free press

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 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

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 
 

Post-Punk Druidry - with Youth

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

Liberation Part 2: Glad to be Gay

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

Liberation Part 1: Coming out in the Counterculture

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

The Beat Goes On: The Sounds of Allen Ginsberg

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

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 

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

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

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
 
 

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

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 

Birth, Death - and Frestonia

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

Women, Sex, Counterculture

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

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 Exploding Galaxy

* In 1967 and and 1968, an ordinary north London house contained an Exploding Galaxy - a psychedelic commune and carnival of theatrical performers, artists and performance poets bent on transforming the city through spontaneous happenings, countercultural interventions and street activism..
 
* One of them was only 15 years old. Now all grown up, JILL DROWER comes to the Bureau to talk about her time at 99 Balls Pond Road as a Galaxy member - how the whole crazy endeavour came about - and how it exploded into and out of existence
 
Alson the way we visit The UFO club, The 14 Hour Technicolour Dream, hear about  ‘scrudging’ , bent coppers intent on busting hippies for being hippies and the lost dream of peace, love and understanding that once might have changed everything.
 
 
* For More on The Exploding Galaxy http://www.djfood.org/category/bureau-of-lost-culture/
 
 
* For Kev's amazing psychedelic DJ FOOD archive https://djfood/org
 
* The Bureau Home https://www.bureauoflostculture.com
* The Bureau Instagram https://www.instagram.com/bureauoflostculture/
* The Bureau Newsletter  https://lp.constantcontactpages.com/su/N0ZYoFu/BOLC 
 

A Countercultural History of Camden Town

* Withnail and I, Poets, Spiritualists, Irish, Spanish and Hugenot immigrants, Serial Killers, Artists, Railway workers, William Blake, Rimbaud and Verlaine, Walter Sickert, Sex, Drugs, Rock’n’Roll, Music Hall, Folk, Britpop, Levitation, The Roundhouse, Cecil Sharp House, The New Jerusalem, Markets, Markets, Markets..
 
* Writer, researcher and walker of Lost Rivers Tom Bolton leads us up and out of The Bureau to wander through the streets and stories of the London Borough of Camden - for decades, the down and dirty end of the countercultural city - in search of the strange spirits that still pervade its highways and byways.
 
* For more on Tom and his work https://tombolton.co.uk
 
* Bureau Home www.bureauoflostculture.com
* Bureau Instagram https://www.instagram.com/bureauoflostculture/
* The Bureau Newsletter  https://lp.constantcontactpages.com/su/N0ZYoFu/BOLC 

The Countercultural World of Iain Sinclair

Writer, film maker, poet, flaneur, metropolitan shaman, curator of lost cultures, beat aficionado, and underground poet Iain Sinclair takes us on a walk through his life in the counterculture. 
 
We have brief encounters with Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Alan Moore, Michael Moorcock, Peter Ackroyd, J.G.Ballard and Nicholas Hawksmoor as we hear tales of the poetry underground, life working as a Hackney council gardener, blacklegging in the London docks, cigars in Clerkenwell, an epic ancestral journey from Leadenhall Market to Peru, DIY-publishing, writing, writing, writing, and of course The City, as we circle towards hearing Iain reading selections from Lud Heat, the epic 1975 piece that was destined to become the root text of London psychogeography.
 
For more on on Iain and his work:
www.iainsinclair.org.uk
 
----------
Get the Bureau's Newsletter
 
Support our wild endeavours
 
The Bureau of Lost Culture Home
 
Go on - follow, rate and review us - or be in touch directlybureauoflostculture@gmail.com
We'd love to hear from you.-------------
 

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/
----------
Get the Bureau's Newsletter
 
Support our wild endeavours
 
The Bureau of Lost Culture Home
 
Go on - follow, rate and review us - or be in touch directlybureauoflostculture@gmail.com
We'd love to hear from you.-------------
 

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
 
----------
Get the Bureau's Newsletter
 
Support our wild endeavours
 
The Bureau of Lost Culture Home
 
Go on - follow, rate and review us - or be in touch directlybureauoflostculture@gmail.com
We'd love to hear from you.-------------
 
 

Which One’s Pink? Managing the Counterculture

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..
 
For more on the Bureau of Lost Culture
www.bureauoflostculture.com
 

Days in the Life: The Language of Counterculture

Chick.Trip.Dope, Pad. Heavy. Cool. Scene. Man. Beat. Freak. Weed. Bang. Square. Blast. Cat. Gas!
 
In an action packed episode, we spend a Soho afternoon with 'Mr Slang’ Jonathon Green discussing his amazing life in the counterculture, writing for Rolling Stone and the underground magazines including IT, OZ and Friends. 
 
Then we dig deep into his ground breaking catalogue of the counterculture: ‘Days in the Life: Voices from the English Underground' with its interviews of over a hundred figures involved in the counterculture including Paul McCartney, Barry Miles and Jenny Fabian.
 
And, as Jonathon is our foremost lexicographer of slang, he takes us on wander into the weird and wonderful world of countercultural language, exploring where all those hippie and beatnik words came from and discovering why ‘Fuck' is not in fact a swear word.
 
For more on Jonathon’s books
http://jonathongreen.co.uk
 
For more on Jonathon’s Slang Dictionaries
https://greensdictofslang.com
 
For more on the Bureau of Lost Culture
www.bureauoflostculture.com