cold war

Geiger-Counterculture: A Journey Through Atomic Albion

We are on the brink of a new nuclear age - the energy crisis, the push towards net zero and the gargantuan power requirements of AI demand it - or so we are told.  
 
But here in Britain, the old nuclear age isn’t just a historical footnote - it’s etched into the very landscape.
 
Tom Bolton went on an epic journey around the UK to explore the extraordinary, imposing locations in that landscape, from the 16 vast concrete cathedral-like power stations on remote coasts to the hidden nuclear missile silos that cast a long, physical, cultural and environmental shadow over Albion - past, present, and into the distant future.
His extraordinary new book, Atomic Albion: Journeys Around Britain's Nuclear Power Stations, not only maps the physical geography of Britain’s atomic ambitions, but also digs into their psychic, mythic and cultural impact. 
With great power comes great responsibility, as Spider-Man's Uncle Pete said. And of course, where there is state power, there has always been countercultural dissent, quite rightly in this case, because the power we unleashed by splitting the atom could bring us to the very brink of oblivion..
#atomic #atomicage #nuclear #nuclearpower #nuclearweapons #atombomb #powerstaions #albion #atomicalbion #counterculture 
 

The Spell of David Lynch

When the filmmaker David Lynch died earlier this year, fans created shrines filled with coffee, doughnuts, cigarettes and blue roses; a level of spontaneous mourning more common for dead rock stars or royalty than filmmakers. His auctioned belongings sold for staggering sums, almost as if they were relics, showing how many people felt deeply connected to his work.
Why?
David was that unusual figure - an artist who had mainstream success but seemed to remain defiantly and deeply countercultural.
How?
And, this was a man who had an adjective  - ‘Lynchian’ - named after him
But what does that mean?
The writer and cultural historian  John Higgs, returns to the Bureau. His new book ‘Lynchian: The Spell of David Lynch’  tries to answer those questions while taking a deep dive into the hidden depths of Lynch's films - where beauty and horror, dream and reality, suburban innocence and lurking evil co-exist; where simple pleasures—coffee, pie, music—take on a sacred resonance in contrast to violence and decay. Where we can take a journey into darkness and out again - changed.
And we dig into art, consciousness, dreaming, ideas and the writer's life in these changing times.
#DavidLynch
#Lynchian
#TwinPeaks
#CinemaOfDreams
#SurrealCinema
#BlueVelvet
#FilmNoir
#Mulhollanddrive
#CultFilm
#DreamLogic
#transcendentalmeditation
 

This is Penny Rimbaud - Part One

Penny Rimbaud , who has spent more than half a century living the ideals that most of us only talk about, has been described as an activist philosopher, an anarchist, a Zen Buddhist. Though he would likely not recognise those descriptions, he is certainly a poet, a musician, an artist.
Born Jeremy John Ratter in 1943, in the late 1960s, together with artist Gee Vaucher, he founded Dial House, an open community and creative refuge in rural Essex. It became both a home and a hub — a living experiment in anarchism, art, and radical living, from which emerged Crass, a band that tore apart punk’s nihilism and replaced it with a fierce moral energy: anti-war, anti-sexism, anti-consumerism — but pro-peace, pro-freedom, and defiantly DIY.
Their black-and-white graphics, polemical lyrics, and uncompromising stance made them one of the most influential and challenging acts of their time.
When Crass disbanded in 1984, Penny kept on creating, often with Gee. He became a prolific poet, writer, and spoken-word performer, continuing to explore themes of love, pacifism, and spiritual autonomy.
Now in his eighties, he still lives and works at Dial House — still questioning authority, still seeking truth through art and language.
We range back and forth across Penny's personal history and his thoughts on culture, capitalism, art and the very notion of the self.  
In his own words: 
“There is no authority but yourself.”  
----
During this conversation, we hear:
'Dulce et Decorum Est’ - from What Passing Bells (The War Poems of Wilfred Owen)
‘How?’ - from How?
‘Of Summer's Passing' - with Peter Vukomirovic - from Of Summer's Passing
'Oh America'  - with Youth - from Oh America
#counterculture #crass #pennyrimbaud #anarchism #capitalism #dialhouse #artschool #
 

Roots, Radical and Rockers - With Billy Bragg

As musician and activist BILLY BRAGG makes a welcome return as a voice of countercultural sanity, we revisit the Lost History of Skiffle as he takes us on an extraordinary whirlwind tour through the music that the counterculture forgot.
 
Along the way, we hear about the emergence of The Teenager in post-war Britain, the massive impact of Rock Around the Clock, the Soho espresso bar culture of the 50s and the birth of British youth culture.
 
We explore why Skiffle, which soundtracked that youth culture for a few intense years and was the inspiration for musicians in The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, The Who and The Rolling Stones, has been oddly forgotten.  And Billy explains why, as the first British DIY musical revolution, Skiffle provided the template for the Punk movement of the 70s that was to inspire him.
 
Along the way, we get educated about the post-war 'trad jazz' movement, the cultural stranglehold of the BBC - and the terrific transformatory power of a guy - or a girl - with a guitar.
 
For more on Billy and his book Roots, Radicals and Rockers:
https://www.billybragg.co.uk/product/roots-radicals-and-rockers-how-skiffle-changed-the-world-hardback-signed-by-billy/
 
#skiffle #billybragg #beatles #rock'n'roll #teenager #1950 #musichistory 

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 

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
 

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

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 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

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
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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 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
 

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 #

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 

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

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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The Soviet 'Punk Frank Zappa'

We meet with film director Olivia Litchenstein and BBC Russian Arts presenter Alexander Kan to hear about the extraordinary musician Sergey Kuryokhin, ‘the Soviet Punk Frank Zappa’ who with his underground cohorts in Leningrad tried to soundtrack perestroika as the cold war crumbled around them.
Olivia tells of the strange circumstances of the making of the BBC TV series Comrades during the twilight of the Soviet Empire, with tales of tapes smuggled in diplomatic bags and a bizarre intervention by Ronald Reagan.
Alex tells of his friendship with Kuryokhin, an incredibly talented, charming musical provocateur whose live performances astonished Russian audiences.  And we learn of the bizarre prank Kuryokhin played on National TV claiming Lenin was a magic mushroom, just one of many dadaist interventions he made before his tragically early death.
The Comrades program featuring Sergey Kuryokhin: https://youtu.be/ibY2lXdgdnM
For more on The Bureau of Lost Culture:
www.bureauoflostculture.com

The Invisible Battle of the Cold War Airwaves

This Episode explore three stories of cold war era radio in the USSR: Soviet Radio Jammers, the Russian ‘Woodpecker’ and the Soviet Radio Hooligans
We meet with Russian broadcaster Vladimir Raevsky to talk about radio jamming in cold war era Soviet Union.
As East and West super powers square up to each with nuclear weapons, a parallel invisible war is being fought in the airwaves.
Hundreds of millions of dollars are spent on broadcasting propaganda and music into the Soviet Union - and on attempting to block them from being heard.
Stephen tells the strange story of the ‘Russian Woodpecker’, a dystopian broadcasting station near the Chernobyl nuclear reactor and alleged attempts to brainwash the West using radar.
BBC Russian Arts correspondant Alex Kan, sits in a London cafe and tells of the brave young ‘Radio hooligans' who broadcast their own individual pirate radio shows during his youth in the USSR.
For More on the Bureau of Lost Culture:
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