Bureau of Lost Culture

The Man Who Burns Money

This morning I sat in my house, took a twenty pound note from my wallet, lit a match and set the note on fire.
Why? How did I feel as I watched it burn? Was it a waste, an immoral or stupid thing to do - or was it a deeply countercultural act?
Jon Harris, came to the Bureau to talk about his life - as a pornographer, as a rock 'n' roll tour manager, as a bankrupt - and, most importantly, as The High Priest of The Church of Burn.
We try to understand what money is, what it might be and what burning it can mean.
 
We hear of Jon's own history of burning money and of the rites of The Church of Burn. Of course The KLF get a mention, as does Serge Gainsbourg and Youth of Killing Joke as we explore the history of the intentional sacrificial destruction of somethign that mainstream culture seems built around and compleltey obsessed with.
The Church of Burn
Jon's substack
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I have often been asked about the music that plays during the Bureau episodes. Most of it is from two albums by The Real Tuesday Weld: 'Junskshop Melodies' (which will be released in 2025) and 'Songs For Crow' which has just been released. Detaisl HERE
#money #moneyburning #cash #currency #churchofburn #daisycampbell #johnhiggs #youth #killingjoke #klf #theklf #thekfoundation #sergegainsbourg 
 

The Return of the Mystic

What is a mystic, what is mysticism, what is the mystical?
Many of us have sense that there is something mystical, or at least mysterious, underpinning things, some countercultural force that defies explanation but survives even in our 24/7 social-media drenched, junked up internet world of money, career and self promotion.Philosophy, along much modern science and many formal religions, poo-poos the mystical - relegating it to the woo-woo, of interest only to the less sophisticated, the superstitious - or the deluded.
Yet our guest Simon Critchely is a Professor of Philosophy. He came to the Bureau to suggest that modern philosophy has got it wrong, that mystical experiences offer a practical way to deepen the sense of our lives, whether through mainstream spiritual connection, by taking part in mind-altering experiences  - or just by opening to the mystical in ordinary life.
 
We hear about some of the extraordinary mystics of the past, talk about how the arts can point to the mystic, and digress into ecstasy,  sex, drugs and rock and roll, Jesus’s foreskin, William Blake, the covid pandemic, Nick Cave and Wim Wenders,
More on Simon and the book On Mysticism, the Experience of Ecstasy
 
 
#counterculture #mysticism #nickcave #philosophy #mysticalexperience #relics #saints #heretics #consciousness #truth #madness 

The Cut Up Life of Genesis P-Orridge

Genesis P-Orridge was a performance artist, neo Pagan, Industrial music innovator, the co-founder of COUM, Throbbing Gristle and Psychic TV and an arch provocateur. He was variously described as a wrecker of civilisation, transgressive and blasphemous, accused of being a Satanist and of sexually abusing his children (a lie - in fact he was a loving father and grandfather), and claimed to be a threat to society. He could be both very alarming and very kind.
In later life Genesis became infamous with attempts to unite as a “pandrogyne”, a single entity, with partner Lady Jaye through the use of extreme surgical body modification intended to make them physically resemble one another
Filmaker David Charles Rodrigues, director of S/HE IS STILL HERE an extraordinary, moving film based around interviews made in the last months of Genesis's life, came to the Bureau to talk about the Cut Up technique, William Burroughs, Bryon Gysin, The Exploding Galaxy, industrial music, the Satanic Panic and much more in the life and death of a deeply countercultural artist.
 
#genesis p-orridge #throbbinggristle #coum #psychictv #thetempleofpsychicyouth #industrialmusic #templeofpsychicyouth #pandrogyne #coseyfannitutti #chrisandcosey #williamburroughs #bryongysin #cutup #thecutuptechnique #ica #censorship #transgressive #satanicpanic #ladyjaye #thexxplodinggalaxy
 
 
 
 

Growing Up in the Fallout of the Utopian Dream

In the turbulent late 1970s, six-year-old Susanna Crossman moved with her mother and siblings from a suburban terrace to a crumbling mansion deep in the English countryside.
 
They would share their new home with over fifty other residents  - idealists from all over the world - armed with worn paperbacks on ecology, Marx and radical feminism and drawn together by utopian dreams of remaking the world. 
They did not leave for fifteen years.
 
This was not a hippie commune or a new age retreat but a community run on radical socialist Marxist principles.  Yet, however noble the intentions of the adults, was this suitable place - a suitable home -  for a child to grow up?
Susanna wrote a book to try to answer that question and came to the Bureau to tell us all about it - and about the pleasures and perils of growing up in the fallout of the Utopian Dream.
 
More on Susanna
More on her book  Home Is Where We Start
More on British Intentional Communities
 
#communes #counterculture #punk #radical  #utopia #alternativecommunities #intentionalcommunities #esoteric #hippie #marxist 
 

The Man Who Wrote the Joy of Sex

The Joy of Sex was published in 1972 and for years, was rarely out of the bestseller lists, generating sequels, revised editions and a lot of imitators - so how could it be countercultural?
For two reasons: firstly that Dr Alex Comfort who wrote it was a deeply countercultural figure, and second, because its publication represents the moment when the sexual revolution of the countercultural years of the late '50s and ‘60s, threw off its remaining clothes and dived naked into the bourgeous middle class mainstream.
 
And it changed a lot of peoples’ live - well their sex lives at any rate.
 
Social justice journalist activist and anarchist Eric Laursen, author of Polymath: The Life and Professions of Dr. Alex Comfort, came to The Bureau to tell of the poet, novelist, doctor, biologist, gerontologist, anarchist, scientific humanist, public intellectual, pacifist and activist who also happened to write the world’s most famous guide to lovemaking..
 
For More on Eric
 
For More on Polymath: The Life and Professions of Dr. Alex Comfort 
#sex #sexguide #thejoyofsex #alexcomfort #thesexualrevolution #counterculture #sexmanual #sandstone

High Society - Mind-Altering Drugs in History and Culture

*Every society is a high society.  Getting high has been a pursuit of civilisations throughout time.
 
*Every day, people drink coffee in European cafes, chew betel nut in Indonesian markets, nibble coca leaf on Andean mountainsides and smoke tobacco in every nation on earth.
 
*Mind-altering drugs have been part of virtually every human culture that has ever existed - from prehistory to the present day. They have shaped cultures, kick-started global trade, transformed our understanding of the mind, built empires and threatened the fabric of society.
 
*Cultural historian and writer on the psychoactive Mike Jay returned to the Bureau to tell us why
 
For more on Mike and his book High Society
 
#drugs #drugwar #opiumwars #psychoactive #opium #heroin #mescaline #lsd #cocaine #khat #betel #psychedelics #highsociety #gettinghigh #addiction #cartels 

The Underworld

“Ima­gin­a­tion thrives in dark­ness” 
We talk about The Undergound often at the Bureau - not London’s subterranean rail sytem, but the countercultural alternative society of the 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s.
But that is just one of the undergrounds - the underworlds - that are the subject of this episodeDizzying ossuaries, freakish creatures of the deep sea, astounding colors of agates, lava and crystals,  mind bending organic structures of mycorrhizal fungi, caverns, crevices, burrows,  bunkers, burial chambers, ghistly shipwrecks, religous hellscapes and surrealist dreamscapes, natural and constructed subterranean realms and the imagined and unconscious worlds of dreams and the human psyche.
Image Alchemist Stephen Ellcock came to take us on a deep dive journey down under with his truly astonishing, visually stunning guide book Underworlds, a volume in five sections covering both the real and the imaginary, moving between continents and time periods and disciplines such as philosophy, biology, art history and literature.
 
We talk of how the actual physical world beneath us has fed our fears, visions and imagination – and conversely, provoked us to imagine a mythic, esoteric, mysterious underground - the afterworld of the dead, of the fairies and of the psychogical unconscious.
 
For more on Stephen and his amazing work
 

Dope Girls - The Birth of the British Drug Underground

*In 1918, Billie Carleton, a West End actress, came off stage, went partying with friends, returned to her flat and was found dead the next morning - apparently of a cocaine overdose. A few years later, Frieda Kimpton, a dancer in Soho bars, committed suicide - with cocaine.
 
These events blew up into a huge media dope drama - with a cast of characters includes villians - Brilliant Chang, a Chinese restaurant proprietor and Edgar Manning, a black jazz drummer  -  and victims, Billie, Frieda and the other 'Dope Girls'. 
 
*Around them, in the Soho streets off Shaftesbury Avenue, there swirled a raffish group of seedy and entitled hedonists. Britain was horrified and fascinated, and so the drug underground and the moral panic about it, was born amid a gush of exotic tabloid detail.
 
*MAREK KOHN whose newly revised cult classic Dope Girls has inspired an upcoming BBC TV series, came to the Bureau to tell us how the  panic about drugs that kicked off on the 1920s (bringing in drug laws that are still with us today), was more about the fear of newly emancipated women in society and an imagined menace of foreigners bound on enslaving them, than about any damage done by the drugs themselves.
 
*More about Dope Girls HERE
*More about Marek HERE
*More about the upcoming BBC series Dope Girl
 
#drugs #psychedelics #cocaine #opium #morphine #druglaws #counterculture #drugculture  #drugunderground #soho #overdose #dopegirls #dope #drugunderground 

Rubin and The Yippies

In 1964 he was a working class hippie student crossing Haight Street, a road in San Francscso, when hit by a vision  - and life as he knew it was over
In 1994, he was a multi-millionaire new-age entrepeneur crossing Wilshire Boulevard, a road in Los Angeles, when hit by a car - and life as he knew it was over.In the years in between, along with the co-founder of The Yippies Abbie Hoffman, counter-culture icon, anti-war activist, new age/self-help proponent, social-networking pioneer and all round troublemaker JERRY RUBIN helped articulate the voice of young America in the '60s and early '70s.
 
He was arrested countless times, carried out many extrardinary protests that used performance art, pranks and provocation including an attempt to levitate The Pentagon and regularly hung out with John Lennon and Yoko Ono in New York.
Unlike Hoffman, who lived off grid for several years following a drug bust, died by suicide in 1989 and was canonized as a countercultural saint, Rubin was accused by many of “selling out" - the worst thing a 1960s radical could do - and as a consequence got written out of the hippie history books.
 
Well that is until our guest for this episode wrote the biography, 'Did It! From Yippie To Yuppie: Jerry Rubin, An American Revolutionary'
 
PAT THOMAS, archivist, uber re-issue producer, countercultral author and music journalist returned for the third timr to the Bureau.
 
Previously he was here to talk about The Black Panthers and Allen Ginsberg,and this time, he traced  Jerry Rubin's journey from high school journalist to stoned political freak and multi-millionaire entrepeneur.
 
Along the way, we hear about The Yippies(the Youth International Party), The Chicago 8, John Lennon and Yoko Ono in the early 70s, EST training - and selling out
 
And we debate the question:
'Once a revolutionary always a revolutionary?'
 
Pat's book:
 'Did It! From Yippie To Yuppie: Jerry Rubin, An American Revolutionary'
 
 
Check out this Rubin related playlist
 
#jerryrubin #abbiehoffman #theblackpanthers #blackpower #yippies #theyippies #thebeats #allenginsberg #timothyleary #activism #socialism #revolution #levitatethepentagon #eldridgecleaver #bobdylan #nixon #johnandyoko #vietnam #anti-war #protest #johnlennon #haightashbury #thechicago8 
 

The Strange and Beautiful World of Arthur Russell

When musician ARTHUR RUSSELL died in 1992, at age 40, of complications related to HIV-AIDS, he was an obscure figure — though a legend in the 70s and 80s underground music scenes at downtown New York clubs such as The Loft and Paradise Garage. 
RICHARD KING, author of 'Travels Over Feeling'(Faber) a poignant and evocative visual chronology of Arthur's life and times, came to the the Bureau to tell us about him and why he matters.
Despite his prodigious output, his inability to finish songs, and the genre-busting uniqueness of much of his music, meant that he released only two albums under his own name in his lifetime. But in the decades since his death, a series of posthumous releases have generated a deep love and admiration in many who have been lucky to come across his music.
 
We also get into indie record shop culture, music sobbery, the underground New York club scene of  the mid seventies and ask the question: 'How do you know when, a song, a book or a piece of art is finished?'
Thanks to Dan Papps at Faber, to Steve Knutson of Audika Records and Cat Corrigan of Beggars Banquet who have posthumously released much of Arthur's unpublished work, for permission to include his music.
We also included two selections from Matt Wolf’s film 'Wild Combination: A Portrait of Arthur Russell'
Image by Joel Sokolov/Courtesy of Audika Records
 
#arthurrussell #newyorkclubs #avantagarde #philipglass #audikarecords #richardking #faber #hiv #music
 

Forward the Revolution - with Spiral Tribe

They helped inspire a whole generation of young ravers and lit the fuse for what was to blow up with Technival and Burning Man - as well as more mainstream festivals across Europe and the US - but their (counter)cultural contribution remains largely unacknowledged in their home country.
 
Marc Angelo Harrison, one of the orginal founders of the people’s sound system, techno, free party, DJ collective Spiral Tribe came to the Bureau to tell some of their story - and about his own journey up and down the spiral. His book A Darker Electricty published by uber-cool electronic music publisher Velocity Press is a rollocking, rumbuctious, beautifully written testament to a deeply countercultural spirit and time. 
 
We dive deep into the free party scene of the early 90s and talk squatting, sound systems, Ladbroke Grove, doing things for free, police brutality, the 'new age’ travellers, the tragedy of Castle Morton, ongoing inspiration, community - and the power of bass..
 
A Darker Electricity- Mark's book
A Darker Electricity- The Audio book
Free Party: A Folk History - Aaron Trinder’s wonderful documentary of the last 80s and early 90s free festival scene
 
#festivals #counterculture #freefestivals #spiraltribe #squatparty #travellers #newagetravellers #battleofthebeanfield #hippie #castlemorton #techno #drugs #lsd #soundsystem #raveculture #raves #breakbeat #stonehenge 

Dreaming of Ancient Gods

*Whatever happened to the Greek Gods? if you are a teenager living half way up a 1970s tower block listening to Drill, should you even care?
*On this epside we travel in time and space to Ancient Greece, the classical psycho-geographic birthplace of Western Culture (and therefore of counterculture), specfically to the mythic landscape of Epidavros and the sacred temple of Asclepius.
*Our guide and guest is Sarah Janes, one of Britain's foremost lucid dreamers, explorer and teacher of ancient mysteries. 
*We hear how the Temple of Asclepius's treatment of the sick involved diet, excercise, theater - and comedy - in addition to surgery and medicine.
*We revisit the subject of dreams, nightmares and countercultural consciousness  - and hear why the gods are still with us, whether we ignore them or not.
•And the Scottish band The Proclaimers make a surprise apearance.... 
For more on Sarah and her work
#dreaming #psychedelics #theunconscious #consciousness #truth #madness #counterculture #sleep #luciddreaming #dreams #neuroscience #consciousness #nightmares #epidavros #ancientgreece #greekgods #asclepius #jung #ecstasy #thegods
 

The Queer Life of Pop - with Jon Savage

How Queer Culture Shaped Pop Culture
"The 1972 version of David Bowie didn’t spring from nowhere.  Although he refused to affiliate himself explicitly with gay liberation, he had found both artistic and social inspiration in the gay world, in particular the renewed sense of freedom and possibility that rippled through the British gay subculture in the early 1970s."
We finally lured the award-winning, bestselling author, pop-culture, punk penman Jon Savage to the Bureau to talk about his life and epic new book The Secret Public: How LGBTQ Resistance Shaped Popular Culture (1955–1979)
It's an electrifying, massively entertaining - and at times, tragic - look at key moments in music history between 1955 and 1979, which helped move gay culture from the margins to the mainstream and changed the face of pop forever – from the ambiguous sexuality of stars such as Little Richard in the 1950s through to David Bowie, glam rock and Sylvester’s ‘You Make Me Feel(Mighty Real)'.
We talked about all that, about Punk, Joy Division, Tony Wilson, Johnny Marr, Factory Records and about how Jon grew up in the London of the late '50s and '60s, how he became a writer during one of the most exciting times for music journalism in the '70s and '80s - and about his own Secret Public Life..
More on the book here
More on the compilation album here
More on Jon here
#homosexuality #sex #london #queer #gayliberation #musichistory #sexuality #gay #tomrobinson #gladtobegay #queerculture #counterculture #punk #comingout #homesexuality #joydivision #theclash #sex #johnnymarr #factoryrecords #johnnymarr #faberandfaber #littlerichard #glf #gayliberationfront #bisexuality #pride #london #queer #gayliberation #lgbtq #sexuality #gay #thesecretpublic #musicpress #gaydisco #jonsavage #thesmiths #bowie

Angels on Haight Ashbury

'Health care is a right, not a privilege'
 
*Whilst many of his fellow physicians became business entrepeneurs rather than healers, Dr. Dave opened the Haight Ashbury Free Clinic in 1967, ministering to the thousands of young people and hippies flocking to San Francisco during the Summer of Love. 
 
*Over the years, the patients using the clinic shifted from idealistic hippies with STDs and bad trip experiences to those with serious drug addictions, Vietnam veterans with heroin habits and early AIDS patients - the dispossessed and the marginalised cast adrift by the mainstream culture and excluded by the health industry.
 
*We hear about Charles Manson, the CIA, mind control, the history of Haight Ashbury, drugs and the darkening of the hippie dream. And we hear about the events and vision that made Dave turn his back on academic fame and fortune to pursue the countercultural life.
 
*His small office at 558 Clayton St. helped launch the free clinic movement, which has expanded to over 1,200 clinics around the US all built upon his principle of health care as a right, not a privilege.
 
#counterculture #drug  #lsd #acid #haightashbury #thegratefuldead #psychedelic #sanfrancisco #dr.dave #charlesmanson #CIA #MKUltra #medicine 

Post-Punk Druidry - with Youth

*"Punk taught us the future had only just begun” he says
*For him that future was to include the bands Killing Joke, The Orb, Brilliant and The KLF; starting various record labels; hit records; producing and remixing a massive range of artists including Paul McCartney, The Verve, Tom Jones, Maria McKee, Kate Bush, Pink Floyd, Guns N' Roses, Primal Scream, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Art of Noise, Crowded House, Erasure, U2, INXS, and the Suns of Arqa- and a Grammy for his recent work with Toots and the Maytalls
 
*But running beneath it all is a deeply countercultural spirit.
 
*Uber-Music producer and druid Youth (Martin Glover)returned to the Bureau to talk about his life and times. We get deep into punk, post-punk, London as 'The City of Revelation', psychgeography, The Sacred Thames, squatting, the South London Arts Lab, druidry, turning Stonehenge off, having an epiphany, burning money, sampling other people's records, the second summer of love, the creative process, drugs - and, of course, counterculture.
 
Check out this playlist of just a selection of Youth's work and music.
 
https://music.apple.com/gb/playlist/youth-martin-glover-productor/pl.u-EzbdIa0z2vl
 
 
#psychogeography #psychedelics #theunconscious #consciousness #thepyramids #yout #counterculture #drug  #lsd #acid #martinglover #theorb #psychedelic #klf #druidry #killingjoke #occult

The Women at the Heart of Britain's Biggest Acid Bust

*Julie Taylor was a police officer who gave her name to 
'OPERATION JULIE', the biggest drug bust in UK history and one which resulted in the conviction of over a hundred individuals involved in the trafficking of LSD, including some of the most prolific chemists of the era.
 
*Christine Bott was a practising doctor living a classic 1970s rural countercultural life in mid Wales, growing organic vegetable, rearing goats and ministering to the local community. She also happened to be part of the biggest LSD manufacturing gang in UK history, an activity that led to her arrest under the Operation Julie bust and imprisonment amongst 'the 36 most dangerous women in Britain' - including the child murderer Myra Hindley.
 
*Whilst much has been made of Operation Julie in articles, books and even a musical in recent years, Christine's story, like many of those of women in the counterculture, has been largely sidelined - until now.  
 
*Before she died, her friend KATE HAYES promised her that she would tell it - and she has kept that promise by publishing two books: 'The Untold Story of Christine Bott' and 'After Julie: The Kemp Tapes', the latter a record of the only interviews with Christine's partner Richard Kemp, the chemist who invented 'The Microdot' (generally recorded as the best LSD in Christendom.
 
*Both were driven by a desire to change the world for the better, to save the planet and, however naive their actions may have been, they held to that vision and paid the price for it.
 
*Kate came to the Bureau to tell us how it all came about and how Christine survived - and even thrived - despite the darkness of prison.
 
Its truly gripping stuff.
 
For more on Kate and the books
 
#tripping #psychedelics #theunconscious #consciousness #operationjulie #christinebott #counterculture #drug  #lsd #acid #richardkemp #myrahindley #psychedelic #microdot #tripping #druglaw #timleary 

The Sounds of Black Power

*A time when musicians were viewed as revolutionaries and revolutionaries might be considered pop culture icons
 
*Crate digger / rock critc / reissue producer and archivist extraordinaire Pat Thomas came to the Bureau to tell how black power intersected with counterculture and influenced folk, rock, soul and jazz in the years between 1965 and 1975.
 
*We hear astonishing stories from his book 'Listen, Whitey: The Sights and Sounds of Black Power’ and some amazing sounds from the accompanying album issued by Light in the Attic including tracks by John and Yoko, Dylan, The Watts Prophets and Elaine Brown.
 
*And we learn how the Black Power Movement, and the Black Panthers in particular, moved from militant political action to community activism whilst interacting with the wider counterculture - and, though bad things were done, how many of their adherants used a pencil, a book of poetry, a typewriter or a musical instrument to bring about change beyond violent revolution.
 
#counterculture #rockagainstracism #backpanthers #blackpower #angeladavis #racism #thebeats #oakland #tomothyleary #activism #socialism #revolution #rockrevolution #eldridgecleaver #bobdylan #motown #johnandyoko #thewattsprophets 

The Rise and Fall of the '80s Free Festival

*Who do the green roads and wide open spaces of Albion belong to?
 
*This episode is a story is about a collision of two cultures - the counterculture of the twin tribes of urban free party ravers and new age travellers - and the mainstream culture of landowners, the legal authorities, English Heritage and right-wing politicians.
 
*In the first of a series on '80s and '90s counterculture, Aaron Trinder, director of the documentary 'Free Party: A Folk History' came to the Bureau to tell how that collision played out in the years between 1985 and 1992 when extra-ordinary free festivals and parties built  on youthful passion, music, community, dancing, the desire to connect with the ancient landcape  - and drugs - were violently suppressed.
 
*We hear of the brutal police tactics at 'The Battle of the Beanfield' and at Britiain's largest ever free rave at Castle Morton; how legislation has curtailed the culture of the travellers, the use of common land and ancient rights of access, and we note that whilst free festivals have been crushed, commercial festivals have become an essential part of the the mainstream culture, the entertainment industry and the economy.
 
*Upcoming: Mark Angelo Harrison on Spiral Tribe
 
More on Aaron's film 'Free Party a Folk History' 
 
#festivals #counterculture #freefestivals #spiraltribe #squatparty #travellers #newagetravellers #battleofthebeanfield #hippie #castlemorton #techno #drugs #lsd #soundsystem #raveculture #raves #StonehengeFreeFestival #stonehenge
 

Child of the Commune

What was it like to live in a commune? What was it like to grow up in a commune?
NANCY THOMPSON came to the Bureau to tell us. She was born in The Shrubb Family Commune - one that was set up in a big old farmhouse in rural Norfolk in 1970 - and, remarkably, one that is still going today.
In the early to mid '60s many Western cities were magnets drawing the young and hip in from the regions, shaking off the austerity of the '50s, joining their urban peers in experimenting with new and radical ways of loving and living. Communes and squats sprung up all over places like London.
But as the '60s drew to a close, there was a reverse movement and many left the cities heading back out into the shires to try to build a new kind of sociey in the quieter, slower life of village and market town. Some settled in North Suffolk and South Norfolk, an open countryside of low hills and wide plains with few towns and many villages where a commune movement had been established from 1965.
Nancy's is a complex, tumultous tale  - at times a rather bewildering tapestry of overlapping relationships and familes, the British class system, rural life, travellers, gypsies and the gentry, encounter groups, blackmail, rogue psychiatrists, lsd - and horses..
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*For more on Nancy and her childhood in the commune, check out her Substack HERE
*For more on the British commune and intentional community culture of the 60s and 70s see below
The countercultural movement of the 1960s and 1970s in Britain gave rise to a surge of communal living experiments known as hippy communes or intentional communities. These collectives emerged as an alternative to mainstream society, rejecting consumerism, conventionality, and materialism in favor of a more liberated, eco-friendly, and cooperative way of life.
The origins of this communal living trend can be traced back to the mid 60s, when a confluence of social, political, and cultural factors created an environment ripe for such experiments. The rise of the hippie counterculture, and the burgeoning environmental and back-to-the-land movements all contributed to the growth of communal living arrangements.
One of the earliest and most influential British hippy communes was Findhorn in Scotland, established in 1962 by Peter and Eileen Caddy and Dorothy Maclean. Originally a small caravan park, Findhorn evolved into a thriving spiritual community centered around principles of sustainability, meditation, and harmony with nature. Its success inspired many other like-minded groups to establish their own communes across Britain.
As the movement gained momentum in the late 1960s, a wave of new communes emerged, each with its own unique philosophy and approach to communal living. Some, like The Diggers in Cornwall and the Laurieston Hall community in Scotland, focused on self-sufficiency through organic farming and sustainable living practices. Others, like the Freestone community in Essex and the Newbold Trust in Worcestershire, emphasized artistic expression, alternative spirituality, and personal growth.
Many of these communes adopted a back-to-the-land ethos, seeking to reconnect with nature and escape the constraints of urban living. They often established themselves in rural areas, repurposing abandoned farmhouses, old mills, or purchasing inexpensive land to build their communities from scratch. This allowed them to embrace a more self-reliant and environmentally conscious lifestyle, growing their own food, generating their own energy, and living off the land as much as possible.
While each commune had its own unique character and rules, they shared several common principles. Communal living, non-hierarchical decision-making processes, shared resources and responsibilities, and a commitment to peace and environmentalism were hallmarks of these communities. Many also embraced alternative lifestyles, such as polyamory, nudism, or open relationships, challenging traditional societal norms.
As the 1970s progressed, the hippy commune movement faced various challenges, including internal conflicts, financial struggles, and external criticism from more conservative segments of society. Some communes disbanded or evolved into more structured communities, while others managed to endure and adapt to changing times.
One notable example of a long-lasting commune is Braziers Park in Oxfordshire, founded in 1950 and still active today. While not initially a traditional hippy commune, it embraced many of the same principles in the 1960s and 1970s, becoming a hub for alternative living, education, and environmental activism.
Another enduring community is the Findhorn Foundation, which has grown from its humble beginnings into a thriving eco-village and spiritual center, attracting visitors and residents from around the world.
Beyond the more well-known communes, countless smaller collectives and intentional communities also emerged during this period, often existing independently or flying under the radar. These included urban squatting communities, housing co-operatives, and alternative living arrangements that embraced the communal ethos without necessarily adopting the full-fledged "hippy" lifestyle.
These communities served as laboratories for experimentation, pushing the boundaries of what was considered acceptable or possible, and leaving an enduring legacy that continues to influence various aspects of modern life.
 
Many of the principles and practices pioneered by these communities, such as sustainable living, cooperative decision-making, and alternative education, have been adopted and adapted by various organizations and movements.
The communal living ethos has remained alive, albeit on a smaller scale, with contemporary intentional communities and eco-villages continuing to explore alternative ways of living and coexisting with nature.
#communes #counterculture #findhorn #findhornfoundation #utopia #alternativecommunities #intentionalcommunities #esoteric #hippie #shrubbfamily #globaltruckingcompany #drugs #lsd #psychiatry
 

Liberation Part 2: Glad to be Gay

Being the further adventures of English musician broadcaster and LGTBQ activist TOM ROBINSON, as he gets deeply involved in the gay counterculture of London in the '70s whilst on his journey to having a huge hit with the song 2-4-6-8 MotorwayWe hear about the genesis of another hit - (Sing if You're)Glad to Be Gay - a remarkable, unprecedented protest song that climbed into public consciousness in the late 70s (despite the best efforts of some in the establshment), and about Tom's later hit War Baby.
We talk about the desperate times in between, about his activism - not only for the queer commmuity but as part of the Rock Against Racism movement - and how he had to face one his greatest challenges in coming out for a second time, risking the disapproval of the very community he had fought for for many years…
 
And we learn about Stonewall, the UK’s ’Sus Law' and get some terriffic tips for songwriters aspiring stars..
 
For More on Tom
For More on Glad to Be Gay
#homosexuality #sex #suslaw #section28 #stonewall #glf #gayliberationfront #bisexuality #pride #pridemarch  #london #queer #gayliberation #quaker #sexuality #gay #tomrobinson #gladtobegay #suicide #counterculture #cafesociety #comingout #homesexuality #morality 

Liberation Part 1: Coming out in the Counterculture

TOM ROBINSON is an English songwriter who rose to fame in the 70s as an LGBT and anti-racist campaigner.  He has released over 20 albums and is an award-winning much-loved broadcaster who has made many programs on all six BBC radio channels.
 
In this, the first of two programs, we trace his story from troubled youth through a suicide attempt and recovery in an alternative community to coming out in the gay counterculture of '70s London.
 
We hear about his early activism and music, signing to Konk records with Ray Davies of The Kinks and his journey toward a huge hit with the song 2-4-6-8 Motorway.
 
Next time: the writing of the extraordinary, perennial protest song Glad To Be Gay, more activism, more hits with War Baby and Listen to the Radio and taking further risks on the way to becoming who you really are.
 
Tom's first band Cafe Society
For More on Tom
#homosexuality #sex #london #queer #gayliberation #quaker #sexuality #gay #tomrobinson #gladtobegay #suicide #counterculture #cafesociety #comingout #homesexuality #morality 

The Beat Goes On: The Sounds of Allen Ginsberg

YOUTH, producer of a huge range of artists (including Kate Bush, Crowded House, The Orb, KLF, The Verve, Guns ’n’ Roses and Primal Scream) and Jesse Goodman of the Allen Ginsberg Estate come to the Bureau to talk of the beat poet’s impact on music and the British counterculture.
 
We hear about Youth's 'Iron Horse' project and two albums of interpretations of Ginsberg's Fall of America poems by an astounding range of artists and we get deep into counterculture, the power of poetry, creativity and the possibility of a third summer of love..
--
Youth and Jesse will be with us in  March, when we are presenting a program of happenings to celebrate Ginsberg's London Life.  
See the EVENTS page for full details.
--
In May 1965, Allen  arrived in London and gave a free reading at Better Books in Charing Cross Road. It was an event described by poet-provocateur Jeff Nuttall as "the first healing wind on a very parched collective mind” and one that provided the impetus for the International Poetry Incarnation at Royal Albert Hall, a hugely significant catalyst for the first British Summer of Love.
Music featured prominently in Ginsberg’s work - both in his self-accompanied performances and live collaborations with artists including Dylan, Paul McCartney and Patti Smith - and in the inspiration it has had on the wide range of musicians who have set it to music.
Ginsberg In London Events 
Youth’s Iron Horse Album
Youth at The Horse Hospital March 15th
The Fall of America albums  Volume 1 and Volume 2
Images courtesy of the John Hopkins Estate
 

London's Lost Street of Song

Britain’s own Tin Pan Alley, Denmark Street was once alive with the sound of hammered pianos, and sung melodies and choruses. Its songwriters knocked out tunes on the fly and rushed to the street to sell them to pay for the next round of drinks.In the '60s, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and The Kinks came here, so did Donovan and Jimmy Page, Eric Clapton and Elton John, Jimi Hendrix and Jeff Beck. A popular rendezvous was La Gioconda, an Italian cafe which most visited at some point or other – David Bowie was said to practically live there.Later when Malcolm McLaren was looking for a rehearsal space for The Sex Pistols, he was delighted to find room in Denmark Street, installing his upstarts in the heart of the traditional music industry - like Greek soldiers inside the Trojan Horse. 
 
Journalist Pete Watts returns to The Bureau to tell us tales of this lost street of dreams  - and at least of one nightmare.
 
Pete's wonderful book on Denmark Street is HERE
 
 
#hipgnosis #pink floyd #london #pop music #london #musichistory #counterculture #soho #musicpublishing #music  #1960s #jimihendrix #thesexpistols #davidbowie #the kinks #the beatles #DenmarkStreet #tinpanalley

Countercultural Libido: A History of 'Perversion'

Warning: this episode contains discussions of sexual and other adult themes.
Julie Peakman is a historian of eighteenth-century culture who specialises in the study sexuality and pornography.
She is the author of 'Sexual Perversions, 1670-1890', 'Whore Biographies 1700-1825', The Development of Pornography in 18thC England' and many other books.
She came to the Bureau to discuss her latest: 'The Pleasure's All Mine - A History of Perverse Sex' which contains many affecting stories of how benign sexual difference has, in the past, lead to what we would now perceive as unjust and brutal persecution.
'Perversion' has been defined as 'showing a deliberate and obstinate desire to behave in a way that is unreasonable or unacceptable' or 'contrary to the accepted or expected standard or practice' - rather like 'counterculture'.
It has at different times included masturbation, male and female homosexuality, cross-dressing, bestiality, sadomasochism, necrophilia, incest, exhibitionism, voyeurism, fetishism, even straight-up vanilla heterosexual sex in certain circumstances.
Julie's conviction is that the very word and concept of 'perversion' has reached its expiry date - we discuss.
#perversion #sex #london #pornography #fetish #bdsm #sexuality #gay #necrophilia #incest #masturbation #bestiality #prostitution #flagellation #homesexuality #morality 
 

The Incredible String Band Part 2: Inside Looking Out

*In this, the second of a two parter, we hear more of the crazy countercultural life and times of The Incredible String Band  - from the inside looking out  - with Rose Simpson
 
*Rose was one quarter of the band during what many regard as their creative and countercultural peak in the late 60s and early 70s.
 
•Her memoir 'Muse, Odalisque, Handmaiden' is an incredible story, relating how she rocketed (as a student without any particular interest in music or the counterculture), via an accidental meeting in a Scottish mountain cottage, to photoshoots in American Vogue and playing at Woodstock - and then came all the way back again.
 
*It's a fascinating tale, not just because the ISB were fascinating in themselves, but because it is beautifully told with a wealth of detail about a time that is usually dominated by mens' voices.
 
•She had many psychedelic adventures along the way, narrowly escaped getting involved in Scientology and then - and then left it all behind.
 
*And she knows where the sitars are buried...
 
*We dived into drugs, communal life, the ups and downs of free love, the catastrophe of the cult, making it up as you go along, the mysterious life and disappearance of Rose's bandmate Licorice, going full on and far out.
 
*Rose's memoir 'Muse, Odalisque, Handmaiden' (published by Strange Attractor) 
 
*Adrian Whittaker's compilation book Be Glad for the Song Has No Ending 
 
*Thanks to Peter Neal for the audio clips from his film Be Glad for the Song has No Ending
 
 
 
#tripping #psychedelics #london #consciousness #scotland #scottishcounterculture #counterculture #drug  #lsd #music  #joeboyd #1960s #scientology #rosesimpson #incrediblestringband #begladforthesonghasnoending #woodstock #stephenduffy #hippie
 

The Incredible String Band - Part 1: Outside Looking In

They were artists, myth makers, story tellers, tribe leaders, psychedelic troubadours; they pioneered "world music” with albums like The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter; they experimented with theater, drugs, film and lifestyle and inspired The Beatles, The Stones, Led Zeppelin, The Pet Shop's Neil Tennant, The Lilac Time and many, many others.
 
They lived the hippie dream of communes and free love, dressed like mediaeval princes and princesses, were the very essence of the Scottish counterculture, played Woodstock, became cult stars, were acid evengeleists; gathered a following, a tribe that stayed loyal to them long after they had gone..
In this, the first of a two parter, Adrian Whittaker who compiled the epic new book Be Glad for the Song Has No Ending and Peter Neal who made the film Be Glad for the Song has No Ending back in 1970, take us on a trip through the crazy countercultural life and times of The Incredible String Band. 
 
Thanks to Peter for the audio clips from his film Be Glad for the Song has No Ending 
 
#tripping #psychedelics #london #consciousness #scotland #scottishcounterculture #counterculture #drug  #lsd #music  #joeboyd #1960s #scientology #thelilactime #incrediblestringband #begladforthesonghasnoending #woodstock #stephenduffy #hippie
 

In the ’60s: The Birth of the British Underground

He was friends with Burroughs and Ginsberg, wrote their biographies along with those of The Beatles, Paul McCartney, Frank Zappa, Charles Bukowski, Jack Kereouc and penned books on The Beat Hotel, Pink Floyd, The Stones - amongst about 70 others.
 
Barry Miles (known just as Miles) came back to the Bureau to tell us all about it.
 
We hear how he set up Indica Gallery where Lennon met Yoko, started International Times - the bible of the underground - was instrumental in the UFO club and the 14 Hour Technicolour Dream and jow his wife Sue gave Paul McCartney his first hash brownie - and that was just the sixties. 
 
We will do the seventies next time..
 
 
#tripping #psychedelics #london #consciousness #beathotel #thebeats #counterculture #drug  #lsd #memory  #pinkfloyd  #1960s #barrymiles #indica #lennon #mccartney #ginsberg #burroughs #betterbooks
 

How to Expand Your Consciousness Part 3: The Dreaming

*Niels Bohr discovered the structure of the atom in a dream, Coleridge wrote Kubla Khan after a dream, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein was inspired by a dream,Hergé ’s 'Tintin in Tibet' - the first of many Tintin stories - the same.*Keith Richards claimed to have dreamed the riff to 'Satisfaction', Paul McCartney the melody to 'Yesterday’ - the most covered pop song in history. Hell, even Aphex Twin says that 70% of his album 'Selected Ambient Works Volume II' was written whilst lucid dreaming*This episode is all about The Dreaming - and our guide is one of the UK’s foremost dream researchers: SARAH JANES.
*We talk about dreaming as countercultural consciousness, lucid dreaming, dreams and psychedelics, neuroscience, dreams as creative inspiration, the imagination, sleep cycles, REM, memories in dreams, alchemy, wet dreams, the dream space as the underworld - and dreaming as preparation for the afterlife.*Sarah gives some great tips on how to become a lucid dreamer, tells us about her work - and drops a couple of mind bombs on us.
*For more on Sarah and her amazing work
 
#dreaming #psychedelics #theunconscious #consciousness #truth #madness #counterculture #sleep #luciddreaming #dreams #neuroscience #consciousness 

Remembering the Crazy Diamond

•Cult icon, enigma, recluse, crazy diamond, he was the founding member of one of the world’s most  famous and succesful rock groups, but the life of Syd Barrett is full of unanswered questions.
 
•Was he a drug casualty of the sixties? Did he walk away from the pressures of the commercial music world? Did he suffer from an undiagnosed mental illness, did his muse abandon him? Was it a combination of these - or was it something more mysterious, something we can never really understand?
 
•'Have You Got It Yet?’, an extraordinary new film about Syd, pieces together his comet-like rise to pop stardom, his creative and destructive impulses, breakdown, his exit from Pink Floyd and his subsequent life alone, all set against the social context of the psychedelic swinging sixties. It is built around interviews with Syd’s friends, lovers, family and former band mates Roger Waters, David Gilmour, and Nick Mason. It is, as much as a tribute, a film about memory, friendship, lost youth, regret and the enduring power of music.
 
•Roddy Bogawa, the award winning co-director of the film and a crazy diamond in his own right, came to the Bureau to talk about 'Have You Got It Yet?’ - and to try to answer some of the questions about Syd. 
 
•And along the way, we dig deep into London in the '60s, LA in the '70s, punk, underground films - and of course, counterculture.
 
•For more details on the film Have You Got It Yet
•For more about Roddy
*Join our cult
 
Thanks, as ever, to Jenny Spires for connecting us with Roddy.
 
 
#tripping #psychedelics #theunconscious #consciousness #truth #madness #counterculture #drug  #lsd #memorey  #pinkfloyd  #sydbarrett #haveyougotityet? #crazydiamond #darksideofthemoon #wishyouwerehere #shineonyoucrazydiamond #ufoclub #madcap 

How To Expand Your Consciousness Part 2: Tripping

*Psychedelics have made a comeback but they remain deeply mysterious.
 
*They may be now seen as potential 'breakthrough therapy' for mental illness but we still have only a vague idea how they work, and there is a limit to what studies in labs can reveal. Any one who has used them knows that to really understand them, we must broaden our experience of what they actually are.
*Neuropsychologist ANDY MITCHELL decided to investigate for himself, taking ten different drugs in ten different settings - from a London neuroimaging lab to the Colombian Amazon via Silicon Valley and his friend's basement. Along the way, in a picaresque, deeply strange and often wild odyssy, he encountered scientists and gangsters, venture capitalists and con men, psychonauts and shamans.
 
*In this episode  - Number 100 - we follow him and wonder if, whilst big pharma is closing in and whilst psychedelics are being hailed (and monetised), can they still be countercultural, transformatory, consciousness raising? 
 
*Can in fact they still be just .. fun?
 
*Andy's book TEN TRIPS
*Join our cult
#tripping #psychedelics #theunconscious #consciousness #truth #madness #counterculture #drug  #lsd #ayahuasca #neuroscience #consciousness

Songs of War and Peace - with Boris Grebenshikov

*He is perhaps the biggest name in Russian rock music, famous as the leader of the band Aquarium throughout his homeland and 'Outer Russia’ (as the huge and growing number of Russian emigres are called), but he is now listed as a “foreign agent” - basically an anti-patriot, a traitor, for criticising Russia’s war
*Aquarium were pioneers of the clandestine homegrown rock scene that was born in early '70s USSR before emerging from the underground to become the pied pipers of perestroika, selling millions of albums (but usually getting paid nothing).*After a long and illustrous career, Boris Grebenshikov now lives in London and in response to the conflict has put together an extraordinary compilation aiming to help children in Ukraine - and for the friends and fans he has had to leave behind.
 
*The album features a star-studded ensemble including Dave Stewart of The Eurythmics, Jethro Tull, Marianne Faithful, Marc Almond, The Waterboys, Jackson Brown, Crowded House and many others. *We talk of the USSR in the 60s, cultural censorship,the power of music, the KGB arresting your friends, being back on the outside yet again - and we hear selections from the 'Heal the Sky’ album.
 
Thanks to Alex Kan for making this happen.
 
*For more details and to support the project: Heal The Sky
*Let us know where you are at (a few questions about you)
*Get Our Bulletin
 
#counterculture #music #ussr #soho #aquarium #ukraine #russia #war #borisgrebenshikov #perestroika #coldwar #russinemeigre #russianrock
 

Riding The Oblivion Express - with Brian Auger

•He’s played with Jimi Hendrix, Sonny Boy Williamson, Paul McCartney, Rod Stewart, Jimmy Page, Billy Cobham, Spencer Davies, Long John Baldry, Rod Stewart, John McLaughlin, Tom Jones, Eric Burdon and many, many more.•With Julie Driscoll he had a huge hit with a masterful psychedelic rendition of Dylan's "This Wheel's on Fire” 
 
•He's been hailed as the godfather of acid jazz, sampled by hip hop stars and nominated for a Grammy Award.
 
•At 82, BRIAN AUGER is still moving, grooving, sharp as a pin - and 'beginning again' as he says.
 
•We hear his extraordinary story and of the sign posts pointing the way on his musical journey - from the London Blitz - through the Soho jazz clubs of the 60s - to Venice Beach.
 
•Thanks to Greg Boroman and Karma Augur for making this happen.
 
*For More on Brian 
 
* For more on the Auger Incorporated Archive release
 
*Let us know where you are at(a few questions about you)
*Get Our Bulletin
 
#counterculture #music #hammondorgan #soho #sohoclubs #soho #sohohistory #londonhistory #juliedriscoll #brianauger #hendrix #6oslondon #acidjazz

The Soho Bibles: The Secret Porn of Post-War London

*Under the counter-culture..
 
*They were handmade illegal obscene books, a little like early punk zines, typewritten mimeographed manuscripts with two or three pornographic stories or a novella.
 
*Many contained drawings or photographs and were sold in post-war London and provincial second hand bookshops  Thousands were produced, but only a small proportion survive today.  
 
*Titles like Orgy Twins, Lust and Agony in Double Domination Nunnery Versus Fuckery or Discipline in the Home gave a sense of the contents to eager suburban punters wanting their share of the sexual revolution.
 
*Archaelogist and curator of forgotten, neglected, stigmatised or hidden phenomena, Dr. HELEN WICKSTEAD, who has written first major study of The Soho Typescripts (or The Soho Bibles as they have become known), takes us through the door and under the counter to take a peep through the curtain at a lost world of smut, desire and money.
*And we talk about Mickey Mouse having sex, the secret room of The British Museum, the private case of The British Library, a prehistoric phallus, erotic fish, police corruption, The Obscene Publications Act, Holywelll Street -  and pornography as counterculture..
 
*For more of Helen*Let us know where you are at(short survey about You)
*Join Us
 
#counterculture #pornography  #porn #sohobibles #sohotranscripts #soho #sohohistory #londonhistory #zines #sex 
*Images courtesy of Helen Wickstead /Dave Notaro 
 

How to Expand Your Consciousness Part 1: Philosophy

Philosophy as Counterculture?
 
*For thousands of years, humans have been trying to expand this mysterious thing called consciousness, not only by drugs, dancing, art and spiritual practice but just by thinking, talking and arguing.
 
*Is philosophy for anyone - or just for the elite in their ivory towers and universities? Can it be of the street, can it be counterculture?
 
*We try and find out - in the company of philosopher Robert Rowland Smith, author of several books including The Reality Test and the bestseller Breakfast with Socrates and pracitioner of a kind of encounter group called Constellations.
 
*Robert leads us through what philosophy means now and we get deep into how the living and the dead can communicate, the expansion of unconsiousness, R D Laing on madness,and whether Jacques Derrida was a psychedelic.
 
*And we hear some deep words of wisdom from David Lynch
 
*For more on Robert and his work
*Join our cult
 
#counterculture #derrida #davidlynch #philosophy #constellations #scorates #psychedelics #theunconscious #consciousness #truth #madness
 

The Music of the Cults

*Their number encompasses the darkest bogeymen of countercultural nightmares- including Charles Manson, Jim Jones, David Koresh and the Reverend Moon -as well as saintly figures devoted to the good of others; outright charlatans, narcissistic psychopaths, deluded New Age prophets as well as genuine gurus.*Since the 1950s, certain charismatic individuals have taken it upon themselves to collect others around them in ‘cults’, rejecting mainstream religion and society in favour of a claim to secret knowledge of the path of liberation. The consequences have often been disastrous, involving the devotees actually getting liberated from their money, freedom - and sometimes, their lives.
 
*Artist and archivist MICAH MOSES has spent twenty years not only studying cults, new religious movements and individuals of a spiritually inspired nature, but broadcasting their soundtracks to a wider world.
 
*Micah came to the Bureau ahead of his ‘GODBODY' exhibition around the theme of the New Age showing in London at The Horse Hospital in September 2023.
 
*This episode of the Bureau contains a selection of strange, esoteric and sometimes sinister sounds from the vast archive he has gathered over the years. 
 
*For more on Micah’s WFMU Music of Mind Control radio show
*For the GODBODY exhibition
*Join our cult
#counterculture #cults #cultleaders #newage #thenewage #secretsocieties #jimjones #jonestown #marshallapplewhite #heavensgate #thechildrenofgod #manson #charlesmanson #davidberg  #scientology #guru #godbody #thehorsehospital

Rock, Radicals and Racism

*Roger Huddle is a born and bred Londoner, a working class music-mad mod who grew up in the 50s, got radicalised in the 60s and became a co-founder of one the most successful activist groups of the 70s - Rock Against Racism (RAR).
 
*RAR was a political and cultural movement which emerged in 1976 in reaction to a rise in racist attacks on the streets of the United Kingdom and increasing support for the far-right National Front at the ballot box.
 
•Between 1976 and 1982 RAR activists organised national carnivals and tours, as well as local gigs and clubs throughout the country bringing together black and white fans in their common love of music.
 
*The musicians came from all pop music genres including some of the UK's biggest post-punk and Reggae artists including The Clash, Misty in Roots, Elvis Costello and X-Ray Spex.
 
*Roger came into the Bureau to tell us all about it  and to school us in the London club scene of the 60s, radical socialism, agit prop, agit-pop, cultural revolution - and William Morris.
 
•For  more on Roger: 
•For more on RAR and Syd Shelton check out the film White Riot 
•Image courtesy: John Sturrock
 
#counterculture #rockagainstracism #rogerhuddle #sydshelton #thenationalfront #racism #thebeats #london #walthamstow #williammorris #socialism #revolution #rockrevolution #theclash #agitprop #trotsky

So You Say You Want a (Sexual) Revolution?

The pill, Profumo, pornography.
Love, liberation and libido.
Larkin, Lady Chatterley, Lolita, *No era in recent history has been both more celebrated and more vilified than the 1960s. 
*For some it was a time when music, fashion and drugs enabled young people to express their individuality and freedom and their hopes and dreams of a better world. For others, it marked the advent of the permissive society, the undermining of authority, family values and common decency. 
*And at the heart of this continuing controversy was ..sex. *PETER DOGGET, journalist, cultural critic and writer, whose book 'Growing Up: Sex in the 60s' takes an unflinching look at the dark underbelly of the sexual revolution, came into the Bureau to explain that while the orgiastic hedonism, ever-changing partners and polymorphous perversity of countercultural myth was enjoyed by a tiny minority, the vast majority of the British population could only gawp from the sidelines, still living in a world  with a moral code that stretched back to the Victorian Age.
 
We talk about the battle between two opposing forces: the urge to free the body from guilt, and the desire to control, cannibalise and exploit that liberation for profit or pleasure - plus VD, groupies, The Beatles miniskirts, Germaine Greer and Jane Birkin (RIP).
 
*For more on Peter and his work
 
*Get our Counterculture newsletter
 
*The Bureau of Lost Culture Home
 
#sex #counterculture #sexualrevolution #sexualliberation #libido #permissivesociety #thepill #miniskirt #hippie #commune #blowup #janebirkin #sergegainsbourg #nabokov #freelove #sohoradio
 
 

Knocking On Heaven’s Door

*As the 60s turned into the 70s, and as some of the technicolour idealistic visions of the first summer of love started to fade, many of the denizens of those decades began to seek Utopia outside the cities of America and Europe.*Communes and communities sprang up in rural areas as spiritual seekers, hopeful hippies, fugitives, folkies, freaks and wild wanderers on the seas of fate tried to create new societies, living by their own values - often away from the watchful eye of the authorities.
 
*After experiencing a personal catastrophe, musician and writer DAVID BRAMWELL set off in search of salvation by exploring some of the alternative and intentional communities where folk are still trying to build utopia. He came across all sort of strange things and people along the way in an odyssey that took in a 1950s caravan on the northern shores of Scotland, a dominatrix community in the Czech republic and a time machine hidden in a vast underground temple in Italy.
 
*And he came in to the Bureau of Lost Culture to tell us all about it…
 
*Check out David's book 'The No. 9 Bus to Utopia', other writings, radio and countercultural projects.
 
*Get our Counterculture newsletter
 
*The Bureau of Lost Culture Home
 
#damanhur #counterculture #findhorn #findhornfoundation #utopia #alternativecommunities #intentionalcommunities #esoteric #hippie #commune #esalen #christiania #pan #devas #cosmic #sohoradio

A Short History of The Pagan

*'This is the Dawning of the Age of Aquarius' claimed the first song in the hippie musical Hair in 1967. 
And perhaps it was.
 
*As thousands gathered at Stonehenge to welcome the summer solstice sunrise and hundred of thousands gathered at the Glastonbury festival, Ethan Doyle White came to the Bureau of Lost Culture to talk about Paganism.  
 
*Glastonbury itself is regarded by many as a ‘pagan place’ and many of those 8000 people who gathered at Stonehenge might describe themselves as 'pagans' - part of a counterculture that has roots going back to the pre-Christian era.
 
*But what does Pagan mean? Where did the word come? We take a trip through pagan history and ask what do modern pagans believe, think and do? We hear about Wicca, Heathens and Druids and delve into earth mysteries, magic, the New Age and psychogeography..
 
*Happy Solstice Brother and Sisters
 
For more on Ethan and his beautiful visual history of the Pagan
Get our Counterculture newsletter
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#pagan #counterculture #wicca #heathen #dionfortune #psychedelicsound #witch #esoteric #thegoldendawn #aleistercrowley  #magic #pre-christian

The ’4000 Year Old Rock ’n’ Roll Band’

*In a remote village in the Ahl Srif tribal area of Northern Morocco, dwell a collective of Sufi musicians. They play a form of trance music which is used for healing.  Timothy Leary called them The 4,000-year-old Rock’N’Roll band - rather superficial hyperbole perhaps - though it is true that what The Master Musicians of Joujouka play is thousands of years old - and shares something in common with the wildest and most inspired of  rock music.
 
Record producer, film-maker and Beat historian Frank Rynne, who co-organises their annual festival,  came to the Bureau to tell the strange and wonderful story of the musicians of Joujouka, their culture and their interaction with the counterculture of the 50s and 60s
 
We hear about Tangier at the time - and the life there of Beat artists Bryon Gysin and William Burroughs with digressions into the dark side of bohemia - along with the story of doomed Rolling Stone Brian Jones who came to record the Master Musicians shortly before his death.
 
For more on the Master Musicians of Jojouka
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#joujouka #counterculture #themastermusiciansofjoujouka #sufi #brianjones #psychedelicsound #psychedelicrock #williamburroughs #briongyson #rollingstones  #beatgeneration #thebeats

The Life and Psychedelic Times of the 13th Floor Elevators

*They were psychedelic outlaws holing up in hill country hideouts to escape police harassment, dealing drugs to survive and blasting out a mix of LSD evangelism, mystical philosophy and grooved up rock’n’roll.
 
*In their short existence, The 13th Floor Elevators succeeded in blowing the lid off the musical underground, logging early salvos in the countercultural struggle against state authorities, and turning their deeply hallucinatory take on jug-band garage rock into a new American institution called psychedelic music. 
 
*Paul Drummond author of 'Eye Mind - the Saga of Roky Erickson and the 13th Floor Elevators’ deemed the band significant enough to spend eight years of his life researching and writing about them - along with producing the definitve compilations of their work.
 
*We dig into their craziness - and into Janis Joplin, LSD, peyote, Antonin Artaud, mayhem, madness, music and more.
 
For More on Paul and his work
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#13thfloorelevators #counterculture #the13thfloorelevators #lsd #acid #psychedelicsound #psychedelicrock #occult #psychedelic #peyote  #rokyerickson #esoteric 

The Kindred of the Kibbo Kift

*If they were a cult, they were a very British cult.
 
*In the 1920s if you had seen strangely attired groups of people walking in formation along southern England's pagan pathways and round its prehistoric stone circles, you may have encountered The Kindred of the Kibbo Kift.
 
*They shared their initials - and a predeliction for arcane symbols, pointy hoods and cloaks - with the Ku Klux Klan but that's where the similarities end.
*They thought they were spiritual samurai, rebuilding Britain after the Great War with magical rituals, outdoor living and utopian vision. They were clean-living proto-new age weekend hippies directed by a messianic autocratic visionary and produced extraordinary art and craft of graphics, symbols, costumes.
 
*They remain one of our most fascinating and forgotten countercultural groups.
 
*They also inspired a '70s rock opera..
 
*Annebella Pollen, author of a wonderful book on the Kindred, came to the Bureau to tell us all about them and about some of the other strange esoteric groups that flourished in between the world wars.
 
The episode contains music from Chris Judge Smith and Maxwell Hutchinson's rock opera Kibbo Kift
 
*For Bella’s book:  The Kindred of The Kibbo Kift
 
*Join us at the Bureau of Lost Culture
https://lp.constantcontactpages.com/su/N0ZYoFu/BOLC
 
*Listen to all our shows
www.bureauoflostculture.com
 
 
Photo: Angus Macbean
#london #counterculture #naturism #greenshirts #havelockellis #hgwells #aleistercrowley #occult #kibbokift #thekindredofthekibbokift #cults #cult #occult #esoteric #camping

The Secret History of Psychonauts

"You do it to yourself" sang RadioheadWell that was certainly true of some of the subjects of this episode.
 
Historian of the mind MIKE JAY returns to the Bureau to tell of the intrepid scientists, artists, writers and thinkers who were experimenting with psychoactive substances and recording their experiences in the Victorian age and onwards.  
 
But the notion that researchers might partake of drugs if they were going to have something valuable to say about them became unacceptable.
 
And we hear about the first British psychedelic experiences of Aleister Crowley, W B Yeats, Havelock Ellis and Maude Gone along with some of the lesser known London Psychonauts huffing ether, chloroform and nitrous oxide in the pursuit of knowledge during the 19th century counterculture.
 
For Mike's book: Psychonauts: drugs and the making of the modern mind 
 
Join us at the Bureau of Lost Culture
https://lp.constantcontactpages.com/su/N0ZYoFu/BOLC
 
Listen to all our shows
www.bureauoflostculture.com
 
#london #drugs #psychoactive #psychedelic #humphreydavy #wbyeats #aleistercrowley #occult #jameslee #morphine #heroin #opium #hashish #nitrousoxide #science

The Vision Collectors

*Do you believe it's possible to know the future?
 
*Deep in the heart of the countercultural 60s, when the boundaries of consciousness were being explored and pushed forward, when human achievements were coming thick and fast, a psychiatrist and a rather un-counterculural science journalist, prompted by a terrible disaster, carried out a peculiar experiment with time..
 
*Writer SAM KNIGHT comes to the Bureau to tell their strange story and that of The Premonition Bureau - an attempt to harness the intuitions of the British public in order to predict - and possibly avoid - disasters.
 
*Visions of the future, foresight, foretelling, divination and  prophecies have populated myth, literature and history - the notion that time is not linear is even gaining currency in science, but is it really possible to anticipate what has not yet happened?
 
*We talk about all this and about writing, listening, the placebo and nocebeo effects, about psychic research.  voodoo death phenomenon and the writing of his wonderful book.
 
*Sam's book 'The Premonition Bureau'https://www.faber.co.uk/product/9780571357567-the-premonitions-bureau/*Sign up for the Bureau of Lost Culture bulletinhttps://lp.constantcontactpages.com/su/N0ZYoFu/BOLC
 
*The Story of the Brompton Time Machine
https://soundcloud.com/the-real-tuesday-weld-1/the-brompton-time-machine
 
Jeff Edwards - the last child to be pulled from the Aberfan wreckage. 
 
#premonitions, #time, #aberfan, #mentalhealth, #london #vision, #prophecy, #disaster, #peterfairley, #jcbarker, #psychiatry, #counterculture, #premonitionbureau, #foresight, #precognition #dreams

Moss Side Story - with Barry Adamson

He was a member of some of the most influential post punk bands: Magazine, The Birthday Party and The Bad Seeds. He's collaborated with a whole range of artists including Nick Cave, Iggy Pop, Diamanda Galas, David Lynch, Jarvis Cocker, Atticus Ross and Depeche Mode. He's written film scores, made films himself, made many solo records and recently published an extraordinary memoir of youth:  'Up Above the City and Down Beneath the Stars.’
 
The Jazz Devil Barry Adamson came to the Bureau to talk about his life and times - and about bones, about being an outsider, about Manchester in the 70s, about Punk, luck, trouble  - and about heroin addiction. 
 
And we discuss the alchemical process of turning darkness into artness and signposts and signal moments along the way.
 
For more on Barry 
http://www.barryadamson.com
 
Join us at the Bureau of Lost Culture
https://lp.constantcontactpages.com/su/N0ZYoFu/BOLC
 
All shows
www.bureauoflostculture.com
#manchester #barryadamson #magazine #thebirthdayparty #thebadseeds #nickcave #howarddevoto #theclash #punk #postpunk #heroin #davidlynch #jazzdevil #nickcave #johnnymarr

The Life and Times of Peter Coyote 2: Buddhism in Babylon

*From heroin to Hollywood, 
Here is the second part of our conversation with the writer, countercultural activist, Zen priest and erstwhile movie star PETER COYOTE at his farm in Sebastopol California. 
 
*Last time, we left him isolated and lost in the throes of drug addiction as the countercultural dream had started to turn sour. Now we pick up the story in the American communes of the early 70s, hear how he transitioned to become a successful actor appearing in over 160 films, and dig deep into counterculture, creativity, charisma, drugs, buddhism, how he navigated Hollywood Babylon.
 
*And Peter gives some amazing advice for actors, artists  - and for all of us
 
With thanks to Jenny Spires.
 
Join the Bureau of Lost Culture for countercultural news, stories and special events
http://www.bureauoflostculture.com
 
For more on Peter and his work
http://www.petercoyote.com
#counterculture #thediggers #petercoyote #psychedelic #mescaline #peyote #haightashbury #freefamil #london #hellsangels #kenkesey #zen #america #heroin #drugaddiction 

The Life and Times of Peter Coyote 1: Diggers to Dharma Bums

*Angels in London
*You've probably seen him in a film - he’s performed in more than 130 as an actor for some of the world’s greatest directors including Roman Polanski, Pedro Almodovar, Steven Spielberg and Steven Soderberg, or maybe you have heard his voice - he's an Emmy Award-winning narrator of over 200 documentaries.
*He is a writer, a poet, an ordained Buddhist priest who has been practicing Zen for over 50 years. *But that's not the half of it - as we find out in this, the first of two episodes charting the extraordinary life of PETER COYOTE.
 
*We did deep into the American counterculture, Hells Angels in London, heroin addiction, radical theatre groups, The Diggers, the Free Family, the birth of the communes, mescaline and how the atom bomb created rock and roll.
 
*AND Peter reads some of his poems from his collection 'The Tongue of a Crow'
 
*With thanks and appreciation  to Jenny Spires for connecting us.
 
Join the Bureau of Lost Culture for countercultural news, stories and special events
http://www.bureauoflostculture.com
 
For more on Peter and his work
http://www.petercoyote.com
 
#counterculture #thediggers #petercoyote #psychedelic #mescaline #peyote #haightashbury #freefamil #london #hellsangels #kenkesey #zen #america

The Divided Self of R.D. Laing

*In 1965 the psychiatrist R.D.LAING formed a commune in an East London community centre called Kingsley Hall where the psychotic and the schizophrenic could live on equal terms with their carers. There were no locks and no anti-psychotic drugs but there were all-night therapy sessions, dinners with visiting mystics and high grade LSD available to any who chose to take it
*The Neuro-psychiatrist Anthony David came to the Bureau to talk about Laing and about how his groundbreaking book The Divided Self propelled him into the status of a countercultural guru. He grew his hair, he wore beads, he toured America speaking to large audiences and was asked to pronounce on all sorts of matters far beyond the subject of madness.
 
*We dig into Laing's life and work, successes and shadows, the subjects of mental health and psychedelics, talk about Van Gogh, David Bowie, Syd Barrett and the links between creativity and madness. And we hear about Tony's own work in London with those suffering from acute mental disorders.*For Tony's book 'Into the Abyss'https://oneworld-publications.com/work/into-the-abyss/*For the Bureau of Lost Culture http://www.bureauoflostculture.com
#rdlaing, #madness, #psychedelics, #mentalhealth, #london #schizophrenia, #psychosis, #thedividedself, #sydbarrett, #bowie, #psychiatry, #counterculture, #kingsleyhall, #anthonydavid, #vangogh

The Lost World of Cambodian Rock ’n’ Roll

*In the swinging 1960s, after nearly a century of colonisation, Cambodia was ready to rock. Young musicians from the countryside flocked to the vibrant cosmopolitan capital city of Phnom Penh. The city was a melting pot of sound: old fashioned rock’n’roll, early heavy metal, crooners and swooners and love duets. 
 
*Then on 17th April 1975, the music stopped.
the Khmer Rouge captured Phnom Penh and began a genocide. Around 90% of the musicians died in the killing fields.
 
*DEE PEYOK joins us to talk about 'Away From Beloved Lover'(Granta), her extraordinary book detailing the lost world of amazing music that flourished between 1955 and 1970 in Cambodia.  
*And we hear of Dee’s own journey - an extraordinary odyssey into the heart of darkness -  and light -  in search of this lost world.
For more on Away From Beloved Lover: https://granta.com/products/away-from-beloved-lover/
For The Bureau of Lost Culture: www.bureauoflostculture.com
#Cambodia #KhmerRouge, #Sinsisamouth, #DeePayok, #PhnomPenh, #killingfields, #surfrock, #censorship, #Cambodiarocks, #Vietcong,  #genocide #vietnamwar
 

Flashing on the Sixties Part 2

Feeding the Woodstock thousands, acid, the Summer of Love, the Haight Ashbury, Timothy Leary, anti-Vietnam war protests, the problems of free love and living in communes, the Monterey pop festival, The Diggers, Wavy Gravy, Owsley, Bob and Sarah Dylan, Peter Coyote, helping Dennis Hopper though a bad trip..
In this episode we sat down again with 80 year old photographer LISA LAW in her home in Mexico to hear more extraordinary tales from the her life on the frontiers of counterculture.
 
We take up the tales as Lisa arrives in San Francisco in 1967, follow her behind the scenes at the Woodstock, Texas and Monterey Pop festivals, through the ups and downs of family life and motherhood whilst always taking photographs of a society in the turmoils of radical change.
 
Thanks to Roger Burton for the introduction to Lisa. During the episode we hear Tim Leary at 'The Human Be In' in San Francisco and the poet Adrian Mitchell reciting his poem To Whom it May Concern (Tell Me Lies about Viet Nam).
For more on Lisa, her film, book and images: www.flashingonthesixties.com/For more on the Bureau: www.bureauoflostculture.com
 
Images copyright Lisa Law
 
#Dylan, #TheVelvetUnderground, #JanisJoplin, #TheBeatles, #OtisRedding, #PeterFonda, #DenisHopper, #TimothyLeary, #RamDass, #AllenGinsberg, KenKesey, #thehogfarm, #themerrypranksters, #wavygravy, #peterpaulandmary #haightashbury, #hippies, #psychedelicmushrooms, #lisalaw, #vietnamwar
 

Flashing On the Sixties: Part 1

*Dylan, The Velvet Underground, Janis Joplin, The Beatles,  Otis Redding, Nico, Peter Fonda, Denis Hopper, Timothy Leary, Ram Dass, Allen Ginsberg and many, many more  - Lisa Law's images are extraordinary. But then her story is extraordinary.
 
*On Christmas eve, Lisa sat in her home in Yelapa, Mexico and recounted some of her countercultural life and times in this, the first of two episodes that provide an unparalleled glimpse into the music scenes of the 60s and 70s and California's blossoming counterculture.
 
*We hear about the American folk revival ,beatniks, bohemians, Mexican shamans and the weird and wonderful world of hippy communes in New Mexico, some of the many moments that she lived, witnessed, and recorded on the frontier of society on the brink of cultural change.
 
*For more on Lisa's life, images, book and documentary: www.flashingonthesixties.com/
*For more on the Bureau of Lost Culture: www.bureauoflostculture.com
 
Images copyright Lisa Law
 
#Dylan, #TheVelvetUnderground, #JanisJoplin, #TheBeatles,  #OtisRedding, #PeterFonda, #DenisHopper, #TimothyLeary, #RamDass, #AllenGinsberg, KenKesey, thehogfarm, themerrypranksters, #wavygravy, #peter,paulandmary #haightashbury, #hippies, #psychedelicmushrooms, #lisalaw
 
 

La Rocka! The Life and Looks of Lloyd Johnson

*Starting in 1966, LLOYD JOHNSON not only sold clothes to a multitude of street smart, cool kids, but contributed to the very look of rock ’n' roll fashion. In the decades since, he has helped style Keith Richards, Bob Dylan, Jack Nicholson, David Bailey, The Clash, Iggy Pop, Tom Waits, Barry Adamson, Johnny Marr, Nick Cave,The Stray Cats and The Pretenders.*On top of that, his designs have appeared on many record sleeves including albums by Rod Stewart and Madness, in videos like George Michael’s" Faith”, in the films Quadrophenia and Jim Jarmusch's Down by Law and Mystery Train, and as stage costumes for David Bowie.
*The Face said he is one of the crucial figures in the development of British style. 
He just says: 'I created what I saw as stage-wear for the street.*Lloyd came into the Bureau to share some of his stories.  And we hear about growing up in Hastings, Kensington Market, the Kings Road, Mods vs Rockers, Fred Astaire, Freddy Mercury, model aeroplanes and much, more from a life lived in clothes for over 50 years.
 
*Thanks to Roger Burton for the intro
 
*Image: Lloyd outside Johnson The Modern Outfitters 1975 (sourced by Paul Gorman for the show he curated at Chelsea Space in 2012 https://www.chelseaspace.org/archive/johnson-pr.html)
 
*Join us to get our newsletter and hear more tales from the underground, the counterculture and the upside down.
 
www.bureauoflostculture.com
#RodStewart #Madness #GeorgeMichael #Quadrophenia #JimJarmusch #DavidBowie #KeithRichards #BobDylan #JackNicholson #DavidBailey #TheClash #IggyPop #TomWaits #JohnnyMarr #NickCave #TheStrayCats #barryadamson #ThePretenders #lloydjohnson #larocka

Roentgenizdat - The Hidden History of Bone Music

*During the Cold War era, the songs that Soviet citizens could listen to were ruthlessly controlled by the state. But a secret underground subculture of music lovers and bootleggers defied the censors, building recording machines and making their own extraordinary discs of forbidden jazz, rock ‘n’ roll, and Russian music, cut onto used hospital x-ray film. 
 
*Today’s special guest is, er… me, Stephen Coates
 
*My new book BONE MUSIC details how the x-ray bootleggers worked, and reveals for the first time, the hidden history of their archivist precursors in Budapest. Who were they? Why did they do it and how was this Roentgenizdat (private pressing on xray) even possible? 
 
*Cultural Commentator TRAVIS ELBOROUGH returns to the Bureau and we swap seats so that he can run the show 
 
*We dig deep into the culture of the Soviet X-Ray Underground, the character of the bootleggers, cold war culture, cultural repression and ask if Bone Music has anything to say about current censorship in Russia.
 
*For More on BONE MUSIC the book: https://www.x-rayaudio.com/bonemusicbook
*The Bureau of Lost Culture: https://www.bureauoflostculture.com
 
#bonemusic #x-rayaudio #xrayaudio #sovietunion #coldwar #forbiddenculture #roentgenizdat #bonerecords #rockonribs #

Punk, Porn and Performance

She worked as a go-go dancer, stripper and glamour model. She's been a performance artist of masochistic tangos and twisted mambos, a ballroom dance teacher, a street arts choreographer and a punk-rock drummer. She worked with Throbbing Gristle, Genesis P Orridge, Monte Cazzaza, and Derek Jarman.
 *And she was there at the formation of Adam and the Ants and the Monochrome Set.
 
*Dorothy Max Prior joins us to talk about her wonderful book '69 Exhibition Road Twelve True-Life Tales from the Fag End of Punk, Porn & Performance’ published by Strange Attractor Press.*We hear about gay London in the 70s,  the derelict city, bedsit land, fetish wear, rubber miniskirts, Westwood and Mclaren, The Sex Pistols, The Clash, The Roxy, The Monochrome Set, her own band Rema Rema and of course Stuart Leslie Goddard, better known as Adam Ant..
 
*For more on Max’s book:  http://strangeattractor.co.uk/shoppe/69-exhibition-road/
The Bureau of Lost Culture: https://www.bureauoflostculture.com
 
#counterculture #punk #thesexpistols #theclash #remarema #theroxyclub #dorothymaxprior #adamant #adamandtheants #themonochromeset #london

Tripping the Light Fantastic

*You couldn’t turn up at at any self respecting psychedelic hangout, countercultural club, happening, be-in or even disco in the late sixties and seventies without being immersed in the cosmic cloud of swirling dreamy liquid images, shapes and colours of the light shows illuminating and enhancing the music.
 
*Our counterculural companion in arms, Kevin Foakes, DJ Food, turntablist, graphic designer-par-excellence -  and now author - returns to the Bureau to talk about his wonderful new book 'Wheels of Light’, published by Four Corners Books - a visual voyage through the history of British light show from 1970 to 1990,  and a gorgeous multi-coloured sensory experience in itself, bursting with amazing images and art.
 
*If we took a trip in a time machine we might find them a little primitive given the multi media hi-tech laser extravaganzas we've got used to, but back in the days of love, the psychedelic light shows were genuinely revolutionary, mind bending, consciousness enhancing and state altering - particularly if augmented by a large dose of LSD.
 
*We hear about lighting up the UFO club, Pink Floyd and Soft Machine and we are joined by Neil Rice, co-founder of Optikinetics, one of the main suppliers of the projectors and gizmos that created the psychedelic light shows of the 60s and 70s - and by Jennie Caldwell, practicing light jockey for many bands in the subsequent summers of love of the 80s and 90s, including those cosmic warriors on the edge of time, Hawkwind.
 
*For More on Kev / DJ Food:  https://www.djfood.org
*For Kev’s 'Wheels of Light’ book: https://www.fourcornersbooks.co.uk/books/wheels-of-light/
*The Bureau of Lost Culture: https://www.bureauoflostculture.com
#lightshow #hawkwind #pinkfloyd #sydbarret #UFOclub #softmachine #psychedelic #lsd #ravescene #summeroflove #tripping
 

The Last of the Merry Pranksters

*In the summer of 1964, a very strange vehicle was seen making its way across America. it was a school bus covered in psychedelic colours, driven by NEAL CASSADY, a beat generation character made famous in JACK KEROUAC'S beat generation classic On the Road and piloted by KEN KESEY, the best selling author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
 
*The bus contained a raggle-taggle crew of crazy psychonauts calling themselves The Merry pranksters allegedly dispensing LSD in orange kool aid to all and sundry in attempt to turn on America.
 
*In this episode, we leave Soho to travel to the far west of the USA, to a farm in Oregon to meet KEN BABBS the last of The Merry Pranksters.
 
*We talk of all sorts of things - Ken Kesey, the Magic Trip and the Acid Tests of course, plus Kerouac, Ginsberg, Viet Nam, Timothy Leary, spontaneity, the good life and dreams.*And at the end we hear some very positive news about a question that I suspect is troubling many of us
 
*For The Bureau of Lost Culture https://www.bureauoflostculture.com 
 
#bureauoflostculture #kenkesey #kenbabbs #tarot #themerrypranksters #kerouac #ginsberg #themagicbus #lsd  #acid #tomwolfe #counterculture #psychedelic #thegratefuldead #acidtests #nealcassady #beatgeneration 
 
 

The Lost Tarot Deck of Austin Osman Spare

It is a tale of lost treasure, it is a tale of a lost - or rather forgotten - artist, a mystic, a cockney visionary.
 
•Curator Jonathan Allen comes to the Bureau to tell of AUSTIN OSMAN SPARE and the strange and wonderful Tarot Deck that lay for decades in the archives of The Magic Circle, undisturbed and forgotten.
 
•Now a growing influence on artists, writer and chaos magick  practitioners including Alan Moore and Jimmy Page, Spare became largely unnoticed in his lifetime.
 
•We hear of his curious, occult life in South London, his riches to rags story, cartomancy, divination and the discovery that may just change his future. 
 
•And we hear of the efforts to bring that future into the present through a campaign by Strange Attractor Press that will make Spare's extraordinary visionary Tarot available for mystics, art lovers, collectors and the curious..
 
•For the Austin Spare Tarot Deck Kickstarter https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/strangeattractoruk/austin-osman-spare-occult-tarot-deck-and-book
 
•For the book Lost Envoy http://strangeattractor.co.uk/shoppe/lost-envoy/
 
•For The Bureau of Lost Culture https://www.bureauoflostculture.com
 
#bureauoflostculture #austinspare #austinosmanspare #tarot #lostenvoy #strangeattractor #strangeattractorpress #alanmoore #jimmypage #williamblake #pankhurst #mervynpeake #magiccircle #themagiccircle #tarotdeck #cartomancy #chaosmagick #magick #conjuring #southwark 
 
 

The Cabaret of the Nameless

*Performance artist, actor and underground cabaret star Madame LePustra leads us on a journey back in time in search of the Berlin Cabaret and Kabarett of Weimar Republic era Berlin.
 
*We learn of the strange and progressive Golden Years of the 1920s when queer and trans identiities were accepted, even feted, within an underground culture that briefly flowered in the city between the wars.
 
*We meet some of the extraordinary women performers who pushed artistic, theatrical and social boundaries before the Nazis jackbooted the doors of the clubs and theatres and brought the era to a tragic close.
 
*And we hear of Madame Le Pustra’s work to remember and reinterpret the times through their re-imagined ‘Cabaret of the Nameless’.
 
For more on Madame Le Pustra https://madamelepustra.com 
The Bureau of Lost Culture https://www.bureauoflostculture.com
Image courtesy Madame Le Pustra  / Michel Dierickx 
 
#berlincabaret #weimarcabaret #madamelepustra #cabaretofthenameless #counterculture

Smells Like Teen Spirit

*"Teenage savages go wild in a jungle of lust and lawlessness!"
 
*Countercultural commentator and writer JOHN HIGGS comes to the Bureau. We head out into the feverish febrile pheromone filled phase of self consciousness, sex drugs and rock’n’roll known as adolescence as we investigate the birth of the teenage in the late 40s and 50s.  
 
*Was it all really kicked off by Little Richard’s Tutti Frutti?    
 
*We chart the rise of youth culture on both sides of the Iron Curtain and debate that while ‘all you need is love’, ‘you can’t always get what you want’ as we trace counterculture through beats, mods, hippies, punks, ravers, grunge and britpop, touch down briefly on gender politics and the death of Kurt Cobain and wonder if 70 will one day be the new seventeen.
 
For more on John https://johnhiggs.com
 
The Bureau of Lost Culture https://www.bureauoflostculture.com
#counterculture #littlerichard #teenage #rockandroll #kurtcobain #beatles #rollingstones #hippie 

The Low Down LA Life of Tom Waits

*Musician and actor TOM WAITS is one of the great countercultural artists of our time, His '70s albums documented low life America in an LA that no longer exists
 
*Filmmaker Alex Harvey, author of 'Song Noir: Tom Waits and the Spirit of Los Angeles’ comes to the Bureau to tell how Waits mined a rich seam of the city’s low-life locations and characters, letting the place feed his dark imagination.
 
*We hear how Tom blended real life with the mythic, turning autobiographical details into songs that were both romantic and disturbing -  and created a vision of LA as the warped, narcotic heart of his nocturnal explorations.
 
*For more on Alex http://alexanderharvey.org/
*For Song Noir: http://www.reaktionbooks.co.uk/display.asp?ISB=9781789146639
*For more on Tom Waits: http://www.tomwaits.com/
*For The Bureau of Lost Culture https://www.bureauoflostculture.com 
#counterculture #tomwaits #rickieleejones  #thetropicana #LA #kathleenbrenan 

Sowing the Seeds of Love

*Timothy Leary may have wanted to cause a revolution your head with LSD, The Beatles in your heart with Love, but countercultural activist and entrepreneur CRAIG SAMS went for the Gut.
 
*After bringing himself back from death’s door by curing the amoebic dysentery and hepatitis he contracted on the Central Asia hippie trail, he embarked on a mission to change the world and raise consciousness through food.
 
*We sit down with him for a feast of of fabulous food fables from feeding the freaks at The UFO club and the first Glastonbury festival, to co-founding Seed, London's first macrobiotic restaurant and the go-to healthy eatery for John and Yoko, The Stones and many other denizens of the London underground.
 
*Also on the menu: how he went on to co-found Whole Earth foods and then Green and Black's Chocolate, how macrobiotics will improve an LSD trip, how changing the way we eat can save us - and the planet - and how, at nearly eighty, he is still living the countercultural life.
For More on Craig: https://www.craigsams.com
 
Join us at The Bureau of Lost Culture https://linktr.ee/bureauoflostculture
#counterculture #macrobiotic #johnandyoko  #thebeatles #greenandblacks #wholeearth #craigsams

The Birth of the Asian Underground

*DJ and broadcaster BOBBY FRICTION drops by the Bureau to tell the tale of how, in the early 90s, a bunch of British kids from immigrant families ripped it up, mixing their traditional musical roots with drum and bass, electronic beats and urban sounds to form a new countercultural genre all their own - the Asian Underground.
 
*We hear how the scene was a kind of counterpart to the way Western counterculture adapted and was inspired by Eastern mysticism and culture.
 
*It's a rollicking personal tale by Bobby who was there at the beginning and who has been championing the scene ever since, soundtracked by some choice musical cuts.
 
We dig deep into all sorts of other stuff too: growing up in 70s London, racism on the city streets, Bhangra, 'ghazals', ABBA, Prince,  daytime gigs, Sikh culture. radical politics, why 'Black' was cool but 'Asian' was apparently not in London club culture.
 
*And Bobby makes a plea for the British to realise the vision of becoming one people celebrating their diversity rather than splitting back into tribes.
 
*For more on Bobby: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01rydpz
*For London Month of the Dead: https://www.londonmonthofthedead.com
*For Continental Drifts: https://www.continentalDrifts.co.uk
*The Bureau of Lost Culture: https://www.bureauoflostculture.com

Alan Moore on Counterculture

*He is widely recognised as one of the best comic book writers in the English language with works like From Hell, Watchmen, V for Vendetta, Killing Joke, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and Swamp Thing. He's the author of modern literary classics, including Jerusalem, a 1,266-page experimental epic novel, that have led to his legendary status and critical acclaim.*He is also an occultist, a ceremonial magician and an anarchist.
 
*ALAN MOORE beamed into the Bureau for an afternoon  conversation about counterculture - in his own life and work and in the past, the present and in the future.
 
*We also dig deep into the 60s, the 70s, Thatcherism, Britpop, the power of The Arts Lab, why he doesn’t watch the adaptions of his work, the power of limitations to foster creativity and much much more.
 
*Alan’s storytelling course on BBC Maestro:  https://www.bbcmaestro.com
LONDON MONTH OF THE DEAD http://www.londonmonthofthedead.com
THE REAL TUESDAY WELD
http://www.tuesdayweld.com
Join us and support our wild endeavours https://www.bureauoflostculture.com
#alanmoore #michaelmoorcock #counterculture #artslab #london #malcolmmclaren 

Birth, Death - and Frestonia

The People's Republic of Frestonia, a countercultural micronation, was formed in three streets in North Kensington in the heady years of late seventies London.
 
*Long before the Occupy movement, a group of squatters, radicals, artists and activists decided to fight back against a local authority bent on evicting them from their homes and declared the area independent of the UK. Drawing huge media interest, some derision and lot of goodwill, they had their own passports, stamps and theatre and even applied to join the United Nations.
 
One of them, the psychotherapist Josefine Speyer, Frestonia's minister of Culture, comes to visit the Bureau for an hour or so to tell us what it was all about - and all about the countercultural journey she made to live there from her youth in Germany. We hear of communes in Berlin and Scotland, travelling in a gypsy caravan in Wales, home births and hash cookies in a cow shed and of some of the many alternative projects initiated by her radical activist husband Nicholas Albery.
 
*And we learn how they came to found the Natural Death Centre, blowing the lid on the secretive cabal that controlled the funeral industry and returning death and dying back to where it belongs - with the people..
 
For more about Frestonia:  http://www.frestonia.org
A list of Micronations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_micronations
For the Natural Death Centre: http://www.naturaldeath.org.uk
More on Josefine:  https://deathcafe.com/profile/25/
 
 

Women, Sex, Counterculture

The Sexual Revolution? Yes. Liberation? Maybe. Penis Envy? NO!
 
*Youth culture in the sixties was progressive in so many ways but when it came to the relations between the sexes, it was perhaps much more traditional than it liked to admit.
 
*Sleeping around, Syd Barret, Pink Floyd, Groupies, Frigidity, the Pill, abortion, Oz magazine and of course The Female Eunuch make their appearance as we dig deep into what it was like growing up as a young woman in the underground scene of swinging sixties London.
 
*Author Jill Drower, once a member of The Exploding Galaxy experimental dance commune returns to the Bureau along with beat traveller, model and singer Jenny Spires as we ask if the story of counterculture has largely been one told by men about men.
 
*For Jill's book: The Exploding Galaxy: Performance Art, LSD and Bent Coppers in the Sixties Counterculture’ 
 
*Sign up for The Bureau Newsletter: https://lp.constantcontactpages.com/su/N0ZYoFu/BOLC 
#SydBarrett #Pink Floyd #Groupies #Frigidity #abortion #Ozmagazine #TheFemaleEunuch #germainegreer #jennyspires #theexplodinggalaxy

City of the Beast: Aleister Crowley’s London

*We take a creep through dimly lit London streets populated with prostitutes, bohemians, charlatans, junkies, spiritualists, drunkards and lost souls following magician, author, occultist and drug fiend ALEISTER CROWLEY,'The Great Beast’, as he prowls Piccadilly in pursuit of pleasure, power and yet more prostitutes.
 
*'Do What Though Wilt shall be the whole of the law’
 
*Our guide is Phil Baker, author of ‘City of The Beast’, part Crowley biography, part psychogeographic odyssey and part London gazetteer. We seek the man beneath the myth, the flaneur beneath the fiend and ask why do  many still find the often deplorable Crowley so intriguing, even inspiring?
 
*Along the was we get fascinating glimpses into a lost era, a shadowy underworld of Victorian and Edwardian counterculture, Sex Magick, ether, drugs and .. snails.. 
 
*For The City of the Beast book : http://strangeattractor.co.uk/news/city-of-the-beast/
 
*For the O.T.O https://oto-usa.org/
 
*Sign up for The Bureau Newsletter: https://lp.constantcontactpages.com/su/N0ZYoFu/BOLC 
* The Bureau Instagram https://www.instagram.com/bureauoflostculture/
#crowley #aleistercrowley #counterculture #magick #thegoldendawn #london #prostitution #occult #ether #666 #O.T.O. 
 

On the Farm with Allen Ginsberg

*In 1969, the poet, Beat generation godfather, countercultural guru and political activist ALLEN GINSBERG bought a farm in upstate New York to provide a creative hub and rehab refuge for his friends - a collection of poets, artists, washed-up drunks, strung-out junkies, ne’er do wells and exhausted underground figures, all reeling after the intensity of the 60s.
 
*One, his lifelong friend and biographer Barry Miles, chronicler of the counterculture, returns to the Bureau to tell of a bucolic summer he spent with Ginsberg and an assortment of crazy characters on the farm, archiving the poet's vast collection of tape recordings.
 
*We also visit The Chelsea Hotel and meet some the equally crazy characters who lived and loved there in 1970s Manhattan including Janis Joplin, Arthur Miller and Leonard Cohen - and along the way we discuss The Beats, Buddhism, Burroughs - and beards.
 
 
*Thanks to Stephen Cleary and The British Library Sound Archive for providing the recordings of Allen and to Peter Hale of The Ginsberg Estate for permission to use them.
 
*For More on Miles: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Miles
*The Allen Ginsberg Project: https://allenginsberg.org
*Sign up for The Bureau Newsletter: https://lp.constantcontactpages.com/su/N0ZYoFu/BOLC 
* The Bureau Instagram https://www.instagram.com/bureauoflostculture/
*The British Library Sound Archive:
https://sounds.bl.uk
 
#ginsberg #kerouac #williamburroughs #beatpoets #beatgeneration #counterculture
 

Albion Dreaming - A Brief Trip Through the History of British LSD

*Experimental treatment of the insane, secret tests by MI5 with volunteers thinking they were helping find a cure for the common cold, Cold War weapon research by the Ministry of defence on unsuspecting troops -  the early history of LSD in the UK was rather inauspicious.
 
*And then all hell - or heaven - broke loose..
 
*Britain's foremost psychedelic historian ANDY ROBERTS returns to the Bureau to take us on a trip through the revolutions in the head caused by Acid from the 1950s to now.
 
*Along the way we meet some of the characters who experimented, manufactured, dealt, swallowed and were transformed by it - as well as those who tried to stop them  - including an unlikely Breaking Bad style pharmacist in Islington, The Microdot Gang and even the Kray Twins..
 
*So sit back, relax, blow out the candles and kick off your sandals … (thanks The Lilac Time), tune in,  turn and ...
*Andy and Albion Dreaming: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Albion-Dreaming-popular-history-Britain/dp/1905736274
* Sign up for The Bureau Newsletter to get countercultural treats https://lp.constantcontactpages.com/su/N0ZYoFu/BOLC 
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*The Real Tuesday Weld https://www.tuesdayweld.com

On the Road ... with Johnny Marr

* From Colin Wilson to Tony Wilson, Patti Smith to Mark E Smith, what was it like coming of age in the counterculture of Manchester in the 60s, 70s and 80s?
 
* Johnny Marr has just released his latest record and his band's on tour with Blondie. He's worked with Billie Eilish on the Academy award winning theme for the Bond blockbuster No Time to Die and with all sorts of other artists including Hans Zimmer, Modest Mouse, The The and The Pretenders.
 
* He’s had chart hits with Electronic, and, oh yeah, he co-piloted one of the best loved and influential British bands of all time - The Smiths.
 
* We don’t really talk about that - but we do dig deep into archetypal psychology, northern peak experience, clothes, records, books, youth culture and reading the road signs along the way to your destiny..
 
* Image credit: Andy Cotterill
 
* For More on Johnny: https://johnnymarr.com
 
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The Life and Times of Dubmeister Dennis Bovell

* He stepped off a plane from Barbados onto a wet and windy runway at Heathrow airport in 1965 aged 12.
* Now he’s a DJ, multi-instrumentalist and producer of hundreds of records spanning reggae, lovers rock, soul, dub, punk and pop.  
 
* Dennis Bovell's life in music is populated by a countercultural cornucopia of artists as wide ranging as Linton Kwesi Johnson, The Slits, Madness, Bananarama, the Pop Group, Fela Kuti, Orange Juice, Marvin Gaye, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Dexy’s Midnight Runners and most recently, Radiohead, The Animal Collective and Spoon.* He's even got an MBE.* We dig into all that - or as much as we can - plus Hendrix, sound systems, cutting dub plates, sound clashes with Lee Scratch Perry, police harrasment, wrongful imprisonment and the youthful joys of eating breadfruit on the beach.
* For More on Dennis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_Bovell
 
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The Exploding Galaxy

* In 1967 and and 1968, an ordinary north London house contained an Exploding Galaxy - a psychedelic commune and carnival of theatrical performers, artists and performance poets bent on transforming the city through spontaneous happenings, countercultural interventions and street activism..
 
* One of them was only 15 years old. Now all grown up, JILL DROWER comes to the Bureau to talk about her time at 99 Balls Pond Road as a Galaxy member - how the whole crazy endeavour came about - and how it exploded into and out of existence
 
Alson the way we visit The UFO club, The 14 Hour Technicolour Dream, hear about  ‘scrudging’ , bent coppers intent on busting hippies for being hippies and the lost dream of peace, love and understanding that once might have changed everything.
 
 
* For More on The Exploding Galaxy http://www.djfood.org/category/bureau-of-lost-culture/
 
 
* For Kev's amazing psychedelic DJ FOOD archive https://djfood/org
 
* The Bureau Home https://www.bureauoflostculture.com
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A Countercultural History of Camden Town

* Withnail and I, Poets, Spiritualists, Irish, Spanish and Hugenot immigrants, Serial Killers, Artists, Railway workers, William Blake, Rimbaud and Verlaine, Walter Sickert, Sex, Drugs, Rock’n’Roll, Music Hall, Folk, Britpop, Levitation, The Roundhouse, Cecil Sharp House, The New Jerusalem, Markets, Markets, Markets..
 
* Writer, researcher and walker of Lost Rivers Tom Bolton leads us up and out of The Bureau to wander through the streets and stories of the London Borough of Camden - for decades, the down and dirty end of the countercultural city - in search of the strange spirits that still pervade its highways and byways.
 
* For more on Tom and his work https://tombolton.co.uk
 
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Countercultural Broadcasting: Urban Pirate Radio

* Ninja Tune head honcho and Coldcut co-pirate Jonathan More returns to the Bureau to talk about his adventures hi-jinxing and hi-jacking the airwaves in the Wild West of South London. 
* For the second in our trilogy on illicit broadcasting, we hear tales of DJ derring-do during the birth Of Kiss Fm, once one of the coolest of the urban pirate radio stations and its transition to the commercial mainstream. 
* And in the mix, we debate how the mainstream is dependent on the underground, the culture feeds on the counterculture, and along the way go crate-digging into how Jon caught the disease of collecting vinyl, putting on warehouse parties, life-changing meetings in London taxis, pirate TV, Coldcut's Solid Steel show - and nuclear power station ephemera.. 
* For Jon and Coldcut http://coldcut.net
* Jon’s Soho Radio show Out to Lunch https://sohoradiolondon.com/profile/jon-more/ 
Thanks for audio samples and info:
* DJ Food https://www.djfood.org/
* The Pirate Radio Archive https://www.thepiratearchive.net/
* AMFM.0rg https://www.amfm.org.uk/
* Death is Not the End https://deathisnot.bandcamp.com/album/london-pirate-radio-adverts-1984-1993-vol-1 
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The Man Who Drilled a Hole in his Head

Cannabis, psilocybin, mescaline and LSD were not enough to fulfil Joey Mellen’s quest to expand his consciousness to the furthest limits 'in search of the miraculous'. So in 1968 he used an electric drill to self-trepan himself by boring a hole into his skull.
 
Now a delightful and very lively 82, Joey visits the Bureau to tell how an upper middle class English public schoolboy tuned in, turned on and dropped out, became a psychonautic beatnik and carried out the act of self surgery that made him infamous in countercultural London.  Along the way we dig deep into acid evangelism, how to avoid bad trips, the blood chemistry of the ego and the strange life of Bart Hughes, the dutchman whose theories inspired Joey, Amanda Fielding and various others to seek enlightenment through trepanation.  
 
And we ask Joey if he acheived his goal of getting high and never coming down.
 
This episode was sponsored by the artist known as The Real Tuesday Weld 
 
Joey’s book Bore Hole
 
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A Soundtrack for a City

The last violet seller in Piccadilly Circus, the Canvey Island Oil refinery, the bascule chamber of Tower Bridge, the song of The Muffin Man. In the twelve years before his early death in 2021, Ian Rawes engaged in a Quixotic endeavour to capture - and collect - the sound of London. 
 
With over 2000 field recordings, historical audio pieces, sound maps, writings and images, The London Sound Survey he created is an idiosyncratic but wonderfully accessible, evocative and often arresting series of sonic snapshots that aim to track a changing city.
 
Tony Herrington of The Wire magazine comes to the Bureau to remember Ian and celebrate his work. We hear various selections from the Sound Survey and talk counterculture, field-recording, bells, anarcho-punk activism - and of course, independent music publishing, along the way.
 
SIGN UP TO JOIN US
 
The London Sound Survey Website
 
Tony's obituary for Ian
 
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The Lives and Times of Michael Moorcock - Part 1

Multi-award winning writer, musician, editor, essayist and inventor of the multiverse, Michael Moorcock, beams into the Bureau for the first episode exploring his deeply countercultural life in literature and London
 
It’s an action-packed hour involving The Beats, William Burroughs, Soho, J G Ballard, Tarzan, Conan the Barbarian, anarchists, a Rolls Royce, myth, skiffle, fanzines, comics and books, books books.
 
We hear how a precocious teenage Michael sets out on a career that led to the writing of over a hundred books and the creation of the well-loved characters including Elric and Jerry Cornelius who inhabit them, and we hear a revelation that will surprise even die-hard Moorcock afficionados..
 
For more on Michael
http://www.multiverse.org
 
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The Lost World of The Self-Made Record

We revisit the wonderfully odd, lost culture of the coin-operated machines that allowed ordinary people to make a record of their voice long before the advent of tape or digital recording.(Jack White has been using one, The Voice O Graph, more recently to produce terrific lo- fi caught-in-the-moment records, including an album with Neil Young).
 
We are joined by oral historian and broadcaster Alan Dein to hear a selection of recordings of strange, moving ghostly voices from his collection and learn how the records were used to send messages home from the war, record visits to tourist destinations or to capture the sounds of loved ones in a way that had never been possible before.
 
For more on Alan’s award winning work
https://www.facebook.com/alan.dein
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Image courtesy Museum of London

Ms. Freedom: From Counterculture to Counter-couture

DIANA CRAWSHAW's countercultural journey took her from a small north Yorkshire town to the centre of swinging London and the glamour of St Tropez; from selling, designing and making clothes in 60s London's hippest boutiques Lord Kitchener's Valet, Mr Freedom and Paradise Garage,to reading palms at the Holland Park office of Richard Branson.
 
One of our most modest and delightful guests, Diana tells tales of her times with the designers that dressed the great the good and the glitterati, including David Hockney, Picasso, Rock Hudson, The Beatles, Elton John and Freddie Mercury. We hear how she set out to find herself, how she made Dennis Hopper cry and how she fixed Raquel Welch’s hot pants.
 
Diana reads palms at Wilde Ones in the Kings Road
https://wildeones.com/tarot-readings/
 
Thanks to Paul Gorman
http://www.paulgormanis.com
 
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The Countercultural World of Iain Sinclair

Writer, film maker, poet, flaneur, metropolitan shaman, curator of lost cultures, beat aficionado, and underground poet Iain Sinclair takes us on a walk through his life in the counterculture. 
 
We have brief encounters with Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Alan Moore, Michael Moorcock, Peter Ackroyd, J.G.Ballard and Nicholas Hawksmoor as we hear tales of the poetry underground, life working as a Hackney council gardener, blacklegging in the London docks, cigars in Clerkenwell, an epic ancestral journey from Leadenhall Market to Peru, DIY-publishing, writing, writing, writing, and of course The City, as we circle towards hearing Iain reading selections from Lud Heat, the epic 1975 piece that was destined to become the root text of London psychogeography.
 
For more on on Iain and his work:
www.iainsinclair.org.uk
 
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Blondie, The Bowery and The Blank Generation

Gary Lachman, the original bass player of Blondie (as Gary Valentine), returns to the Bureau to tell of his time in the New York underground music scene of the 1970s.
 
Now the UK’s foremost writer on the esoteric, with 24 books under his belt including works on Aleister, Crowley, Jung, Gurdjieff, Magick and the occult, Gary was once deep in the heart of New York's 'Blank Generation'.
 
We hear about living with Debbie Harry and Chris Stein in a loft on The Bowery, playing CBGB and Gotham's underground clubs, hanging with The Ramones and Patti Smith, touring with Television and Iggy Pop and living the countercultural life on the Lower East side in the years before and beyond new wave.
 
For more on Gary
www.garylachman.co.uk
 
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Raving Upon Thames

Soho and Chelsea have always been hailed as the epicentres of swinging London.
 
But there was a third, and now rather forgotten place which gave birth to The Cool - a place that was the home to one of the most influential jazz clubs of the 50s before providing a launchpad for The Rolling Stones and the bourgeoning British R+B and psychedelic scenes of the 60s. It was a place that went onto to host an extraordinary roster of artists including Cream, The Yardbirds, pre-Bowie David Jones, Pink Floyd, Black Sabbath, Jimmy Page, Genesis, Yes and many, many others before morphing into a hippy commune in the 70s.
 
Author Andrew Humphreys comes to the Bureau to tell the strange story of Eel Pie Island - a bucolic bit of London in the middle of the river Thames - an island which for 15 years played an essential role in the history of British counterculture.
 
For more on Andrew and his book Raving Upon Thames
http://www.paradiseroad.co.uk
 
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The Art and Craftiness of Sampling

Jon More, one half of cut-and-paste collage kings Coldcut and co-founder with Matt Black of Ninja Tune record label, joins turntablist, crate digger Strictly Kev of  DJ Food as we dig deep into the wild and wonky world of sampling - the borrowing, plundering, adapting and re-imagining of existing audio, songs and sounds to create new audio, songs and sounds.
 
Sampling  might have started off as a countercultural underground cut-and-paste technique used by experimental artists but it ended up powering a huge amount of hip-hop tunes and some very big hit records.
 
We hear some of Jon and Kev's favourite sampling selections, learn about the creative use of the tape recorder pause button, and delve into sound art, musique concrète and pop cultural pick-pocketing down the ages.
 
For more on Jon and Coldcut
http://coldcut.net
 
For more on DJ Food / Strictly Kev
https://www.djfood.org
 
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The Rise and Fall of the Bootleg Record

The bootleg record was a phenomena that emerged in the heady days of the late 60s and survived to the early 80s - a kind of countercultural entrepreneurial activity that was rendered completely obsolete by the internet.  Bootleggers, often a cross between music fans and black marketeers, were practitioners of ‘disorganised crime’ distributing music illicitly on vinyl, cassette and cd whilst being pursued by record labels around the world from Compton to Camden.In this episode (a reboot of a Soho Radio show from 2018), we are joined by cultural commentator and lover of all things vinyl, Travis Elborough, to dig deep into the wild world of the dodgy pirates, counterfeits, unsanctioned outtakes, demos and live recordings that included the music of artists from Judy Garland through to the Beatles, The Rolling Stones and Bob Dylan and from The Sex Pistols and Television and to Elliot Smith.For more on Travis 
www.traviselborough.co.uk
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Women Against The Bomb

Forty years ago, in the late summer of 1981, a group of women walked from Wales for over a hundred miles carrying a hand-made banner proclaiming their protest against American nuclear cruise  missiles that were to be sationed in the UK. Their march to the US military base at Greenham Common led to the establishment of a camp that, for nearly two decades, drew women from all over the world to make their voices heard in the name of peace - and inspired fellow protestors internationallyArtist, activist and banner maker Thalia Cambpell one of the original marchers and founders of the camp, visits the Bureau to tell tales of dancing on nuclear silos, clashes with the authorities and the creation of vibrant protest art amongst the mud and mayhem.And we are joined by historian Charlotte Dew, author of 'Women For Peace: Banners From Greenham Common’, a book published to coincide with the 40th anniversary of the protests that presents image of the amazing banners made by Thalia and her fellows celebrating the collective power of women, women’s art and the history of peace campaigning. For more on the book, the banners and the bombwww.fourcornersbooks.co.uk/books/women-for-peace-banners-from-greenham-common/
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Child of the Counterculture

A Zelig, a holy fool, a trickster, a black magician, a sociopath, a charlatan, a genius, a fabulist, a junkie, an alcoholic, a secret agent, a police informer, a disruptor, an often loveable preacher of Love who didn't actually seem to know what it meant?LSD evangelist Michael Hollingshead might or might not have been all of these, but he was certainly a father. What is it like to be the child of such a person?Comedian Vanessa Hollingshead and writer Jeannie Hilton tell the dark and intense story of Vanessa’s tumultuous life with Michael, the working class Englishman who, according to his own claim, 'turned on the world' - or at least, many of those who did - including Timothy Leary and The Beatles - and who, like many who have advocated universal love and cosmic enlightenment, led a tragic and toxic personal life.
It's a wild and crazy trip, at times funny, at times disturbing. Be warned!
To find out more about The Divine Rascal film projectwww.thedivinerascal.com
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William Burroughs and Friends

The ghosts of William Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, Alan Ginsberg, John Giorno and Bob Cobbing make an appearance at the Bureau - as curator Steve Cleary plays us a  selection of super rare  recordings from the British Library Sound Archive.
 
The Archive is one of the biggest curated resources of audio in the world and includes over 1 million discs, 185,000 tapes, and many other sound and video recordings from around the globe  Steve takes us on a wander through its unparalleled counterculture collection.
 
We also hear from the capital's foremost chronicler of the counterculture, Barry Miles, on Burroughs' life in London  - along with a live recording of the beat writer at Manchester's Hacienda, a sampling of his cutups, some deeply strange sound poems and a wonderful recording of Kerouac jazz scatting at Neal Cassidy’s house.
 
For more on the British Library Sound Archive
https://sounds.bl.uk
 
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Stories and Sounds of Central Asia

Bird markets, sacred springs, border crossings, silk weavers, street drummers, games with headless goats, anti-aircraft rockets, courtyard songs and refugee choirs..
 
Documentary maker Monica Whitlock returns to the Bureau to paint an evocative sonic picture of the people and places she encountered whilst working in Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Afghanistan as the BBC’s foreign correspondent for Central Asia.
 
We hear some of the extraordinary archive of field recordings, conversations and music she collected whilst living and travelling in Tashkent, Samarkand and Andujan and while crossing the borders between a family of ancient states. And we learn something of these regions with their deep rooted tribal loyalties as they were being reborn and reformed in the ruins of the Soviet empire.
 
For more on Monica:
http://www.story-scapes.com
 
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The Lost World of Pirate Radio - Part One

PIRATE RADIO first erupted in the UK in the early 1960s when stations such as Radio Caroline and Radio London started to broadcast from ships moored offshore or disused WW2 forts in the north sea. They were set up by wildcat entrepreneurs and music enthusiasts to meet the growing demand for the pop, rock and underground music not catered for by the BBC who had a monopoly on the airwaves.Music writer ROB CHAPMAN returns to the Bureau to tell the story of this first golden age of illicit broadcasting.  We hear of the extraordinary life of pirate-in-chief Ronan O’Rahilly anarchist founder of Radio Caroline, of legendary broadcaster John Peel and his ground breaking show ‘The Perfumed Garden’, and of the oddities of life aboard the radio ships precariously sailing the airwaves.Initially, the stations got round the law because they were broadcasting from international waters to delighted young people across the country before they ran foul of the authorities and were shut down in 1967. But their impact lived on: the government caved into youth demand for pop music with the creation of Radio 1 and many of the pirate radio DJs including Tony Blackburn, Kenny Everett, Johnnie Walker, Emperor Rosko went on to mainstream success with the BBC and commercial stations of the seventies and beyond.For more on Robhttp://www.rob-chapman.com
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The Acid Techno Squat Party

In these days of constantly CCTV-surveilled, property over-developed London patrolled by health and safety wonks and paranoid private security forces, the wild world of the inner city squat party seems an impossibility. 
 
DJ, veteran of a thousand festivals and squat party promoter WILL  WILES comes to the Bureau to tell tales of acid house daring do, breaking into a variety of buildings (including Newcastle's 19th century Tyne Bridge), rigging up electricity and lights and installing sound systems for DJs to thrill and delight a community of underground ravers dusk 'til dawn before vanishing again on Monday morning.
 
We hear of cooking up ketamine in the kitchen, police raids, psychic dance floor camaraderie and the exploits of tech-savvy wily, piratical, psychedelic pioneers carrying on their subversive activities right under the noses of the authorities and bemused neighbours - motivated by music, madness and a deep belief in the counter-cultural spirit.
 
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Cancelled! The Counterculture of Ideas

Forbidden! Taboo! Shouldn’t be allowed!
 
Do you ever find yourself censoring yourself? Not saying quite what you think, feel or believe in case it is disapproved of?
 
Human rights lawyer ERIC BERKOWITZ comes to the Bureau to talk about his epic new book 'Dangerous Ideas: A History of Censorship from Ancient Times to Fake News.
 
It's a thrilling read, full of sometimes comical, often alarming and always thought-provoking human stories - from that of the ancient Chinese emperor who destroyed any works implying there had ever been a better era than his own, to the current Chinese leader's attempts to have Winnie the Pooh banned (after his and the bear's resemblance was pointed out). The UK and the US don’t fare too well either.
 
Why have books, films, images words and ideas always been censored by those in power? Are there times when they should be? Does censorship ever work? 
 
Eric digs deep into the touchiness of tyrants, into our current issues around blame, shame and cancel culture and why he thinks that almost nothing should be censored. We explore why countercultural ideas are so necessary for the culture and why they are only really dangerous when denied expression.
 
For more on Eric and the book
www.ericberkowitz.com
 
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The Life and Times of a Foreign Correspondent

The Cold War is ending, the Soviet Empire is crumbling.
In Central Asia, new countries are being born - or built - in the ruins: Kazakstan, Krygystan, Tajakstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan.
 
Allegiances and borders are shifting, overshadowed by the ghosts of ancient kingdoms. Exciting times. New histories in the making. And it all needs reporting.
 
Documentary maker MONICA WHITLOCK visits the Bureau to tell tales of her times as the Central Asian foreign correspondent for the BBC.
 
And what tales they are: lost treasure; Polish cemeteries in the Uzbek desert; tiny paintings on matchboxes smuggled from gulags; state murder and a last desperate dash across the runway, fleeing Tashkent after being accused of abetting terrorists. 
 
This episode features some of Monica's collection of field recordings.
 
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London’s Lost World of Yiddisher Jazz

London’s East End and Soho were the centres of a unique musical culture in the years between the 20s and the 50s.
 
Award wining oral historian and radio producer ALAN DEIN returns to the Bureau to tell stories of songs that soundtracked that world and feature on ‘Music is the Most Beautiful Language in the World', the album of super rare tunes by London jewish jazz artists he has unearthed.
 
We hear tales of poverty and glamour, Soho gangsters, ghettos, vaudeville swing, comedy, cuisine and cabaret - and of some of the musicians who escaped the squalid streets of Whitechapel to become international stars. And we discuss what it means to be an oral historian, the power of story and how much radio still matters.For more on Alan’s work
https://www.facebook.com/alan.deinFor Don't Log off
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01jxzy9
For the ‘Music is the Most Beautiful Language in the World’ album
https://jwmrecords.bandcamp.com/releases
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The UFO Club

Journalist and counterculture commentator Peter Watts joins us to talk about The UFO Club, the massively influential short-lived London club of the late 1960s established by Joe Boyd and John "Hoppy” Hopkins.
It featured light shows, poetry readings, avant-garde art by Yoko Ono and many rock acts (Pink Floyd, Jimi Hendrix, Procul Harem) who later became massive.
For a brief two year period, it acted as the epicentre of the whirligig of summer of love underground London with a 'who's who of the counterculture' guest list and set the standards for psychedelic fashion and design.
Peter’s blog on London and counterculture:
www.greatwen.com 
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The English Underground with Nick Laird Clowes - Part 2

We return for Part 2 of a trip through the English Underground scene of the 1960s and 1970s led by musician and pied piper Nick Laird Clowes of The Dream Academy.
Nick tells of his extraordinary youth deeply immersed in the political, musical and alternative scenes of West London. We hear about meeting Iggy Pop in a toilet, Nick Drake's guitar, the demise of Syd Barrett and dinner with Andy Warhol amongst many other terrific tales of living the countercultural life.
For more on the Bureau of Lost Culturewww.bureauoflostculture.com
For more on Nickwww.nicklairdclowes.com

The English Underground with Nick Laird Clowes - Part 1

We take a romp through the underground alternative and music scene of the 1960s in the first half of a two part episode. Our guide is musician and Nick Laird Clowes who regales us with stories of running away to the Isle of Wight festival, dj-ing at The Roundhouse, meeting John Lennon amongst many countercultural characters of the day and much, much more.
All this before an age when most of us had even smoked a cigarette - and all before his days of pop stardom with The Dream Academy.
For more on the Bureau of Lost Culturewww.bureauoflostculture.com
For more on Nickhttps://www.nicklairdclowes.com

Tales from The Flamingo Club

Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Billie Holiday Dizzy Gillespie, Rod Stewart, Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett, Eric Clapton, the Moody Blues, Mick Fleetwood, Pink Floyd, Georgie Fame, Ginger Baker, Long John Baldry, the Small Faces … the roll call of those who played in the Soho basement called The Flamingo is a who's who of 50s and 60s cool. 
 
Journalist and author Pete Watts takes us on a trip through time and down the stairs of 33 Wardour Street to hear stories of one of London's most important lost and legendary venues.
 
We hear how the Flamingo was hugely influential on up and coming musical stars of the 60s like Pete Townsend and The Rolling Stones, how it played an influential roll in the history of black music in the city and how you can perhaps still catch its spirit in the gents’ loos of the Irish theme pub that now occupies the site..
 
For more on Pete Watts:
the great wen
 
For more on the Bureau of Lost Culture
www.bureauoflostculture.com 

Comics, Drugs and Rock 'n' Roll

He has published Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, Robert Crumb, J G Ballard, Hunt Emerson, Eddie Campbell, Brian Bolland, Dave McKean, Martin Rowson and Melinda Gebbie amongst others. 
His publishing house Knockabout Comics has put out books on marijuana, magic mushrooms and many other aspects of alternative living from West Wales to Ladbroke Grove. And he's fought the law (though the law has frequently won).With special guest DJ Food / Kev Foakes, we flick through the pages of the countercultural life of Tony Bennett hearing tales from the wild world of underground publishing, radical bookshops, obscenity trials, censorship, customs busts - and, of course  a crazy cornucopia of comics, including Gilbert Shelton’s hippy-slacker masterwork The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers.For more on Tony and Knockabout Comicshttps://www.knockaboutcomics.comFor more on DJ Foodhttps://www.djfood.orgFor more on the Bureau of Lost Culturewww.bureauoflostculture.com

Blinded by The Light - A Countercultural History of Spectacles

What do Morrissey, Dorothy Parker, Le Corbusier, Harold Lloyd, Janis Joplin, Andy Warhol, Alan Ginsberg, Michael Caine, Gloria Steinem, Buddy Holly, John Lennon, Jarvis Cocker have in common?
 
Like around 65% of the British population they needed some sort of vision correction - aka glasses.
 
Writer and cultural commentator  Travis Elborough returns to the Bureau to talk about his forthcoming book: 'Through the Looking Glasses: The Spectacular Life of Spectacles’ (Little Brown).
 
We take a long look at the wonderful and wonky world of glasses from the Middle Ages to the present - along with a cast of spec. wearing monks, artisans, foppish dandies, wonks, nerds, bohemians, bands, spies and film stars as we examine the story of eyewear through the lens of the counterculture. 
 
For more on Travis and his work
https://traviselborough.co.uk
 
For more on Bureau of Lost Culture
www.bureauoflostculture.com 

How the Beatles Rocked the Kremlin

Cold War Spy meets The Fab Four in the USSR
 
When Leslie Woodhead was asked by Granada TV to film a new young music group in a club in Liverpool in 1962, he had no idea what he was in for - and neither had the rest of the world. He was witnessing the birth of a phenomenon that was about to have a huge impact on both the culture and the counterculture. But by then he had already had another extraordinary experience - serving a stint as a cold war spy, learning Russian on a remote Scottish pig farm and spending time eavesdropping on Soviet pilots from West Berlin.
 
These experiences continued to influence his life as a multi-award winning film maker, finally coalescing in his documentary ‘How the Beatles Rocked the Kremlin’.
 
In this episode, we trace the almost unbelievable transformational effect the Fab Four had on young Russians in the 60s and 70s - an effect that many believed was more significant than all the cold war western propaganda and the threat of nuclear attack combined, in helping to bring about perestroika and the fall of the Soviet empire. 
 
For more on Leslie and his work
https://www.lesliewoodhead.com
 
For more on Bureau of Lost Culture
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NICO - You are Beautiful and You are Alone

She was a singer, songwriter, musician, muse, model, actress and artist. She had roles in several films, including Fellini's La Dolce Vita and Andy Warhol's Chelsea Girls, fronted The Velvet Underground, made many albums solo and toured for over two decades. She inspired many other artists including Bjork, Siousxie, Iggy Pop and Morrissey. Yet NICO’s life has often been reduced to a series of myths about junkiedom, decay, difficult behaviour and wasted talent.
 
Rock ’n’ Roll historian Jennifer Otter Bickerdike comes to the Bureau to set matters straight and talk about her upcoming book 'You Are Beautiful and You Are Alone: The Biography of Nico’(Faber).  We dig into fandom, fables and why female musicians, junkies and artists in the counterculture have been treated differently, even mythologised differently, than their male counterparts; and why Iggy Pop is still so cool and why Nico still matters.
 
For more on Jen and the book
https://www.jenniferotterbickerdike.com
 
For more on Bureau of Lost Culture
www.bureauoflostculture.com