america

Ibiza and The Meteoric Rise of Club Culture - From Arty to Party

Sunshine + Love, Beats + Drugs
 
How did a sleepy island off the coast of Spain, metamorphose from an artistic, countercultural haven into the global epicentre of electronic dance music, lighting the touch paper that caused the explosion of club culture?
 
Alexis Petridis, chief music writer for The Guardian, and Dean Chalkley, one of the UK’s leading photographers of British subculture (both seasoned ravers), witnessed this extraordinary rise from the underground at Mixmag, the clubbers’ bible, and have documented the subsequent transformations.
 
Alexis takes us on a trip through the island’s bohemian past and tells how its unique combination of natural beauty, 60s counterculture and 70s glamour set the scene for an extraordinary pop cultural explosion in the 80s and 90s that would resonate through the Western world.
 
The photographs in Dean’s new book ‘Back in Ibiza 1998 - 2003’ , taken in the heat of many magic moments, capture the golden age of happy, all-in-it-together, 24 hour party people, bacchanalian excess, and sunkissed beach life the island offered before the corporate monsters of superstar DJs, big brands and VIP lounges swallowed it whole.
 
For more on Dean
Alexis on music
Alexis on Club Culture
 
Images courtesy Dean Chalkley
#BureauOfLostCulture, #IbizaClubCulture, #Rave, #BalearicBeats, #90sClubScene, #80sClubScene, #IbizaHistory, #AcidHouse #CultureUnderground, #Dancemusic,  #LostCultureFound,#mdma, #pasha, #nickyholloway, #superstardjs 
 

Myths of the Magic Mushroom

The evolutionary leap from ape to human was precipitated by primates eating psychoactive fungi, there is an ancient shamanic lineage of psychedelic plant use in the West, mushrooms have their own consciousness, drinking Reindeer piss can get you high.. there are many myths about magic mushrooms.
 
Meanwhile, we are living through a kind of psychedelic renaissance: psilocybin is often in the press, hailed as a potential treatment, for depression, addiction, grief, psychosis - and a way to be more productive and well-adjusted.
 
What to make of it all? Has the counterculture gone mainstream? Never mind The Age of Aquarius, is this The Age of the Mushroom?
 
Andy Letcher is a British scholar, author, activist and musician. His work explores the intersections of psychedelics, culture, paganism and folk traditions, and 20 years ago he published 'Shroom: A Cultural History of the Magic Mushroom'.  
 
He came to the Bureau to discuss it, how things have changed since he wrote it - and the myths behind the magic.
 
For more on Andy
#bureauoflostculture #magicmushroom #psilocybin #terencemckenna #psychedelic #grahamwasson #mariasabina #libertycaps #tripping #psychoactive

Burroughs, Bowles and The Tangier Interzone

Tangier was a magnet for artists, writers, musicians, and political exiles throughout the mid-20th century, amongst them the writers Paul Bowles and William Burroughs
 
From 1924 to 1956 the city operated as an international zone under the joint administration of several European powers. This status created an environment of legal ambiguity, which, combined with the city’s strategic location at the crossroads of Africa and Europe, made it a haven for those seeking escape from the constraints of conventional society
 
The zone had  a sense of lawlessness and freedom, attracting a diverse mix of expatriates, spies, smugglers, and avant-garde intellectuals. The city’s permissive attitude towards drugs, homosexuality,and radical political thought made it a particularly alluring destination for members of the counterculture.
 
Composer and writer Paul Bowles, settled there and drew members of the Beat Generation to the city to be inspired, to complete their projects and to live the Moroccan dream. Few lived in human dialogue with the locals, operating rather as economically priveleged colonial bohemians 
 
William Burroughs' time in Tangier in the 1950s deeply influenced his novel Naked Lunch. Burroughs saw the city as a place where the constraints of Western morality could be discarded in favor of a more experimental and uninhibited lifestyle.
 
He christened it THE INTERZONE
 
Although the Tnagier International Zone officially ceased to exist in 1956, its mythos lived on in literature, music, and the enduring image of Tangier as a place where the world’s outsiders could find a home
 
Multimedia artist and curator Abdelaziz Taleb, director of The Arab Media Lab Project has taken a deep dive into the Interzone - both its reality and its myth, exploring the blurred line between the two.  He came to the Bureau to talk about it, the often untold influence of Moroccans on the Beats,  and the mystery of Tangier.
 
For more on Aziz and the Interzone Project and Here
 
#counterculture, #thebeatgeneration, #thebeats, #tangier, #thetangierinternationalzone, #thetangierinterzone, #interzone, #burroughs, #bowles, #williamburroughs, #paulbowles, #heroin, #nakedlunch, #thearabmediaproject, #allenginsberg, #jakckerouac,#mohammedchakri, #bryingyson, #brianjones, #joujouka,#morocco
 
 

The Birth of British Youth Culture

Teddy Boys (and Teddy Girls)emerged in Britain in the early 1950s, becoming the UK's first distinct youth subculture. 
 
Born in the aftermath of World War II, these working-class teenagers rejected post-war austerity and embraced a bold, rebellious style of dandyish suits, long drape jackets, narrow trousers, velvet collars, patterned waistcoats - and of course pomaded quiffed hair for the boys and equally sharp threads for the girls.
 
Musican and writer Max Decharne, author of 'Teddy Boys: Post-War Britain and the First Youth Revolution’, came to the Bureau to talk about the Teddys - and about Mods, Punk, the masssive influence of Bill Haley's Rock Around the Clock and of the impact the working class have had on British fashion.
 
The Teds became notorious in the media - associated with violence, for clashes with rival gangs and for their alleged involvement in the 1958 Notting Hill riots. But was that really the case? Or was it because, as working class upstarts they rattled the middle and upper class establishment?
Embracing American rock'n'roll, they became the foundation for future youth movements, proving that teenagers could form their own cultural identity, shaping Britain’s rock and roll scene and inspiring later subcultures like the Mods and Rockers.
For More on Max 
For his music
For more on the book 
Ken Russell's wonderful images of Teddy Girls
 
#teddy #teddyboys #teddygirls #quiff #rock'n'roll #billhaley #rockaroundtheclock #streetstyle #youthculture 

Spirit, Soul and Rock 'n' Roll - with Mike Scott

The Waterboys' MIKE SCOTT grew up in the '60s in Edinburgh and said: “I accepted the incredible happenings of that decade — with all its rapid evolution, colour, revelations and magic — as the normal order of things".
 
At the age of 4 he had his first mystical experience and remembers that from the minute he bought "Last Night in Soho" by Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich in 1968 he knew he had to live a life in music.In the years since he has toured the world with The Waterboys and as a solo artist, had hit records with The Whole of the Moon, This is the Sea and Fishermans Blues and has released 15 albums.
 
Mike has been unashamedly open about the importance of spirituality in his life - even when that has been deeply unfashionable in the mainstream culture.
 
Now, The Waterboys have a new record about to land. It features Bruce Springsteen, Steve Earle and Fiona Apple and it's a song cycle around the life of legendary actor and countercultural polymath Dennis Hopper.  
Mike came to the Bureau to talk about all of that, his time at the Findhorn Foundation, Life, Death and Dennis Hopper - and much more. 
For Mike and his work, music and adventures
Universal Hall
 
Findhorn Foundation
 
#thewaterboys #mikescott #brucespringsteen #findhorn #findhornfoundation #steveearle #fionaapple #ladbrokegrove #thewholeofthemoon #dennishopper

The Boy Who Became a Girl

She says: ‘I was reared Catholic but got over it, was born male but got over it, stopped sleeping with boys about the time I stopped being one and am much happier than I was when I was younger'.ROZ KAVENY is a poet, a novelist, a writer of science fiction, a reviewer, a cultural critic, a literary journalist and a celebrated  activist.
 
She has also been a sex worker - a hustler - as she would say, and has been both celebrated and denigrated.
She was born a boy in 1949, became a woman all the way back in 1982 and has led a very countercultural life indeed.
 
This is part of her story. It's a wild and at times shocking ride. It gives an insight into what it was like to come of age as trans in an era before even being gay was legalised in the UK.
 
Note: contains descriptions of sexualabuse.
 
#trans #transgender #rozkaveney #sexchange #genderdismorphia #gender #hustlers #gendersurgery
 

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
 
 
 
 

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 

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
 

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 

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 

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 

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

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
 

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
 

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
The Bureau of Lost Culture Home
 
#pagan #counterculture #wicca #heathen #dionfortune #psychedelicsound #witch #esoteric #thegoldendawn #aleistercrowley  #magic #pre-christian

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
Get our Counterculture newsletter
The Bureau of Lost Culture Home
#13thfloorelevators #counterculture #the13thfloorelevators #lsd #acid #psychedelicsound #psychedelicrock #occult #psychedelic #peyote  #rokyerickson #esoteric 

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

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
 
 

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 
 
 

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

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 a conversation about counterculture - in his own life and work, 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 adaptations of his work, the power of limitations to foster creativity and much  more.
 
*Alan’s storytelling course on BBC Maestro: 
LONDON MONTH OF THE DEAD
THE REAL TUESDAY WELD
 
Join us and support our wild endeavours 
 
#alanmoore #michaelmoorcock #counterculture #artslab #london #malcolmmclaren 

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

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
 

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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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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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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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
 
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Tonite Let's All Make Love in London: The Films of Peter Whitehead

Peter Whitehead was an innovative English writer and filmmaker who documented the counterculture in London and New York in the late 1960s.
 His film Wholly Communion captured The International Poetry Incarnation, a groundbreaking event at The Royal Albert Hall in 1965 that was to prove pivotal in the evolution of the underground  scene. The film featured poetry readings by Beat poets including Allen Ginsberg, Michael Horovitz, Adrian Mitchell and Lawrence Ferlinghetti and established Whitehead as the London counterculture’s 'Man With a Movie Camera’.
 
Film event producer Marek Pytel walks us through Whtehead's life and work including the iconic 'Tonite Let's All Make Love in London’ documentary that helped define the "swinging London" scene of the sixties with psychedelic performances and interviewees including Pink Floyd, John Lennon, Yoko Ono, Mick Jagger, Vanessa Redgrave, Lee Marvin, Julie Christie, Allen Ginsberg, Eric Burdon, Michael Caine and many others.
 
We hear how Whitehead went onto film with The Rolling Stones and Jimi Hendrix and to make provocative work about the countercultural protest movement in late 60s New York before making an extraordinary career swerve.
 
For More on Marek Pytel's work see www.realityfilm.co.uk
 
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The Man Who Turned On the World - Hollingshead Pt.1

In the first of an occasional series of broadcasts around the subject of LSD, psychedelic historian Andy Roberts takes us on the first part of a trip through the extraordinary life and times of Michael Hollingshead.
 
Hollingshead's assertion that he ‘turned on the world’ may be wildly immodest, but he did introduce Timothy Leary (and many others) to acid and thus played an essential role in the evolution of the counterculture in the USA and the UK.
 
He remains relatively forgotten - and his home town of Darlington does not figure in the topography of Acid culture - despite his tremendous consciousness changing exploits.
 
But he was no saint. Andy, whose book Divine Rascal is the first biography of Hollingshead, charts the idiosyncracies and rise and fall of a man variously described as a Zelig, holy fool, trickster, black magician, sociopath, charlatan, genius, fabulist, junkie, alcoholic, secret agent, police informer, disruptor and sex mad preacher of Love who didn't actually understand love.
 
To be continued.
 
For more on Andy and ‘Divine Rascal'
http://strangeattractor.co.uk/shoppe/divine-rascal/
 
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Barney Bubbles: Designing the Counterculture

Writer and cultural commentator Paul Gorman takes us on an exploration of the countercultural designer Barney Bubbles. It is an extraordinary story, magic and tragic by turn.
 
Bubbles, who, despite his effervescent alias, was so modest that he declined to have his name included on the many extraordinary album covers he designed, has rather faded from public awareness since his untimely suicide. But he remains much admired by lovers of album cover art and has influenced a growing coterie of graphic designers. 
 
Paul, who has championed him with a biography and three exhibitions, traces his life and work from the hard boiled world of advertising and commercial graphics in the 60s, through the psychedelic West London underground scene of the early 70s, to the post punk era of Stiff Records and beyond. Along the way we hear of some of the outpourings of the cornucopia that was Bubbles’ mind, including the designs of Frendz magazine, the Hawkwind Tarot, The Specials' Ghost Town video - and those album covers..
 
And we hear about Paul’s own journey and, as usual, speculate on the nature of this creature called ‘counterculture’.
 
For more on Paul Gorman
https://www.paulgormanis.com
 
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High Weirdness: Psychedelic Visions in 70s America

‘America’s leading scholar of High Strangeness’ Dr.Erik Davis, enters the Bureau.
We hear about Erik’s career charting the highs and lows of counterculture, esoterica and psychedelia in America and meet three of the most influential radical psychedelic characters of 1970s - the writers / thinkers / lunatics Philip K Dick, Terence McKenna and Robert Anton Wilson.
Each had extraordinary mystical experiences in the heady days of early 1970 countercultures which kickstarted an incredible outpouring of radical theories, fiction, speculations, conspiracy theories and consciousness exploration.
We hear about radical politics, drugs, strange new religions, environmentalism, cults and the darkening of the psychedelic dream as the sunny uplands of the 1960s turn into the confused melting pot of the 1970s.
For more on Erik Davis:
www.techgnosis.com
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The Secret History of Mescaline

Mike Jay, the UK’s foremost historian of psychoactive plants, joins us to talk about the deeply strange hallucinogen/drug/medicine/sacrament mescaline - a substance derived from the peyote cactus.
Whilst other psychedelic compounds are more popular - and much more in the news - Mike tells us why mescaline was actually the very first psychedelic.
We hear strange stories of drug use in 19th century London, Native American medicine ceremonies - and Bovril..
For more on the Bureau of Lost Culturewww.bureauoflostculture.com
More about Mike's work
www.mikejay.net
 

The History of the Self - Made Record

We are joined by oral historian and broadcaster Alan Dein.
We discuss the history, culture and technology of the coin-operated machines that allowed ordinary people to make a record of themselves in the West (and, in adapted bootlegged form, to create records of forbidden music in the Soviet Union) long before the advent of tape or digital recording.
We hear a selection of extraordinary recordings of strange, moving voices from Alan’s 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 X-Ray Audio
www.x-rayaudio.com
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