbit hole entirely and get a breath of fresh air.

Further on down the line, truckin' in the 1970s

My point (and yes, I had one...) is that you can't really say which concert is best because it's a matter of taste, but even beyond that the band itself changed so much over the years it would be like comparing apples to orange sunshine. The Playboy mansion clip is from 1969--and by that time the Dead had already evolved from being the house band at the Acid Tests hosted by Kesey and the Pranksters. The band that played the Trips Festival at the Longshoreman's Hall in 1966 had already grown less experimental, more polished and professional. By 1972, they were an altogether different group, and the recordings from that tour were released on "Europe 72" remain favorites. Some would argue this was the "best" Dead period. By 1978, they'd mutated again--the show rocked harder, etc, and if you liked that sort of thing you might like that. To all the kids who staggered after them in the 1980s and 1990s the experience was altogether different. The band played the old favorites for adoring kids who weren't even alive when they put out their first album. (a far cry from my first Dead concert in '70 or so. When someone yelled out "St. Stephen!" Garcia barked back, "That was three X*&$* years ago, man!")

The last clip is from April 17th, 1972, at the Tivoli Theatre in Copenhagen. Their hi-jinx are in high gear as you can see from the clown masks. 1972 was a good year. What do you think?



Grateful Dead Update: According the the Washington Post (April 14th, 2009): "The surviving (and formerly feuding) members of the Grateful Dead had a secret impromptu meeting Monday evening with the man they credit with reuniting them: President Obama."

"The president welcomed all the members of The Dead, who are performing tonight at the Verizon Center in Washington, to the Oval Office just before dinner last night. They didn't talk music as much as they did history - history about the Oval Office, and the president's desk."

To read the rest of the story in the Washington Post, click here.

Still Dead: Phil Lesh and Bob Weir lead the latest incarnation of the Dead shown performing here in NYC, March 30th, 2009

Read annotated Grateful Dead lyrics here.

BURNING MAN

What's the deal with Burning Man? It's 120 degrees in the shade and you have to pack in water...it's like Road Warrior on the surface of Mercury. What's the deal? Why not have the annual freakout in some mountain meadow with a babbling brook? How about in the dunes on some beautiful coastline? Am I just hopelessly square? What brings out all the freaks, neo-hippies, ravers, artists and strippers to bake in this hellish landscape? Is it the dope? The art? The naked people? Is it the sense of belonging? Are people tripping their brains out? WTF?

The art looks pretty cool...and it looks like people put a lot of work into their projects, so we tip our hat. Maybe this is the last chance for full-out craziness, the last hurrah for non-conformists on our orderly, dying planet. Okay, I can see that. I shouldn't rush to judgment. Who knows? Maybe someday I'll glue some toy dinosaurs on the Mazda and drive down to Death Valley or whatever godforsaken landcape they've chosen for their revels, and have a truly transcendent experience. I could make a hat out of tinfoil. Paint my ass blue. Get some roller skates, you know, and some bottled water, and head out beyond the Thunderdome. And why not?


Burning Man? Check out the official website here.

KID CHARLEMAGNE

A strange band, without an obvious niche, named after a sex toy in a William Burroughs novel -- who would think they'd make it big? At first glance jazzy, with decidedly weird lyrics, backed by a crack team of studio musicians, that's Steely Dan. Here they tell the tale of a certain infamous outlaw chemist of the 1960s, loosely based on reality (as were many things back then), one Augustus Owsley Stanley, III, otherwise known simply as Owsley.


For a 2007 interview with Owsley, click here.

FATHER OF LSD DIES AT 102

Albert Hoffman, the Swiss scientist who created LSD, died at his home near Basel, Switzerland at the age of 102.

To some, LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide) may seem to be an anachronism, a souvenir of the psychedelic counterculture of the 1960s like lava lamps and black lights, but the drug was actually created in 1938. It's powerful psychoactive properties weren't discovered for five more years, when Hoffman accidentally ingested the drug and experienced its powerful effects while riding his bicycle home from the lab.


"[Hoffman] then took LSD hundreds of times, but regarded it as a powerful and potentially dangerous psychotropic drug that demanded respect. More important to him than the pleasures of the psychedelic experience was the drug’s value as a revelatory aid for contemplating and understanding what he saw as humanity’s oneness with nature. That perception, of union, which came to Dr. Hofmann as almost a religious epiphany while still a child, directed much of his personal and professional life."
--the New York Times, 4/30/08

From a BBC documentary on LSD:


A link to the New York Times obituary, click HERE.

NOW APPEARING IN THE VELVEETA LOUNGE

This is bad. Very bad.

Wayne Newton, looking like the perennial ex-husband, slides through a cheesy Vegas version of the most pretentious, overwrought song in human history, MacArthur Park. This sweaty lounge lizard bears his soul like a bowl of queso fundido, but alas some songs are impossible to sing. These lyrics could kill a man.

MacArthur Park is melting in the dark
All the sweet, green icing flowing down...
Someone left the cake out in the rain
I don't think that I can take it
'cause it took so long to bake it
And I'll never have that recipe again
Oh, noooooooooooooooooo!