*The Bureau of Lost Culture broadcast curious, rare, half-forgotten, half-remembered countercultural stories, oral histories and tales from the underground. *Join host Stephen Coates and a wide range of guests including musicians, writers and cultural commentators like Billy Bragg, Lisa Law, Michael Moorcock, Alan Moore, Jill Drower, Peter Coyote and Johnny Marr in conversation. *Listen live on Saturdays at 9.00am on London’s premier independent station Soho Radio or via catch-up on all major podcast providers: *The Bureau is now collected at The British Library Sound Archive
Episodes
Monday Nov 27, 2023
Monday Nov 27, 2023
*Niels Bohr discovered the structure of the atom in a dream, Coleridge wrote Kubla Khan after a dream, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein was inspired by a dream,
Hergé ’s 'Tintin in Tibet' - the first of many Tintin stories - the same.
*Keith Richards claimed to have dreamed the riff to 'Satisfaction', Paul McCartney the melody to 'Yesterday’ - the most covered pop song in history. Hell, even Aphex Twin says that 70% of his album 'Selected Ambient Works Volume II' was written whilst lucid dreaming
*This episode is all about The Dreaming - and our guide is one of the UK’s foremost dream researchers: SARAH JANES.
Hergé ’s 'Tintin in Tibet' - the first of many Tintin stories - the same.
*Keith Richards claimed to have dreamed the riff to 'Satisfaction', Paul McCartney the melody to 'Yesterday’ - the most covered pop song in history. Hell, even Aphex Twin says that 70% of his album 'Selected Ambient Works Volume II' was written whilst lucid dreaming
*This episode is all about The Dreaming - and our guide is one of the UK’s foremost dream researchers: SARAH JANES.
*We talk about dreaming as countercultural consciousness, lucid dreaming, dreams and psychedelics, neuroscience, dreams as creative inspiration, the imagination, sleep cycles, REM, memories in dreams, alchemy, wet dreams, the dream space as the underworld - and dreaming as preparation for the afterlife.
*Sarah gives some great tips on how to become a lucid dreamer, tells us about her work - and drops a couple of mind bombs on us.
*Sarah gives some great tips on how to become a lucid dreamer, tells us about her work - and drops a couple of mind bombs on us.
#dreaming #psychedelics #theunconscious #consciousness #truth #madness #counterculture #sleep #luciddreaming #dreams #neuroscience #consciousness
Saturday Nov 11, 2023
Saturday Nov 11, 2023
•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
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
Tuesday Oct 31, 2023
Tuesday Oct 31, 2023
*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
#tripping #psychedelics #theunconscious #consciousness #truth #madness #counterculture #drug #lsd #ayahuasca #neuroscience #consciousness
Sunday Aug 20, 2023
Sunday Aug 20, 2023
*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.
*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
#counterculture #cults #cultleaders #newage #thenewage #secretsocieties #jimjones #jonestown #marshallapplewhite #heavensgate #thechildrenofgod #manson #charlesmanson #davidberg #scientology #guru #godbody #thehorsehospital
Sunday Jul 23, 2023
Sunday Jul 23, 2023
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.
*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.
*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).
#sex #counterculture #sexualrevolution #sexualliberation #libido #permissivesociety #thepill #miniskirt #hippie #commune #blowup #janebirkin #sergegainsbourg #nabokov #freelove #sohoradio
Sunday Jun 25, 2023
Sunday Jun 25, 2023
*'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
#pagan #counterculture #wicca #heathen #dionfortune #psychedelicsound #witch #esoteric #thegoldendawn #aleistercrowley #magic #pre-christian
Sunday Jun 11, 2023
Sunday Jun 11, 2023
*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.
#joujouka #counterculture #themastermusiciansofjoujouka #sufi #brianjones #psychedelicsound #psychedelicrock #williamburroughs #briongyson #rollingstones #beatgeneration #thebeats
Saturday May 27, 2023
Saturday May 27, 2023
*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.
#13thfloorelevators #counterculture #the13thfloorelevators #lsd #acid #psychedelicsound #psychedelicrock #occult #psychedelic #peyote #rokyerickson #esoteric
Sunday Apr 30, 2023
Sunday Apr 30, 2023
"You do it to yourself" sang Radiohead
Well that was certainly true of some of the subjects of this episode.
Well that was certainly true of some of the subjects of this episode.
Historian of the mind MIKE JAY returns to the Bureau to tell of the intrepid scientists, artists, writers and thinkers who were experimenting with psychoactive substances and recording their experiences in the Victorian age and onwards.
But the notion that researchers might partake of drugs if they were going to have something valuable to say about them became unacceptable.
And we hear about the first British psychedelic experiences of Aleister Crowley, W B Yeats, Havelock Ellis and Maude Gone along with some of the lesser known London Psychonauts huffing ether, chloroform and nitrous oxide in the pursuit of knowledge during the 19th century counterculture.
For Mike's book: Psychonauts: drugs and the making of the modern mind
Join us at the Bureau of Lost Culture
Listen to all our shows
#london #drugs #psychoactive #psychedelic #humphreydavy #wbyeats #aleistercrowley #occult #jameslee #morphine #heroin #opium #hashish #nitrousoxide #science
Saturday Apr 01, 2023
Saturday Apr 01, 2023
He was a member of some of the most influential post punk bands: Magazine, The Birthday Party and The Bad Seeds. He's collaborated with a whole range of artists including Nick Cave, Iggy Pop, Diamanda Galas, David Lynch, Jarvis Cocker, Atticus Ross and Depeche Mode. He's written film scores, made films himself, made many solo records and recently published an extraordinary memoir of youth: 'Up Above the City and Down Beneath the Stars.’
The Jazz Devil Barry Adamson came to the Bureau to talk about his life and times - and about bones, about being an outsider, about Manchester in the 70s, about Punk, luck, trouble - and about heroin addiction.
And we discuss the alchemical process of turning darkness into artness and signposts and signal moments along the way.
For more on Barry
Join us at the Bureau of Lost Culture
All shows
#manchester #barryadamson #magazine #thebirthdayparty #thebadseeds #nickcave #howarddevoto #theclash #punk #postpunk #heroin #davidlynch #jazzdevil #nickcave #johnnymarr
Sunday Mar 19, 2023
Sunday Mar 19, 2023
*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
Monday Mar 06, 2023
Monday Mar 06, 2023
*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
#counterculture #thediggers #petercoyote #psychedelic #mescaline #peyote #haightashbury #freefamil #london #hellsangels #kenkesey #zen #america
Saturday Feb 18, 2023
Saturday Feb 18, 2023
*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
*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
Sunday Jan 08, 2023
Sunday Jan 08, 2023
*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
Sunday Nov 20, 2022
Sunday Nov 20, 2022
She worked as a go-go dancer, stripper and glamour model. She's been a performance artist of masochistic tangos and twisted mambos, a ballroom dance teacher, a street arts choreographer and a punk-rock drummer. She worked with Throbbing Gristle, Genesis P Orridge, Monte Cazzaza, and Derek Jarman.
*And she was there at the formation of Adam and the Ants and the Monochrome Set.
*Dorothy Max Prior joins us to talk about her wonderful book '69 Exhibition Road Twelve True-Life Tales from the Fag End of Punk, Porn & Performance’ published by Strange Attractor Press.
*We hear about gay London in the 70s, the derelict city, bedsit land, fetish wear, rubber miniskirts, Westwood and Mclaren, The Sex Pistols, The Clash, The Roxy, The Monochrome Set, her own band Rema Rema and of course Stuart Leslie Goddard, better known as Adam Ant..
*We hear about gay London in the 70s, the derelict city, bedsit land, fetish wear, rubber miniskirts, Westwood and Mclaren, The Sex Pistols, The Clash, The Roxy, The Monochrome Set, her own band Rema Rema and of course Stuart Leslie Goddard, better known as Adam Ant..
*For more on Max’s book: http://strangeattractor.co.uk/shoppe/69-exhibition-road/
The Bureau of Lost Culture: https://www.bureauoflostculture.com
#counterculture #punk #thesexpistols #theclash #remarema #theroxyclub #dorothymaxprior #adamant #adamandtheants #themonochromeset #london
Sunday Nov 06, 2022
Sunday Nov 06, 2022
*You couldn’t turn up at at any self respecting psychedelic hangout, countercultural club, happening, be-in or even disco in the late sixties and seventies without being immersed in the cosmic cloud of swirling dreamy liquid images, shapes and colours of the light shows illuminating and enhancing the music.
*Our counterculural companion in arms, Kevin Foakes, DJ Food, turntablist, graphic designer-par-excellence - and now author - returns to the Bureau to talk about his wonderful new book 'Wheels of Light’, published by Four Corners Books - a visual voyage through the history of British light show from 1970 to 1990, and a gorgeous multi-coloured sensory experience in itself, bursting with amazing images and art.
*If we took a trip in a time machine we might find them a little primitive given the multi media hi-tech laser extravaganzas we've got used to, but back in the days of love, the psychedelic light shows were genuinely revolutionary, mind bending, consciousness enhancing and state altering - particularly if augmented by a large dose of LSD.
*We hear about lighting up the UFO club, Pink Floyd and Soft Machine and we are joined by Neil Rice, co-founder of Optikinetics, one of the main suppliers of the projectors and gizmos that created the psychedelic light shows of the 60s and 70s - and by Jennie Caldwell, practicing light jockey for many bands in the subsequent summers of love of the 80s and 90s, including those cosmic warriors on the edge of time, Hawkwind.
*For More on Kev / DJ Food: https://www.djfood.org
*For Kev’s 'Wheels of Light’ book: https://www.fourcornersbooks.co.uk/books/wheels-of-light/
*The Bureau of Lost Culture: https://www.bureauoflostculture.com
#lightshow #hawkwind #pinkfloyd #sydbarret #UFOclub #softmachine #psychedelic #lsd #ravescene #summeroflove #tripping
Monday Oct 24, 2022
Monday Oct 24, 2022
*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
*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
Monday Sep 12, 2022
Monday Sep 12, 2022
*"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
Monday Aug 15, 2022
Monday Aug 15, 2022
*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
Monday Jul 04, 2022
Monday Jul 04, 2022
The People's Republic of Frestonia, a countercultural micronation, was formed in three streets in North Kensington in the heady years of late seventies London.
*Long before the Occupy movement, a group of squatters, radicals, artists and activists decided to fight back against a local authority bent on evicting them from their homes and declared the area independent of the UK. Drawing huge media interest, some derision and lot of goodwill, they had their own passports, stamps and theatre and even applied to join the United Nations.
One of them, the psychotherapist Josefine Speyer, Frestonia's minister of Culture, comes to visit the Bureau for an hour or so to tell us what it was all about - and all about the countercultural journey she made to live there from her youth in Germany. We hear of communes in Berlin and Scotland, travelling in a gypsy caravan in Wales, home births and hash cookies in a cow shed and of some of the many alternative projects initiated by her radical activist husband Nicholas Albery.
*And we learn how they came to found the Natural Death Centre, blowing the lid on the secretive cabal that controlled the funeral industry and returning death and dying back to where it belongs - with the people..
For more about Frestonia: http://www.frestonia.org
A list of Micronations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_micronations
For the Natural Death Centre: http://www.naturaldeath.org.uk
More on Josefine: https://deathcafe.com/profile/25/
Monday Jun 20, 2022
Monday Jun 20, 2022
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
Monday May 23, 2022
Monday May 23, 2022
*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:
#ginsberg #kerouac #williamburroughs #beatpoets #beatgeneration #counterculture
Monday May 09, 2022
Monday May 09, 2022
*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
Sunday Apr 24, 2022
Sunday Apr 24, 2022
* From Colin Wilson to Tony Wilson, Patti Smith to Mark E Smith, what was it like coming of age in the counterculture of Manchester in the 60s, 70s and 80s?
* Johnny Marr has just released his latest record and his band's on tour with Blondie. He's worked with Billie Eilish on the Academy award winning theme for the Bond blockbuster No Time to Die and with all sorts of other artists including Hans Zimmer, Modest Mouse, The The and The Pretenders.
* He’s had chart hits with Electronic, and, oh yeah, he co-piloted one of the best loved and influential British bands of all time - The Smiths.
* We don’t really talk about that - but we do dig deep into archetypal psychology, northern peak experience, clothes, records, books, youth culture and reading the road signs along the way to your destiny..
* Image credit: Andy Cotterill
* For More on Johnny: https://johnnymarr.com
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Monday Mar 28, 2022
Monday Mar 28, 2022
* In 1967 and and 1968, an ordinary north London house contained an Exploding Galaxy - a psychedelic commune and carnival of theatrical performers, artists and performance poets bent on transforming the city through spontaneous happenings, countercultural interventions and street activism..
* One of them was only 15 years old. Now all grown up, JILL DROWER comes to the Bureau to talk about her time at 99 Balls Pond Road as a Galaxy member - how the whole crazy endeavour came about - and how it exploded into and out of existence
Alson the way we visit The UFO club, The 14 Hour Technicolour Dream, hear about ‘scrudging’ , bent coppers intent on busting hippies for being hippies and the lost dream of peace, love and understanding that once might have changed everything.
* For More on The Exploding Galaxy http://www.djfood.org/category/bureau-of-lost-culture/
* For Kev's amazing psychedelic DJ FOOD archive https://djfood/org
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Sunday Mar 13, 2022
Sunday Mar 13, 2022
* Withnail and I, Poets, Spiritualists, Irish, Spanish and Hugenot immigrants, Serial Killers, Artists, Railway workers, William Blake, Rimbaud and Verlaine, Walter Sickert, Sex, Drugs, Rock’n’Roll, Music Hall, Folk, Britpop, Levitation, The Roundhouse, Cecil Sharp House, The New Jerusalem, Markets, Markets, Markets..
* Writer, researcher and walker of Lost Rivers Tom Bolton leads us up and out of The Bureau to wander through the streets and stories of the London Borough of Camden - for decades, the down and dirty end of the countercultural city - in search of the strange spirits that still pervade its highways and byways.
* For more on Tom and his work https://tombolton.co.uk
* Bureau Home www.bureauoflostculture.com
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Sunday Feb 27, 2022
Sunday Feb 27, 2022
* Ninja Tune head honcho and Coldcut co-pirate Jonathan More returns to the Bureau to talk about his adventures hi-jinxing and hi-jacking the airwaves in the Wild West of South London.
* For the second in our trilogy on illicit broadcasting, we hear tales of DJ derring-do during the birth Of Kiss Fm, once one of the coolest of the urban pirate radio stations and its transition to the commercial mainstream.
* And in the mix, we debate how the mainstream is dependent on the underground, the culture feeds on the counterculture, and along the way go crate-digging into how Jon caught the disease of collecting vinyl, putting on warehouse parties, life-changing meetings in London taxis, pirate TV, Coldcut's Solid Steel show - and nuclear power station ephemera..
* For Jon and Coldcut http://coldcut.net
* Jon’s Soho Radio show Out to Lunch https://sohoradiolondon.com/profile/jon-more/
Thanks for audio samples and info:
* DJ Food https://www.djfood.org/
* The Pirate Radio Archive https://www.thepiratearchive.net/
* AMFM.0rg https://www.amfm.org.uk/
* Death is Not the End https://deathisnot.bandcamp.com/album/london-pirate-radio-adverts-1984-1993-vol-1
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Tuesday Jan 18, 2022
Tuesday Jan 18, 2022
Multi-award winning writer, musician, editor, essayist and inventor of the multiverse, Michael Moorcock, beams into the Bureau for the first episode exploring his deeply countercultural life in literature and London
It’s an action-packed hour involving The Beats, William Burroughs, Soho, J G Ballard, Tarzan, Conan the Barbarian, anarchists, a Rolls Royce, myth, skiffle, fanzines, comics and books, books books.
We hear how a precocious teenage Michael sets out on a career that led to the writing of over a hundred books and the creation of the well-loved characters including Elric and Jerry Cornelius who inhabit them, and we hear a revelation that will surprise even die-hard Moorcock afficionados..
For more on Michael
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Sunday Nov 21, 2021
Sunday Nov 21, 2021
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
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Monday Oct 25, 2021
Monday Oct 25, 2021
Jon More, one half of cut-and-paste collage kings Coldcut and co-founder with Matt Black of Ninja Tune record label, joins turntablist, crate digger Strictly Kev of DJ Food as we dig deep into the wild and wonky world of sampling - the borrowing, plundering, adapting and re-imagining of existing audio, songs and sounds to create new audio, songs and sounds.
Sampling might have started off as a countercultural underground cut-and-paste technique used by experimental artists but it ended up powering a huge amount of hip-hop tunes and some very big hit records.
We hear some of Jon and Kev's favourite sampling selections, learn about the creative use of the tape recorder pause button, and delve into sound art, musique concrète and pop cultural pick-pocketing down the ages.
For more on Jon and Coldcut
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Monday Sep 13, 2021
Monday Sep 13, 2021
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 project
www.thedivinerascal.com
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Thursday May 27, 2021
Thursday May 27, 2021
Journalist and counterculture commentator Peter Watts joins us to talk about The UFO Club, the massively influential short-lived London club of the late 1960s established by Joe Boyd and John "Hoppy” Hopkins.
It featured light shows, poetry readings, avant-garde art by Yoko Ono and many rock acts (Pink Floyd, Jimi Hendrix, Procul Harem) who later became massive.
For a brief two year period, it acted as the epicentre of the whirligig of summer of love underground London with a 'who's who of the counterculture' guest list and set the standards for psychedelic fashion and design.
Peter’s blog on London and counterculture:
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Sunday Jan 03, 2021
Sunday Jan 03, 2021
Hawkwind: Never in fashion but never out of it, piratical pagan proto-punks, avatars of the underground, figureheads of the free festival scene, innovative heralds of the rave generation, cosmic space rockers with street fighter spirit - there is no one like them.
We meet with Joe Banks author of “Hawkwind: Days Of The Underground – Radical Escapism In The Age Of Paranoia” (Strange Attractor Press) to explore the story of a much loved band that have gradually come to win the respect of many of the most cynical of critics - perhaps partly just by virtue of still being around, but mainly by sticking to their fiercely independent, idiosyncratc, anti-corporate, psychedelic ethos.
And we return to the West London musical, social melting pot we have previously explored with Nick Laird Clowes to uncover the fertile countercultural ground that gave birth to Hawkwind and in which they played such an important role.
For more on Joe Banks
Tuesday Dec 01, 2020
Tuesday Dec 01, 2020
One afternoon in the mid 1960s, Pete Jenner left off marking exam papers at the London School of Economics and popped into the Marquee club. There was a band playing, They changed his life - and he changed theirs.
Pete enters the Bureau of Lost Culture to tell us about discovering The Pink Floyd, the band he and Andrew King guided from darlings of the underground to early commercial success.
But that was just the beginning. We hear about Pete' early life as the son of a radical vicar and how politics and music blended in his involvement in the early days of the West London Underground scene: The London Free School, The Tabernacle, The UFO club and the start of the Hyde Park festivals.
We learn about the tragic disintegration of Syd Barrett who Pete and Andrew King chose to back whilst Pink Floyd went onto to global stardom, and we learn something about the ins and outs of a life spent in music, fostering the careers of Marc Bolan, Roy Harper, Ian Drury, The Clash and Billy Bragg amongst many others..
Wednesday Sep 16, 2020
Wednesday Sep 16, 2020
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'
Wednesday Sep 16, 2020
Wednesday Sep 16, 2020
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
Wednesday Sep 16, 2020
Wednesday Sep 16, 2020
‘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:
For more on Bureau Of Lost Culture
Wednesday Sep 16, 2020
Wednesday Sep 16, 2020
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 Culture
www.bureauoflostculture.com
More about Mike's work
