Podcasts about kesey

American novelist, writer, and countercultural figure

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Best podcasts about kesey

Latest podcast episodes about kesey

TrueLife
Chaos, Austerity, & AI - Learning to see in the dark…

TrueLife

Play Episode Listen Later Mar 27, 2025 24:14


Support the show:https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_USBuy Grow kit: https://modernmushroomcultivation.com/This Band willl Blow your Mind! Codex Serafini: https://codexserafini.bandcamp.com/album/the-imprecation-of-animaThe Alchemy of AshesI. The DescentThey said the road was paved in gold,but I found only dust—dust in my lungs, dust in my veins,dust in the ruins of the gods I once believed in.The stars collapsed like dying prophets,whispering riddles to the blind.I clawed through the wreckage of my former self,searching for the bones of meaning,but meaning had been set aflame,and the smoke spelled my name in tongues I'd forgotten.O fool of the waking world,O dreamer in a land of steel!Did you think the fire would spare you?Did you think the night would kneel?II. The CrucibleThere is a moment in every exilewhen the wind stops wailing,when silence presses like a lover's palm against your mouth—and you understand.Not with words, not with reason,but with the marrow of your bones,with the ache that only grief can conjure.The old world burns, the new one writhes,and somewhere between death and dawn,you learn to dance in the cinders.They call it madness, they call it sin,but Kesey called it the edge,Leary called it the key,and Morrison screamed it from the rooftopsuntil the night swallowed his voice.We have been here before,in the temples of Eleusis,in the deserts of the prophets,in the painted haze of acid visions—standing at the threshold of annihilation,laughing because we finally see.III. The RebirthLet them come with their chains, their rules, their fear—I have walked through the fire, and I am not the same.I am forged in the wreckage, baptized in the void,a child of ruin, a son of the storm.O city of sleeping minds,O kingdom of glass and smoke!You cannot hold me, you cannot name me,I have carved my own gospel into the skin of the sky.For I have seen the sacred spiral,the ouroboros coiled in eternity's palm.I have watched death weep into the river,only to rise again,only to rise again,only to rise again.And so I rise—not in chains, not in fear,but in the name of all who bled before me,all who dared to whisper to the abyssand heard it whisper back:You were never broken.You were only becoming. Support the show:https://www.paypal.me/Truelifepodcast?locale.x=en_USCheck out our YouTube:https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPzfOaFtA1hF8UhnuvOQnTgKcIYPI9Ni9&si=Jgg9ATGwzhzdmjkgGrow your own:https://modernmushroomcultivation.com/This Band Will Blow Your Mind: Codex Serafinihttps://codexserafini.bandcamp.com/album/the-imprecation-of-anima

Book Cult
Mini 83: The Merry Pranksters

Book Cult

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 11, 2024 21:17


Join us as we ride around with Ken Kesey and his crew of Merry Pranksters from Califnoria to New York. We will do drugs, flash truckers, and make incoherent audio & video. It is the 60s, it's the start of the hippie movement and it is a mess.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/book-cult--5718878/support.

Richard Syrett's Strange Planet
1108 MIRACULOUS MACHINE PRODUCES STRUCTURED HEALING WATER

Richard Syrett's Strange Planet

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 6, 2024 59:52


EPISODE #1108 MIRACULOUS MACHINE PRODUCES STRUCTURED HEALING WATER Richard welcomes an artist who will discuss his many adventures while traveling with Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters in the mid 1960s. He'll also discuss a revolutionary water-ionization system (Kangen Water) that transforms regular tap water into pure, healthy, electrolytically-reduced and hydrogen-rich drinking water. ​Guest: Mike Lancaster was barely a teenager when he hooked up with the famous Merry Pranksters, a collection of comrades and followers of American author Ken Kesey in 1964. Kesey and the Merry Pranksters lived communally at Kesey's homes in California and Oregon, and are noted for the sociological significance of a lengthy road trip they took in the summer of 1964, traveling across the United States in a psychedelic painted school bus called Furthur, organizing parties and giving out LSD. WEBSITE: https://www.onfurthur.com SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS!!! HIMS - Making Healthy and Happy Easy to Achieve Sexual Health, Hair Loss, Mental Health, Weight Management START YOUR FREE ONLINE VISIT TODAY - HIMS dot com slash STRANGE https://www.HIMS.com/strange BECOME A PREMIUM SUBSCRIBER!!! https://strangeplanet.supportingcast.fm Three monthly subscriptions to choose from. Commercial Free Listening, Bonus Episodes and a Subscription to my monthly newsletter, InnerSanctum. We and our partners use cookies to personalize your experience, to show you ads based on your interests, and for measurement and analytics purposes. By using our website and services, you agree to our use of cookies as described in our Cookie Policy. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://strangeplanet.supportingcast.fm/

Tales from the Green Room
Daughters of Grateful Dead Legends (Garcia, Hunter, Kesey) + Betty Cantor-Jackson

Tales from the Green Room

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 2, 2024 55:32


Ever wonder what it was like growing up as a true child in the Grateful Dead family? Trixie Garcia (Jerry's daughter), Jess Hunter Keilt (daughter of lyricist Robert Hunter), and Merry Prankster/Author Ken Kesey's daughter, Sunshine Kesey share fond stories of the circus atmosphere surrounding their upbringing. In a rare interview with these three ladies together, while guests backstage at the Skull & Roses Festival in Ventura, CA, they also share thoughts on the amazing longevity of the music and culture molded by their parents, and how such continues to impact people's lives. On this Earth Day interview, learn also how Friends of the Jerry Garcia Amphitheater in San Francisco has helped to preserve that venue and the surrounding open space in The City's McClaren Park, the heart of Jerry Garcia's childhood neighborhood. Adding to the roster of female Grateful Dead royalty appearing on this episode, meet Grateful Dead audio engineer, Betty Cantor-Jackson, visiting with Tales From The Green Room backstage at Terrapin Sunday Daydream Vol. 3 with Phil & Friends. Betty shares some of her journey and plight as a women in the music industry, the story of her Betty Boards recordings, and her work recording the Grateful Dead's famous Barton Hall concert at Cornell University on 5/8/77. CreditsBertha - Live at Olympia Theatre, Paris France5/3/1972Performed by Grateful Dead, Merle SaundersWritten by Jerry Garcia, Robert HunterRecording by Betty Cantor-JacksonSpotify LinkBrown-Eyed Women - Live at Barton Hall, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 5/8/1977Performed by Grateful DeadWritten by Jerry Garcia, Robert HunterRecording by Betty Cantor-JacksonYouTube Music LinkLinkshttps://www.jerryday.org/https://guides.library.ucsc.edu/gratefuldeadarchivehttps://www.instagram.com/jessiebluebell/https://relix.com/news/detail/the_betty_boards_are_now_in_the_grateful_dead_vault/#gratefuldead#jerryday#thewomenaresmarter#bettyboards#europe72#merrypranksters#terrapin

Get Lit Podcast
Get Lit Episode 279: Ken Kesey

Get Lit Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 31, 2024 46:27


Send us a Text Message.We're featuring a listener request (thanks, Dad!) - Ken Kesey. Known for his novel 'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest', Kesey wrote many other works through various forms, including articles and stories over the course of his storied career. We explore the other jobs he had, the adventures he took in between (to prison and beyond!), and the important work he advocated for! Join us on our very own trip in the Further with our own Merry Pranksters! 

On the Media
Happy Bicycle Day!

On the Media

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 17, 2024 21:42


April 19th, which is this Friday, marks an odd holiday known as Bicycle Day — the day, now 81 years ago, when Swiss scientist Albert Hofmann rode his bike home from work after dosing himself with his lab concoction, lysergic acid diethylamide, or LSD. The first acid trip.Hofmann's wobbly ride is what launches us into an exploration of a moment, when Ken Kesey, an evangelist of acid would emerge from a Menlo Park hospital lab, and plow through the nation's gray flannel culture in a candy colored bus. Some know Kesey as the enigmatic author behind One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest — others, as the driving force in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Tom Wolfe's seminal work in New Journalism. In honor of the 50th anniversary of the release of Acid Test, Brooke speaks with Wolfe and writer River Donaghey about how acid shaped Kesey, spawned the book and de-normalized American conformity.Songs:Holidays B by Ib GlindemannIm Glück by Neu!Apache '65 by Davie Allan and the ArrowsSelections from "The Acid Tests Reels" by The Merry Pranksters & The Grateful DeadAlicia by Los MonstruosThe Days Between by The Grateful Dead (Live 6/24/95)  On the Media is supported by listeners like you. Support OTM by donating today (https://pledge.wnyc.org/support/otm). Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @onthemedia, and share your thoughts with us by emailing onthemedia@wnyc.org.

The VHS Strikes Back
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975)

The VHS Strikes Back

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 3, 2024 63:30


Supporter Stephen had picked The Conversation last time around and we're going back to the 70's again with One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest this week. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), directed by Milos Forman, was a landmark production that brought Ken Kesey's celebrated novel to the screen. The film's production was marked by numerous challenges, including securing the rights to Kesey's novel, which had been previously adapted into a successful stage play. Forman collaborated closely with screenwriters Lawrence Hauben and Bo Goldman to adapt the complex narrative into a compelling screenplay. Additionally, casting the lead role of Randle McMurphy was a significant task, with Jack Nicholson ultimately chosen for his charismatic and dynamic portrayal of the rebellious anti-hero. The film also featured a talented ensemble cast, including Louise Fletcher as Nurse Ratched and Danny DeVito, who contributed to the film's authenticity and emotional depth. Filming took place primarily at the Oregon State Hospital, lending an authentic and immersive backdrop to the story's psychiatric setting. Forman's meticulous attention to detail and his ability to balance the film's darkly comedic elements with its underlying social commentary contributed to its critical and commercial success. "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" became a cultural phenomenon, earning widespread acclaim, including five Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Actor for Nicholson. Its enduring legacy as a cinematic masterpiece continues to resonate with audiences, cementing its place in film history as one of the greatest achievements in American cinema. If you enjoy the show we have a Patreon, so become a supporter. ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.patreon.com/thevhsstrikesback⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Plot Summary: Randle McMurphy is a rebellious and charismatic inmate who feigns mental illness to avoid hard labor in prison. McMurphy is transferred to a psychiatric hospital where he clashes with the tyrannical Nurse Ratched and befriends his fellow patients, including the meek Billy Bibbit and the silent Chief Bromden. McMurphy's defiance and unorthodox behavior inspire the patients to rebel against Nurse Ratched's oppressive rule, leading to a dramatic confrontation that exposes the power dynamics and injustices within the institution. ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠thevhsstrikesback@gmail.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://linktr.ee/vhsstrikesback⁠ --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/thevhsstrikesback/support

Rock N Roll Pantheon
Comes A Time: Photographer Rosie McGee Part I

Rock N Roll Pantheon

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 29, 2024 66:08


In this 2 part special of Comes A Time, photographer Rosie McGee shares stories behind her iconic photos of the Grateful Dead and San Francisco music scene in the 1960s. She started taking photos at age 12 and lived with the Dead when they moved to LA in 1966, capturing intimate behind-the-scenes moments. Her photos show the band as fresh-faced kids, like a baby-faced Bob Weir looking similar to Mike's daughter. She has great photos of Pigpen, describing him as very sweet and quiet offstage. Some of Rosie's favorite photos include young Jerry Garcia backstage with a Les Paul goldtop and lamb chops, a whimsical Grace Slick looking elf-like in Central Park, Jorma Kaukonen of Jefferson Airplane who she knew before the Dead, and a rare candid of Jerry with Owsley "Bear" Stanley which she slyly shot hiding behind a palm frond since he hated being photographed. The photos provide a fascinating look into the vibrant 1960s San Francisco music scene. Rosie reminisces about the early days and characters like Kesey, the Airplane, and more. Her photos capture intimate unguarded moments that show the humanity and bonds between these legendary figures when they were just young creative souls. Stay tuned for Part 2 with more stories behind Rosie's classic archives. Comes A Time Podcast and content posted by Comes A Time is presented solely for general informational, educational, and entertainment purposes. The use of information on this podcast or materials linked from this podcast is at the user's own risk. It is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, professional coach, psychotherapist, or other qualified professional, diagnosis, or treatment. Users should not disregard or delay in obtaining medical advice for any medical or mental health condition they may have and should seek the assistance of their healthcare professionals for any such conditions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Comes A Time
Photographer Rosie McGee: Part I

Comes A Time

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 27, 2024 66:08


In this 2 part special of Comes A Time, photographer Rosie McGee shares stories behind her iconic photos of the Grateful Dead and San Francisco music scene in the 1960s. She started taking photos at age 12 and lived with the Dead when they moved to LA in 1966, capturing intimate behind-the-scenes moments. Her photos show the band as fresh-faced kids, like a baby-faced Bob Weir looking similar to Mike's daughter. She has great photos of Pigpen, describing him as very sweet and quiet offstage. Some of Rosie's favorite photos include young Jerry Garcia backstage with a Les Paul goldtop and lamb chops, a whimsical Grace Slick looking elf-like in Central Park, Jorma Kaukonen of Jefferson Airplane who she knew before the Dead, and a rare candid of Jerry with Owsley "Bear" Stanley which she slyly shot hiding behind a palm frond since he hated being photographed. The photos provide a fascinating look into the vibrant 1960s San Francisco music scene. Rosie reminisces about the early days and characters like Kesey, the Airplane, and more. Her photos capture intimate unguarded moments that show the humanity and bonds between these legendary figures when they were just young creative souls. Stay tuned for Part 2 with more stories behind Rosie's classic archives. Comes A Time Podcast and content posted by Comes A Time is presented solely for general informational, educational, and entertainment purposes. The use of information on this podcast or materials linked from this podcast is at the user's own risk. It is not intended as a substitute for the advice of a physician, professional coach, psychotherapist, or other qualified professional, diagnosis, or treatment. Users should not disregard or delay in obtaining medical advice for any medical or mental health condition they may have and should seek the assistance of their healthcare professionals for any such conditions. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Help on the Way
We Are Wearing the Lampshade - 1/22/78

Help on the Way

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 22, 2024 136:47


Say hi to Kesey, we're going to Eugene! This week on the Help on the Way podcast, our hosts FiG and Knob are heading out west. They're going to listen to the Grateful Dead's January 22nd, 1978 show at McArthur Court at the University of Oregon. This show was released as Dave's Picks 23. Discussions abound about Vince Welnick's birthday, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and some Cornell hot takes Knob has been sitting on for years. New Minglewood Blues Dire Wolf Cassidy Peggy-O El Paso Tennessee Jed Jack Straw Row Jimmy The Music Never Stopped Bertha > Good Lovin' Ship of Fools Samson and Delilah Terrapin Station > Drums > The Other One > St. Stephen > Not Fade Away > Around and Around U.S. Blues

Grateful Dad & Friends
Flashback to ‘72 with Richard Sutton

Grateful Dad & Friends

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 15, 2024 78:44


In Episode 11 of GD&F, lifelong music-lover Richard Sutton gives us a firsthand peek into the buildup to the Grateful Dead's August 27th 1972 benefit concert in Veneta, Oregon to help save the nearly bankrupt Springfield Creamery.  In what would turn out to be one of the Dead's most legendary performances, Richard was behind-the-scenes working with the Kesey family & friends in the sweltering 100+ degree heat helping prepare the venue for the band and estimated 20,000 people who would ultimately be in attendance.  Richard describes his life on the road leading up to the epic ‘72 concert in fascinating detail.  He paints an amazingly colorful picture of his experiences living on communes and shares his incredible tale of when he stumbled onto a Grateful Dead rehearsal.  He recalls his crosscountry journey to the East Coast where he fell in love at first sight, married a beautiful model and never looked back.  Join us, and let's see where the energy takes us! #IFEhttps://music.apple.com/us/album/intro-live-at-veneta-or-8-27-72/680077190?i=680077195  https://music.apple.com/us/album/bertha-live-at-veneta-or-8-27-72/680077190?i=680077204 https://music.apple.com/us/album/ive-been-all-around-this-world-live-at-the-fillmore/1676232099?i=1676232357https://music.apple.com/us/album/workin-for-a-livin/723912623?i=723912769

Farmacia letteraria
766 - Il livello dello scontro tra scrittore e intelligenza artificiale

Farmacia letteraria

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 9, 2024 10:23


Massimiliano Ciarrocca, editor e scrittore, ha fatto riscrivere due grandi incipit della letteratura all'AI. Ecco dunque lo stato dell'arte... buon ascolto!

Lit for Christmas
Episode Nine: Surfer on Acid & Ken Kesey

Lit for Christmas

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 24, 2023 119:12


WARNING: This episode contains adult language and discussion of a certain guy in red fur that may not be appropriate for small children. Welcome to our first 'ber month Lit for Christmas party of the year! In this episode, Marty and his friend, Madeline, become Merry Prankster's as the discuss Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest in honor of what would have been Kesey's 88th birthday on September 17. BONUS POINTS: Take a drink every time someone says the word “crazy.” GHOST OF CHRISTMAS PRESENT: Surfer on Acide (recipe adapted from Liquor.com)  Ingredients 1 shot of Jagermeister (substitute non-alcoholic bourbon for non-alcoholic version) 1 shot of coconut rum (substitute coconut cream for non-alcoholic version) 1 shot of pineapple juice Pineapple wedge for garnish (optional) Ice Directions: 1.   Add all the ingredients in a shaker with ice. 2.   Shake, strain, and pour into a highball glass with ice. 3.   Garnish with pineapple wedge (optional). GHOST OF CHRISTMAS PRESENT NONALCOHOLIC ALTERNATIVE: Use ingredients and follow above directions, making the substitutions listed above. ⁠ YOUR HOSTS Marty has a Master's in fiction writing, MFA in poetry writing, and teaches in the English Department at Northern Michigan University in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.  He served two terms at Poet Laureate of the Upper Peninsula, and has published the poetry collection The Mysteries of the Rosary from Mayapple Press.  For more of Marty's thoughts and writing visit his blog Saint Marty saintmarty-marty.blogspot.com) or listen to his other podcast Confessions of Saint Marty, also on Anchor.fm.  Marty is a writer, blogger, wine sipper, easy drunk, and poetry obsessor who puts his Christmas tree up in mid-October and refuses to take it down until the snow starts melting. Madeline has a BA in English Creative Writing and gin drinking.  Currently, she is pursuing a Library Science graduate degree and avoiding the Lizard Man of Bloomington.  In her spare time, she enjoys reading eco-lit, true crime, and Alice Hoffman books. Music for this episode: "Jingle Bells Jazzy Style" by Julius H, used courtesy of Pixabay. "A Christmas Treat" by Magic-828, used courtesy of Pixabay. Other music in the episode: "O Come All Ye Grateful Dead-Heads."  Rivers, Bob. Twisted Christmas.  Critique/Atco/Atlantic, 1988. A Christmas Carol sound clips from: The Campbell Theater 1939 radio production of A Christmas Carol, narrated by Orson Welles and starring Lionel Barrymore. This month's Christmas lit: Kesey, Ken.  One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.  Penguin Books, New York:  1962.

Alignment Adventures
139. Kelsey Aida: What's blocking your manifestations & how to overcome it!

Alignment Adventures

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 21, 2023 63:20


Have you been trying to manifest the life of your dreams but always coming up against the things holding you back? This aligning and expansive interview with Kelsey Aida is for you! Kelsey is a bestselling author and transformation facilitator in the personal development space who has helped thousands of women upgrade their lives and love themselves unconditionally. In this conversation, we discuss the one thing that is holding you back from manifesting all your desires and how you can work through it! We also touch on the beauty of contrast, how to use affirmations that actually work, Kelsey's Kundalini awakening, and how we can radically love ourselves! Check out Kelsey's free meditation on radical self love! Connect with Kesey on IG @kelseyaida and on her website www.kelseyaida.com Resources for your alignment journey: 30 days of alignment journal prompts  1:1 Internal Guidance Sessions Discover Your Internal Guidance Mini Course Lindsay M. Tanner YouTube channel - yoga flows, meditations, and much more! Alignment Adventures Podcast YouTube Channel - watch the video version of each interview Let's hangout more :) Instagram @lindsaymtanner Website www.lindsaymtanner.com YouTube Lindsay M. Tanner TikTok Lindsaymtanner Discounts! Use code alignmentadventures to get 20% off your Enlighten Candle order! Get your free 7 day trial of Gaia!  DISCLAIMER: Links included in this description might be affiliate links. If you purchase a product or service with the links that I provide I may receive a small commission. There is no additional charge to you! Thank you for supporting my mission so I can continue to provide you with aligning content each week! --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/lindsay-tanner/support

A History Of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs
Episode 165: “Dark Star” by the Grateful Dead

A History Of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs

Play Episode Listen Later May 20, 2023


Episode 165 of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Dark Stat” and the career of the Grateful Dead. This is a long one, even longer than the previous episode, but don't worry, that won't be the norm. There's a reason these two were much longer than average. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a twenty-minute bonus episode available, on "Codine" by the Charlatans. Errata I mispronounce Brent Mydland's name as Myland a couple of times, and in the introduction I say "Touch of Grey" came out in 1988 -- I later, correctly, say 1987. (I seem to have had a real problem with dates in the intro -- I also originally talked about "Blue Suede Shoes" being in 1954 before fixing it in the edit to be 1956) Resources No Mixcloud this week, as there are too many songs by the Grateful Dead, and Grayfolded runs to two hours. I referred to a lot of books for this episode, partly because almost everything about the Grateful Dead is written from a fannish perspective that already assumes background knowledge, rather than to provide that background knowledge. Of the various books I used, Dennis McNally's biography of the band and This Is All a Dream We Dreamed: An Oral History of the Grateful Dead by Blair Jackson and David Gans are probably most useful for the casually interested. Other books on the Dead I used included McNally's Jerry on Jerry, a collection of interviews with Garcia; Deal, Bill Kreutzmann's autobiography; The Grateful Dead FAQ by Tony Sclafani; So Many Roads by David Browne; Deadology by Howard F. Weiner; Fare Thee Well by Joel Selvin and Pamela Turley; and Skeleton Key: A Dictionary for Deadheads by David Shenk and Steve Silberman. Tom Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test is the classic account of the Pranksters, though not always reliable. I reference Slaughterhouse Five a lot. As well as the novel itself, which everyone should read, I also read this rather excellent graphic novel adaptation, and The Writer's Crusade, a book about the writing of the novel. I also reference Ted Sturgeon's More Than Human. For background on the scene around Astounding Science Fiction which included Sturgeon, John W. Campbell, L. Ron Hubbard, and many other science fiction writers, I recommend Alec Nevala-Lee's Astounding. 1,000 True Fans can be read online, as can the essay on the Californian ideology, and John Perry Barlow's "Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace". The best collection of Grateful Dead material is the box set The Golden Road, which contains all the albums released in Pigpen's lifetime along with a lot of bonus material, but which appears currently out of print. Live/Dead contains both the live version of "Dark Star" which made it well known and, as a CD bonus track, the original single version. And archive.org has more live recordings of the group than you can possibly ever listen to. Grayfolded can be bought from John Oswald's Bandcamp Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript [Excerpt: Tuning from "Grayfolded", under the warnings Before we begin -- as we're tuning up, as it were, I should mention that this episode contains discussions of alcoholism, drug addiction, racism, nonconsensual drugging of other people, and deaths from drug abuse, suicide, and car accidents. As always, I try to deal with these subjects as carefully as possible, but if you find any of those things upsetting you may wish to read the transcript rather than listen to this episode, or skip it altogether. Also, I should note that the members of the Grateful Dead were much freer with their use of swearing in interviews than any other band we've covered so far, and that makes using quotes from them rather more difficult than with other bands, given the limitations of the rules imposed to stop the podcast being marked as adult. If I quote anything with a word I can't use here, I'll give a brief pause in the audio, and in the transcript I'll have the word in square brackets. [tuning ends] All this happened, more or less. In 1910, T. S. Eliot started work on "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock", which at the time was deemed barely poetry, with one reviewer imagining Eliot saying "I'll just put down the first thing that comes into my head, and call it 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.'" It is now considered one of the great classics of modernist literature. In 1969, Kurt Vonnegut wrote "Slaughterhouse-Five, or, The Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death", a book in which the protagonist, Billy Pilgrim, comes unstuck in time, and starts living a nonlinear life, hopping around between times reliving his experiences in the Second World War, and future experiences up to 1976 after being kidnapped by beings from the planet Tralfamadore. Or perhaps he has flashbacks and hallucinations after having a breakdown from PTSD. It is now considered one of the great classics of modernist literature or of science fiction, depending on how you look at it. In 1953, Theodore Sturgeon wrote More Than Human. It is now considered one of the great classics of science fiction. In 1950, L. Ron Hubbard wrote Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health. It is now considered either a bad piece of science fiction or one of the great revelatory works of religious history, depending on how you look at it. In 1994, 1995, and 1996 the composer John Oswald released, first as two individual CDs and then as a double-CD, an album called Grayfolded, which the composer says in the liner notes he thinks of as existing in Tralfamadorian time. The Tralfamadorians in Vonnegut's novels don't see time as a linear thing with a beginning and end, but as a continuum that they can move between at will. When someone dies, they just think that at this particular point in time they're not doing so good, but at other points in time they're fine, so why focus on the bad time? In the book, when told of someone dying, the Tralfamadorians just say "so it goes". In between the first CD's release and the release of the double-CD version, Jerry Garcia died. From August 1942 through August 1995, Jerry Garcia was alive. So it goes. Shall we go, you and I? [Excerpt: The Grateful Dead, "Dark Star (Omni 3/30/94)"] "One principle has become clear. Since motives are so frequently found in combination, it is essential that the complex types be analyzed and arranged, with an eye kept single nevertheless to the master-theme under discussion. Collectors, both primary and subsidiary, have done such valiant service that the treasures at our command are amply sufficient for such studies, so extensive, indeed, that the task of going through them thoroughly has become too great for the unassisted student. It cannot be too strongly urged that a single theme in its various types and compounds must be made predominant in any useful comparative study. This is true when the sources and analogues of any literary work are treated; it is even truer when the bare motive is discussed. The Grateful Dead furnishes an apt illustration of the necessity of such handling. It appears in a variety of different combinations, almost never alone. Indeed, it is so widespread a tale, and its combinations are so various, that there is the utmost difficulty in determining just what may properly be regarded the original kernel of it, the simple theme to which other motives were joined. Various opinions, as we shall see, have been held with reference to this matter, most of them justified perhaps by the materials in the hands of the scholars holding them, but none quite adequate in view of later evidence." That's a quote from The Grateful Dead: The History of a Folk Story, by Gordon Hall Gerould, published in 1908. Kurt Vonnegut's novel Slaughterhouse-Five opens with a chapter about the process of writing the novel itself, and how difficult it was. He says "I would hate to tell you what this lousy little book cost me in money and anxiety and time. When I got home from the Second World War twenty-three years ago, I thought it would be easy for me to write about the destruction of Dresden, since all I would have to do would be to report what I had seen. And I thought, too, that it would be a masterpiece or at least make me a lot of money, since the subject was so big." This is an episode several of my listeners have been looking forward to, but it's one I've been dreading writing, because this is an episode -- I think the only one in the series -- where the format of the podcast simply *will not* work. Were the Grateful Dead not such an important band, I would skip this episode altogether, but they're a band that simply can't be ignored, and that's a real problem here. Because my intent, always, with this podcast, is to present the recordings of the artists in question, put them in context, and explain why they were important, what their music meant to its listeners. To put, as far as is possible, the positive case for why the music mattered *in the context of its time*. Not why it matters now, or why it matters to me, but why it matters *in its historical context*. Whether I like the music or not isn't the point. Whether it stands up now isn't the point. I play the music, explain what it was they were doing, why they were doing it, what people saw in it. If I do my job well, you come away listening to "Blue Suede Shoes" the way people heard it in 1956, or "Good Vibrations" the way people heard it in 1966, and understanding why people were so impressed by those records. That is simply *not possible* for the Grateful Dead. I can present a case for them as musicians, and hope to do so. I can explain the appeal as best I understand it, and talk about things I like in their music, and things I've noticed. But what I can't do is present their recordings the way they were received in the sixties and explain why they were popular. Because every other act I have covered or will cover in this podcast has been a *recording* act, and their success was based on records. They may also have been exceptional live performers, but James Brown or Ike and Tina Turner are remembered for great *records*, like "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag" or "River Deep, Mountain High". Their great moments were captured on vinyl, to be listened back to, and susceptible of analysis. That is not the case for the Grateful Dead, and what is worse *they explicitly said, publicly, on multiple occasions* that it is not possible for me to understand their art, and thus that it is not possible for me to explain it. The Grateful Dead did make studio records, some of them very good. But they always said, consistently, over a thirty year period, that their records didn't capture what they did, and that the only way -- the *only* way, they were very clear about this -- that one could actually understand and appreciate their music, was to see them live, and furthermore to see them live while on psychedelic drugs. [Excerpt: Grateful Dead crowd noise] I never saw the Grateful Dead live -- their last UK performance was a couple of years before I went to my first ever gig -- and I have never taken a psychedelic substance. So by the Grateful Dead's own criteria, it is literally impossible for me to understand or explain their music the way that it should be understood or explained. In a way I'm in a similar position to the one I was in with La Monte Young in the last episode, whose music it's mostly impossible to experience without being in his presence. This is one reason of several why I placed these two episodes back to back. Of course, there is a difference between Young and the Grateful Dead. The Grateful Dead allowed -- even encouraged -- the recording of their live performances. There are literally thousands of concert recordings in circulation, many of them of professional quality. I have listened to many of those, and I can hear what they were doing. I can tell you what *I* think is interesting about their music, and about their musicianship. And I think I can build up a good case for why they were important, and why they're interesting, and why those recordings are worth listening to. And I can certainly explain the cultural phenomenon that was the Grateful Dead. But just know that while I may have found *a* point, *an* explanation for why the Grateful Dead were important, by the band's own lights and those of their fans, no matter how good a job I do in this episode, I *cannot* get it right. And that is, in itself, enough of a reason for this episode to exist, and for me to try, even harder than I normally do, to get it right *anyway*. Because no matter how well I do my job this episode will stand as an example of why this series is called "*A* History", not *the* history. Because parts of the past are ephemeral. There are things about which it's true to say "You had to be there". I cannot know what it was like to have been an American the day Kennedy was shot, I cannot know what it was like to be alive when a man walked on the Moon. Those are things nobody my age or younger can ever experience. And since August the ninth, 1995, the experience of hearing the Grateful Dead's music the way they wanted it heard has been in that category. And that is by design. Jerry Garcia once said "if you work really hard as an artist, you may be able to build something they can't tear down, you know, after you're gone... What I want to do is I want it here. I want it now, in this lifetime. I want what I enjoy to last as long as I do and not last any longer. You know, I don't want something that ends up being as much a nuisance as it is a work of art, you know?" And there's another difficulty. There are only two points in time where it makes sense to do a podcast episode on the Grateful Dead -- late 1967 and early 1968, when the San Francisco scene they were part of was at its most culturally relevant, and 1988 when they had their only top ten hit and gained their largest audience. I can't realistically leave them out of the story until 1988, so it has to be 1968. But the songs they are most remembered for are those they wrote between 1970 and 1972, and those songs are influenced by artists and events we haven't yet covered in the podcast, who will be getting their own episodes in the future. I can't explain those things in this episode, because they need whole episodes of their own. I can't not explain them without leaving out important context for the Grateful Dead. So the best I can do is treat the story I'm telling as if it were in Tralfamadorian time. All of it's happening all at once, and some of it is happening in different episodes that haven't been recorded yet. The podcast as a whole travels linearly from 1938 through to 1999, but this episode is happening in 1968 and 1972 and 1988 and 1995 and other times, all at once. Sometimes I'll talk about things as if you're already familiar with them, but they haven't happened yet in the story. Feel free to come unstuck in time and revisit this time after episode 167, and 172, and 176, and 192, and experience it again. So this has to be an experimental episode. It may well be an experiment that you think fails. If so, the next episode is likely to be far more to your taste, and much shorter than this or the last episode, two episodes that between them have to create a scaffolding on which will hang much of the rest of this podcast's narrative. I've finished my Grateful Dead script now. The next one I write is going to be fun: [Excerpt: Grateful Dead, "Dark Star"] Infrastructure means everything. How we get from place to place, how we transport goods, information, and ourselves, makes a big difference in how society is structured, and in the music we hear. For many centuries, the prime means of long-distance transport was by water -- sailing ships on the ocean, canal boats and steamboats for inland navigation -- and so folk songs talked about the ship as both means of escape, means of making a living, and in some senses as a trap. You'd go out to sea for adventure, or to escape your problems, but you'd find that the sea itself brought its own problems. Because of this we have a long, long tradition of sea shanties which are known throughout the world: [Excerpt: A. L. Lloyd, "Off to Sea Once More"] But in the nineteenth century, the railway was invented and, at least as far as travel within a landmass goes, it replaced the steamboat in the popular imaginary. Now the railway was how you got from place to place, and how you moved freight from one place to another. The railway brought freedom, and was an opportunity for outlaws, whether train robbers or a romanticised version of the hobo hopping onto a freight train and making his way to new lands and new opportunity. It was the train that brought soldiers home from wars, and the train that allowed the Great Migration of Black people from the South to the industrial North. There would still be songs about the riverboats, about how ol' man river keeps rolling along and about the big river Johnny Cash sang about, but increasingly they would be songs of the past, not the present. The train quickly replaced the steamboat in the iconography of what we now think of as roots music -- blues, country, folk, and early jazz music. Sometimes this was very literal. Furry Lewis' "Kassie Jones" -- about a legendary train driver who would break the rules to make sure his train made the station on time, but who ended up sacrificing his own life to save his passengers in a train crash -- is based on "Alabamy Bound", which as we heard in the episode on "Stagger Lee", was about steamboats: [Excerpt: Furry Lewis, "Kassie Jones"] In the early episodes of this podcast we heard many, many, songs about the railway. Louis Jordan saying "take me right back to the track, Jack", Rosetta Tharpe singing about how "this train don't carry no gamblers", the trickster freight train driver driving on the "Rock Island Line", the mystery train sixteen coaches long, the train that kept-a-rollin' all night long, the Midnight Special which the prisoners wished would shine its ever-loving light on them, and the train coming past Folsom Prison whose whistle makes Johnny Cash hang his head and cry. But by the 1960s, that kind of song had started to dry up. It would happen on occasion -- "People Get Ready" by the Impressions is the most obvious example of the train metaphor in an important sixties record -- but by the late sixties the train was no longer a symbol of freedom but of the past. In 1969 Harry Nilsson sang about how "Nobody Cares About the Railroads Any More", and in 1968 the Kinks sang about "The Last of the Steam-Powered Trains". When in 1968 Merle Haggard sang about a freight train, it was as a memory, of a child with hopes that ended up thwarted by reality and his own nature: [Excerpt: Merle Haggard, "Mama Tried"] And the reason for this was that there had been another shift, a shift that had started in the forties and accelerated in the late fifties but had taken a little time to ripple through the culture. Now the train had been replaced in the popular imaginary by motorised transport. Instead of hopping on a train without paying, if you had no money in your pocket you'd have to hitch-hike all the way. Freedom now meant individuality. The ultimate in freedom was the biker -- the Hell's Angels who could go anywhere, unburdened by anything -- and instead of goods being moved by freight train, increasingly they were being moved by truck drivers. By the mid-seventies, truck drivers took a central place in American life, and the most romantic way to live life was to live it on the road. On The Road was also the title of a 1957 novel by Jack Kerouac, which was one of the first major signs of this cultural shift in America. Kerouac was writing about events in the late forties and early fifties, but his book was also a precursor of the sixties counterculture. He wrote the book on one continuous sheet of paper, as a stream of consciousness. Kerouac died in 1969 of an internal haemmorage brought on by too much alcohol consumption. So it goes. But the big key to this cultural shift was caused by the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, a massive infrastructure spending bill that led to the construction of the modern American Interstate Highway system. This accelerated a program that had already started, of building much bigger, safer, faster roads. It also, as anyone who has read Robert Caro's The Power Broker knows, reinforced segregation and white flight. It did this both by making commuting into major cities from the suburbs easier -- thus allowing white people with more money to move further away from the cities and still work there -- and by bulldozing community spaces where Black people lived. More than a million people lost their homes and were forcibly moved, and orders of magnitude more lost their communities' parks and green spaces. And both as a result of deliberate actions and unconscious bigotry, the bulk of those affected were Black people -- who often found themselves, if they weren't forced to move, on one side of a ten-lane highway where the park used to be, with white people on the other side of the highway. The Federal-Aid Highway Act gave even more power to the unaccountable central planners like Robert Moses, the urban planner in New York who managed to become arguably the most powerful man in the city without ever getting elected, partly by slowly compromising away his early progressive ideals in the service of gaining more power. Of course, not every new highway was built through areas where poor Black people lived. Some were planned to go through richer areas for white people, just because you can't completely do away with geographical realities. For example one was planned to be built through part of San Francisco, a rich, white part. But the people who owned properties in that area had enough political power and clout to fight the development, and after nearly a decade of fighting it, the development was called off in late 1966. But over that time, many of the owners of the impressive buildings in the area had moved out, and they had no incentive to improve or maintain their properties while they were under threat of demolition, so many of them were rented out very cheaply. And when the beat community that Kerouac wrote about, many of whom had settled in San Francisco, grew too large and notorious for the area of the city they were in, North Beach, many of them moved to these cheap homes in a previously-exclusive area. The area known as Haight-Ashbury. [Excerpt: The Grateful Dead, "Grayfolded"] Stories all have their starts, even stories told in Tralfamadorian time, although sometimes those starts are shrouded in legend. For example, the story of Scientology's start has been told many times, with different people claiming to have heard L. Ron Hubbard talk about how writing was a mug's game, and if you wanted to make real money, you needed to get followers, start a religion. Either he said this over and over and over again, to many different science fiction writers, or most science fiction writers of his generation were liars. Of course, the definition of a writer is someone who tells lies for money, so who knows? One of the more plausible accounts of him saying that is given by Theodore Sturgeon. Sturgeon's account is more believable than most, because Sturgeon went on to be a supporter of Dianetics, the "new science" that Hubbard turned into his religion, for decades, even while telling the story. The story of the Grateful Dead probably starts as it ends, with Jerry Garcia. There are three things that everyone writing about the Dead says about Garcia's childhood, so we might as well say them here too. The first is that he was named by a music-loving father after Jerome Kern, the songwriter responsible for songs like "Ol' Man River" (though as Oscar Hammerstein's widow liked to point out, "Jerome Kern wrote dum-dum-dum-dum, *my husband* wrote 'Ol' Man River'" -- an important distinction we need to bear in mind when talking about songwriters who write music but not lyrics). The second is that when he was five years old that music-loving father drowned -- and Garcia would always say he had seen his father dying, though some sources claim this was a false memory. So it goes. And the third fact, which for some reason is always told after the second even though it comes before it chronologically, is that when he was four he lost two joints from his right middle finger. Garcia grew up a troubled teen, and in turn caused trouble for other people, but he also developed a few interests that would follow him through his life. He loved the fantastical, especially the fantastical macabre, and became an avid fan of horror and science fiction -- and through his love of old monster films he became enamoured with cinema more generally. Indeed, in 1983 he bought the film rights to Kurt Vonnegut's science fiction novel The Sirens of Titan, the first story in which the Tralfamadorians appear, and wrote a script based on it. He wanted to produce the film himself, with Francis Ford Coppola directing and Bill Murray starring, but most importantly for him he wanted to prevent anyone who didn't care about it from doing it badly. And in that he succeeded. As of 2023 there is no film of The Sirens of Titan. He loved to paint, and would continue that for the rest of his life, with one of his favourite subjects being Boris Karloff as the Frankenstein monster. And when he was eleven or twelve, he heard for the first time a record that was hugely influential to a whole generation of Californian musicians, even though it was a New York record -- "Gee" by the Crows: [Excerpt: The Crows, "Gee"] Garcia would say later "That was an important song. That was the first kind of, like where the voices had that kind of not-trained-singer voices, but tough-guy-on-the-street voice." That record introduced him to R&B, and soon he was listening to Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley, to Ray Charles, and to a record we've not talked about in the podcast but which was one of the great early doo-wop records, "WPLJ" by the Four Deuces: [Excerpt: The Four Deuces, "WPLJ"] Garcia said of that record "That was one of my anthem songs when I was in junior high school and high school and around there. That was one of those songs everybody knew. And that everybody sang. Everybody sang that street-corner favorite." Garcia moved around a lot as a child, and didn't have much time for school by his own account, but one of the few teachers he did respect was an art teacher when he was in North Beach, Walter Hedrick. Hedrick was also one of the earliest of the conceptual artists, and one of the most important figures in the San Francisco arts scene that would become known as the Beat Generation (or the Beatniks, which was originally a disparaging term). Hedrick was a painter and sculptor, but also organised happenings, and he had also been one of the prime movers in starting a series of poetry readings in San Francisco, the first one of which had involved Allen Ginsberg giving the first ever reading of "Howl" -- one of a small number of poems, along with Eliot's "Prufrock" and "The Waste Land" and possibly Pound's Cantos, which can be said to have changed twentieth-century literature. Garcia was fifteen when he got to know Hedrick, in 1957, and by then the Beat scene had already become almost a parody of itself, having become known to the public because of the publication of works like On the Road, and the major artists in the scene were already rejecting the label. By this point tourists were flocking to North Beach to see these beatniks they'd heard about on TV, and Hedrick was actually employed by one cafe to sit in the window wearing a beret, turtleneck, sandals, and beard, and draw and paint, to attract the tourists who flocked by the busload because they could see that there was a "genuine beatnik" in the cafe. Hedrick was, as well as a visual artist, a guitarist and banjo player who played in traditional jazz bands, and he would bring records in to class for his students to listen to, and Garcia particularly remembered him bringing in records by Big Bill Broonzy: [Excerpt: Big Bill Broonzy, "When Things Go Wrong (It Hurts Me Too)"] Garcia was already an avid fan of rock and roll music, but it was being inspired by Hedrick that led him to get his first guitar. Like his contemporary Paul McCartney around the same time, he was initially given the wrong instrument as a birthday present -- in Garcia's case his mother gave him an accordion -- but he soon persuaded her to swap it for an electric guitar he saw in a pawn shop. And like his other contemporary, John Lennon, Garcia initially tuned his instrument incorrectly. He said later "When I started playing the guitar, believe me, I didn't know anybody that played. I mean, I didn't know anybody that played the guitar. Nobody. They weren't around. There were no guitar teachers. You couldn't take lessons. There was nothing like that, you know? When I was a kid and I had my first electric guitar, I had it tuned wrong and learned how to play on it with it tuned wrong for about a year. And I was getting somewhere on it, you know… Finally, I met a guy that knew how to tune it right and showed me three chords, and it was like a revelation. You know what I mean? It was like somebody gave me the key to heaven." He joined a band, the Chords, which mostly played big band music, and his friend Gary Foster taught him some of the rudiments of playing the guitar -- things like how to use a capo to change keys. But he was always a rebellious kid, and soon found himself faced with a choice between joining the military or going to prison. He chose the former, and it was during his time in the Army that a friend, Ron Stevenson, introduced him to the music of Merle Travis, and to Travis-style guitar picking: [Excerpt: Merle Travis, "Nine-Pound Hammer"] Garcia had never encountered playing like that before, but he instantly recognised that Travis, and Chet Atkins who Stevenson also played for him, had been an influence on Scotty Moore. He started to realise that the music he'd listened to as a teenager was influenced by music that went further back. But Stevenson, as well as teaching Garcia some of the rudiments of Travis-picking, also indirectly led to Garcia getting discharged from the Army. Stevenson was not a well man, and became suicidal. Garcia decided it was more important to keep his friend company and make sure he didn't kill himself than it was to turn up for roll call, and as a result he got discharged himself on psychiatric grounds -- according to Garcia he told the Army psychiatrist "I was involved in stuff that was more important to me in the moment than the army was and that was the reason I was late" and the psychiatrist thought it was neurotic of Garcia to have his own set of values separate from that of the Army. After discharge, Garcia did various jobs, including working as a transcriptionist for Lenny Bruce, the comedian who was a huge influence on the counterculture. In one of the various attacks over the years by authoritarians on language, Bruce was repeatedly arrested for obscenity, and in 1961 he was arrested at a jazz club in North Beach. Sixty years ago, the parts of speech that were being criminalised weren't pronouns, but prepositions and verbs: [Excerpt: Lenny Bruce, "To is a Preposition, Come is a Verb"] That piece, indeed, was so controversial that when Frank Zappa quoted part of it in a song in 1968, the record label insisted on the relevant passage being played backwards so people couldn't hear such disgusting filth: [Excerpt: The Mothers of Invention, "Harry You're a Beast"] (Anyone familiar with that song will understand that the censored portion is possibly the least offensive part of the whole thing). Bruce was facing trial, and he needed transcripts of what he had said in his recordings to present in court. Incidentally, there seems to be some confusion over exactly which of Bruce's many obscenity trials Garcia became a transcriptionist for. Dennis McNally says in his biography of the band, published in 2002, that it was the most famous of them, in autumn 1964, but in a later book, Jerry on Jerry, a book of interviews of Garcia edited by McNally, McNally talks about it being when Garcia was nineteen, which would mean it was Bruce's first trial, in 1961. We can put this down to the fact that many of the people involved, not least Garcia, lived in Tralfamadorian time, and were rather hazy on dates, but I'm placing the story here rather than in 1964 because it seems to make more sense that Garcia would be involved in a trial based on an incident in San Francisco than one in New York. Garcia got the job, even though he couldn't type, because by this point he'd spent so long listening to recordings of old folk and country music that he was used to transcribing indecipherable accents, and often, as Garcia would tell it, Bruce would mumble very fast and condense multiple syllables into one. Garcia was particularly impressed by Bruce's ability to improvise but talk in entire paragraphs, and he compared his use of language to bebop. Another thing that was starting to impress Garcia, and which he also compared to bebop, was bluegrass: [Excerpt: Bill Monroe, "Fire on the Mountain"] Bluegrass is a music that is often considered very traditional, because it's based on traditional songs and uses acoustic instruments, but in fact it was a terribly *modern* music, and largely a postwar creation of a single band -- Bill Monroe and his Blue Grass Boys. And Garcia was right when he said it was "white bebop" -- though he did say "The only thing it doesn't have is the harmonic richness of bebop. You know what I mean? That's what it's missing, but it has everything else." Both bebop and bluegrass evolved after the second world war, though they were informed by music from before it, and both prized the ability to improvise, and technical excellence. Both are musics that involved playing *fast*, in an ensemble, and being able to respond quickly to the other musicians. Both musics were also intensely rhythmic, a response to a faster paced, more stressful world. They were both part of the general change in the arts towards immediacy that we looked at in the last episode with the creation first of expressionism and then of pop art. Bluegrass didn't go into the harmonic explorations that modern jazz did, but it was absolutely as modern as anything Charlie Parker was doing, and came from the same impulses. It was tradition and innovation, the past and the future simultaneously. Bill Monroe, Jackson Pollock, Charlie Parker, Jack Kerouac, and Lenny Bruce were all in their own ways responding to the same cultural moment, and it was that which Garcia was responding to. But he didn't become able to play bluegrass until after a tragedy which shaped his life even more than his father's death had. Garcia had been to a party and was in a car with his friends Lee Adams, Paul Speegle, and Alan Trist. Adams was driving at ninety miles an hour when they hit a tight curve and crashed. Garcia, Adams, and Trist were all severely injured but survived. Speegle died. So it goes. This tragedy changed Garcia's attitudes totally. Of all his friends, Speegle was the one who was most serious about his art, and who treated it as something to work on. Garcia had always been someone who fundamentally didn't want to work or take any responsibility for anything. And he remained that way -- except for his music. Speegle's death changed Garcia's attitude to that, totally. If his friend wasn't going to be able to practice his own art any more, Garcia would practice his, in tribute to him. He resolved to become a virtuoso on guitar and banjo. His girlfriend of the time later said “I don't know if you've spent time with someone rehearsing ‘Foggy Mountain Breakdown' on a banjo for eight hours, but Jerry practiced endlessly. He really wanted to excel and be the best. He had tremendous personal ambition in the musical arena, and he wanted to master whatever he set out to explore. Then he would set another sight for himself. And practice another eight hours a day of new licks.” But of course, you can't make ensemble music on your own: [Excerpt: Jerry Garcia and Bob Hunter, "Oh Mary Don't You Weep" (including end)] "Evelyn said, “What is it called when a person needs a … person … when you want to be touched and the … two are like one thing and there isn't anything else at all anywhere?” Alicia, who had read books, thought about it. “Love,” she said at length." That's from More Than Human, by Theodore Sturgeon, a book I'll be quoting a few more times as the story goes on. Robert Hunter, like Garcia, was just out of the military -- in his case, the National Guard -- and he came into Garcia's life just after Paul Speegle had left it. Garcia and Alan Trist met Hunter ten days after the accident, and the three men started hanging out together, Trist and Hunter writing while Garcia played music. Garcia and Hunter both bonded over their shared love for the beats, and for traditional music, and the two formed a duo, Bob and Jerry, which performed together a handful of times. They started playing together, in fact, after Hunter picked up a guitar and started playing a song and halfway through Garcia took it off him and finished the song himself. The two of them learned songs from the Harry Smith Anthology -- Garcia was completely apolitical, and only once voted in his life, for Lyndon Johnson in 1964 to keep Goldwater out, and regretted even doing that, and so he didn't learn any of the more political material people like Pete Seeger, Phil Ochs, and Bob Dylan were doing at the time -- but their duo only lasted a short time because Hunter wasn't an especially good guitarist. Hunter would, though, continue to jam with Garcia and other friends, sometimes playing mandolin, while Garcia played solo gigs and with other musicians as well, playing and moving round the Bay Area and performing with whoever he could: [Excerpt: Jerry Garcia, "Railroad Bill"] "Bleshing, that was Janie's word. She said Baby told it to her. She said it meant everyone all together being something, even if they all did different things. Two arms, two legs, one body, one head, all working together, although a head can't walk and arms can't think. Lone said maybe it was a mixture of “blending” and “meshing,” but I don't think he believed that himself. It was a lot more than that." That's from More Than Human In 1961, Garcia and Hunter met another young musician, but one who was interested in a very different type of music. Phil Lesh was a serious student of modern classical music, a classically-trained violinist and trumpeter whose interest was solidly in the experimental and whose attitude can be summed up by a story that's always told about him meeting his close friend Tom Constanten for the first time. Lesh had been talking with someone about serialism, and Constanten had interrupted, saying "Music stopped being created in 1750 but it started again in 1950". Lesh just stuck out his hand, recognising a kindred spirit. Lesh and Constanten were both students of Luciano Berio, the experimental composer who created compositions for magnetic tape: [Excerpt: Luciano Berio, "Momenti"] Berio had been one of the founders of the Studio di fonologia musicale di Radio Milano, a studio for producing contemporary electronic music where John Cage had worked for a time, and he had also worked with the electronic music pioneer Karlheinz Stockhausen. Lesh would later remember being very impressed when Berio brought a tape into the classroom -- the actual multitrack tape for Stockhausen's revolutionary piece Gesang Der Juenglinge: [Excerpt: Karlheinz Stockhausen, "Gesang Der Juenglinge"] Lesh at first had been distrustful of Garcia -- Garcia was charismatic and had followers, and Lesh never liked people like that. But he was impressed by Garcia's playing, and soon realised that the two men, despite their very different musical interests, had a lot in common. Lesh was interested in the technology of music as well as in performing and composing it, and so when he wasn't studying he helped out by engineering at the university's radio station. Lesh was impressed by Garcia's playing, and suggested to the presenter of the station's folk show, the Midnight Special, that Garcia be a guest. Garcia was so good that he ended up getting an entire solo show to himself, where normally the show would feature multiple acts. Lesh and Constanten soon moved away from the Bay Area to Las Vegas, but both would be back -- in Constanten's case he would form an experimental group in San Francisco with their fellow student Steve Reich, and that group (though not with Constanten performing) would later premiere Terry Riley's In C, a piece influenced by La Monte Young and often considered one of the great masterpieces of minimalist music. By early 1962 Garcia and Hunter had formed a bluegrass band, with Garcia on guitar and banjo and Hunter on mandolin, and a rotating cast of other musicians including Ken Frankel, who played banjo and fiddle. They performed under different names, including the Tub Thumpers, the Hart Valley Drifters, and the Sleepy Valley Hog Stompers, and played a mixture of bluegrass and old-time music -- and were very careful about the distinction: [Excerpt: The Hart Valley Drifters, "Cripple Creek"] In 1993, the Republican political activist John Perry Barlow was invited to talk to the CIA about the possibilities open to them with what was then called the Information Superhighway. He later wrote, in part "They told me they'd brought Steve Jobs in a few weeks before to indoctrinate them in modern information management. And they were delighted when I returned later, bringing with me a platoon of Internet gurus, including Esther Dyson, Mitch Kapor, Tony Rutkowski, and Vint Cerf. They sealed us into an electronically impenetrable room to discuss the radical possibility that a good first step in lifting their blackout would be for the CIA to put up a Web site... We told them that information exchange was a barter system, and that to receive, one must also be willing to share. This was an alien notion to them. They weren't even willing to share information among themselves, much less the world." 1962 brought a new experience for Robert Hunter. Hunter had been recruited into taking part in psychological tests at Stanford University, which in the sixties and seventies was one of the preeminent universities for psychological experiments. As part of this, Hunter was given $140 to attend the VA hospital (where a janitor named Ken Kesey, who had himself taken part in a similar set of experiments a couple of years earlier, worked a day job while he was working on his first novel) for four weeks on the run, and take different psychedelic drugs each time, starting with LSD, so his reactions could be observed. (It was later revealed that these experiments were part of a CIA project called MKUltra, designed to investigate the possibility of using psychedelic drugs for mind control, blackmail, and torture. Hunter was quite lucky in that he was told what was going to happen to him and paid for his time. Other subjects included the unlucky customers of brothels the CIA set up as fronts -- they dosed the customers' drinks and observed them through two-way mirrors. Some of their experimental subjects died by suicide as a result of their experiences. So it goes. ) Hunter was interested in taking LSD after reading Aldous Huxley's writings about psychedelic substances, and he brought his typewriter along to the experiment. During the first test, he wrote a six-page text, a short excerpt from which is now widely quoted, reading in part "Sit back picture yourself swooping up a shell of purple with foam crests of crystal drops soft nigh they fall unto the sea of morning creep-very-softly mist ... and then sort of cascade tinkley-bell-like (must I take you by the hand, ever so slowly type) and then conglomerate suddenly into a peal of silver vibrant uncomprehendingly, blood singingly, joyously resounding bells" Hunter's experience led to everyone in their social circle wanting to try LSD, and soon they'd all come to the same conclusion -- this was something special. But Garcia needed money -- he'd got his girlfriend pregnant, and they'd married (this would be the first of several marriages in Garcia's life, and I won't be covering them all -- at Garcia's funeral, his second wife, Carolyn, said Garcia always called her the love of his life, and his first wife and his early-sixties girlfriend who he proposed to again in the nineties both simultaneously said "He said that to me!"). So he started teaching guitar at a music shop in Palo Alto. Hunter had no time for Garcia's incipient domesticity and thought that his wife was trying to make him live a conventional life, and the two drifted apart somewhat, though they'd still play together occasionally. Through working at the music store, Garcia got to know the manager, Troy Weidenheimer, who had a rock and roll band called the Zodiacs. Garcia joined the band on bass, despite that not being his instrument. He later said "Troy was a lot of fun, but I wasn't good enough a musician then to have been able to deal with it. I was out of my idiom, really, 'cause when I played with Troy I was playing electric bass, you know. I never was a good bass player. Sometimes I was playing in the wrong key and didn't even [fuckin'] know it. I couldn't hear that low, after playing banjo, you know, and going to electric...But Troy taught me the principle of, hey, you know, just stomp your foot and get on it. He was great. A great one for the instant arrangement, you know. And he was also fearless for that thing of get your friends to do it." Garcia's tenure in the Zodiacs didn't last long, nor did this experiment with rock and roll, but two other members of the Zodiacs will be notable later in the story -- the harmonica player, an old friend of Garcia's named Ron McKernan, who would soon gain the nickname Pig Pen after the Peanuts character, and the drummer, Bill Kreutzmann: [Excerpt: The Grateful Dead, "Drums/Space (Skull & Bones version)"] Kreutzmann said of the Zodiacs "Jerry was the hired bass player and I was the hired drummer. I only remember playing that one gig with them, but I was in way over my head. I always did that. I always played things that were really hard and it didn't matter. I just went for it." Garcia and Kreutzmann didn't really get to know each other then, but Garcia did get to know someone else who would soon be very important in his life. Bob Weir was from a very different background than Garcia, though both had the shared experience of long bouts of chronic illness as children. He had grown up in a very wealthy family, and had always been well-liked, but he was what we would now call neurodivergent -- reading books about the band he talks about being dyslexic but clearly has other undiagnosed neurodivergences, which often go along with dyslexia -- and as a result he was deemed to have behavioural problems which led to him getting expelled from pre-school and kicked out of the cub scouts. He was never academically gifted, thanks to his dyslexia, but he was always enthusiastic about music -- to a fault. He learned to play boogie piano but played so loudly and so often his parents sold the piano. He had a trumpet, but the neighbours complained about him playing it outside. Finally he switched to the guitar, an instrument with which it is of course impossible to make too loud a noise. The first song he learned was the Kingston Trio's version of an old sea shanty, "The Wreck of the John B": [Excerpt: The Kingston Trio, "The Wreck of the John B"] He was sent off to a private school in Colorado for teenagers with behavioural issues, and there he met the boy who would become his lifelong friend, John Perry Barlow. Unfortunately the two troublemakers got on with each other *so* well that after their first year they were told that it was too disruptive having both of them at the school, and only one could stay there the next year. Barlow stayed and Weir moved back to the Bay Area. By this point, Weir was getting more interested in folk music that went beyond the commercial folk of the Kingston Trio. As he said later "There was something in there that was ringing my bells. What I had grown up thinking of as hillbilly music, it started to have some depth for me, and I could start to hear the music in it. Suddenly, it wasn't just a bunch of ignorant hillbillies playing what they could. There was some depth and expertise and stuff like that to aspire to.” He moved from school to school but one thing that stayed with him was his love of playing guitar, and he started taking lessons from Troy Weidenheimer, but he got most of his education going to folk clubs and hootenannies. He regularly went to the Tangent, a club where Garcia played, but Garcia's bluegrass banjo playing was far too rigorous for a free spirit like Weir to emulate, and instead he started trying to copy one of the guitarists who was a regular there, Jorma Kaukonnen. On New Year's Eve 1963 Weir was out walking with his friends Bob Matthews and Rich Macauley, and they passed the music shop where Garcia was a teacher, and heard him playing his banjo. They knocked and asked if they could come in -- they all knew Garcia a little, and Bob Matthews was one of his students, having become interested in playing banjo after hearing the theme tune to the Beverly Hillbillies, played by the bluegrass greats Flatt and Scruggs: [Excerpt: Flatt and Scruggs, "The Beverly Hillbillies"] Garcia at first told these kids, several years younger than him, that they couldn't come in -- he was waiting for his students to show up. But Weir said “Jerry, listen, it's seven-thirty on New Year's Eve, and I don't think you're going to be seeing your students tonight.” Garcia realised the wisdom of this, and invited the teenagers in to jam with him. At the time, there was a bit of a renaissance in jug bands, as we talked about back in the episode on the Lovin' Spoonful. This was a form of music that had grown up in the 1920s, and was similar and related to skiffle and coffee-pot bands -- jug bands would tend to have a mixture of portable string instruments like guitars and banjos, harmonicas, and people using improvised instruments, particularly blowing into a jug. The most popular of these bands had been Gus Cannon's Jug Stompers, led by banjo player Gus Cannon and with harmonica player Noah Lewis: [Excerpt: Gus Cannon's Jug Stompers, "Viola Lee Blues"] With the folk revival, Cannon's work had become well-known again. The Rooftop Singers, a Kingston Trio style folk group, had had a hit with his song "Walk Right In" in 1963, and as a result of that success Cannon had even signed a record contract with Stax -- Stax's first album ever, a month before Booker T and the MGs' first album, was in fact the eighty-year-old Cannon playing his banjo and singing his old songs. The rediscovery of Cannon had started a craze for jug bands, and the most popular of the new jug bands was Jim Kweskin's Jug Band, which did a mixture of old songs like "You're a Viper" and more recent material redone in the old style. Weir, Matthews, and Macauley had been to see the Kweskin band the night before, and had been very impressed, especially by their singer Maria D'Amato -- who would later marry her bandmate Geoff Muldaur and take his name -- and her performance of Leiber and Stoller's "I'm a Woman": [Excerpt: Jim Kweskin's Jug Band, "I'm a Woman"] Matthews suggested that they form their own jug band, and Garcia eagerly agreed -- though Matthews found himself rapidly moving from banjo to washboard to kazoo to second kazoo before realising he was surplus to requirements. Robert Hunter was similarly an early member but claimed he "didn't have the embouchure" to play the jug, and was soon also out. He moved to LA and started studying Scientology -- later claiming that he wanted science-fictional magic powers, which L. Ron Hubbard's new religion certainly offered. The group took the name Mother McRee's Uptown Jug Champions -- apparently they varied the spelling every time they played -- and had a rotating membership that at one time or another included about twenty different people, but tended always to have Garcia on banjo, Weir on jug and later guitar, and Garcia's friend Pig Pen on harmonica: [Excerpt: Mother McRee's Uptown Jug Champions, "On the Road Again"] The group played quite regularly in early 1964, but Garcia's first love was still bluegrass, and he was trying to build an audience with his bluegrass band, The Black Mountain Boys. But bluegrass was very unpopular in the Bay Area, where it was simultaneously thought of as unsophisticated -- as "hillbilly music" -- and as elitist, because it required actual instrumental ability, which wasn't in any great supply in the amateur folk scene. But instrumental ability was something Garcia definitely had, as at this point he was still practising eight hours a day, every day, and it shows on the recordings of the Black Mountain Boys: [Excerpt: The Black Mountain Boys, "Rosa Lee McFall"] By the summer, Bob Weir was also working at the music shop, and so Garcia let Weir take over his students while he and the Black Mountain Boys' guitarist Sandy Rothman went on a road trip to see as many bluegrass musicians as they could and to audition for Bill Monroe himself. As it happened, Garcia found himself too shy to audition for Monroe, but Rothman later ended up playing with Monroe's Blue Grass Boys. On his return to the Bay Area, Garcia resumed playing with the Uptown Jug Champions, but Pig Pen started pestering him to do something different. While both men had overlapping tastes in music and a love for the blues, Garcia's tastes had always been towards the country end of the spectrum while Pig Pen's were towards R&B. And while the Uptown Jug Champions were all a bit disdainful of the Beatles at first -- apart from Bob Weir, the youngest of the group, who thought they were interesting -- Pig Pen had become enamoured of another British band who were just starting to make it big: [Excerpt: The Rolling Stones, "Not Fade Away"] 29) Garcia liked the first Rolling Stones album too, and he eventually took Pig Pen's point -- the stuff that the Rolling Stones were doing, covers of Slim Harpo and Buddy Holly, was not a million miles away from the material they were doing as Mother McRee's Uptown Jug Champions. Pig Pen could play a little electric organ, Bob had been fooling around with the electric guitars in the music shop. Why not give it a go? The stuff bands like the Rolling Stones were doing wasn't that different from the electric blues that Pig Pen liked, and they'd all seen A Hard Day's Night -- they could carry on playing with banjos, jugs, and kazoos and have the respect of a handful of folkies, or they could get electric instruments and potentially have screaming girls and millions of dollars, while playing the same songs. This was a convincing argument, especially when Dana Morgan Jr, the son of the owner of the music shop, told them they could have free electric instruments if they let him join on bass. Morgan wasn't that great on bass, but what the hell, free instruments. Pig Pen had the best voice and stage presence, so he became the frontman of the new group, singing most of the leads, though Jerry and Bob would both sing a few songs, and playing harmonica and organ. Weir was on rhythm guitar, and Garcia was the lead guitarist and obvious leader of the group. They just needed a drummer, and handily Bill Kreutzmann, who had played with Garcia and Pig Pen in the Zodiacs, was also now teaching music at the music shop. Not only that, but about three weeks before they decided to go electric, Kreutzmann had seen the Uptown Jug Champions performing and been astonished by Garcia's musicianship and charisma, and said to himself "Man, I'm gonna follow that guy forever!" The new group named themselves the Warlocks, and started rehearsing in earnest. Around this time, Garcia also finally managed to get some of the LSD that his friend Robert Hunter had been so enthusiastic about three years earlier, and it was a life-changing experience for him. In particular, he credited LSD with making him comfortable being a less disciplined player -- as a bluegrass player he'd had to be frighteningly precise, but now he was playing rock and needed to loosen up. A few days after taking LSD for the first time, Garcia also heard some of Bob Dylan's new material, and realised that the folk singer he'd had little time for with his preachy politics was now making electric music that owed a lot more to the Beat culture Garcia considered himself part of: [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, "Subterranean Homesick Blues"] Another person who was hugely affected by hearing that was Phil Lesh, who later said "I couldn't believe that was Bob Dylan on AM radio, with an electric band. It changed my whole consciousness: if something like that could happen, the sky was the limit." Up to that point, Lesh had been focused entirely on his avant-garde music, working with friends like Steve Reich to push music forward, inspired by people like John Cage and La Monte Young, but now he realised there was music of value in the rock world. He'd quickly started going to rock gigs, seeing the Rolling Stones and the Byrds, and then he took acid and went to see his friend Garcia's new electric band play their third ever gig. He was blown away, and very quickly it was decided that Lesh would be the group's new bass player -- though everyone involved tells a different story as to who made the decision and how it came about, and accounts also vary as to whether Dana Morgan took his sacking gracefully and let his erstwhile bandmates keep their instruments, or whether they had to scrounge up some new ones. Lesh had never played bass before, but he was a talented multi-instrumentalist with a deep understanding of music and an ability to compose and improvise, and the repertoire the Warlocks were playing in the early days was mostly three-chord material that doesn't take much rehearsal -- though it was apparently beyond the abilities of poor Dana Morgan, who apparently had to be told note-by-note what to play by Garcia, and learn it by rote. Garcia told Lesh what notes the strings of a bass were tuned to, told him to borrow a guitar and practice, and within two weeks he was on stage with the Warlocks: [Excerpt: The Grateful Dead, “Grayfolded"] In September 1995, just weeks after Jerry Garcia's death, an article was published in Mute magazine identifying a cultural trend that had shaped the nineties, and would as it turned out shape at least the next thirty years. It's titled "The Californian Ideology", though it may be better titled "The Bay Area Ideology", and it identifies a worldview that had grown up in Silicon Valley, based around the ideas of the hippie movement, of right-wing libertarianism, of science fiction authors, and of Marshall McLuhan. It starts "There is an emerging global orthodoxy concerning the relation between society, technology and politics. We have called this orthodoxy `the Californian Ideology' in honour of the state where it originated. By naturalising and giving a technological proof to a libertarian political philosophy, and therefore foreclosing on alternative futures, the Californian Ideologues are able to assert that social and political debates about the future have now become meaningless. The California Ideology is a mix of cybernetics, free market economics, and counter-culture libertarianism and is promulgated by magazines such as WIRED and MONDO 2000 and preached in the books of Stewart Brand, Kevin Kelly and others. The new faith has been embraced by computer nerds, slacker students, 30-something capitalists, hip academics, futurist bureaucrats and even the President of the USA himself. As usual, Europeans have not been slow to copy the latest fashion from America. While a recent EU report recommended adopting the Californian free enterprise model to build the 'infobahn', cutting-edge artists and academics have been championing the 'post-human' philosophy developed by the West Coast's Extropian cult. With no obvious opponents, the global dominance of the Californian ideology appears to be complete." [Excerpt: Grayfolded] The Warlocks' first gig with Phil Lesh on bass was on June the 18th 1965, at a club called Frenchy's with a teenage clientele. Lesh thought his playing had been wooden and it wasn't a good gig, and apparently the management of Frenchy's agreed -- they were meant to play a second night there, but turned up to be told they'd been replaced by a band with an accordion and clarinet. But by September the group had managed to get themselves a residency at a small bar named the In Room, and playing there every night made them cohere. They were at this point playing the kind of sets that bar bands everywhere play to this day, though at the time the songs they were playing, like "Gloria" by Them and "In the Midnight Hour", were the most contemporary of hits. Another song that they introduced into their repertoire was "Do You Believe in Magic" by the Lovin' Spoonful, another band which had grown up out of former jug band musicians. As well as playing their own sets, they were also the house band at The In Room and as such had to back various touring artists who were the headline acts. The first act they had to back up was Cornell Gunter's version of the Coasters. Gunter had brought his own guitarist along as musical director, and for the first show Weir sat in the audience watching the show and learning the parts, staring intently at this musical director's playing. After seeing that, Weir's playing was changed, because he also picked up how the guitarist was guiding the band while playing, the small cues that a musical director will use to steer the musicians in the right direction. Weir started doing these things himself when he was singing lead -- Pig Pen was the frontman but everyone except Bill sang sometimes -- and the group soon found that rather than Garcia being the sole leader, now whoever was the lead singer for the song was the de facto conductor as well. By this point, the Bay Area was getting almost overrun with people forming electric guitar bands, as every major urban area in America was. Some of the bands were even having hits already -- We Five had had a number three hit with "You Were On My Mind", a song which had originally been performed by the folk duo Ian and Sylvia: [Excerpt: We Five, "You Were On My Mind"] Although the band that was most highly regarded on the scene, the Charlatans, was having problems with the various record companies they tried to get signed to, and didn't end up making a record until 1969. If tracks like "Number One" had been released in 1965 when they were recorded, the history of the San Francisco music scene may have taken a very different turn: [Excerpt: The Charlatans, "Number One"] Bands like Jefferson Airplane, the Great Society, and Big Brother and the Holding Company were also forming, and Autumn Records was having a run of success with records by the Beau Brummels, whose records were produced by Autumn's in-house A&R man, Sly Stone: [Excerpt: The Beau Brummels, "Laugh Laugh"] The Warlocks were somewhat cut off from this, playing in a dive bar whose clientele was mostly depressed alcoholics. But the fact that they were playing every night for an audience that didn't care much gave them freedom, and they used that freedom to improvise. Both Lesh and Garcia were big fans of John Coltrane, and they started to take lessons from his style of playing. When the group played "Gloria" or "Midnight Hour" or whatever, they started to extend the songs and give themselves long instrumental passages for soloing. Garcia's playing wasn't influenced *harmonically* by Coltrane -- in fact Garcia was always a rather harmonically simple player. He'd tend to play lead lines either in Mixolydian mode, which is one of the most standard modes in rock, pop, blues, and jazz, or he'd play the notes of the chord that was being played, so if the band were playing a G chord his lead would emphasise the notes G, B, and D. But what he was influenced by was Coltrane's tendency to improvise in long, complex, phrases that made up a single thought -- Coltrane was thinking musically in paragraphs, rather than sentences, and Garcia started to try the same kind of th

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Könyv-Kult Bibliopod
180 fok - A CIA bedrogozta, diliházba ment, majd ebből regényt írt

Könyv-Kult Bibliopod

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 13, 2023 38:15


Ken Kesey bár a 20. századi amerikai ellenkultúra egyik fontos prózaírója, de munkássága mégis jóval keskenyebb polcokat tud megtölteni, mint a másik nagy beat irodalmi apostol, Jack Kerouac életműve. Kesey az A száll a kakukk fészkére című, gyorsan kultuszregénnyé, illetve mára klasszikussá vált műve tulajdonképpen az egyetlen alkotása, mely erős nyomot hagyva egyben elismerést is hagy az irodalomtörténészekben és a közönségben is. A 180 fok – A kultúra ellenpontjai című könyves podcast két műsorvezetője, – Turai Zsolt és Pöltl Oxi Zoltán – mint alapművet cincálja szét a híres drámát, melyről a regény mellett az abból készült Milos Forman által rendezett filmváltozat is jócskán terítékre kerül. Az adásban többek között Ken Kesey furcsán rövid és még furcsábban ritkás írói munkásságáról, a Száll a kakukk fészkére összetett szimbolikájáról, az egyes szereplők karaktereinek fontosságáról, a főszereplő McMurphy és a vele szemben álló elmegyógyintézet egyenlőtlen küzdelméről is beszél a két podcaster. Ezek mellett összehasonlításra kerül általuk a regény keletkezésének amerikai és a két műsorvezető szocializálódását jelentő 1980-as évek magyar viszonyrendszere, már ami az államhatalom által alkalmazott kényszerkezeléseket illeti. Ugyancsak említésre kerül Ratched főnővér férfiellenessége, McMurphy rakoncátlan renegátsága, illetve az elmegyógyintézetekben játszódó magyar regények, dokumentumkötetek egy-egy darabja is, ahogy szintén szó esik a két főszereplő közötti párharcban bevetett gyógyszerelés, leszedálás, elektrosokk terápia és lobotómia műtét által fémjelezett kiábrándítóan és nyomasztóan durva világ is.

Nighat Hashmi
DBTZB-14 Dil Kesey Bdalta Hey(A)

Nighat Hashmi

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 7, 2022 31:35


DBTZB-14 Dil Kesey Bdalta Hey(A) by Nighat Hashmi

Nighat Hashmi
DBTZB-14 Dil Kesey Bdalta Hey(B)

Nighat Hashmi

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 7, 2022 34:16


DBTZB-14 Dil Kesey Bdalta Hey(B) by Nighat Hashmi

Nighat Hashmi
DBTZB-14 Dil Kesey Bdalta Hey(C)

Nighat Hashmi

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 7, 2022 20:27


DBTZB-14 Dil Kesey Bdalta Hey(C) by Nighat Hashmi

A History Of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs
Episode 158: “White Rabbit” by Jefferson Airplane

A History Of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 23, 2022


Episode one hundred and fifty-eight of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “White Rabbit”, Jefferson Airplane, and the rise of the San Francisco sound. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a twenty-three-minute bonus episode available, on "Omaha" by Moby Grape. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ Erratum I refer to Back to Methuselah by Robert Heinlein. This is of course a play by George Bernard Shaw. What I meant to say was Methuselah's Children. Resources I hope to upload a Mixcloud tomorrow, and will edit it in, but have had some problems with the site today. Jefferson Airplane's first four studio albums, plus a 1968 live album, can be found in this box set. I've referred to three main books here. Got a Revolution!: The Turbulent Flight of Jefferson Airplane by Jeff Tamarkin is written with the co-operation of the band members, but still finds room to criticise them. Jefferson Airplane On Track by Richard Molesworth is a song-by-song guide to the band's music. And Been So Long: My Life and Music by Jorma Kaukonen is Kaukonen's autobiography. Some information on Skip Spence and Matthew Katz also comes from What's Big and Purple and Lives in the Ocean?: The Moby Grape Story, by Cam Cobb, which I also used for this week's bonus. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Before I start, I need to confess an important and hugely embarrassing error in this episode. I've only ever seen Marty Balin's name written down, never heard it spoken, and only after recording the episode, during the editing process, did I discover I mispronounce it throughout. It's usually an advantage for the podcast that I get my information from books rather than TV documentaries and the like, because they contain far more information, but occasionally it causes problems like that. My apologies. Also a brief note that this episode contains some mentions of racism, antisemitism, drug and alcohol abuse, and gun violence. One of the themes we've looked at in recent episodes is the way the centre of the musical world -- at least the musical world as it was regarded by the people who thought of themselves as hip in the mid-sixties -- was changing in 1967. Up to this point, for a few years there had been two clear centres of the rock and pop music worlds. In the UK, there was London, and any British band who meant anything had to base themselves there. And in the US, at some point around 1963, the centre of the music industry had moved West. Up to then it had largely been based in New York, and there was still a thriving industry there as of the mid sixties. But increasingly the records that mattered, that everyone in the country had been listening to, had come out of LA Soul music was, of course, still coming primarily from Detroit and from the Country-Soul triangle in Tennessee and Alabama, but when it came to the new brand of electric-guitar rock that was taking over the airwaves, LA was, up until the first few months of 1967, the only city that was competing with London, and was the place to be. But as we heard in the episode on "San Francisco", with the Monterey Pop Festival all that started to change. While the business part of the music business remained centred in LA, and would largely remain so, LA was no longer the hip place to be. Almost overnight, jangly guitars, harmonies, and Brian Jones hairstyles were out, and feedback, extended solos, and droopy moustaches were in. The place to be was no longer LA, but a few hundred miles North, in San Francisco -- something that the LA bands were not all entirely happy about: [Excerpt: The Mothers of Invention, "Who Needs the Peace Corps?"] In truth, the San Francisco music scene, unlike many of the scenes we've looked at so far in this series, had rather a limited impact on the wider world of music. Bands like Jefferson Airplane, the Grateful Dead, and Big Brother and the Holding Company were all both massively commercially successful and highly regarded by critics, but unlike many of the other bands we've looked at before and will look at in future, they didn't have much of an influence on the bands that would come after them, musically at least. Possibly this is because the music from the San Francisco scene was always primarily that -- music created by and for a specific group of people, and inextricable from its context. The San Francisco musicians were defining themselves by their geographical location, their peers, and the situation they were in, and their music was so specifically of the place and time that to attempt to copy it outside of that context would appear ridiculous, so while many of those bands remain much loved to this day, and many made some great music, it's very hard to point to ways in which that music influenced later bands. But what they did influence was the whole of rock music culture. For at least the next thirty years, and arguably to this day, the parameters in which rock musicians worked if they wanted to be taken seriously – their aesthetic and political ideals, their methods of collaboration, the cultural norms around drug use and sexual promiscuity, ideas of artistic freedom and authenticity, the choice of acceptable instruments – in short, what it meant to be a rock musician rather than a pop, jazz, country, or soul artist – all those things were defined by the cultural and behavioural norms of the San Francisco scene between about 1966 and 68. Without the San Francisco scene there's no Woodstock, no Rolling Stone magazine, no Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, no hippies, no groupies, no rock stars. So over the next few months we're going to take several trips to the Bay Area, and look at the bands which, for a brief time, defined the counterculture in America. The story of Jefferson Airplane -- and unlike other bands we've looked at recently, like The Pink Floyd and The Buffalo Springfield, they never had a definite article at the start of their name to wither away like a vestigial organ in subsequent years -- starts with Marty Balin. Balin was born in Ohio, but was a relatively sickly child -- he later talked about being autistic, and seems to have had the chronic illnesses that so often go with neurodivergence -- so in the hope that the dry air would be good for his chest his family moved to Arizona. Then when his father couldn't find work there, they moved further west to San Francisco, in the Haight-Ashbury area, long before that area became the byword for the hippie movement. But it was in LA that he started his music career, and got his surname. Balin had been named Marty Buchwald as a kid, but when he was nineteen he had accompanied a friend to LA to visit a music publisher, and had ended up singing backing vocals on her demos. While he was there, he had encountered the arranger Jimmy Haskell. Haskell was on his way to becoming one of the most prominent arrangers in the music industry, and in his long career he would go on to do arrangements for Bobby Gentry, Blondie, Steely Dan, Simon and Garfunkel, and many others. But at the time he was best known for his work on Ricky Nelson's hits: [Excerpt: Ricky Nelson, "Hello Mary Lou"] Haskell thought that Marty had the makings of a Ricky Nelson style star, as he was a good-looking young man with a decent voice, and he became a mentor for the young man. Making the kind of records that Haskell arranged was expensive, and so Haskell suggested a deal to him -- if Marty's father would pay for studio time and musicians, Haskell would make a record with him and find him a label to put it out. Marty's father did indeed pay for the studio time and the musicians -- some of the finest working in LA at the time. The record, released under the name Marty Balin, featured Jack Nitzsche on keyboards, Earl Palmer on drums, Milt Jackson on vibraphone, Red Callender on bass, and Glen Campbell and Barney Kessell on guitars, and came out on Challenge Records, a label owned by Gene Autry: [Excerpt: Marty Balin, "Nobody But You"] Neither that, nor Balin's follow-up single, sold a noticeable amount of copies, and his career as a teen idol was over before it had begun. Instead, as many musicians of his age did, he decided to get into folk music, joining a vocal harmony group called the Town Criers, who patterned themselves after the Weavers, and performed the same kind of material that every other clean-cut folk vocal group was performing at the time -- the kind of songs that John Phillips and Steve Stills and Cass Elliot and Van Dyke Parks and the rest were all performing in their own groups at the same time. The Town Criers never made any records while they were together, but some archival recordings of them have been released over the decades: [Excerpt: The Town Criers, "900 Miles"] The Town Criers split up, and Balin started performing as a solo folkie again. But like all those other then-folk musicians, Balin realised that he had to adapt to the K/T-event level folk music extinction that happened when the Beatles hit America like a meteorite. He had to form a folk-rock group if he wanted to survive -- and given that there were no venues for such a group to play in San Francisco, he also had to start a nightclub for them to play in. He started hanging around the hootenannies in the area, looking for musicians who might form an electric band. The first person he decided on was a performer called Paul Kantner, mainly because he liked his attitude. Kantner had got on stage in front of a particularly drunk, loud, crowd, and performed precisely half a song before deciding he wasn't going to perform in front of people like that and walking off stage. Kantner was the only member of the new group to be a San Franciscan -- he'd been born and brought up in the city. He'd got into folk music at university, where he'd also met a guitar player named Jorma Kaukonen, who had turned him on to cannabis, and the two had started giving music lessons at a music shop in San Jose. There Kantner had also been responsible for booking acts at a local folk club, where he'd first encountered acts like Mother McCree's Uptown Jug Champions, a jug band which included Jerry Garcia, Pigpen McKernan, and Bob Weir, who would later go on to be the core members of the Grateful Dead: [Excerpt: Mother McCree's Uptown Jug Champions, "In the Jailhouse Now"] Kantner had moved around a bit between Northern and Southern California, and had been friendly with two other musicians on the Californian folk scene, David Crosby and Roger McGuinn. When their new group, the Byrds, suddenly became huge, Kantner became aware of the possibility of doing something similar himself, and so when Marty Balin approached him to form a band, he agreed. On bass, they got in a musician called Bob Harvey, who actually played double bass rather than electric, and who stuck to that for the first few gigs the group played -- he had previously been in a band called the Slippery Rock String Band. On drums, they brought in Jerry Peloquin, who had formerly worked for the police, but now had a day job as an optician. And on vocals, they brought in Signe Toley -- who would soon marry and change her name to Signe Anderson, so that's how I'll talk about her to avoid confusion. The group also needed a lead guitarist though -- both Balin and Kantner were decent rhythm players and singers, but they needed someone who was a better instrumentalist. They decided to ask Kantner's old friend Jorma Kaukonen. Kaukonen was someone who was seriously into what would now be called Americana or roots music. He'd started playing the guitar as a teenager, not like most people of his generation inspired by Elvis or Buddy Holly, but rather after a friend of his had shown him how to play an old Carter Family song, "Jimmy Brown the Newsboy": [Excerpt: The Carter Family, "Jimmy Brown the Newsboy"] Kaukonen had had a far more interesting life than most of the rest of the group. His father had worked for the State Department -- and there's some suggestion he'd worked for the CIA -- and the family had travelled all over the world, staying in Pakistan, the Philippines, and Finland. For most of his childhood, he'd gone by the name Jerry, because other kids beat him up for having a foreign name and called him a Nazi, but by the time he turned twenty he was happy enough using his birth name. Kaukonen wasn't completely immune to the appeal of rock and roll -- he'd formed a rock band, The Triumphs, with his friend Jack Casady when he was a teenager, and he loved Ricky Nelson's records -- but his fate as a folkie had been pretty much sealed when he went to Antioch College. There he met up with a blues guitarist called Ian Buchanan. Buchanan never had much of a career as a professional, but he had supposedly spent nine years studying with the blues and ragtime guitar legend Rev. Gary Davis, and he was certainly a fine guitarist, as can be heard on his contribution to The Blues Project, the album Elektra put out of white Greenwich Village musicians like John Sebastian and Dave Van Ronk playing old blues songs: [Excerpt: Ian Buchanan, "The Winding Boy"] Kaukonen became something of a disciple of Buchanan -- he said later that Buchanan probably taught him how to play because he was such a terrible player and Buchanan couldn't stand to listen to it -- as did John Hammond Jr, another student at Antioch at the same time. After studying at Antioch, Kaukonen started to travel around, including spells in Greenwich Village and in the Philippines, before settling in Santa Clara, where he studied for a sociology degree and became part of a social circle that included Dino Valenti, Jerry Garcia, and Billy Roberts, the credited writer of "Hey Joe". He also started performing as a duo with a singer called Janis Joplin. Various of their recordings from this period circulate, mostly recorded at Kaukonen's home with the sound of his wife typing in the background while the duo rehearse, as on this performance of an old Bessie Smith song: [Excerpt: Jorma Kaukonen and Janis Joplin, "Nobody Loves You When You're Down and Out"] By 1965 Kaukonen saw himself firmly as a folk-blues purist, who would not even think of playing rock and roll music, which he viewed with more than a little contempt. But he allowed himself to be brought along to audition for the new group, and Ken Kesey happened to be there. Kesey was a novelist who had written two best-selling books, One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest and Sometimes A Great Notion, and used the financial independence that gave him to organise a group of friends who called themselves the Merry Pranksters, who drove from coast to coast and back again in a psychedelic-painted bus, before starting a series of events that became known as Acid Tests, parties at which everyone was on LSD, immortalised in Tom Wolfe's book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. Nobody has ever said why Kesey was there, but he had brought along an Echoplex, a reverb unit one could put a guitar through -- and nobody has explained why Kesey, who wasn't a musician, had an Echoplex to hand. But Kaukonen loved the sound that he could get by putting his guitar through the device, and so for that reason more than any other he decided to become an electric player and join the band, going out and buying a Rickenbacker twelve-string and Vox Treble Booster because that was what Roger McGuinn used. He would later also get a Guild Thunderbird six-string guitar and a Standel Super Imperial amp, following the same principle of buying the equipment used by other guitarists he liked, as they were what Zal Yanovsky of the Lovin' Spoonful used. He would use them for all his six-string playing for the next couple of years, only later to discover that the Lovin' Spoonful despised them and only used them because they had an endorsement deal with the manufacturers. Kaukonen was also the one who came up with the new group's name. He and his friends had a running joke where they had "Bluesman names", things like "Blind Outrage" and "Little Sun Goldfarb". Kaukonen's bluesman name, given to him by his friend Steve Talbot, had been Blind Thomas Jefferson Airplane, a reference to the 1920s blues guitarist Blind Lemon Jefferson: [Excerpt: Blind Lemon Jefferson, "Match Box Blues"] At the band meeting where they were trying to decide on a name, Kaukonen got frustrated at the ridiculous suggestions that were being made, and said "You want a stupid name? Howzabout this... Jefferson Airplane?" He said in his autobiography "It was one of those rare moments when everyone in the band agreed, and that was that. I think it was the only band meeting that ever allowed me to come away smiling." The newly-named Jefferson Airplane started to rehearse at the Matrix Club, the club that Balin had decided to open. This was run with three sound engineer friends, who put in the seed capital for the club. Balin had stock options in the club, which he got by trading a share of the band's future earnings to his partners, though as the group became bigger he eventually sold his stock in the club back to his business partners. Before their first public performance, they started working with a manager, Matthew Katz, mostly because Katz had access to a recording of a then-unreleased Bob Dylan song, "Lay Down Your Weary Tune": [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, "Lay Down Your Weary Tune"] The group knew that the best way for a folk-rock band to make a name for themselves was to perform a Dylan song nobody else had yet heard, and so they agreed to be managed by Katz. Katz started a pre-publicity blitz, giving out posters, badges, and bumper stickers saying "Jefferson Airplane Loves You" all over San Francisco -- and insisting that none of the band members were allowed to say "Hello" when they answered the phone any more, they had to say "Jefferson Airplane Loves You!" For their early rehearsals and gigs, they were performing almost entirely cover versions of blues and folk songs, things like Fred Neil's "The Other Side of This Life" and Dino Valenti's "Get Together" which were the common currency of the early folk-rock movement, and songs by their friends, like one called "Flower Bomb" by David Crosby, which Crosby now denies ever having written. They did start writing the odd song, but at this point they were more focused on performance than on writing. They also hired a press agent, their friend Bill Thompson. Thompson was friends with the two main music writers at the San Francisco Chronicle, Ralph Gleason, the famous jazz critic, who had recently started also reviewing rock music, and John Wasserman. Thompson got both men to come to the opening night of the Matrix, and both gave the group glowing reviews in the Chronicle. Record labels started sniffing around the group immediately as a result of this coverage, and according to Katz he managed to get a bidding war started by making sure that when A&R men came to the club there were always two of them from different labels, so they would see the other person and realise they weren't the only ones interested. But before signing a record deal they needed to make some personnel changes. The first member to go was Jerry Peloquin, for both musical and personal reasons. Peloquin was used to keeping strict time and the other musicians had a more free-flowing idea of what tempo they should be playing at, but also he had worked for the police while the other members were all taking tons of illegal drugs. The final break with Peloquin came when he did the rest of the group a favour -- Paul Kantner's glasses broke during a rehearsal, and as Peloquin was an optician he offered to take them back to his shop and fix them. When he got back, he found them auditioning replacements for him. He beat Kantner up, and that was the end of Jerry Peloquin in Jefferson Airplane. His replacement was Skip Spence, who the group had met when he had accompanied three friends to the Matrix, which they were using as a rehearsal room. Spence's friends went on to be the core members of Quicksilver Messenger Service along with Dino Valenti: [Excerpt: Quicksilver Messenger Service, "Dino's Song"] But Balin decided that Spence looked like a rock star, and told him that he was now Jefferson Airplane's drummer, despite Spence being a guitarist and singer, not a drummer. But Spence was game, and learned to play the drums. Next they needed to get rid of Bob Harvey. According to Harvey, the decision to sack him came after David Crosby saw the band rehearsing and said "Nice song, but get rid of the bass player" (along with an expletive before the word bass which I can't say without incurring the wrath of Apple). Crosby denies ever having said this. Harvey had started out in the group on double bass, but to show willing he'd switched in his last few gigs to playing an electric bass. When he was sacked by the group, he returned to double bass, and to the Slippery Rock String Band, who released one single in 1967: [Excerpt: The Slippery Rock String Band, "Tule Fog"] Harvey's replacement was Kaukonen's old friend Jack Casady, who Kaukonen knew was now playing bass, though he'd only ever heard him playing guitar when they'd played together. Casady was rather cautious about joining a rock band, but then Kaukonen told him that the band were getting fifty dollars a week salary each from Katz, and Casady flew over from Washington DC to San Francisco to join the band. For the first few gigs, he used Bob Harvey's bass, which Harvey was good enough to lend him despite having been sacked from the band. Unfortunately, right from the start Casady and Kantner didn't get on. When Casady flew in from Washington, he had a much more clean-cut appearance than the rest of the band -- one they've described as being nerdy, with short, slicked-back, side-parted hair and a handlebar moustache. Kantner insisted that Casady shave the moustache off, and he responded by shaving only one side, so in profile on one side he looked clean-shaven, while from the other side he looked like he had a full moustache. Kantner also didn't like Casady's general attitude, or his playing style, at all -- though most critics since this point have pointed to Casady's bass playing as being the most interesting and distinctive thing about Jefferson Airplane's style. This lineup seems to have been the one that travelled to LA to audition for various record companies -- a move that immediately brought the group a certain amount of criticism for selling out, both for auditioning for record companies and for going to LA at all, two things that were already anathema on the San Francisco scene. The only audition anyone remembers them having specifically is one for Phil Spector, who according to Kaukonen was waving a gun around during the audition, so he and Casady walked out. Around this time as well, the group performed at an event billed as "A Tribute to Dr. Strange", organised by the radical hippie collective Family Dog. Marvel Comics, rather than being the multi-billion-dollar Disney-owned corporate juggernaut it is now, was regarded as a hip, almost underground, company -- and around this time they briefly started billing their comics not as comics but as "Marvel Pop Art Productions". The magical adventures of Dr. Strange, Master of the Mystic Arts, and in particular the art by far-right libertarian artist Steve Ditko, were regarded as clear parallels to both the occult dabblings and hallucinogen use popular among the hippies, though Ditko had no time for either, following as he did an extreme version of Ayn Rand's Objectivism. It was at the Tribute to Dr. Strange that Jefferson Airplane performed for the first time with a band named The Great Society, whose lead singer, Grace Slick, would later become very important in Jefferson Airplane's story: [Excerpt: The Great Society, "Someone to Love"] That gig was also the first one where the band and their friends noticed that large chunks of the audience were now dressing up in costumes that were reminiscent of the Old West. Up to this point, while Katz had been managing the group and paying them fifty dollars a week even on weeks when they didn't perform, he'd been doing so without a formal contract, in part because the group didn't trust him much. But now they were starting to get interest from record labels, and in particular RCA Records desperately wanted them. While RCA had been the label who had signed Elvis Presley, they had otherwise largely ignored rock and roll, considering that since they had the biggest rock star in the world they didn't need other ones, and concentrating largely on middle-of-the-road acts. But by the mid-sixties Elvis' star had faded somewhat, and they were desperate to get some of the action for the new music -- and unlike the other major American labels, they didn't have a reciprocal arrangement with a British label that allowed them to release anything by any of the new British stars. The group were introduced to RCA by Rod McKuen, a songwriter and poet who later became America's best-selling poet and wrote songs that sold over a hundred million copies. At this point McKuen was in his Jacques Brel phase, recording loose translations of the Belgian songwriter's songs with McKuen translating the lyrics: [Excerpt: Rod McKuen, "Seasons in the Sun"] McKuen thought that Jefferson Airplane might be a useful market for his own songs, and brought the group to RCA. RCA offered Jefferson Airplane twenty-five thousand dollars to sign with them, and Katz convinced the group that RCA wouldn't give them this money without them having signed a management contract with him. Kaukonen, Kantner, Spence, and Balin all signed without much hesitation, but Jack Casady didn't yet sign, as he was the new boy and nobody knew if he was going to be in the band for the long haul. The other person who refused to sign was Signe Anderson. In her case, she had a much better reason for refusing to sign, as unlike the rest of the band she had actually read the contract, and she found it to be extremely worrying. She did eventually back down on the day of the group's first recording session, but she later had the contract renegotiated. Jack Casady also signed the contract right at the start of the first session -- or at least, he thought he'd signed the contract then. He certainly signed *something*, without having read it. But much later, during a court case involving the band's longstanding legal disputes with Katz, it was revealed that the signature on the contract wasn't Casady's, and was badly forged. What he actually *did* sign that day has never been revealed, to him or to anyone else. Katz also signed all the group as songwriters to his own publishing company, telling them that they legally needed to sign with him if they wanted to make records, and also claimed to RCA that he had power of attorney for the band, which they say they never gave him -- though to be fair to Katz, given the band members' habit of signing things without reading or understanding them, it doesn't seem beyond the realms of possibility that they did. The producer chosen for the group's first album was Tommy Oliver, a friend of Katz's who had previously been an arranger on some of Doris Day's records, and whose next major act after finishing the Jefferson Airplane album was Trombones Unlimited, who released records like "Holiday for Trombones": [Excerpt: Trombones Unlimited, "Holiday For Trombones"] The group weren't particularly thrilled with this choice, but were happier with their engineer, Dave Hassinger, who had worked on records like "Satisfaction" by the Rolling Stones, and had a far better understanding of the kind of music the group were making. They spent about three months recording their first album, even while continually being attacked as sellouts. The album is not considered their best work, though it does contain "Blues From an Airplane", a collaboration between Spence and Balin: [Excerpt: Jefferson Airplane, "Blues From an Airplane"] Even before the album came out, though, things were starting to change for the group. Firstly, they started playing bigger venues -- their home base went from being the Matrix club to the Fillmore, a large auditorium run by the promoter Bill Graham. They also started to get an international reputation. The British singer-songwriter Donovan released a track called "The Fat Angel" which namechecked the group: [Excerpt: Donovan, "The Fat Angel"] The group also needed a new drummer. Skip Spence decided to go on holiday to Mexico without telling the rest of the band. There had already been some friction with Spence, as he was very eager to become a guitarist and songwriter, and the band already had three songwriting guitarists and didn't really see why they needed a fourth. They sacked Spence, who went on to form Moby Grape, who were also managed by Katz: [Excerpt: Moby Grape, "Omaha"] For his replacement they brought in Spencer Dryden, who was a Hollywood brat like their friend David Crosby -- in Dryden's case he was Charlie Chaplin's nephew, and his father worked as Chaplin's assistant. The story normally goes that the great session drummer Earl Palmer recommended Dryden to the group, but it's also the case that Dryden had been in a band, the Heartbeats, with Tommy Oliver and the great blues guitarist Roy Buchanan, so it may well be that Oliver had recommended him. Dryden had been primarily a jazz musician, playing with people like the West Coast jazz legend Charles Lloyd, though like most jazzers he would slum it on occasion by playing rock and roll music to pay the bills. But then he'd seen an early performance by the Mothers of Invention, and realised that rock music could have a serious artistic purpose too. He'd joined a band called The Ashes, who had released one single, the Jackie DeShannon song "Is There Anything I Can Do?" in December 1965: [Excerpt: The Ashes, "Is There Anything I Can Do?"] The Ashes split up once Dryden left the group to join Jefferson Airplane, but they soon reformed without him as The Peanut Butter Conspiracy, who hooked up with Gary Usher and released several albums of psychedelic sunshine pop. Dryden played his first gig with the group at a Republican Party event on June the sixth, 1966. But by the time Dryden had joined, other problems had become apparent. The group were already feeling like it had been a big mistake to accede to Katz's demands to sign a formal contract with him, and Balin in particular was getting annoyed that he wouldn't let the band see their finances. All the money was getting paid to Katz, who then doled out money to the band when they asked for it, and they had no idea if he was actually paying them what they were owed or not. The group's first album, Jefferson Airplane Takes Off, finally came out in September, and it was a comparative flop. It sold well in San Francisco itself, selling around ten thousand copies in the area, but sold basically nothing anywhere else in the country -- the group's local reputation hadn't extended outside their own immediate scene. It didn't help that the album was pulled and reissued, as RCA censored the initial version of the album because of objections to the lyrics. The song "Runnin' Round This World" was pulled off the album altogether for containing the word "trips", while in "Let Me In" they had to rerecord two lines -- “I gotta get in, you know where" was altered to "You shut the door now it ain't fair" and "Don't tell me you want money" became "Don't tell me it's so funny". Similarly in "Run Around" the phrase "as you lay under me" became "as you stay here by me". Things were also becoming difficult for Anderson. She had had a baby in May and was not only unhappy with having to tour while she had a small child, she was also the band member who was most vocally opposed to Katz. Added to that, her husband did not get on well at all with the group, and she felt trapped between her marriage and her bandmates. Reports differ as to whether she quit the band or was fired, but after a disastrous appearance at the Monterey Jazz Festival, one way or another she was out of the band. Her replacement was already waiting in the wings. Grace Slick, the lead singer of the Great Society, had been inspired by going to one of the early Jefferson Airplane gigs. She later said "I went to see Jefferson Airplane at the Matrix, and they were making more money in a day than I made in a week. They only worked for two or three hours a night, and they got to hang out. I thought 'This looks a lot better than what I'm doing.' I knew I could more or less carry a tune, and I figured if they could do it I could." She was married at the time to a film student named Jerry Slick, and indeed she had done the music for his final project at film school, a film called "Everybody Hits Their Brother Once", which sadly I can't find online. She was also having an affair with Jerry's brother Darby, though as the Slicks were in an open marriage this wasn't particularly untoward. The three of them, with a couple of other musicians, had formed The Great Society, named as a joke about President Johnson's programme of the same name. The Great Society was the name Johnson had given to his whole programme of domestic reforms, including civil rights for Black people, the creation of Medicare and Medicaid, the creation of the National Endowment for the Arts, and more. While those projects were broadly popular among the younger generation, Johnson's escalation of the war in Vietnam had made him so personally unpopular that even his progressive domestic programme was regarded with suspicion and contempt. The Great Society had set themselves up as local rivals to Jefferson Airplane -- where Jefferson Airplane had buttons saying "Jefferson Airplane Loves You!" the Great Society put out buttons saying "The Great Society Really Doesn't Like You Much At All". They signed to Autumn Records, and recorded a song that Darby Slick had written, titled "Someone to Love" -- though the song would later be retitled "Somebody to Love": [Excerpt: The Great Society, "Someone to Love"] That track was produced by Sly Stone, who at the time was working as a producer for Autumn Records. The Great Society, though, didn't like working with Stone, because he insisted on them doing forty-five takes to try to sound professional, as none of them were particularly competent musicians. Grace Slick later said "Sly could play any instrument known to man. He could have just made the record himself, except for the singers. It was kind of degrading in a way" -- and on another occasion she said that he *did* end up playing all the instruments on the finished record. "Someone to Love" was put out as a promo record, but never released to the general public, and nor were any of the Great Society's other recordings for Autumn Records released. Their contract expired and they were let go, at which point they were about to sign to Mercury Records, but then Darby Slick and another member decided to go off to India for a while. Grace's marriage to Jerry was falling apart, though they would stay legally married for several years, and the Great Society looked like it was at an end, so when Grace got the offer to join Jefferson Airplane to replace Signe Anderson, she jumped at the chance. At first, she was purely a harmony singer -- she didn't take over any of the lead vocal parts that Anderson had previously sung, as she had a very different vocal style, and instead she just sang the harmony parts that Anderson had sung on songs with other lead vocalists. But two months after the album they were back in the studio again, recording their second album, and Slick sang lead on several songs there. As well as the new lineup, there was another important change in the studio. They were still working with Dave Hassinger, but they had a new producer, Rick Jarrard. Jarrard was at one point a member of the folk group The Wellingtons, who did the theme tune for "Gilligan's Island", though I can't find anything to say whether or not he was in the group when they recorded that track: [Excerpt: The Wellingtons, "The Ballad of Gilligan's Island"] Jarrard had also been in the similar folk group The Greenwood County Singers, where as we heard in the episode on "Heroes and Villains" he replaced Van Dyke Parks. He'd also released a few singles under his own name, including a version of Parks' "High Coin": [Excerpt: Rick Jarrard, "High Coin"] While Jarrard had similar musical roots to those of Jefferson Airplane's members, and would go on to produce records by people like Harry Nilsson and The Family Tree, he wasn't any more liked by the band than their previous producer had been. So much so, that a few of the band members have claimed that while Jarrard is the credited producer, much of the work that one would normally expect to be done by a producer was actually done by their friend Jerry Garcia, who according to the band members gave them a lot of arranging and structural advice, and was present in the studio and played guitar on several tracks. Jarrard, on the other hand, said categorically "I never met Jerry Garcia. I produced that album from start to finish, never heard from Jerry Garcia, never talked to Jerry Garcia. He was not involved creatively on that album at all." According to the band, though, it was Garcia who had the idea of almost doubling the speed of the retitled "Somebody to Love", turning it into an uptempo rocker: [Excerpt: Jefferson Airplane, "Somebody to Love"] And one thing everyone is agreed on is that it was Garcia who came up with the album title, when after listening to some of the recordings he said "That's as surrealistic as a pillow!" It was while they were working on the album that was eventually titled Surrealistic Pillow that they finally broke with Katz as their manager, bringing Bill Thompson in as a temporary replacement. Or at least, it was then that they tried to break with Katz. Katz sued the group over their contract, and won. Then they appealed, and they won. Then Katz appealed the appeal, and the Superior Court insisted that if he wanted to appeal the ruling, he had to put up a bond for the fifty thousand dollars the group said he owed them. He didn't, so in 1970, four years after they sacked him as their manager, the appeal was dismissed. Katz appealed the dismissal, and won that appeal, and the case dragged on for another three years, at which point Katz dragged RCA Records into the lawsuit. As a result of being dragged into the mess, RCA decided to stop paying the group their songwriting royalties from record sales directly, and instead put the money into an escrow account. The claims and counterclaims and appeals *finally* ended in 1987, twenty years after the lawsuits had started and fourteen years after the band had stopped receiving their songwriting royalties. In the end, the group won on almost every point, and finally received one point three million dollars in back royalties and seven hundred thousand dollars in interest that had accrued, while Katz got a small token payment. Early in 1967, when the sessions for Surrealistic Pillow had finished, but before the album was released, Newsweek did a big story on the San Francisco scene, which drew national attention to the bands there, and the first big event of what would come to be called the hippie scene, the Human Be-In, happened in Golden Gate Park in January. As the group's audience was expanding rapidly, they asked Bill Graham to be their manager, as he was the most business-minded of the people around the group. The first single from the album, "My Best Friend", a song written by Skip Spence before he quit the band, came out in January 1967 and had no more success than their earlier recordings had, and didn't make the Hot 100. The album came out in February, and was still no higher than number 137 on the charts in March, when the second single, "Somebody to Love", was released: [Excerpt: Jefferson Airplane, "Somebody to Love"] That entered the charts at the start of April, and by June it had made number five. The single's success also pushed its parent album up to number three by August, just behind the Beatles' Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and the Monkees' Headquarters. The success of the single also led to the group being asked to do commercials for Levis jeans: [Excerpt: Jefferson Airplane, "Levis commercial"] That once again got them accused of selling out. Abbie Hoffman, the leader of the Yippies, wrote to the Village Voice about the commercials, saying "It summarized for me all the doubts I have about the hippie philosophy. I realise they are just doing their 'thing', but while the Jefferson Airplane grooves with its thing, over 100 workers in the Levi Strauss plant on the Tennessee-Georgia border are doing their thing, which consists of being on strike to protest deplorable working conditions." The third single from the album, "White Rabbit", came out on the twenty-fourth of June, the day before the Beatles recorded "All You Need is Love", nine days after the release of "See Emily Play", and a week after the group played the Monterey Pop Festival, to give you some idea of how compressed a time period we've been in recently. We talked in the last episode about how there's a big difference between American and British psychedelia at this point in time, because the political nature of the American counterculture was determined by the fact that so many people were being sent off to die in Vietnam. Of all the San Francisco bands, though, Jefferson Airplane were by far the least political -- they were into the culture part of the counterculture, but would often and repeatedly disavow any deeper political meaning in their songs. In early 1968, for example, in a press conference, they said “Don't ask us anything about politics. We don't know anything about it. And what we did know, we just forgot.” So it's perhaps not surprising that of all the American groups, they were the one that was most similar to the British psychedelic groups in their influences, and in particular their frequent references to children's fantasy literature. "White Rabbit" was a perfect example of this. It had started out as "White Rabbit Blues", a song that Slick had written influenced by Alice in Wonderland, and originally performed by the Great Society: [Excerpt: The Great Society, "White Rabbit"] Slick explained the lyrics, and their association between childhood fantasy stories and drugs, later by saying "It's an interesting song but it didn't do what I wanted it to. What I was trying to say was that between the ages of zero and five the information and the input you get is almost indelible. In other words, once a Catholic, always a Catholic. And the parents read us these books, like Alice in Wonderland where she gets high, tall, and she takes mushrooms, a hookah, pills, alcohol. And then there's The Wizard of Oz, where they fall into a field of poppies and when they wake up they see Oz. And then there's Peter Pan, where if you sprinkle white dust on you, you could fly. And then you wonder why we do it? Well, what did you read to me?" While the lyrical inspiration for the track was from Alice in Wonderland, the musical inspiration is less obvious. Slick has on multiple occasions said that the idea for the music came from listening to Miles Davis' album "Sketches of Spain", and in particular to Davis' version of -- and I apologise for almost certainly mangling the Spanish pronunciation badly here -- "Concierto de Aranjuez", though I see little musical resemblance to it myself. [Excerpt: Miles Davis, "Concierto de Aranjuez"] She has also, though, talked about how the song was influenced by Ravel's "Bolero", and in particular the way the piece keeps building in intensity, starting softly and slowly building up, rather than having the dynamic peaks and troughs of most music. And that is definitely a connection I can hear in the music: [Excerpt: Ravel, "Bolero"] Jefferson Airplane's version of "White Rabbit", like their version of "Somebody to Love", was far more professional, far -- and apologies for the pun -- slicker than The Great Society's version. It's also much shorter. The version by The Great Society has a four and a half minute instrumental intro before Slick's vocal enters. By contrast, the version on Surrealistic Pillow comes in at under two and a half minutes in total, and is a tight pop song: [Excerpt: Jefferson Airplane, "White Rabbit"] Jack Casady has more recently said that the group originally recorded the song more or less as a lark, because they assumed that all the drug references would mean that RCA would make them remove the song from the album -- after all, they'd cut a song from the earlier album because it had a reference to a trip, so how could they possibly allow a song like "White Rabbit" with its lyrics about pills and mushrooms? But it was left on the album, and ended up making the top ten on the pop charts, peaking at number eight: [Excerpt: Jefferson Airplane, "White Rabbit"] In an interview last year, Slick said she still largely lives off the royalties from writing that one song. It would be the last hit single Jefferson Airplane would ever have. Marty Balin later said "Fame changes your life. It's a bit like prison. It ruined the band. Everybody became rich and selfish and self-centred and couldn't care about the band. That was pretty much the end of it all. After that it was just working and living the high life and watching the band destroy itself, living on its laurels." They started work on their third album, After Bathing at Baxter's, in May 1967, while "Somebody to Love" was still climbing the charts. This time, the album was produced by Al Schmitt. Unlike the two previous producers, Schmitt was a fan of the band, and decided the best thing to do was to just let them do their own thing without interfering. The album took months to record, rather than the weeks that Surrealistic Pillow had taken, and cost almost ten times as much money to record. In part the time it took was because of the promotional work the band had to do. Bill Graham was sending them all over the country to perform, which they didn't appreciate. The group complained to Graham in business meetings, saying they wanted to only play in big cities where there were lots of hippies. Graham pointed out in turn that if they wanted to keep having any kind of success, they needed to play places other than San Francisco, LA, New York, and Chicago, because in fact most of the population of the US didn't live in those four cities. They grudgingly took his point. But there were other arguments all the time as well. They argued about whether Graham should be taking his cut from the net or the gross. They argued about Graham trying to push for the next single to be another Grace Slick lead vocal -- they felt like he was trying to make them into just Grace Slick's backing band, while he thought it made sense to follow up two big hits with more singles with the same vocalist. There was also a lawsuit from Balin's former partners in the Matrix, who remembered that bit in the contract about having a share in the group's income and sued for six hundred thousand dollars -- that was settled out of court three years later. And there were interpersonal squabbles too. Some of these were about the music -- Dryden didn't like the fact that Kaukonen's guitar solos were getting longer and longer, and Balin only contributed one song to the new album because all the other band members made fun of him for writing short, poppy, love songs rather than extended psychedelic jams -- but also the group had become basically two rival factions. On one side were Kaukonen and Casady, the old friends and virtuoso instrumentalists, who wanted to extend the instrumental sections of the songs more to show off their playing. On the other side were Grace Slick and Spencer Dryden, the two oldest members of the group by age, but the most recent people to join. They were also unusual in the San Francisco scene for having alcohol as their drug of choice -- drinking was thought of by most of the hippies as being a bit classless, but they were both alcoholics. They were also sleeping together, and generally on the side of shorter, less exploratory, songs. Kantner, who was attracted to Slick, usually ended up siding with her and Dryden, and this left Balin the odd man out in the middle. He later said "I got disgusted with all the ego trips, and the band was so stoned that I couldn't even talk to them. Everybody was in their little shell". While they were still working on the album, they released the first single from it, Kantner's "The Ballad of You and Me and Pooneil". The "Pooneil" in the song was a figure that combined two of Kantner's influences: the Greenwich Village singer-songwriter Fred Neil, the writer of "Everybody's Talkin'" and "Dolphins"; and Winnie the Pooh. The song contained several lines taken from A.A. Milne's children's stories: [Excerpt: Jefferson Airplane, "The Ballad of You and Me and Pooneil"] That only made number forty-two on the charts. It was the last Jefferson Airplane single to make the top fifty. At a gig in Bakersfield they got arrested for inciting a riot, because they encouraged the crowd to dance, even though local by-laws said that nobody under sixteen was allowed to dance, and then they nearly got arrested again after Kantner's behaviour on the private plane they'd chartered to get them back to San Francisco that night. Kantner had been chain-smoking, and this annoyed the pilot, who asked Kantner to put his cigarette out, so Kantner opened the door of the plane mid-flight and threw the lit cigarette out. They'd chartered that plane because they wanted to make sure they got to see a new group, Cream, who were playing the Fillmore: [Excerpt: Cream, "Strange Brew"] After seeing that, the divisions in the band were even wider -- Kaukonen and Casady now *knew* that what the band needed was to do long, extended, instrumental jams. Cream were the future, two-minute pop songs were the past. Though they weren't completely averse to two-minute pop songs. The group were recording at RCA studios at the same time as the Monkees, and members of the two groups would often jam together. The idea of selling out might have been anathema to their *audience*, but the band members themselves didn't care about things like that. Indeed, at one point the group returned from a gig to the mansion they were renting and found squatters had moved in and were using their private pool -- so they shot at the water. The squatters quickly moved on. As Dryden put it "We all -- Paul, Jorma, Grace, and myself -- had guns. We weren't hippies. Hippies were the people that lived on the streets down in Haight-Ashbury. We were basically musicians and art school kids. We were into guns and machinery" After Bathing at Baxter's only went to number seventeen on the charts, not a bad position but a flop compared to their previous album, and Bill Graham in particular took this as more proof that he had been right when for the last few months he'd been attacking the group as self-indulgent. Eventually, Slick and Dryden decided that either Bill Graham was going as their manager, or they were going. Slick even went so far as to try to negotiate a solo deal with Elektra Records -- as the voice on the hits, everyone was telling her she was the only one who mattered anyway. David Anderle, who was working for the label, agreed a deal with her, but Jac Holzman refused to authorise the deal, saying "Judy Collins doesn't get that much money, why should Grace Slick?" The group did fire Graham, and went one further and tried to become his competitors. They teamed up with the Grateful Dead to open a new venue, the Carousel Ballroom, to compete with the Fillmore, but after a few months they realised they were no good at running a venue and sold it to Graham. Graham, who was apparently unhappy with the fact that the people living around the Fillmore were largely Black given that the bands he booked appealed to mostly white audiences, closed the original Fillmore, renamed the Carousel the Fillmore West, and opened up a second venue in New York, the Fillmore East. The divisions in the band were getting worse -- Kaukonen and Casady were taking more and more speed, which was making them play longer and faster instrumental solos whether or not the rest of the band wanted them to, and Dryden, whose hands often bled from trying to play along with them, definitely did not want them to. But the group soldiered on and recorded their fourth album, Crown of Creation. This album contained several songs that were influenced by science fiction novels. The most famous of these was inspired by the right-libertarian author Robert Heinlein, who was hugely influential on the counterculture. Jefferson Airplane's friends the Monkees had already recorded a song based on Heinlein's The Door Into Summer, an unintentionally disturbing novel about a thirty-year-old man who falls in love with a twelve-year-old girl, and who uses a combination of time travel and cryogenic freezing to make their ages closer together so he can marry her: [Excerpt: The Monkees, "The Door Into Summer"] Now Jefferson Airplane were recording a song based on Heinlein's most famous novel, Stranger in a Strange Land. Stranger in a Strange Land has dated badly, thanks to its casual homophobia and rape-apologia, but at the time it was hugely popular in hippie circles for its advocacy of free love and group marriages -- so popular that a religion, the Church of All Worlds, based itself on the book. David Crosby had taken inspiration from it and written "Triad", a song asking two women if they'll enter into a polygamous relationship with him, and recorded it with the Byrds: [Excerpt: The Byrds, "Triad"] But the other members of the Byrds disliked the song, and it was left unreleased for decades. As Crosby was friendly with Jefferson Airplane, and as members of the band were themselves advocates of open relationships, they recorded their own version with Slick singing lead: [Excerpt: Jefferson Airplane, "Triad"] The other song on the album influenced by science fiction was the title track, Paul Kantner's "Crown of Creation". This song was inspired by The Chrysalids, a novel by the British writer John Wyndham. The Chrysalids is one of Wyndham's most influential novels, a post-apocalyptic story about young children who are born with mutant superpowers and have to hide them from their parents as they will be killed if they're discovered. The novel is often thought to have inspired Marvel Comics' X-Men, and while there's an unpleasant eugenic taste to its ending, with the idea that two species can't survive in the same ecological niche and the younger, "superior", species must outcompete the old, that idea also had a lot of influence in the counterculture, as well as being a popular one in science fiction. Kantner's song took whole lines from The Chrysalids, much as he had earlier done with A.A. Milne: [Excerpt: Jefferson Airplane, "Crown of Creation"] The Crown of Creation album was in some ways a return to the more focused songwriting of Surrealistic Pillow, although the sessions weren't without their experiments. Slick and Dryden collaborated with Frank Zappa and members of the Mothers of Invention on an avant-garde track called "Would You Like a Snack?" (not the same song as the later Zappa song of the same name) which was intended for the album, though went unreleased until a CD box set decades later: [Excerpt: Grace Slick and Frank Zappa, "Would You Like a Snack?"] But the finished album was generally considered less self-indulgent than After Bathing at Baxter's, and did better on the charts as a result. It reached number six, becoming their second and last top ten album, helped by the group's appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show in September 1968, a month after it came out. That appearance was actually organised by Colonel Tom Parker, who suggested them to Sullivan as a favour to RCA Records. But another TV appearance at the time was less successful. They appeared on the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, one of the most popular TV shows among the young, hip, audience that the group needed to appeal to, but Slick appeared in blackface. She's later said that there was no political intent behind this, and that she was just trying the different makeup she found in the dressing room as a purely aesthetic thing, but that doesn't really explain the Black power salute she gives at one point. Slick was increasingly obnoxious on stage, as her drinking was getting worse and her relationship with Dryden was starting to break down. Just before the Smothers Brothers appearance she was accused at a benefit for the Whitney Museum of having called the audience "filthy Jews", though she has always said that what she actually said was "filthy jewels", and she was talking about the ostentatious jewellery some of the audience were wearing. The group struggled through a performance at Altamont -- an event we will talk about in a future episode, so I won't go into it here, except to say that it was a horrifying experience for everyone involved -- and performed at Woodstock, before releasing their fifth studio album, Volunteers, in 1969: [Excerpt: Jefferson Airplane, "Volunteers"] That album made the top twenty, but was the last album by the classic lineup of the band. By this point Spencer Dryden and Grace Slick had broken up, with Slick starting to date Kantner, and Dryden was also disappointed at the group's musical direction, and left. Balin also left, feeling sidelined in the group. They released several more albums with varying lineups, including at various points their old friend David Frieberg of Quicksilver Messenger Service, the violinist Papa John Creach, and the former drummer of the Turtles, Johnny Barbata. But as of 1970 the group's members had already started working on two side projects -- an acoustic band called Hot Tuna, led by Kaukonen and Casady, which sometimes also featured Balin, and a project called Paul Kantner's Jefferson Starship, which also featured Slick and had recorded an album, Blows Against the Empire, the second side of which was based on the Robert Heinlein novel Back to Methuselah, and which became one of the first albums ever nominated for science fiction's Hugo Awards: [Excerpt: Jefferson Starship, "Have You Seen The Stars Tonite"] That album featured contributions from David Crosby and members of the Grateful Dead, as well as Casady on two tracks, but  in 1974 when Kaukonen and Casady quit Jefferson Airplane to make Hot Tuna their full-time band, Kantner, Slick, and Frieberg turned Jefferson Starship into a full band. Over the next decade, Jefferson Starship had a lot of moderate-sized hits, with a varying lineup that at one time or another saw several members, including Slick, go and return, and saw Marty Balin back with them for a while. In 1984, Kantner left the group, and sued them to stop them using the Jefferson Starship name. A settlement was reached in which none of Kantner, Slick, Kaukonen, or Casady could use the words "Jefferson" or "Airplane" in their band-names without the permission of all the others, and the remaining members of Jefferson Starship renamed their band just Starship -- and had three number one singles in the late eighties with Slick on lead, becoming far more commercially successful than their precursor bands had ever been: [Excerpt: Starship, "We Built This City on Rock & Roll"] Slick left Starship in 1989, and there was a brief Jefferson Airplane reunion tour, with all the classic members but Dryden, but then Slick decided that she was getting too old to perform rock and roll music, and decided to retire from music and become a painter, something she's stuck to for more than thirty years. Kantner and Balin formed a new Jefferson Starship, called Jefferson Starship: The Next Generation, but Kantner died in January 2016, coincidentally on the same day as Signe Anderson, who had occasionally guested with her old bandmates in the new version of the band. Balin, who had quit the reunited Jefferson Starship due to health reasons, died two years later. Dryden had died in 2005. Currently, there are three bands touring that descend directly from Jefferson Airplane. Hot Tuna still continue to perform, there's a version of Starship that tours featuring one original member, Mickey Thomas, and the reunited Jefferson Starship still tour, led by David Frieberg. Grace Slick has given the latter group her blessing, and even co-wrote one song on their most recent album, released in 2020, though she still doesn't perform any more. Jefferson Airplane's period in the commercial spotlight was brief -- they had charting singles for only a matter of months, and while they had top twenty albums for a few years after their peak, they really only mattered to the wider world during that brief period of the Summer of Love. But precisely because their period of success was so short, their music is indelibly associated with that time. To this day there's nothing as evocative of summer 1967 as "White Rabbit", even for those of us who weren't born then. And while Grace Slick had her problems, as I've made very clear in this episode, she inspired a whole generation of women who went on to be singers themselves, as one of the first prominent women to sing lead with an electric rock band. And when she got tired of doing that, she stopped, and got on with her other artistic pursuits, without feeling the need to go back and revisit the past for ever diminishing returns. One might only wish that some of her male peers had followed her example.

america tv love music american new york history black children church chicago hollywood uk master disney apple rock washington mexico british san francisco west holiday arizona ohio washington dc spanish arts spain tennessee alabama revolution detroit north record strange island fame heroes empire nazis jews vietnam stone matrix ocean rev southern california tribute catholic mothers beatles crown cd cia philippines rolling stones thompson west coast oz elvis wizard finland pakistan villains rock and roll bay area snacks xmen volunteers parks garcia reports dolphins ashes turtles nest bob dylan lives purple medicare big brother bands airplanes northern omaha americana san jose invention satisfaction lsd woodstock cream ballad elvis presley newsweek pink floyd belgians republican party added dino californians peter pan medicaid state department other side marvel comics katz triumphs antioch grateful dead baxter chronicle rock and roll hall of fame alice in wonderland spence peace corps miles davis lovin family tree starship buchanan carousel tilt charlie chaplin sly santa clara san francisco chronicle would you like schmitt frank zappa headquarters kt national endowment mixcloud janis joplin ayn rand chaplin slick steely dan bakersfield hippies triad concierto monkees old west rock music garfunkel elektra rca runnin levis greenwich village sketches milne buddy holly white rabbit village voice phil spector get together david crosby haskell byrds zappa ravel spoonful jerry garcia heartbeats fillmore brian jones wyndham doris day jefferson airplane bolero george bernard shaw my best friend glen campbell stranger in a strange land levi strauss steve ditko all you need superior court lonely hearts club band whitney museum methuselah harry nilsson jacques brel ed sullivan show judy collins dryden sgt pepper tom wolfe weavers heinlein buffalo springfield bessie smith great society altamont rca records run around robert heinlein this life ken kesey jefferson starship objectivism bob weir john phillips holding company sly stone acid tests golden gate park aranjuez ricky nelson haight ashbury bill graham elektra records grace slick carter family family dog san franciscan bluesman john sebastian colonel tom parker bill thompson tennessee georgia mercury records abbie hoffman ditko charles lloyd balin smothers brothers jorma fillmore east town criers roger mcguinn rickenbacker hot tuna tommy oliver van dyke parks monterey pop festival merry pranksters john wyndham one flew over the cuckoo gary davis mystic arts jorma kaukonen milt jackson we built this city antioch college jackie deshannon cass elliot moby grape mothers of invention mickey thomas dave van ronk slicks wellingtons jimmy brown fillmore west monterey jazz festival yippies echoplex roy buchanan jack nitzsche ian buchanan kesey quicksilver messenger service paul kantner jack casady marty balin al schmitt casady fred neil surrealistic pillow kantner all worlds blues project bob harvey bobby gentry skip spence jac holzman billy roberts john hammond jr papa john creach tilt araiza
Still Toking With
S3E27 - Still Toking with Michael Hargrove (Actor)

Still Toking With

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 21, 2022 68:35


Episode Notes Join us as we dive into the mind of The "Candyman" Michael Hargrove will be in the house telling us his tales from Chicago PD to playing Candyman just don't say his name 3 times or else... ————————————————— This episode is sponsored by Deadly Grounds Coffee "Its good to get a little Deadly" https://deadlygroundscoffee.com ————————————————— Check out Toking with the Dead Episode 1 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awhL5FyW_j4 Check out Toking with the Dead Episode 2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SaUai58ua6o Buy awesome Merchandise! https://www.stilltoking.com/ https://teespring.com/stores/still-toking-with ————————————— Follow our guest https://www.imdb.com/name/nm2726586/ https://www.facebook.com/OfficialMichaelHargrove/ ————————————————— Follow Still Toking With and their friends! https://smartpa.ge/5zv1 https://thedorkeningpodcastnetwork.com/ ————————————— Produced by Leo Pond and The Dorkening Podcast Network https://TheDorkening.com Facebook.com/TheDorkening Youtube.com/TheDorkening Twitter.com/TheDorkening Dead Dork Radio https://live365.com/station/Dead-Dork-Radio-a68071 MICHAEL HARGROVE, honored with the Black Theatre Alliance's Sidney Poitier Award in 2002 as Best Leading Actor in a Play for his role in "Will He Bop, Will He Drop" at Chicago's National Pastime Theater. Michael has also appeared in such National Pastime Theater productions as "Red Dog Moon," David Rabe's "The Orphan," "Yuba City," Kafka's "The Trial," "Servant of the People!! The Rise and Fall of Huey P. Newton and the Black Panther Party," "Possessed," Kesey's "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Shakespeare's "Julius Caesar" (as Mark Anthony) and Ionesco's "Rhinoceros." A mainstay on the Chicago theatre scene, Hargrove has also appeared in "Dark of the Moon" (Chi-Town Revelers) and two stagings at the Shattered Globe Theater - "In the Shadow of A Smile and "An Absurd Evening...The Lesson and Rats." The Birminham Alabama native has guest-starred on such locally-filmed TV series as "Chicago Fire," "Chicago P.D" and "Early Edition." His feature film work includes Gary Fleder's gridiron biopic, "The Express," "Psychic Crime Busters," "The Modern Myth," "Out-Takes," "Given Circumstances," "A Careless Kitchen," "An Abduction" and, notably, Tom Gustafson's LGBTQ fantasy, "Were the World Mine." The latter title earned Gustafson over a dozen film festival awards upon its 2008 release, most notably from the Florida, Nashville, Rhode Island, Ft. Worth Gay/Lesbian, Indianapolis LGBT, Inside Out Toronto LGBT, L.A. Outfest, Outflix, TWIST Seattle Queer Film and the Philadelphia, Tampa and Torino Gay/Lesbian festivals. Find out more at https://still-toking-with.pinecast.co Send us your feedback online: https://pinecast.com/feedback/still-toking-with/dca700aa-c18b-48ec-9a6a-cd1b74548847 This podcast is powered by Pinecast.

PenDust Radio
The Night Ken Kesey Gave His Magic Away

PenDust Radio

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 20, 2022 13:20


MEMOIR | ROBERTO LOIEDERMAN In January 1966, novelist and countercultural leader Ken Kesey held a three-day event in San Francisco called The Trips Festival. This story is Roberto Loiederman's recollection of the festival — a mind-bending event, as well as a dramatic turning point for Kesey, and those who attended. The post The Night Ken Kesey Gave His Magic Away appeared first on PenDust Radio.

The Book Isn't Necessarily Better: A Library Podcast
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

The Book Isn't Necessarily Better: A Library Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 20, 2022 68:41


Join Roxanne and Mikayla as they discuss One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey. Enjoy a rare episode where the two librarians BOTH loved the book AND the movie! Discover who was originally supposed to play Nurse Ratched, and just what "influenced" Kesey as he wrote the first paragraph of the novel. Connect with us on Instagram at @thebookisntnecessarilybetter or write to us at podcast@communitylibrary.net. More By & About Ken Kesey Become a Member InterLibrary Loan

Sermons - Harvest Church  |  Arroyo Grande
Jesus is Absolutely Enough

Sermons - Harvest Church | Arroyo Grande

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 18, 2022 57:09


0 (0s): Good morning if you're on the patio or you're at home, would you also stand as we worshiped 1 (21s): I 0 (21s): Was lost, but he brought me in no, his, his I was asleep to, since Jesus died. 1 (1m 4s): There's 0 (2m 59s): A place. Yes. 2 (3m 12s): Because as we worship you, we are your children. We thank you that we get to worship you this morning church. We're going to sing a new song this morning. And in that song, we declare that we believe in the word of God. We declare that he is true and that we sing this out with that. 0 (3m 37s): Do your speed. Can see being Christ. Jesus I believe in the resurrection that will, we will rise. 0 (4m 22s): Ah, I believe in resurrection when Jesus I believe in God. 0 (7m 5s): I believe in Christ 1 (8m 17s): we cry. 1 (10m 23s): We cry. 3 (10m 51s): Thank you, Lord. You are indeed. Holy And by your grace, you have imputed holiness to us. It's incredible. You have forgiven our sins washed us, made us as white as snow pure and your sites because of the shed blood of Christ on our behalf. We thank you, Lord, that you are holy and you have made a way for us to ensure into your holy presence by forgiving us, redeeming us. This promise, this process of sanctify sanctification. You're sanctifying us Lord. You're doing such wonderful and profound and powerful things in our lives. 3 (11m 37s): Lord God, I pray God that we would God find a firm foundation. God, for those of us who have been waffling questioning, wondering doubting Lord, I pray that we would set our feet on a firm. The, the firm foundation, who is Christ the Lord, and that we would stand firm, that the truth of the scripture would anchor our lives. Anchor our souls. Lord, the revelation of God would be sufficient for us for our lives. We love you. We trust you, God. We believe you. And we praise you in Jesus name. 3 (12m 17s): Amen. Amen. Hey, go and turn around and greet and neighbor and we'll come right back here in just a moment. I'll get it. I got it. 1 (12m 26s): my back. 3 (13m 53s): Come on back. Good morning. We're in Hebrews chapter seven. Today you can be seated and turns you Hebrews chapter seven. I'm just going to warn you up front. I got a ton of material to go through today. I got a ton of stuff. So for historical context, we'll be looking at well, we look well steady all the way through Hebrews chapter seven, but we'll be looking at chapter six, chapter eight and chapter nine as well, just to kind of lay some groundwork. But before that, we'll just kind of go through some information. And the title of the message today is Jesus is absolutely enough. 3 (14m 36s): He's absolutely enough. And we walk with Jesus for any length of time, whether we're brand new and cry in the Lord, or I've been doing this walking with the Lord for decades, we realize that Jesus is absolutely enough, but then, but then circumstances happen. Sometimes we begin to waffle in that we begin to wonder about that. We begin to question that. And so really that's why Hebrews has been written to reaffirm, to believers in the Lord. Jesus Christ, that he is absolutely enough. That station is to fall back into an old way of thinking old system of believing a way of working things out with the Lord where the truth is. He's absolutely not for this life. 3 (15m 17s): He's come that we might have life and life abundantly, but then also for our eternal life. So we have a hope in Christ for this life and for the next this life. And for the next it'd be a total bummer if we didn't have hope in this life as well. But God by his grace has given us a bundle of mercy and goodness and gifts and favor for this life. And then it just carries on into eternity. God is absolutely good. I just want to cover a few things before we get into our text today. Some of us wonder because of maybe background experiences, choices we've made is God sufficient. 3 (15m 58s): Is he absolutely enough to save me, to redeem me? And I just want to tell you, man, no matter who you are, God is absolutely enough. Jesus is absolutely enough to redeem you. He's able to cleanse you of your sins to make you a brand new person to sanctify your life so that you look, you look totally different in your new life than you did in your old life. He's actually made it possible for you to be born again spiritually with the implication, meaning that you're going to be a brand new person in the Lord. Jesus Christ. 3 (16m 38s): Jesus is enough to save us. Jesus, Jesus has by one sacrifice made perfect forever. Those who are being made. Holy, we read that in Hebrews 10, 14, Peter preach that there is salvation in no one else for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved. We see that in acts chapter four, verse 12, there is literally no one and nothing else that we could add to Christ to aid in our salvation. We are saved by grace through faith because he is good. 3 (17m 21s): Not because we are good. He finished the work on the cross. And what he did is enough to save us John 1930. So Jesus is enough to save us and that should set a foundation in our lives to build upon that informs our lives and encourage us. Us encourages us to believe that he is absolutely enough for every other arena of our lives. Jesus is enough to save us. Jesus is enough to provide for us. Paul wrote in Philippians four 19, and my God will supply every need of yours according to his riches in glory in Christ Jesus. 3 (18m 6s): So Jesus is absolutely enough. He's absolutely enough to bless us as well. Paul said that God blessed us in interest with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, Ephesians one three, he didn't say a few spiritual blessings. He said every spiritual blessing. And since we can't add anything more to every Jesus is truly enough for every spiritual need we have. So we see that God is sufficient, absolutely sufficient, absolutely enough for every area of our lives. Jesus is enough to equip us. 3 (18m 46s): I say this all the time that God calls and God equips people to do the work in the world that he has for us to do at whatever level he's calling us. And he's equipping us. Jesus is enough to equip us. We have the promise that God's divine power has bestowed on us. Absolutely everything necessary for a dynamic spiritual life and godliness. Second, Peter one three says by his divine power, by his divine power, God has given us everything we need for living a godly life. You wonder how to live a godly life. Stay close to Jesus. 3 (19m 27s): Be filled with the holy spirit, open up the word of God, allow it to inform you. You will live a godly life by his grace. We have received all of this by coming to know him, the one who called us to himself by means of his marvelous glory and excellence. So he hasn't called us into a religious system. He's called us into a relationship with him by which she pours out and bestows upon us. All kinds of amazing gifts here in this life and in the life to come, Jesus is enough to strengthen us. Maybe you're feeling weary. It's only halfway through January in the new year, but maybe you're feeling weary. God is actually able to strengthen you in whatever scenario that you're facing in your life for Jesus is enough to strengthen us. 3 (20m 16s): When Paul prayed three times to the Lord to remove the thorn from his flesh, the response was my grace is sufficient for you. For my power is made perfect in weakness. My grace is sufficient for you. My power is made perfect in your weakness. So when we are weak, Jesus' strength is enough to carry us onward. In fact, our weakness only perfects his power, which leaves no room for adding another power source. Jesus is all we need. 3 (20m 56s): There is nothing and no one to add to Christ his person and his work are perfect. He is the way he is the truth and he is the life. John 14 six. He is the only one who can save. He's the only one who can provide for us, bless us, equip us and strengthen us. Having faith in Christ involves trusting. This is the challenge for us. Having faith in God involves trusting in his complete sufficiency. Having faith in God involves trusting in his complete sufficiency for our salvation and for our life in the here. 3 (21m 39s): And now he's come that we might have life in life, abundance, you that he Hewitt wrote. I need no other argument. I need no other plea. It is enough that Jesus died and that he died for me. There's something about that truth that should resonate with us as believers. If you're hearing this truth for the first time, you need to know by God's grace, he wants to come into your life. He wants to forgive you. He wants to set you free. He wants to lavish on you. The kind of love that you've never experienced before he wants to lead you through life leads you out of danger, leads you into eternal life with him. He wants to be your Lord, your king, your Redeemer, and your saver. 3 (22m 21s): Why? Because he's absolutely enough. Jesus is absolutely enough. So before we get into Hebrews chapter seven, that was just kind of get us, get us prepared for that to get some historical context. Like I said, we're gonna look at the last couple of verses of Hebrews chapter six. We're going to look at the first couple of verses of Hebrews chapter eight. And then we're going to look at a number of verses in Hebrews chapter nine because all of those verses is a lot, but all of those verses give us context, historical context to understand what's happening in Hebrews chapter seven, Hebrews chapter seven is it is a challenging chapter and some people skip it. And, but I just like to go through the whole text of scripture. 3 (23m 2s): And so we're gonna do our best to teach their Hebrews chapter seven today, before we do that, let's get into Hebrews chapter six. I feel like we should pray. Here we go, Lord, we're gonna pray one more time. There's a lot of information ahead of us. I pray God that we hang in there, that we don't glaze over and check out, but that we hear the truth that are, that we need to hear in our spirits Lord in our souls, in our minds, in our lives, God. And that we would hear it and not just hear it, but believe it, maybe at a whole new level, maybe for the first time, but that we would believe God that you are absolutely all that we need. Jesus. And so he works efficient, absolutely sufficient. 3 (23m 44s): So help us to believe that and hear that and see that in the passage of scriptures that we read through today in Jesus name. Amen. Here we go. Hebrews six, you guys ready? Historical contexts, Hebrews six, 19 through 20. You can just jot these down and look at them later, but there'll be up on the screen as well. This hope is a strong and trustworthy anchor for our souls. What's the hope that we're talking about all of the hope that we've been talking about, right? I hope for eternal life in Jesus, new life in Jesus here on the here and now. So this hope is what we're talking about. And Hebrews chapter six, this hope is a strong and trustworthy anchor for our souls. It means when we are building our life on this truth, that anchors of the truth anchors us and keeps us from getting too far away from God and too far away from God's planet keeps us right where we need to be. 3 (24m 34s): It leads us this hope, this, it leads us through the curtain, into God's inner sanctuary in the tabernacle. There was the holy place and the most holy place. This is where the priests of God did business with God, where they offered sacrifices for themselves. And for the people of God who had sinned, they're offering animal sacrifices, old covenant, old Testament stuff. This is what was going on, but Jesus has already gone in there for us. And he has become our eternal high priest. In the order of milk has a deck. Let's jump to Hebrews chapter eight, skip skipping chapter seven for a moment, Hebrews chapter eight verses one and two says this here is the main point. 3 (25m 17s): So as you read through Hebrews 5, 6, 7, as you read through Hebrews, you get to Hebrews chapter eight. And it says, here is the main point when it says here is the main point. It's time to pay attention because this is the main point, right? So we want to pay attention. So if you're asking, what's the main point, here's the main point. We have a high priest who sat down in the place of honor beside the throne of the majestic God in heaven. What does it mean that he sat down and we said it is finished, right? It is just right. Like the work, the sacrifice has been accomplished. 3 (25m 58s): It is finished. The work is done. So he sits down at the right hand of the father. There, he ministers in the heavenly tabernacle, the true place of worship that was built by the Lord and not by human hands. We'll talk about that as we go through our study through Hebrew. So the fact that Jesus is at the right hand of the throne of God and he's interceding for us indicates that he hasn't called us into a religious practice. He's called us into a relationship with him. And some of us pay lip service to that relationship, but we never really maybe injured into it. 3 (26m 39s): Or we don't handle that very well. We kind of maybe keep God at a distance or we, you know, talk to them or pray to them on Sundays or when we're in trouble and that sort of thing. But he's actually called us into a close and intimate relationship with him. And he's, he's invested. He made the way for our salvation for just an amazing life here in the earth. Even with all of the difficulties that we go through, he is with us. He sustains us, he strengthens us. He provides for us. So he's done all of that to come that again, that we might have life and life abundance, but then also he's gone to the father. He sits there and he's interceding for us. So he's engaged with us. He's thinking about us, he's aware of what we're going through. 3 (27m 20s): So when we're going through stuff, we can go to him and bring our petitions to him. And he will intercede for us, strengthening us in what he has called us to do and what he's taking us through. There, he ministers and the heavily tabernacle, the true place of worship that was built by the Lord and not by human hands. Jesus is absolutely enough. Number one, because he has completed the necessary work of securing our salvation. Wow. He has completed the necessary work of securing our salvation. 3 (28m 1s): He has pleaded the necessary work of securing our salvation. Some of us seem to understand that on a whole new level, like a transformational level, that changes the way that we think and relate to God and live in this life. It's Jesus plus absolutely nothing that equals salvation. So Jesus by his grace, because he is good. Not because we are good, he saves us. And then he takes us on this amazing journey. That's reflective of our connection with him, our intimacy with him. He takes us on this journey of sanctification. I was just talking to a couple of this morning after first service. 3 (28m 42s): And they said they were separated and they were distant from God. And then when they decided to get serious about their relationship with God, again, because they had drifted and backslidden God brought them back together and his reconciling their relationship, sanctifying their relationship, bringing them back together and together now they will follow Jesus together. This is what Jesus does. He's absolutely sufficient to save us. And then to take us down this path of sanctification, whereby we look totally different, totally different as we move forward. Then when we did, when we were younger, I did a Memorial service for my friend. 3 (29m 23s): I don't know, last year, sometime friend from junior high school. And so all these are all buddies from junior high and high school people that I've known forever. And a lot of them I haven't seen for decades, like since then know. So it's been a few that few decades. So when I get done, you know, bringing the message and talking about my friend who passed away, some friends came up to me who hadn't seen me since high school. They're like, man, you're totally different than you used to be my best. That's the plan, right? Like if I'm born again, but stay, if we're born again, but never grow. If we never grow up in our most holy faith in what's the point, God has designed us to mature and grow and be sanctified by his grace so that his work is constantly happening within us and changing us and transforming us Jesus plus nothing equals salvation that we go on this amazing journey called sanctification. 3 (30m 18s): Jesus is sufficient. He's completely enough. So this important information for the believers in the first century needed to be reiterated and communicated to them so that they might wake up because they began to backslide away from it begin to not believe it begin to fall away from this truth. And so this first century group of believers, Jewish believers needed to hear this information again. And I, I think down through the centuries, down through the centuries, we've all needed to be hearing this information again. So it's my job to bring this information, this revelation to us again, so that we have a firm foundation and an effective walk with Jesus, many people. 3 (31m 1s): We, we wrestle in our seasons of life with whether the truth is that Jesus isn't, we, we, we wonder is Jesus enough. And we need to be reminded by the scripture. This is why I'm always telling us open up your Bible, get to church, stay informed with the word of God. Hebrews was written to a group of people who were backsliding or struggling. We've all been in that place where we've been struggling with what we really believe. So Hebrews now to us is reminding us as followers of Jesus, that he is enough. This information and revelation are difficult for some to hang on to, but if we just continue to come back to it, we will be able to hang onto it. 3 (31m 43s): I think some of us get saved and we're distant from the Lord. And so we never quite experienced victory on this side of heaven. And so we're dealing with guilt and condemnation and there's something about there's something about in the first century, something about the religious experience that the people wanted to sometime somehow participate in their salvation, into their sanctification. So that's why they kind of drifted back into like the animal sacrifices where literally they would sacrifice the bulls and goats and, and the blood of those animals would, were meant to cover sin until a time all of that stuff was going on. But, and so we're disconnected from that. 3 (32m 23s): But the reality is, is that in the 21st century, we want Jesus. Plus my good works it's Jesus. Plus my Bible reading it's Jesus. Plus my giving my tithing, whatever it may be. It's Jesus plus something else that brings me into a place of favor with God. And that God wants to shake all that up. He wants to shake all that up. Not that he's not going to grow you and make you different, but it's Jesus plus nothing else that equals your salvation. Jesus is enough. Meaning no more beating yourself up for past mistakes. Jesus is enough. Some of us are thinking back to our life when they, oh Lord. 3 (33m 4s): Back in 1945, I did this right back in 2020. I did this last week. Lord, I did this. I got to say, my grace is sufficient. If you confess your sins, God is faithful. And just to forgive you and to cleanse you from all unrighteousness. So no more guilt over past mistakes, no more condemnation because Jesus has forgiven your sins. We love the new system, but our flesh likes the old system. So we slipped back into a system of works. Paul addressed this issue to the church in Glacia Galatians one six. He said, I am shocked. I'm shocked that you're turning away so soon from God who called you to himself through the loving mercy of Christ. 3 (33m 49s): You're following a different way. That pretends to be the good news, but it's not the good news at all. So let's look at Hebrews chapter nine because Hebrews chapter nine helps us understand the old system. This is what would happen in the old covenant. Under the old, in the old Testament before Christ came, this is what was going on. When these things were in place, the old system, the old covenant, the priests, the Levi priest regularly entered the first room, which is the holy place as they perform their religious duties. But only the high priests Everett enter the injured, the most holy place, which is behind another curtain in the tabernacle and only once a year. 3 (34m 33s): And he always offered blood for his own sins. And for the sins that people had committed in ignorance by these regulations, the holy spirit revealed that the entrance to the most holy place was not freely open. As long as the tabernacle and the system that old system is, is represented, represent represented. We're still in use right about that verse nine. This is an illustration pointing to the present time. So now we're talking about what God has done, what Jesus has done. This is an illustration pointing to the present time for the gifts and sacrifices that the priests offer are not able to cleanse the consciouses of the people who bring them for that old system deals only with food and drink and various cleansing ceremonies, physical regulations that were in effect only until a better system could be established. 3 (35m 32s): What is that better system that has been established Jesus, right? Christ the better system Christ is the better system. He's the perfect and final sacrifice. And so these people had believed the first century believers, Jewish believers had believed, but then begin to slip back into old ways of thinking. So that's why this letter is written verse 11 says, so Christ has now become the high priest language that they would understand over all the good things that have come. He has entered that greater, more perfect tabernacle in heaven, which was not made by human hands and is not part of this created world. 3 (36m 14s): So now let's get into Hebrews chapter seven. Is that clock set? Okay, good to set. I got to, I need to know how much time I've got left here. I just need to take a breath and what I need to do. So I'm trying to get a lot in here. I told my wife, I said, I'm not sure if I'll be able to get all of Hebrews seven in there. She said, we'll break it up. Of course I didn't break it up here. We are. So now as we get into Hebrews chapter seven, we're going to be learning about this mysterious person named Mel Kesa deck. All right. Again, the whole purpose of this letter is to inform and to encourage and to remind the Jewish believers that Jesus is absolutely enough. 3 (36m 57s): And so this person, Mel Kazakh interacted with Abraham. So we're talking 4,000 years ago, 2000 years before Christ Marchesa deck and Abraham are having this interaction. It was a setup 4,000 years ago to prepare the people, the Jewish people, especially, and as Gentiles, it was to prepare them for a better system that would be revealed 4,000 years later. So we will learn about this mysterious person though, because we've kind of hinted about him leading up to this point. So we're going to learn some stuff about milk as a deck and realize Marquez deck is greater than Abraham, but Jesus is greater than has a deck. 3 (37m 42s): Here we go, because the deck is both a king and a priest who foreshadowed Jesus. So the Levitical priests were just priest. They weren't Kings as well. They were just priest. So cause a king. He's the king of Salem, which is ancient Jerusalem. So he's king and priest, but we know that Jesus is a prophet priest and king. So he trumps milk has a deck and Marchesa deck trumps Abraham. So Jesus trumps them all. Here we go. Mel Kazakh prepared the Jewish people for a different type of priesthood. Something that would be instituted thousands of years later, God use mal Kesey deck. It seems as an example of what was to come in Christ. 3 (38m 24s): So mal Kuznick foreshadowed the work ministry and life of the Lord. Jesus Christ. We will see that now is greater than Abraham, but Jesus is greater than milk has it at Hebrews chapter seven one, shall we get into verse one? All right, here we go. This milk mill Cassa deck was king of the city of Salem, ancient Jerusalem, and also a priest of God. Most high when Abraham was returning home, after winning a great battle against the Kings milk, met him and blessed him. Then Abraham took a 10th of all. He had captured in battle and gave it to milk. Heza deck the name now Kesey deck means king of justice and king of Salem means king of peace. 3 (39m 8s): And so when we study this guy, Mel Kesey deck, we see that there's some similarities. Some people would say that milk Kesey deck was a Krzysztof mini, a an old Testament personification of Jesus. I don't believe that. I don't think that's the case. I think no deck was used. Maybe he was an angelic being who ruled over Salem, Jerusalem. I don't know who he is. We won't know this side of heaven, but we will meet him in eternity. Right? Cause he remains a priest forever. Like the Lord Jesus Christ. All right. We're looking at milk as a deck. There are plenty of similarities to Jesus, our great high priest, by the way, is just a priest and Jesus is the great high priest. 3 (39m 53s): All right, here we go. No charismatic is just says that he's just, and Jesus is just first John one nine. But if we confess our sins to him, he is faithful. And what just, he is faithful. And just to forgive our sins and to cleanse us from all wickedness. So who is the one who is just unable to forgive? Well, Jesus is right. We see it in the scripture and ex or excuse me, John first, John one seven says, but if we are living in the light, as God is in the light, then we have fellowship with each other and the blood of Jesus, his son cleanses us from all sin. So if you wonder if Jesus is enough, absolutely enough to forgive you and to save you. 3 (40m 39s): We we've got evidence from the scripture. Hebrews seven two says again, the name means king of justice and king of Salem means king of peace. So ML Kesey deck as king of Salem is also known as the king of peace. Who else do we know in the scripture is related to peace? Jesus, he's the prince of peace, right? Isaiah nine, six, a popular passage for Christmas time says this for a child is born to us. A son is given to us. The government will rest on his shoulders and he will be called wonderful counselor, mighty God, everlasting father and prince of peace, right? 3 (41m 22s): He's the prince of peace. Isaiah nine, seven. Speaking of Jesus says his government and its peace will never end. He will rule with fairness and there it is again, justice from the throne of his ancestor, David, for all eternity, the passionate commitment of the Lord of heaven's armies will make this happen. So what else do we know about milk has a deck? Well, there's no record. This is interesting, right? Is there's no record of his father or mother or any of his ancestors, no beginning or end to his life. He remains a priest forever resembling the son of God. 3 (42m 4s): So that Greek word translated resembling in Hebrews chapter verse seven, chapter seven, verse three, it just simply means a copy or a facsimile. It means to be made like, or to render similar. So we see that milk has a deck is a priest forever resembling the son of God. I don't think he's across Christophe and at Christ often, if you think so, no problem. We won't have to talk about it after church, but I think he's probably just an angelic being or some somebody that God chose to use to point us to a new system, to the person in the work of the Lord, Jesus Christ. 3 (42m 48s): So there's no record of his family. Lineage is important. If you want to serve as a priest, you needed to prove that you were part of the right family, that you were indeed a Levi's. So we see begin to see a shifts. So God calls Melchizedek priest forever, but he's not a Levi. It only errands descendants. The it's could be priests. So we see a shift. We know that Jesus, wasn't a Levis, but he's called our great high priest. Jesus was of what tribe Judah. So that's a totally different tribe. Nowhere in all of scripture were people from Judas tribe priests. 3 (43m 28s): So we've got Mel Cassie, who's pointing people to a new system. Jesus is God using Melchizedek to point us to a new system pointing to something better that's coming. So he used the McKesson and 4,000 years ago to kind of foreshadow Jesus, you came 2000 year, goes years ago so that we get to hear about him today, 2000 years later, God's God's got this big picture plan that is unholy. So if you're worried about your life and what's going on in your life and you're like 30 years old right now, God's got it handled. Maybe you're a hundred years old. God is good. He's got it handled, right? He's not on this. Time-space continue. He's not worried. He's outside of time. He's got you handle. He's absolutely capable of handling your life. 3 (44m 9s): So there's no record of his family. We know who Jesus, father and mother are, but Jesus, again, our great high priest is not a Levi he's of the tribe of Judah. According to verse three, Mel and Jesus are both priests forever. I don't know how to work that out. Theologically. We'll figure it out when we get there. But according to the scripture, that's the case and they're priests forever. So typically a Levi would serve for a time they would die. And then a new Levi would come in and serve as priest. But Jesus is our great high priest for forever and ever and ever consider then how great this milk has. 3 (44m 52s): The deck was even Abraham. The great patriarch of Israel recognize this by giving a 10th of what he had taken in battle. So again, we're trying to elevate the reality that McKesson had good points is to Jesus is actually superior to father Abraham, the father of the Hebrew nation. He's been elevated as their father, spiritually and relationally. And, and, and through whom the promise of God has come, but there's something beyond that. And so the writers pointing this out, even Abraham, the gate, rape patriarch recognize this by giving him a 10th of what he had taken in battle. Now the law of Moses required that priests who are descendants of Levi must collect a tie from the rest of the people of Israel who are also descendants of Abraham. 3 (45m 37s): But now Cassa, DEC, who was not a descendant of Levi collected a 10th from Abraham and no Kesa Dick placed a blessing upon Abraham, the one who had already received the promise Genesis 12. And without question, the person who has the power to give a blessing is greater than the one who is blessed. Verse eight, the priests who collect ties are men who die. So Mel Kesa Dick is greater than they are because we are told that he lives on. In addition, we might even say that these Levi's and I, I love this rationale here, this, this language here. In addition, we might even say that these Levi's the ones who collected the ties, paid tied to milk has a deck when their ancestor, Abraham paid a tie to him for although Levi wasn't born yet, the seed from which he came was in Abraham's body. 3 (46m 28s): When deck collected the tithe from him, you have to think about that one. So if the priesthood of Levi in which the law was based could have achieved, this is important. Verse 11, if the priesthood of Levi in which the law was based, the old covenant, the old system could have achieved the perfection, God intended. Why did God needs? You establish a different priesthood with a priest in the order of instead of the, instead of the order of Levi and Erin, right? There's a transition happening. The old covenant was given the law was given. So we, we might recognize how desperately in need of God's grace. We are like obey the 10 commandments. 3 (47m 10s): Nobody could do it. Nobody could keep the commandments. In fact, scripture says that we break one part of the law. We're guilty of breaking all of the loss. So in every scenario with every person, we all need the grace of the Lord, Jesus Christ. And so the message throughout the scripture in the old and the new Testament points us to Jesus. Hebrews chapter points us to Jesus first wealth. And if the priesthood is changed, the law must also be changed to permit it for the priests. We are talking about belong to a different tribe whose members have never served at the alter as priest. What I, what I mean is our Lord came from the tribe of Judah and Moses never mentioned priests coming from that tribe. 3 (47m 57s): This change has been made very clear since a different priest who was like Mel Kesa. Dick has appeared. Jesus became a priest, not by meeting the physical requirements by belonging, to the tribe of Levi Levi, but by the power of a life that cannot be destroyed as a Psalm was pointed out. When he prophesied you are a priest forever. In the order of Melchizedek, Jesus is absolutely enough. Number one, because he has completed the necessary work of securing our salvation and number two, and we'll wrap this left part up very quickly because he is a priest forever, and he guarantees a better covenant with God. 3 (48m 41s): So the old covenant was based on works obedience to the law Jesus and the new covenant guarantees by his sacrificial work on the cross. He guarantees a better covenant with God by grace. Are we saved through faith as nothing to do with ourselves, Ephesians 2 8, 9. It's all a gift of, of, of the Lord by grace. Are we saved through faith? Jesus guarantees a better covenant with God. Yes. The old requirement about the priesthood was set aside because it was weak and useless. Do you guys hear that? And this is what the people were beginning to slip back into. They were blinded to the effectiveness of what Christ had done, and they were slipping back into an old system for the law. 3 (49m 24s): Never made anything perfect, but now we have confidence in a better hope through which we draw near to God. This new system was established with a solemn oath. Era's descendants became priest without such an oath, but there was an oath regarding Jesus. For God said to him, the Lord has taken an oath and will not break his vow. You are a priest forever. So this will never change. This will never change because of this oath. Verse 22, Jesus is the one who guarantees this better covenant with God. You can't guarantee a better covenant with God through your good works. You can't guarantee a better relationship with God through your good works. 3 (50m 5s): You will enjoy maybe greater intimacy with God because of your obedience to him. You will enjoy a closer relationship with God, maybe because of your obedience, but you will never guarantee a better covenant relationship with him based on those things. Jesus secured that for you. Verse 23, there were many priests under the old system for death, prevented them from remaining in office, but because Jesus lives forever, his priesthood lasts forever. Therefore he is able once and forever to save those who come to God through him, he lives forever to intercede with God on their behalf. Jesus is absolutely enough. Number one, because he has completed the necessary work of securing our salvation. 3 (50m 46s): Number two, because he is a priest forever. And he guarantees a better covenant with God. Number three, because he is holy and blameless unstained by sin. He is holy and blameless. Imagine holy and blameless. The Lord, Jesus Christ. God who created the heavens and the earth took on human flesh in the, in the incarnation became a child raised, preached, taught, lived, died, raised from the dead all for you and me. 3 (51m 26s): Not because of his sin, but because of our sin, he is the kind of high Friess we need because he is holy and blameless, unstained by sin. He has been set apart from centers and has been given the highest place of honor and heaven. Unlike those other high priests, he does not need to offer sacrifices every day. They did this for their own sins and first, and then for the sins of the people. But Jesus did this once for all. Get this once for all. Don't keep going back, just receive the grace of the Lord. Jesus tries to, if you mess up, say, Lord, forgive me. I don't want to walk down that path, but don't go back from things that you've already been forgiven for. 3 (52m 7s): You're feeling guilty and condemnation about just, just receive the grace of the Lord. Jesus Christ. Maybe you're here today and you've never received the grace of the Lord. Jesus Christ healed. Jesus loves you. His grace is efficient. Receive it a fresh brand new today and watch what God will do in your life. The law pointed high priests who were limited by human weakness, but after the law was given God appointed his son with an oath and his son has been made the perfect high priest forever. Jesus has absolutely enough for your life now and for your eternity, build your spiritual foundation on that truth. 3 (52m 52s): And 2022 will be for you a time of amazing growth, spiritually amazing growth in the area of faith and confidence in trusting God and amazing things. Transformational things will begin to take place in your life, but we got to place our confidence solely in Jesus. He's absolutely enough with that. Let's go ahead and stand up and we're going to sing and worship a little bit more and then we'll get out of here. Lord. Thank you for this time. Thank you for your word for the historical context of your word. Thank you for speaking us. I pray God with all of that information. God that we would've absorbed something that builds us up in our most holy faith that we would have grabbed hold of something that will transform us and change us and encourage us Lord. 3 (53m 40s): So bless us. Help us. We pray Lord in Jesus name. Amen. Amen. Let's worship. 2 (56m 50s): Hi. Holy holy holy. And we cry. Holy holy today. And God we know that in eternity. We can cry. Holy holy, holy, thank you. That you are good. Thank you for your word. Thank you for your church. We love you. Jesus. In Jesus name, we pray. Amen.

The Jake Feinberg Show
The Roy Sebern Interview Set II

The Jake Feinberg Show

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 28, 2021 65:59


Original Merry Prankster talks about Perry Lane and painting the bus at Kesey's pad in La Honda.

Richard Syrett's Strange Planet
646 The Merry Pranksters, The Grateful Dead and Kangen Water

Richard Syrett's Strange Planet

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 3, 2021 52:19


EPISODE #646 THE MERRY PRANKSTERS, THE GRATEFUL DEAD AND KANGEN WATER Richard welcomes an artist who will discuss his many adventures while traveling with Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters in the mid 1960s. He'll also discuss a revolutionary water-ionization system that transforms regular tap water into pure, healthy, electrolytically-reduced and hydrogen-rich drinking water. ​Guest: Mike Lancaster was barely a teenager when he hooked up with the famous Merry Pranksters, a collection of comrades and followers of American author Ken Kesey in 1964. Kesey and the Merry Pranksters lived communally at Kesey's homes in California and Oregon, and are noted for the sociological significance of a lengthy road trip they took in the summer of 1964, traveling across the United States in a psychedelic painted school bus called Furthur, organizing parties and giving out LSD. SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS Life Change and Formula 13 Teas All Organic, No Caffeine, Non GMO!  More Energy!  Order now, use the code 'unlimited' to save 10% on all non-SALE items, PLUS... ALL your purchases ships for free!!!   C60EVO -The Secret is out about this powerful anti-oxidant. The Purest C60 available is ESS60.  Buy Direct from the Source.  Buy Now and Save 10% – Use Coupon Code: EVRS at Checkout!   Strange Planet Shop - If you're a fan of the radio show and the podcast, why not show it off?  Greats T-shirts, sweatshirts, mugs, and more.  It's a Strange Planet - Dress For It! BECOME A PREMIUM SUBSCRIBER FOR LESS THAN $2 PER MONTH If you're a fan of this podcast, I hope you'll consider becoming a Premium Subscriber.  For just $1.99 per month, subscribers to my Conspiracy Unlimited Plus gain access to two exclusive, commercial-free episodes per month. They also gain access to my back catalog of episodes. The most recent 30 episodes of Conspiracy Unlimited will remain available for free.  Stream all episodes and Premium content on your mobile device by getting the FREE Conspiracy Unlimited APP for both IOS and Android devices... Available at the App Store and Google Play.  

Richard Syrett's Strange Planet
646: THE MERRY PRANKSTERS, THE GRATEFUL DEAD AND KANGEN WATER

Richard Syrett's Strange Planet

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 3, 2021 53:55


EPISODE #646 THE MERRY PRANKSTERS, THE GRATEFUL DEAD AND KANGEN WATER Richard welcomes an artist who will discuss his many adventures while traveling with Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters in the mid 1960s. He'll also discuss a revolutionary water-ionization system that transforms regular tap water into pure, healthy, electrolytically-reduced and hydrogen-rich drinking water. ​Guest: Mike Lancasterwas barely a teenager when he hooked up with the famous Merry Pranksters, a collection of comrades and followers of American author Ken Kesey in 1964. Kesey and the Merry Pranksters lived communally at Kesey's homes in California and Oregon, and are noted for the sociological significance of a lengthy road trip they took in the summer of 1964, traveling across the United States in a psychedelic painted school bus called Furthur, organizing parties and giving out LSD. SUPPORT OUR SPONSORS Life Change and Formula 13 Teas All Organic, No Caffeine, Non GMO!  More Energy!  Order now, use the code 'unlimited' to save 10% on all non-SALE items, PLUS... ALL your purchases ships for free!!! C60EVO -The Secret is out about this powerful anti-oxidant. The Purest C60 available is ESS60.  Buy Direct from the Source.  Buy Now and Save 10% – Use Coupon Code: EVRS at Checkout! Strange Planet Shop - If you're a fan of the radio show and the podcast, why not show it off?  Greats T-shirts, sweatshirts, mugs, and more.  It's a Strange Planet - Dress For It! BECOME A PREMIUM SUBSCRIBER FOR LESS THAN $2 PER MONTH If you're a fan of this podcast, I hope you'll consider becoming a Premium Subscriber.  For just $1.99 per month, subscribers to my Conspiracy Unlimited Plus gain access to two exclusive, commercial-free episodes per month. They also gain access to my back catalog of episodes. The most recent 30 episodes of Conspiracy Unlimited will remain available for free.  Stream all episodes and Premium content on your mobile device by getting the FREE Conspiracy Unlimited APP for both IOS and Android devices... Available at the App Store and Google Play.

Dying to Know
Mommy Dearest

Dying to Know

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 19, 2021 49:03


In this episode Chaplain Annie is dying to know what you do when someone you have a complex relationship with, dies before you've reconciled? So she speaks with Reverend Kerry Kesey who was raised by hippy parents, yes, she is related to Ken Kesey author of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" and infamous Merry Prankster, Kerry's father, Dale, was on the infamous bus Further and as a child, her family lived on the Kesey farm commune. They lived in a bus, and even in tents in Northern Idaho while her parents tried to build a log cabin. She had her 3rd birthday at Woodstock.Though her childhood may seem like a fun dreamland for many folks, Kerry wanted to follow a very different path from her hippy parents. Her grandmother in Arkansas always brought her to church, and the stability there drew her to Jesus and the Church. So she felt called into ministry, graduating from Northwest Christian University in Eugene, Oregon with a B.S. in Church, Society and Family.  She then attended Lexington Theological Seminary, receiving her Masters in Divinity in 1999 and was ordained as a minister in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ).  Like her nomadic parents, she has served churches in Oregon, Texas, Kentucky, Kansas, Washington and Hawaii, and just recently began a ministry with the First Christian Church Fayette in Missouri.Kerry's hippy mother died suddenly in 2018.

Comes A Time
Lindsay Kent

Comes A Time

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 17, 2021 99:32


This week on Comes a Time Oteil and Mike talk with documentary filmmaker Lindsay Kent, who details the process of telling the story of Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters through her feature-length documentary film Going Furthur, which was released in 2021. In this conversation you'll hear Lindsay, Mike, and Oteil talk about Kesey and the Pranksters and their incredibly anomalous antics, Lindsay's introduction to the universe of the Grateful Dead, the process of understanding her purpose as a filmmaker, and much more. You'll also hear an interesting discussion on how human beings make collective artistic progress over time, and at the end of the episode you'll hear an interview from the archives between Mike and Ken Kesey! Lindsay Kent is a Bay area-based documentary filmmaker with a passion for social impact-focused content. She uses her storytelling abilities to bring meaningful productions to the public at large, and debuted her talents when she screened an early cut of Going Furthur in 2016. The final film was released this year, 2021. The feature-length documentary tells the story of Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters, digging deep into the roots of the counterculture movement. Conductrix is her second feature-length documentary film as producer and director, and in 2019 she curated the first ever Women's Visionary Film Symposium, which took place at a New York retreat center. You can watch Going Furthur On Demand right now through September 30 at Goingfurthur.com. To learn more about Lindsay's work, visit KrenshawFilms.com  Find Going Furthur on Instagram: @Goingfurthur50 @krenshawfilms Find Going Furthur on Facebook: Krenshaw Films Going Furthur Documentary ----------- This podcast is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Please leave us a rating or review on iTunes! Comes A Time is brought to you by Osiris Media. Hosted and Produced by Oteil Burbridge and Mike Finoia. Executive Producers are Christina Collins and RJ Bee. Production, Editing and Mixing by Eric Limarenko and Matt Dwyer. Theme music by Oteil Burbridge. Production assistance by Matt Bavuso. To discover more podcasts that connect you more deeply to the music you love, check out osirispod.com ------- Visit SunsetlakeCBD.com and use the promo code TIME for 20% off premium CBD products Discover Garcia Hand Picked Cannabis at GarciaHandPicked.com or connect with them on Instagram at @garciahandpicked “Find out how Upstart can help you pay off your deb at UPSTART.com/ComesaTime” Visit section119.com and use the promo code COMESATIME for for 15% off your next purchase of Grateful Dead apparel or accessories. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Comes A Time
Lindsay Kent

Comes A Time

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 17, 2021 95:24


This week on Comes a Time Oteil and Mike talk with documentary filmmaker Lindsay Kent, who details the process of telling the story of Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters through her feature-length documentary film Going Furthur, which was released in 2021. In this conversation you'll hear Lindsay, Mike, and Oteil talk about Kesey and the Pranksters and their incredibly anomalous antics, Lindsay's introduction to the universe of the Grateful Dead, the process of understanding her purpose as a filmmaker, and much more. You'll also hear an interesting discussion on how human beings make collective artistic progress over time, and at the end of the episode you'll hear an interview from the archives between Mike and Ken Kesey!Lindsay Kent is a Bay area-based documentary filmmaker with a passion for social impact-focused content. She uses her storytelling abilities to bring meaningful productions to the public at large, and debuted her talents when she screened an early cut of Going Furthur in 2016. The final film was released this year, 2021. The feature-length documentary tells the story of Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters, digging deep into the roots of the counterculture movement. Conductrix is her second feature-length documentary film as producer and director, and in 2019 she curated the first ever Women's Visionary Film Symposium, which took place at a New York retreat center. You can watch Going Furthur On Demand right now through September 30 at Goingfurthur.com. To learn more about Lindsay's work, visit KrenshawFilms.com Find Going Furthur on Instagram:@Goingfurthur50@krenshawfilmsFind Going Furthur on Facebook:Krenshaw FilmsGoing Furthur Documentary-----------This podcast is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Please leave us a rating or review on iTunes!Comes A Time is brought to you by Osiris Media. Hosted and Produced by Oteil Burbridge and Mike Finoia. Executive Producers are Christina Collins and RJ Bee. Production, Editing and Mixing by Eric Limarenko and Matt Dwyer. Theme music by Oteil Burbridge. Production assistance by Matt Bavuso. To discover more podcasts that connect you more deeply to the music you love, check out osirispod.com-------Visit SunsetlakeCBD.com and use the promo code TIME for 20% off premium CBD productsDiscover Garcia Hand Picked Cannabis at GarciaHandPicked.com or connect with them on Instagram at @garciahandpicked“Find out how Upstart can help you pay off your deb at UPSTART.com/ComesaTime”Visit section119.com and use the promo code COMESATIME for for 15% off your next purchase of Grateful Dead apparel or accessories. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Even the Podcast is Afraid
MK-Ultra Part III: Electric Kool-Aid Acid

Even the Podcast is Afraid

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 9, 2021 61:36


In part three of our series on MK-Ultra, we discuss The Merry Pranksters, comrades and followers of American author Ken Kesey in 1964. Who lived communally at Kesey's homes in California and Oregon, and are noted for the sociological significance of a lengthy road trip they took in the summer of 1964, traveling across the United States in a psychedelic painted school bus called Furthur, organizing parties and giving out LSD. But of course some of them volunteered as paid experimental subjects in a study conducted by the U.S. Army, aka Project MK-Ultra. Just like we saw in part two, of how the CIA's MK-Ultra program influenced the formation of The Grateful Dead, now we will also see how they influenced The Merry Pranksters and the Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.[FOLLOW US ON SOCIAL MEDIA]TWITTER: www.twitter.com/PodcastAfraidINSTAGRAM: www.instagram.com/PodcastAfraidYOUTUBE: https://tinyurl.com/3mwr54tbTIKTOK: https://www.tiktok.com/@podcastafraid[PATREON]Do you need more Even the Podcast is Afraid content, and would like to help support the show in the process? You can join our 'Elbow Deep Club' for just $5 per month and get exclusive content like ad-free & early access episodes, access to the after show, and more.PATREON: www.patreon.com/ordisstudios[WATCH OUR TV SHOW ON PODTV]TV NETWORK WEBSITE: https://www.podtv.live/DOWNLOAD APP: https://solo.to/etpia.tvshow.podtvDownload the PodTV app on your iOS, Android, Google Play, Amazon Appstore, and ROKU to watch our video podcast, EXCLUSIVE to PodTV. Just search PodTV Live in your app store.[ORDIS STUDIOS PODCAST NETWORK]WEBSITE: www.ordisstudios.comORDIS STUDIOS TWITTER: www.twitter.com/ordisstudiosORDIS STUDIOS INSTAGRAM: www.instagram.com/ordis.studios[MUSIC USED IN THIS EPISODE]Music from https://filmmusic.io"In Your Arms" by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.com)License: CC BY (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)[THANKS & MENTIONS FOR THIS EPISODE]Stephanie Kemmerer, researcher & writer for Even the Podcast is Afraid, conducted all the writing and research for this series on MK-Ultra."Even the Podcast is Afraid" (ETPIA) is created & produced by Jared Ordis, an original Ordis Studios Production.Even the Podcast is Afraid is part of the Ordis Studios Podcast Network.Copyright © 2021 by Ordis Studioswww.ordisstudios.com

The Jake Feinberg Show
The Dale Kesey Interview

The Jake Feinberg Show

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 26, 2021 74:13


Part of the legendary Kesey tribe talks about his relationship with Neal Cassady and going Furthur.

The Conspiracy Show with Richard Syrett
The JFK Assassination: Through the Looking Glass & The Merry Pranksters, LSD, And The Mirale Of Structured Water

The Conspiracy Show with Richard Syrett

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 19, 2021 104:26


The JFK Assassination: Through the Looking Glass Richard welcomes one of the most respected researchers and writers on the political assassinations of the 1960s to discuss a brand new documentary film on the JFK Assassination directed by Oliver Stone, titled Through the Looking Glass. The film is based on new JFK files that have been released since Stone's Oscar winning film, JFK. ?Guest: Jim DiEugenio wrote the script for Oliver Stone's new documentary film, Through the Looking Glass. Jim is the author of Destiny Betrayed, about the Garrison investigation of the Kennedy assassination, first published in 1992, with a second, greatly revised edition issued in 2012; and Reclaiming Parkland, published in 2013, reprinted in expanded form in 2016, and then reissued with additional material in 2018 as The JFK Assassination: The Evidence Today, which offers a detailed critical examination of the Warren Commission's evidence and conclusions as presented by Vincent Bugliosi's Reclaiming History, along with an analysis of the CIA's influence in Hollywood. He is also the co-author and editor of The Assassinations: Probe Magazine on JFK, MLK, RFK and Malcolm X. He co-edited Probe Magazine from 1993-2000 and was a guest commentator on the anniversary issue of the film JFK re-released by Warner Brothers in 2013. Ken Kesey, The Merry Pranksters, LSD, And The Miracle Of Structured Water Richard welcomes an artist who will discuss his many adventures while traveling with Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters in the mid 1960s. He'll also discuss a revolutionary water- ionization system that transforms regular tap water into pure, healthy, electrolytically-reduced and hydrogen-rich drinking water. ?Guest: Mike Lancaster was barely a teenager when he hooked up with the famous Merry Pranksters, a collection of comrades and followers of American author Ken Kesey in 1964. Kesey and the Merry Pranksters lived communally at Kesey's homes in California and Oregon, and are noted for the sociological significance of a lengthy road trip they took in the summer of 1964, traveling across the United States in a psychedelic painted school bus called Furthur, organizing parties and giving out LSD. Listen live every Sunday at 11pm on Zoomer Radio

Entrez sans frapper
Entrez sans frapper 22/06/2021 - Olivier Guez/Myriam Berghe/Gorian Delpâture/Xavier Vanbuggenhout - 22/06/2021

Entrez sans frapper

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 21, 2021 49:04


Les sorties BD de Xavier Vanbuggenhout : - « La Machine ne ferme jamais les yeux. Une histoire de la télésurveillance de 1984 à Facebook » de Yvan Greenberg et Everett Patterson et Joe Canlas (Delcourt) - Titeuf La grande aventure - Tome 17 » de Zep (Glénat) - « Les cavaliers de l'apocadispe vont bien - Tome 3 » de Libon (Dupuis) - « Lucky Luke se recycle » de Mawil (Lucky Comics/Dargaud) Le journaliste, essayiste et écrivain français Olivier Guez pour son livre "Une passion absurde et dévorante. Écrits sur le football" (L'Observatoire). Un soir d'été 1982, Olivier Guez assiste à son premier match de football. Il n'a pas 10 ans. Les formes pures du stade, les projecteurs aveuglants, le vert ardent de la pelouse cernée de lignes laiteuses, et les milliers de petites touches bleues qui parsèment les gradins : le vertige, l'immense frisson. Il ne s'est jamais vraiment remis de ce spectacle grandiose. Le football a donné à l'écrivain le goût des autres, et le goût du large. Au fil des voyages, il a constaté que ce sport était le miroir des nations, de leur mémoire, de leurs conflits et de leurs imaginaires. Sur un terrain de football se racontent l'identité de la France, le stalinisme et le dégel en Union soviétique, la question raciale au Brésil, la modernité de l'Argentine et de Diego Maradona, le destin de l'Allemagne de l'Est après la réunification, les ambitions planétaires du Qatar et, sous l'égide de la FIFA, les dérives du capitalisme depuis trente ans. C'est le football, cette passion absurde et dévorante que partagent des milliards d'hommes et de femmes à travers le monde, trait d'union de la planète globalisée, que décrit Olivier Guez dans un recueil de textes admirables de sincérité, entrecoupé de photographies de légende, qui vibrent pour toujours dans la mémoire de chacun. Myriam Berghe, journaliste belge poursuivie pour trafic d'êtres humains par la justice belge pour avoir héberger des migrants, pour son livre "Chair à camions" (La Boîte à Pandore). Au sortir d'un procès inédit, Myriam Berghe ouvre les portes d'un monde de douleurs, d'une justice inhumaine, d'un combat qui est loin d'être terminé. C'est une histoire de rencontres. Avec les "saute-frontières" de la Jungle de Calais, traqués à mort mais tellement vivants. Avec toute la misère d'un monde qui refuse d'examiner la migration sous l'angle de la solution plutôt que du problème. Avec un Égyptien à qui la justice a taillé un costume de criminel bien trop grand pour lui. C'est une histoire de complicité entre sans-papiers et Bruxellois solidaires, accusés d'avoir franchi une ligne que leur propre procès en correctionnelle doit servir à tracer. Un dialogue de sourds entre ceux qui accueillent sans juger et ceux qui jugent sans accueillir. Dans cet ouvrage rageur, Myriam Berghe raconte le calvaire. D'abord celui des migrants qui tentent de survivre dans des conditions inhumaines. Le sien, ensuite. Le statut de criminelle qui lui a été attribué parce qu'elle a fait preuve de solidarité et d'humanité. Double coup de cœur de Gorian Delpâture : "La rivière pourquoi" de David James Duncan (Monsieur Toussaint Louverture) et "La rivière" de Peter Heller (Actes Sud). "La rivière pourquoi" : De Portland aux côtes de l'Oregon, de torrents en cascades, de truites arc-en-ciel en saumons royaux, du désespoir à l'euphorie, qu'il croise un cadavre ou une sirène, Gus Orviston est un prodige de la pêche : même sans appât, il cherche à attraper l'insaisissable. Expulsé d'un paradis de lacs et d'affluents par des parents qui passent leur temps à s'envoyer leur canne à pêche au visage, Gus quitte le foyer familial et s'isole au bord d'une rivière idyllique où il peut enfin se plonger dans l'ascèse aquatique qu'il s'est choisi : la pêche. Et si pour lui la pêche résume le monde, le poisson en est l'énigme et au milieu, coule la rivière, ce méandre en forme de question, qui mène le jeu en interrogeant la vie et le bonheur. Avec drôlerie, sagesse et innocence, il nous entraîne dans sa quête du cours d'eau parfait, celui qui répondra à toutes ses questions. La Rivière Pourquoi est un hymne à une existence réconciliée avec nos passions et nos obsessions, avec la nature et ce que nous en faisons. C'est libre, c'est foisonnant, c'est profondément tendre. David James Duncan est un conteur hors pair, capable de dépeindre les âmes comme les paysages de façon fascinante, qui nous offre dans ces pages une aventure spirituelle en forme de roman un peu fou, poétique et surtout très drôle. C'est Kesey, c'est Harrison, c'est Brautigan. "La rivière" : Wynn et Jack, étudiants en pleine possession de leurs moyens, s'offrent enfin la virée en canoë de leurs rêves sur le mythique fleuve Maskwa, dans le Nord du Canada. Ils ont pour eux la connaissance intime de la nature, l'exper-tise des rapides et la confiance d'une amitié solide. Mais quand, à l'horizon, s'élève la menace d'un tout-puissant feu de forêt, le rêve commence à virer au cauchemar, qui transforme la balade contemplative en course contre la montre. Ils ignorent que ce n'est que le début de l'épreuve. Parce que toujours ses histoires, profondément hu-maines, sont prétextes à s'immerger dans la beauté des paysages, et parce qu'il a lui-même descendu quelques-unes des rivières les plus dangereuses de la planète, Peter Heller dose et alterne admirablement les moments suspen-dus, l'émerveillement, la présence à l'instant, et le sur gis-sement de la peur, les accélérations cardiaques, la montée de l'adrénaline. Ses descriptions relèvent d'une osmose enchanteresse avec la nature ; ses rebondissements, d'une maîtrise quasi sadique de l'engrenage. Ce cocktail redou-tablement efficace – suspense et poésie – est sa marque de fabrique. La Rivière n'y déroge pas.

The Jake Feinberg Show
The Mason Williams Interview

The Jake Feinberg Show

Play Episode Listen Later May 27, 2021 50:30


Try to Be Magical ​by Mason Williams ​The two people I met in my life who I thought were great men were Pete Seeger and Ken Kesey. Not only were they clever and could write great songs and great books, they were able to embrace all of humanity—warts and all, I guess you might say. ​All kinds of people would come by Ken's place and visit and talk, and they were welcome. Pete Seeger was always trying to improve the welfare of the common man. He had a broad love of humanity. ​One thing I learned from my friend Kesey: he used to say, “Almost everybody can be clever, but what you really want to do is be magical.” He was part of my Of Time and Rivers Flowing. He told me, “I like your river show, because not only is it very entertaining musically, it's about history and conservation of natural waterways. Those three elements make it magical.” ​I had a place up in Oak Ridge, and Ken lived in Pleasant Hill. I knew about him from his books, which I had read. I found out where he lived, and one day I stopped by just to introduce myself. We sat outside, and he had a parrot who was chewing wood off the side of his house. We had a couple of swigs of whiskey. I told him, “In the River Show that I am doing, since I play guitar and it's mic'd, I'm stuck behind the microphone. What I need is somebody who could be more like an actor, someone who could be on stage and move around and have some motion. Also I need comedy bits that I could engineer for him to do.” ​Ken was my man. He said he wanted to be an actor more than a writer. He used to act on paper. Ken had a big room upstairs in his house. Zane and Sunshine told me you could hear him talking to himself. In actuality he was being these characters he was writing about. He was thinking about what they might say to each other, moving around up there and acting out what wound up being on paper. ​I would write ideas for Ken the same way I wrote for The Smothers Brothers. “Here's a structure; beginning, middle, and end. You can improvise in the middle of it, any way you want to.” ​I wrote one piece, Shall We Gather at the River. There was a section of hymns. I said, “Ken, I want you to be the preacher and I'm going to call you Ken ‘For God's Sake' Kesey.” He used my lines as a structure, but then had some great lines of his own that he added, just as The Smothers Brothers did.

The Jake Feinberg Show
The Katherine Wilson Interview

The Jake Feinberg Show

Play Episode Listen Later May 12, 2021 62:56


​Drive-in Movie ​by Katherine Wilson ​Ken Kesey was a 3-D artist. He was somebody who wanted to create worlds. He didn’t want to just write the book: he saw who was acting in it, the locations. He was a filmmaker. ​That incredible grant that he got to go to Stanford, then he wrote One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. He went to Hollywood for a year to write screenplays, then he got this grant and wrote that novel. The film of it wound up winning more Academy Awards than any film in history except one, 47 years ago. ​Kesey was so cinematic. He was a great cinematic writer. We were always making films. He was part of Gus Van Sant making a film. He was everywhere films were being made ​Ken met with Michael Douglas during the making of Cuckoo’s Nest. Michael idolized Kesey. Michael was living on a compound in Santa Barbara. He wanted Ken to be part of the production. ​Animal House was set in 1962. The screenplay was so bad that I didn’t want to work on it. At first it was going to be set in November 1963, the day before John F. Kennedy got shot. If you look at Animal House, there’s a float with Jackie Kennedy on it wearing her pink hat and a giant sculpture of Kennedy’s face. All the universities turned it down, and that was probably why they changed it to 1962, before the world changed in 1963. The Kingsmen’s hit version of “Louie Louie” came out that year. ​Animal House was supposed to be a drive-in movie; it had a drive-in movie budget. The University of Oregon said yes to it. I’m in film and people would ask me, “Why do you think The University of Oregon would say ‘yes’?” I answered, “Because it’s the home of the Merry Pranksters.” A lot of the Pranksters were celebrated Oregon alumni: Mike Hagen, Jackie Springer, and George Walker. ​What blew the producers away was that all of these “Kesey Filmmakers” had skills they needed for the film. They hired all of us. Hagen had run off to LA. ​We were working on Animal House, and the whole community showed up. All these people helped make the movie look like a million bucks. Universal said, “Hey, we’ve got to put more money into it, but before we do, you’re going to need to have a star.” The directors and the producers said to themselves, “Hey, well let’s see. We’re on a one-million-dollar budget right now. We’ll have like two million if we can get a star. Who do we know that’s a star?” ​John Belushi goes, “Well, all these filmmakers around here are referring to Ken Kesey and he’d be a great professor, right? He actually was one once.” John Landis and Belushi drove out to Ken’s house and within 15 minutes Kesey had made up his mind. He was not interested; he was not an actor. Then Belushi mimicked Del Close, this guy who taught him improv in Chicago. Kesey fell on the floor laughing, because it was so spot on. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/jake-feinberg/support

Jesse Nyberg Podcast
Ep.20 Kesey - BLKMARKET | Jesse Nyberg Podcast

Jesse Nyberg Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later May 6, 2021 85:16


In this episode of The Jesse Nyberg Podcast, I chatted with Kesey from Blkmarket. Kesey is the mastermind behind Blkmarket, one of the most recognized graphic design software and asset companies. Blkmarket has created powerful design tools like Inklab as well as amazing mockups from Plastic textures to T-Shirts. Kesey and I chat about quitting your job to pursue your own company, hiring your own employees, creating software for photoshop, and more. If you want to hear more check out Patreon below for an exclusive Q&A with Kesey. https://www.patreon.com/Jessenyberg --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/jesse-nyberg/support

Steven Phillips with The Morning Dish
The Morning Dish w/ Harvey Jason known for his role in Gumball Rally & owner of Mystery Pier Books

Steven Phillips with The Morning Dish

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 1, 2021 15:52


Harvey Jason actor in films including The Gumball Rally and The Lost World: Jurassic Park, he also played in dozens of TV roles in the 1970s and 1980s,  including Pinky in Rich Man, Poor Man and Harry Zief in Captains and the Kings, both made in 1976.                                      Mystery Pier Books, Inc.Turn through an unexpected entryway on the famed Sunset Strip, proceed down a few stone steps, then just a bit further through a slim, magical passage right out of old Europe, and be met with blooming flowerbeds fronting a charming English cottage that might well have been plucked from Stratford-upon-Avon.Inside, it's as visitor-friendly as it is atmospheric and cozy: a virtual treasure trove of books, several thousand—each and every single one a First Edition—immaculately organized, beautifully kept.This is Mystery Pier Books, Inc., the noted independent bookshop with a prestigious reputation extending far beyond Tinseltown. Member of the Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America (ABAA) and the International League of AntiquarianBooksellers (ILAB), the shop is regularly featured on television and in the major national entertainment magazines. Indeed, Mystery Pier is a true favorite for a great many of the Industry elite, who visit often.Extremely popular with clients close to home in the worlds of motion pictures, television and music, Mystery Pier regularly provides gifts for nominees and winners in the major Awards shows. Books from here grace the bookshelves of Johnny Depp, Bono, Daniel Craig, Martin Scorcese, Barry Gibb, Jude Law, Cameron Diaz, Nicole Kidman, Hans Zimmer, John Malkovich, Bette Midler, Eric Idle, Anthony Hopkins, Oprah Winfrey, Michael Caine, Flea, Pierce Brosnan, Patti Smith, and Jeremy Irons, among many, many others.Owned and operated by the hospitable and knowledgeable father-and-son team of Louis M. Jason (son) and Harvey Jason (father), the shop is embraced not only for the warm friendliness and helpful expertise of its proprietors, but for its extraordinary selection of titles, with the strongest emphasis placed upon quality and condition.One may browse here at leisure through First Editions (in great number signed or inscribed) of authors from Steinbeck, Hemingway, Faulkner and Orwell to Salinger, Ayn Rand, Raymond Chandler and Ian Fleming; from Dickens, Joyce, and Virginia Woolf to J.K. Rowling, Barrie, Milne and Twain; from Heller, Kesey, Kerouac and Hunter Thompson & Burroughs to Vonnegut, Bradbury, Agatha Christie,John D. MacDonald and Rex Stout.In addition to presenting a full range of the acknowledged American & British literary highspots and Modern Firsts, the gleaming wooden shelves stock a wonderful selection of Antiquarian, Mystery & Detective, Children's Classics, Books into Film (dozens signed not only by the books' authors, but also by the stars of the various movie adaptations), Uniquities, and the very best of True Crime.The shop is happy to ship, as it does regularly, with care and high efficiency to customers throughout the world. All major credit cards are accepted.

American Scene
12. American Splendor

American Scene

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 19, 2021 51:58


This little movie brought hilarious metacommentary to a comic book adaptation long before Deadpool! Revisit Paul Giamatti's breakthrough performance as Harvey Pekar as we discuss the Everyman, the tradition of the American working class novel, and our favorite breakfast cereals. (recorded Jan 2, 2021) References: "Harvey Pekar and Joyce Brabner: The party poopers" (The Independent, January 13, 2004) "Where did the working class novel go? Gerald Howard talks tough about Kesey's "Great Notion"" (BELLEMEADE BOOKS, August 1, 2011) Additional reading: "The Strange and Wonderful World of “American Splendor”" (Independent Magazine, July 1, 2003) "Working-Class Heroes in Literature" (UTNE Reader, September 14, 2010)

The Jake Feinberg Show
The Dr. Larry Brilliant Interview

The Jake Feinberg Show

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 28, 2020 86:57


​It’s the End of My Trip ​by Dr. Larry Brilliant ​Sometime in the mid-90s we were on this land in Mendocino County. Wavy, Wavy’s wife Jah, my wife Girija, and I have a piece of land in Mendocino County, where Wavy has this remarkable Camp Winnarainbow. ​We were having a concert; it may have been called The Kate Wolf Concert at the time. There were about 5,000 people attending a Los Lobos concert on this land. ​At one point Wavy was on stage, and he had his microphone and a megaphone. While he was introducing them, he looked off in the distance at Route 101. You could see from the stage, coming down the road, coming towards the concert grounds, was a bus. As it got closer, you could see this was a psychedelic-painted bus. As it got closer and closer, I saw it said FURTHUR II. ​The crowd split in order to allow this bus to drive in, approaching the stage. The music stopped, Wavy was on stage, with his microphone, and as the bus got closer and closer Wavy was saying to the group, “I think it’s Ken Kesey and The Merry Pranksters.” ​The bus stopped like a Vulcan Starship looking at The Starship Enterprise decloaking. They’d all got their phasers on “stun.” Kesey made his way to the top of the bus and opened the hatch. He’d got a microphone and a megaphone himself. ​He yelled out, “Wavy, how are you?” Wavy says, “Welcome, Ken, nice to see you. You’re interrupting our concert.” ​Kesey responds: “I brought FURTHUR here and The Merry Pranksters, but I also have a great guest here. Wavy, don’t you agree we have failed to honor the elders of this movement we’re part of as much as we should?” Wavy and Kesey are having this conversation; 5,000 people were listening from the stage and the top of the bus. ​Kesey continued, “Well, I brought an elder with me that I think that we should honor. His name is Timothy Leary.” ​Making his way up the steps at the top of the bus from the inside was Timothy Leary in a sorcerer’s outfit and his little wizard pointy scepter. He was very thin and obviously dying of liver cancer. He struggled and got to the top of the bus, raised his wizard’s wand, and went around in a circle blessing all 5,000 people. Then he looked to Wavy and said, “Wavy, I’m dying; it’s the end of my trip. It’s been a wonderful trip. I’m not afraid of dying.” Kesey took the microphone and said, “Wavy, I think we need to honor Tim Leary now. What I have in mind is canonizing Tim Leary. Wavy, do you agree that Tim Leary should be canonized?” ​Wavy replied, “Yes, of course, but how will you canonize Tim Leary?” Kesey said, “I’m glad you asked.” ​We started to hear this sound of a motor grinding and something being elevated onto the top of the bus. After a lot of grinding, suddenly you saw he’d got this real cannon on top of the bus. Kesey announced, “I brought my own cannon to canonize Tim Leary.” ​Everyone was getting a little nervous. It was a crowded area and it was a big cannon. Kesey struck a match, the kind you would see in a comic book. He put it on the end of the cannon and there was a “boom,” but not a great blast. From the cannon came confetti and stars that showered down on everybody at the concert. Kesey said, “I hereby canonize Tim Leary.” The crowd went wild and Wavy went wild. That was the Theatre of Ken Kesey. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/jake-feinberg/support

Kicking the Seat
Ep585: Acute Schizophrenic Illiteracy

Kicking the Seat

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 18, 2020


Today, The Kicking the Seat Podcast and Mike Crowley of You'll Probably Agree mix things up with a look at Ratched Season One, which launches today on Netflix! A follow-up to a conversation we had in April, this episode zeroes in on the issues plaguing American Horror Story creator Ryan Murphy’s attempt to center a One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest prequel on its main villain, Nurse Mildred Ratched.This is far from a deep-dive, as an unusually strict embargo prevented Ian and Mike from discussing some key narrative elements. But they forged ahead with some scathing critiques of a show whose utter disregard for Milos Forman’s Oscar-winning movie and Ken Kesey’s hard-hitting novel is downright unforgivable.Kesey’s searing critique of America and its 1960s-era mental health system has given way to gratuitous violence, cartoonish vamping, and social justice anachronisms that undermine what appear to be genuinely sincere beliefs on the part of the showrunners.Also, check out Mike’s written review of Ratched: Season One. And for a completely different kind of conversation, give a listen to the latest episode of You’ll Probably Agree, in which the guys debate the merits of Blade Runner 2049!Episode 585 is the transorbital lobotomy of podcasts!Show Guide:Intro Music: 0:00 - 0:14Intro: 0:14 - 5:13Ratched Trailer: 5:13 - 8:00Ratched Discussion: 8:00 - 55:55Outro Music: 55:55 - 56:11Keep up with the latest seat-kicking goodness by following, liking, rating, and subscribing to us on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, iTunes, Stitcher!

Midnight, On Earth
Episode 007 - Ken Babbs - Merry Prankster and 60's Icon

Midnight, On Earth

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 17, 2020 87:46


It is my great privilege to share a deep, personal, and hilarious discussion with 60's icon, Merry Prankster, and personal hero of mine; Ken Babbs.Ken and I discuss the origin of the hippies and the birth of the counter culture. We discuss his relationship with Ken Kesey, with the interview actually taking place on Ken Kesey's 85th birthday. What an honor! We also touch on the history of psychedelics, the acid tests,God, Aliens, Angels, and more...Wow! Join Us!Ken Babbs is a famous Merry Prankster who became one of the psychedelic leaders of the 1960s. He along with best friend and Prankster leader, Ken Kesey wrote the book Last Go Round. Babbs is best known for his participation in the Acid Tests and on the bus Furthur.Ken Babbs was raised in Mentor, Ohio. He attended the Case Institute of Technology (where he briefly studied engineering) for two years on a basketball scholarship before transferring to Miami University, from which he graduated magna cum laude with a degree in English literature in 1958. He then attended the Stanford University graduate creative writing program on a Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship from 1958–59; having entered the NROTC program to fund his undergraduate studies, Babbs was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the United States Marine Corps following the end of his fellowship. He trained as a helicopter pilot and served in one of the first American advisory units in Vietnam from 1962-63 prior to his discharge and reunion with Kesey in 1964. Babbs had no understanding of the impact the war had on him until he received his orders to go to Vietnam. His insight soon began to take definition. Babbs later stated that he “had no perceptions of the right or wrong of the situation before I went to Vietnam, but it took about six weeks to realize we were wasting our time there... being humble, respect[ing] local customs, learn[ing] the language and helping does more good than hurting.”In the fall of 1958, Babbs took a writing class at Stanford with another Wilson Fellow, Ken Kesey. Babbs later described meeting Kesey as “a moment of mirth and sadness, highness and lowliness, interchanging of ideas and musical moments.” They soon became best friends, maintained a correspondence while Babbs was stationed in the Far East with the Marines, and eventually formed the Merry Pranksters.What started as a Happening emerged into a global frenzy and inspired people, still today. According to Babbs, a Happening is something that “can’t be planned ..It just happens! It takes place in public or private and involves everyone present. In Phoenix in 1964, we painted "A Vote for Barry is a Vote for Fun" on the side of the bus and waved flags and played stars and stripes forever..this qualified as both a prank and a Happening.” .The most famous happening of the Pranksters was the nationwide trip on the Furthur. While on a trip to New York City, the Pranksters needed an automobile that could hold fourteen people and all of their filming and taping equipment. One of the members saw a “revamped school bus” in San Francisco that was for sale. The Pranksters bought the bus and named it Furthur. Babbs was the engineer for the bus. Ken Babbs is mostly credited for the sound systems he created for the Trips Festival. Prior to Babbs’ creation, it was discovered that particular music usually sounded distorted when cranked to high levels because of the cement floor on the San Francisco Longshoreman’s Union Hall (where the Trips Festival was taking place). Babbs being a sound engineer resolved the problem. He made sound amplifiers that would not create distorted sounds when turned up to high sound levels.The purpose for this Happening was to link the psychedelic tribes from the west and the east. Many people tend to remember the east tribe because of Timothy Leary and LSD. Many misjudgments have been made on the Pranksters and their promotion of LSD. However, Babbs makes it clear that “just because we used LSD does not mean we were promoting its use. (LSD) is a dangerous drug..[It’s] a way, I guess, of breaking down the conformist ideology.” .During the legendary Prankster cross country bus trip to the New York World's fair in 1964, an epic movie was filmed and shown at several “Acid Tests”. The film is called The Merry Pranksters Search for a Kool Place. Some have compared the Prankster’s trip to the Acid Tests. Babbs assures that the “Acid Tests came after the bus trip and came about because we were editing the movie of the bus trip and began renting places to show the movie and play our music.” What inspired the Acid Tests was when the Pranksters met the Grateful Dead. Babbs relates to that time as “it was the power that propelled the rocket ship everyone rode to the stars and beyond the whole night the acid test took place.” [IBID]The Hog Farm collective was established through a chain of events beginning with Ken Babbs hijacking the Merry Pranksters' bus, Furthur, to Mexico, which stranded the Merry Pranksters in Los Angeles.Looking back at his experiences as a Merry Prankster, Babbs says he wants younger and future generations to carry on “love, peace, and happiness; extended in practicality to the simple act of helping one another out, being kind and generous.” [ibid]Babbs currently lives on his farm in Dexter, Oregon (near Kesey’s house) with his wife Eileen, an English teacher at South Eugene High School. In 1994, he helped Kesey co-write The Last Go Round, about the oldest and largest rodeos in America. Babbs is also founder and leader of the Sky Pilot Club. Many of Babbs's trips are now available to watch on YouTube. Babbs recently published a novel based on his life in the armed forces during the first years of the Vietnam War, Who Shot the Water Buffalo?Join Us! See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

The Jake Feinberg Show
The Sunshine Kesey Interview

The Jake Feinberg Show

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 17, 2020 67:06


Natural Expression ​by Sunshine Kesey (daughter of Ken Kesey and Mountain Girl) ​I saw Jerry Garcia on stage from my infancy. At the time their events were considered the safest and most loving place anywhere. I grew up at Grateful Dead shows and New Riders of the Purple Sage shows, which all felt like a safe place for kids. I had full run of the place, because I was one of the oldest kids. I was one of the first rock and roll babies in our group and I’d start bossing the kids around. That was a little scene which I can see now was a little unusual. But at the time it seemed natural, because we were a traveling circus, and everyone traveled together. It was just natural that you brought your kids, your dogs, because your home was the road. You had to bring what you wanted with you. ​We went on the road a lot. As time moved on, there were more kids, and things got a little bigger and crazier. The road was longer; then I think we stayed home more. Then later in time Annabelle would go out on the road with Jerry by herself. She was 12, but it was considered OK and safe. It was like a huge village that would look after your kid. ​I used to run around in those big halls in the audience, trucking around by myself. I knew where the stage was. I knew how to find my folks. I loved running around and having a good time, getting into mischief and tripping the spinners. ​I never saw my mom and dad as a couple. They were never a couple in my time. They were friends, thankfully. He was married and had three children. Faye was friends with my mom as well. Luckily the spirit of friendship and the appreciation for my life being in their life was evident. They wanted me in their lives, so I got to be part of the family. ​The times being what they were, all those little fences around what we do had melted away, so it wasn’t considered a terrible transgression. I don’t think my mom ever assumed that she would say “we.” There was never any jockeying for position. It was like a natural expression during high times. I think the complications showed up later. ​A lot of those ideas about free anything did not survive the test of time. Basic things like “Whose food is in the fridge?” It gets compli-cated. We were never a commune per se. ​My mom is a powerful person, a powerful personality. She has a real good sense of family, too. Not just our immediate family but our entire tribal family. She has done so much to knit all this stuff together. Even as the “ex” and being pushed away, she herself is pushy and does what she wants. She made sure her girls had access to their dad and the scene. ​I myself would have been shier: “I’m not invited, I’m not coming.” She made things happen and she continues to make things happen. She keeps the soul of the village somewhat together. ​I know that in 2015, the 50th anniversary of the Grateful Dead, she made a big move to make sure that folks who were part of the Grateful Dead for years and years and years were invited where they hadn’t been invited. ​She wasn’t going to play by the rules. She wanted to have Steve Parish invited. She said, “If these people are not invited, what a terrible crime against our whole scene.” My younger sister Trixie said, “You can’t be doing this, you’re going to rock the boat.” My mom said, “I don’t care about the boat! I’ll buy them tickets if I have to, this is just not right.” ​Last year it was great to see her in action and being a true matriarch to our entire group. She makes people uncomfortable, like my dad did. She would push the bounds. As her kid sometimes I would be like, “Oh God, I’m embarrassed. I can’t believe this is happening.” Then at the end of the day she had pulled off something so cool and made something happen that nobody else would have done, just by being pushy and going there. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/jake-feinberg/support

The Jake Feinberg Show
The Zane Kesey Interview

The Jake Feinberg Show

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 17, 2020 59:02


Son of a Prankster Man. Furthur --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/jake-feinberg/support

WDR 2 Stichtag
Ken Kesey, US-Schriftsteller (Geburtstag 17.09.1935)

WDR 2 Stichtag

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 16, 2020 4:16


Journalist, Autor, Ringer, Versuchskaninchen, Zauberer. All das war Ken Kesey. Autor des Romans "Einer flog über das Kuckucksnest". Die Verfilmung mit Jack Nicholson ist ein Klassiker. Kesey war aber noch mehr, einer der einflussreichsten Väter der Hippiebewegung.

WDR ZeitZeichen
Ken Kesey, amerik. Schriftsteller (Geburtstag 17.9.1935)

WDR ZeitZeichen

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 16, 2020 14:37


Als Student nimmt Ken Kesey am CIA Projekt MKULTRA teil. Seine Aufgabe ist es, psychoaktive Drogen zu nehmen und deren Wirkung aufzuschreiben. Die Tests finden in einem Veteranenhospital statt, wo Kesey als Nachtwächter arbeitet. Diese Erfahrungen verarbeitet er in seinem ersten Roman: "Einer flog über das Kuckucksnest". ein Publikums- und Kritikererfolg, der ihn finanziell unabhängig werden lässt. Autoren: Veronika Bock und Ulrich Biermann

The Jake Feinberg Show
The Ken Babbs Interview Part II

The Jake Feinberg Show

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 4, 2020 61:49


His Shoes and a Note ​Fourteen of us got busted at Ken Kesey’s house for pot. We went to court, and our lawyer made a deal where we all got off except Ken. The reason was that Neal Cassady had already been busted twice for felonies. In California if he went down for another felony, he’d be in jail for another ten or fifteen years. So they made the deal that Ken would take the rap and the rest of us would go free. ​When it came time for Kesey to show up in court and get his conviction, he didn’t show up. He “committed suicide.” He left his shoes and a note on the beach in California and disappeared. What really happened was a buddy of his drove him down to Mexico in an old truck. We knew about it, but the rest of us were still doing the Acid Tests in LA. We had the bus down there, we had a place to stay, and we were doing these shows every Saturday night. The Hog Farm had joined up for that. ​LSD was going to become illegal the next day in California. So after the Acid Tests, we jumped on the bus and headed down to Mexico. We went way down in Mexico, on the ocean. We stayed there six months till our visas expired and we came back along with Kesey. During that time my first wife came down with my kids to visit. My second wife was down there and gave birth to our daughter Casa. Mountain Girl birthed Sunshine Kesey in Mexico. They’re about a month apart in age. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/jake-feinberg/support

The Jake Feinberg Show
The Ken Babbs Interview Set IV

The Jake Feinberg Show

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 4, 2020 64:17


Never Eat When You’re Angry ​When we met at Stanford, right from the get-go, Kesey and I were making tapes together. We’d sit there in the dark, get high, and rap with microphones into a reel-to-reel tape recorder, doing these off-the-wall, off-the-cuff stories, plots, and situations. We were both good at making stuff up on the spot. Kesey was an absolute genius at it; I would fill in a lot. Actual novels, making up the characters and the dialogue. We’d pull out the tape recorder and we never knew how good it was when we were doing it. We first started doing it in relation to writing. Can this stuff be transposed into a book? Can it be sold; is it worth anything? So later we’d listen to it and see if we thought we had any ability in this direction. It actually was pretty good, but it was really raw. There were no cheerleaders singing “rah, rah, rah.” ​We realized we had a talent, but we were really not brought up to speed in that respect until we had Neal Cassady with us. He was the absolute master at talking. He didn’t always make stuff up, but he was able to talk about everything that had happened in his life and weave it into long convoluted stories that always had a moral to them. “Never eat when you’re angry; no one was ever happy angry.” Luckily on the bus trip in 1964 with Neal driving, we all had microphones set up and speakers going, so you would hear us all talking and rapping at the same time --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/jake-feinberg/support

Film is Lit
Ep. 004 - One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (Kesey, 1962/ Forman, 1975)

Film is Lit

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 30, 2020 57:42


**THIS EPISODE CONTAINS FULL SPOILERS** Hold onto your cigarettes, 'cuz there's a new McMurphy in town! TWO McMurphies to be exact! In this episode, Danny and Laura discuss Ken Kesey's classic novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1962) and the equally-classic Forman film (1975). Join us in as we flip the bird to ol'Nurse Ratched and the big bad system she represents. #IWantMyDamnCigarettes #FilmisLitPod #OneFlewOverTheCuckoosNest

Mozaika
Kerouac, Irving nebo Kesey. Druhá část výběru té nejlepší americké literatury ze seznamů povinné četby je tady

Mozaika

Play Episode Listen Later May 18, 2020 9:13


Na dobu mimořádných opatření, kdy studenti nemohou do školy, jsme nejen pro ně v Mozaice připravili sérii o tom nejlepším, co nám i dnes může nabídnout americká literatura. S naší stálou spolupracovnicí Hanou Ulmanovou z Filozofické fakulty Univerzity Karlovy rozebíráme tvorbu dvanácti vybraných autorů, kteří nejčastěji figurují na seznamech četby k maturitě.

On the Media
Ken Kesey's Acid Quest

On the Media

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 1, 2020 18:44


Happy New Year! In this pod extra, we're celebrating what might be your first hangover of 2020 — whether it's fueled by alcohol or just the thought of the year ahead. So, we thought we'd bring you the story of an odd holiday known as Bicycle Day, April 19: the day in 1943, when Swiss scientist Albert Hofmann rode his bike home from work after dosing himself with his lab concoction, lysergic acid diethylamide, or LSD. The first acid trip. Hofmann’s wobbly ride is what launches us into an exploration of a moment, when Ken Kesey, an evangelist of acid would emerge from a Menlo Park hospital lab, and plow through the nation’s gray flannel culture in a candy colored bus. Some know Kesey as the enigmatic author behind One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest — others, as the driving force in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, Tom Wolfe’s seminal work in New Journalism. In honor of the 50th anniversary of the release of Acid Test, Brooke spoke in 2018 with Wolfe (since deceased) and writer River Donaghey about how acid shaped Kesey, spawned the book and de-normalized American conformity. This segment is from our April 20, 2018 show, Moving Beyond the Norm. Songs: Holidays B by Ib GlindemannIm Glück by Neu!Apache '65 by Davie Allan and the ArrowsSelections from "The Acid Tests Reels" by The Merry Pranksters & The Grateful DeadAlicia by Los MonstruosThe Days Between by The Grateful Dead (Live 6/24/95)

Amigos with Mike Finoia
Always Trust a Prankster w/ Ken Babbs

Amigos with Mike Finoia

Play Episode Listen Later Aug 6, 2019 64:56


While in Portland Oregon doing standup, Mike took a trip down memory lane (Route 5 South) to visit with Author / Merry Prankster Ken Babbs. This was a special trip for Finoia, as it's been 18 years since Mike visited and interviewed Ken Kesey. Mike and Babbs discuss Mike's first visit, performing on stage with Phish, controlling the tenants that live in our mind, LSD, writing with Kesey, the Grateful Dead and much more. This episode is dedicated to the memory of my friend, David Kimowitz. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Slate Star Codex Podcast
Book Review: The Electric Kool-aid Acid Test

Slate Star Codex Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 25, 2019 32:30


Ken Kesey, graduating college in Oregon with several wrestling championships and a creative writing degree, made a classic mistake: he moved to the San Francisco Bay Area to find himself. He rented a house in Palo Alto (this was the 1950s, when normal people could have houses in Palo Alto) and settled down to write the Great American Novel. To make ends meet, he got a job as an orderly at the local psych hospital. He also ran across some nice people called “MKULTRA” who offered him extra money to test chemicals for them. As time went by, he found himself more and more disillusioned with the hospital job, finding his employers clueless and abusive. But the MKULTRA job was going great! In particular, one of the chemicals, “LSD”, really helped get his creative juices flowing. He leveraged all of this into his Great American Novel, One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, and became rich and famous overnight. He got his hands on some extra LSD and started distributing it among his social scene – a mix of writers, Stanford graduate students, and aimless upper-class twenty-somethings. They all agreed: something interesting was going on here. Word spread. 1960 San Francisco was already heavily enriched for creative people who would go on to shape intellectual history; Kesey’s friend group attracted the creme of this creme. Allan Ginsberg, Hunter S. Thompson, and Wavy Gravy passed through; so did Neil Cassady (“Dean Moriarty”) Jack Keroauc’s muse from On The Road. Kesey hired a local kid and his garage band to play music at his acid parties; thus began the career of Jerry Garcia and the Grateful Dead. Sometime in the early 1960s, too slow to notice right away, they transitioned from “social circle” to “cult”. Kesey bought a compound in the redwood forests of the Santa Cruz Mountains, an hour’s drive from SF. Beatniks, proto-hippies, and other seekers – especially really attractive women – found their way there and didn’t leave. Kesey and his band, now calling themselves “the Merry Pranksters”, accepted all comers. They passed the days making psychedelic art (realistically: spraypainting redwood trees Day-Glo yellow), and the nights taking LSD in massive group therapy sessions that melted away psychic trauma and the chains of society and revealed the true selves buried beneath (realistically: sitting around in a circle while people said how they felt about each other).

Pop Shield: Perspectives on Music Past and Present
The Grateful Dead’s Dark Star vs. The Velvet Underground’s Sister Ray

Pop Shield: Perspectives on Music Past and Present

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 7, 2019 95:44


There are so many similarities and connections between the Grateful Dead and the Velvet Underground, so why do they feel like polar opposites? We compare and contrast both bands' most jammed-out masterpieces to get to the bottom of it.

DumTeeDum - A show about The BBC's The Archers
DTD: 274 - Ted Kesey who played Joe Grundy passes away.

DumTeeDum - A show about The BBC's The Archers

Play Episode Listen Later May 1, 2019 86:46


Thanks to Kosmo for his wonderful obituary of Edward Kelsey, our beloved Joe Grundy who will be sorely missed by all Dumteedummers.On this week’s episode we hear views from Andy, Old Grey Whiskers, Witherspoon, Steve, Catherine, Claire, Fiona, Tim Bentinck, Terry Molloy See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

What Happending?
#126 Degrassi: The Next Generation

What Happending?

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 30, 2019 50:30


Drake! Rotary phones, Baldwin brothers, the Kesey family protesting the University of Oregon cutting their wrestling program by parking the Kesey bus outside Mac Court because Ken Kesey was a championship high school wrestler and wrestled on the Oregon team while a student, humanure, and Facerange are also discussed.

Inside Out w/ Turner and Seth
Osiris Interview Series - Matt Butler

Inside Out w/ Turner and Seth

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 15, 2018 54:26


While Seth and Rob were in the midst of a memorable weekend of male bonding at Electric Forest last summer, they were able to huddle with Matt Butler in a backstage room in a far corner of the festival and record an interview that Osiris has kindly allowed Inside Out wTnS to use for its own program. First, Seth and Rob talk about the late Ricky Keller, a brilliant Atlanta musician who used to "conduct" the Zambiland Orchestra in the 90s and early 00's. They see this as a precursor to Matt's Everyone Orchestra. Butler essentially conducts a rotating cast of musicians to present a wildly spontaneous performance in a similar fashion to how Keller would with the Zambiland Orchestra. Matt talks early in the interview about the one time he was A MEMBER OF the Zambiland Orchestra, a moment we at Inside Out wTnS see in retrospect as a major passing of the improvisational torch. The hosts peel back the layers and learn how Butler got EO off the ground, how he initially got musicians to "buy into" what he was doing with EO, how he goes into each show with a clean slate, and how "the spirit lives in the dynamics." He also talks about the varying excitement between working with musicians for the first time, and about how most eventually get into the spirit. However, he also talks about the benefit of creating with musicians with whom he has worked many times as things can get rolling from a more advantageous standpoint. Butler makes clear he is not "telling people what to do, he is humbly asking them to bring their presence and to allow him to respond to their inputs." He also relates specific experiences about working with Adrian Belew and Phil Lesh. Butler grew up in Eugene and his Mother had worked with the de factor Eugene Mayor Of The Bolos and Bozos, and he relates much insight on this legendary man. Butler did get to explain Everyone Orchestra to Kesey when it was still just a thought, and Kesey was delighted by the idea. Butler recalls how his previous main band, Jambay (a jamband with the name "jam" in it who existed before the name was coined) won a talent show at a Kesey event, and in turn almost opened up for The Grateful Dead. Matt also talks about how he was able to bring his improvisational ethos into the studio, and the result was the cd, Brooklyn Sessions. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Being This Person
Being This Person 9: Maynard G. Krebs

Being This Person

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 27, 2018 51:36


Maynard (Terry) and I talk music, growing up, and eventually a Kesey quote.

krebs maynard kesey maynard g krebs
Rhapsody In Reverie
San Fermin: On Operatic Album Jackrabbit, Life, Death, Love and Fear

Rhapsody In Reverie

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 23, 2018 81:22


In this week’s episode of Rhapsody in Reverie, Adrienne and Katarina discuss indie band San Fermin. This Brooklyn band’s debut album San Fermin and sophomore album Jackrabbit soared to operatic heights with beautifully crafted narratives weaving each song together. Primary songwriter Ellis Ludwig Leone diverged from concept albums on San Fermin’s most recent album Belong for a much more personal exploration into his mind and talent. Listen to Adrienne and Katarina dissect the nuances hiding within the lyrics of San Fermin, discover references to Hemingway’s The Sun Also Rises and Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest as well as ponder life, death, love and fear. NOTE: Contains a spoiler for One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

Studio 360 with Kurt Andersen
American Icons: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

Studio 360 with Kurt Andersen

Play Episode Listen Later Oct 12, 2017 50:27


This is the story of America’s fight against authority. Ken Kesey had worked in a mental hospital, but his first novel was really a parable of what happens when you stand up to the Man—a counterculture fable that doesn’t end well. Despite his far-reaching influence, Kesey was shut out by filmmakers who turned the story into an Oscar-sweeping phenomenon. “Cuckoo’s Nest”changed how many people thought about mental illness and institutions. Sherman Alexie debunks the myth of the silent Indian; we visit Oregon State Hospital, where the director played himself on screen; a psychiatrist explains how the movie gave mental hospitals a bad name, with tragic consequences; and actress Louise Fletcher takes us into the mind of one of the most fearsome movie villains, the sweet-faced Nurse Ratched. “She doesn’t see her behavior as it really is. Who does? Who sees that they’re really evil?” (Originally aired September 20, 2013) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Just A Story: Urban Legend Podcast
Ep 87: It Was A Brilliant Cure, But We Lost The Patient: Asylums Part 2

Just A Story: Urban Legend Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Jul 15, 2017 133:00


You may have noticed the irony that can be attached to the phrase, 'what do we have to lose?' So often things can go horribly wrong just after someone asks that fateful, seemingly rhetorical question. That's sort of what happened once people decided to stop just confining people with mental illness, and started trying to 'cure' them. Join us this week as we explore medical treatments for mental illness from shock therapy to lobotomy; and meet those whose voices sounded alarm from Kesey to Kennedy. For more on this week's episode, and every episode: justastorypod.com Twitter: @justastorypod  Instagram: justastorypod  Leave a voicemail on the Urban Legend Hotline 1-(512)-222-3375       Help support the show: https://www.patreon.com/justastorypod    

Oregon Music News
Coffeeshop Conversations #44: Jaime Leopold - Short stories and tall tales from Dan Hicks' bassist

Oregon Music News

Play Episode Listen Later May 12, 2017 48:39


October 21, 2015 After a week off while we ramped up for the new site, we’re back at World Cup Coffee and Tea at Northwest 18th and Glisan in Portand for another OMN Coffeeshop Conversation. With me is bassist/composer Jaime Leopold. You may know him from his current group Short Stories. If you’re real good, you know him from the legendary Dan Hicks and His Hot Licks. Jaime was on the scene in San Francisco for all those hippie hijinks…he knew Neal Cassady, Kesey, and nearly all of the other luminaries. It was Cassady who once said, "“We are actually fourth dimensional beings in a third dimensional body inhabiting a second dimensional world!” Jaime even spent a little time in the pokey back then for helping distribute what we in Oregon can now buy in stores. He quit music for a long time, but is back on the scene. Stories? He’s got them.

Pirate Radio Podcasts™
Episode #33 - Gypsy Lauren O'Donnell

Pirate Radio Podcasts™

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 17, 2016 140:46


“It always makes me proud to love the world somehow - hate's so easy compared.” Jack Kerouac, Big Sur Originally recorded Tuesday, August 23rd, 2016 https://www.facebook.com/artbyjyoti INTRO Going #Furthur #Documentary Official #Trailer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ffYFAY0s4U BIG SUR, #Kerouac, #Monterey https://duckduckgo.com/?q=big+sur Lauren ends up "On the Bus" for the 50th Anniversary of the original 1964 tour of the #Merry #Pranksters traveling across #America (and #Canada) http://furthur.org/ken-kesey-collection/ #Magic #Trip: Ken #Kesey's Search for a #Kool Place (2011) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DbysAK2PYc4 6min - #Furthur http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/furthur-call-quits-ahead-grateful-deads-50th-anniversary-20141104 9min - https://duckduckgo.com/?q=rainbow+gathering 10min - The Beat Generation, On The Road, #Dharma #Bums https://duckduckgo.com/?q=the+beat+generation #Portland https://www.minds.com/groups/profile/469815918684282880/Portland 13min - https://duckduckgo.com/?q=west+coast+101+highway+map http://www.dead.net/features/news/furthur-festival-mountain-aire 17min https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Harvester https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Further 23min https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=big+sur+kerouac #Meditation, #breathing 27min - Buddhism: religion OR philosophy? 35min - #Biodegradable food packaging, world #litterbugs, Korea, #NEPAL, #Baja, etc. NEW gen vs. traditional values, selfie culture, #narcissism, leading by example https://www.minds.com/groups/profile/467676375944273920/NEPAL “Be the change that you wish to see in the world.” ― Mahatma #Gandhi 42min - Humanity's "#disconnect" from nature, domestication, #WarOnHumanity https://www.minds.com/groups/profile/463143981115518983/WarOnHumanity 53min - Lauren's siblings, #alcohol #proPAGANda 58min - #Mountain #Aire #Festival, Angels Camp, #California https://duckduckgo.com/?q=grateful+dead+bohemian+grove https://www.minds.com/groups/profile/466617913957163008/CALIFORNIA 1hr4min - Lauren wins the chance to ride with the Pranksters from New York to #OHIO 1hr10min - Pranksters in #Edinburgh, #Rosslin #Chapel http://www.leonardcohenforum.com/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=35058&hilit=rosslin https://duckduckgo.com/?q=merry+pranksters 1hr13min - Stanley Owsley's ex-girlfriend #Rhoney http://www.kerouac.com/beat_event/owsley-me-booksigning/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Owsley_Stanley 1hr15min - Bob Weir rumoured & Rock Scully's coke addictions? Related health problems https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock_Scully 1hr21min - #Peyote https://duckduckgo.com/?q=peyote+strychnine+poisoning https://www.maps.org/images/pdf/books/HuxleyA1954TheDoorsOfPerception.pdf #SOMA = the Moon? 1hr30min - http://alexgrey.com/ General EAST vs. WEST coast perspectives on psychedelia, set & setting 1hr35min - #Milbrook New York https://www.flickr.com/photos/paul_haggerty/4935882555/ http://www.newyorksocialdiary.com/the-way-they-live/2015/big-old-houses-a-short-history-of-millbrook-part-2-of-2 1hr37min - VICE magazine http://www.vice.com/en_us 1hr38min - Mountain Sky https://www.facebook.com/mountainskymusic http://www.mountainsky.net/ 1hr42min https://anchorstruck.com/2011/04/26/the-day-tim-leary-didnt-meet-the-merry-pranksters/ https://explore.lib.virginia.edu/exhibits/show/sixties/walkthrough/kenkesey https://theamericanscholar.org/when-kerouac-met-kesey/#.V8ArU1t97IU 1hr44min - Leary's Last Trip https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ti_TWbKUBg 1hr47min - The tragedy of Kerouac drinking himself to death, alcohol sucks https://duckduckgo.com/?q=how+did+jack+kerouac+die 1hr50min - Bay Natives Botanicals, essential oils, hydrosols #Wildcrafting, #chemtrails https://duckduckgo.com/?q=wildcrafting 1hr58min - MINDS.com ????? Do i have to abandon Facebook? https://www.minds.com/ 2hr4min - Pack of cigarettes to cross the border into Mexico, #FREEDOM to move (or NOT?) 2hr14min - Art by JHOTI 2hr16min - Midweek muckaround, Conspiracy "theories" vs. conspiracy "FACTS"

Pirate Radio Podcasts™
Episode #23 - Parapolitical Godfather Kenn Thomas

Pirate Radio Podcasts™

Play Episode Listen Later Jun 26, 2016 109:17


Episode #23 Kenn Thomas show notes http://www.steamshovel.press/ "Point me in ANY direction & let me OPEN FIRE!" Kenn Thomas to Pirate Radio Podcasts, Friday, June 24th, 2016 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenn_Thomas Intro - #HEILERIS! #23 F-@#$in #doorbell "Go away you crazy #Korean #cultists!" 4min - Kenn successfully speaketh the #Piratecode, & manages to come on board, #WBYEATS #RAW #RobertAntonWilson #GeorgeCarlin https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=carlin+voting 6min - https://duckduckgo.com/?q=TR3B+ufo+man+made When will "they" #CIA et al, Release remaining ( unshredded ) #JFK files? https://duckduckgo.com/?q=when+will+they+release+kennedy+documents 7min30sec - #Discordian #history, #Adam #Gorightly 9min30sec - Everything Is Under Control #Findmuck https://medium.com/@JaphyRyder32/operation-findmuck-b95ea8eb1692#.ge7uuxhfa 10min - #Saltspring #Island https://duckduckgo.com/?q=salt+spring+island The #EMPTY Chair https://duckduckgo.com/?q=buddhism+empty+chair 12min - #BUDDHISM, Mt. #Baldy #ZEN #retreat 13min - #YouTube #streaming 15min - #ALEXJONES promotes the #KRAKEN #GOOGLE, has he appeared yet as a guest on Pirate Radio Podcasts? #DUCKDUCKGO #Startpage #Searchengine #alternatives 16min - Meeting #Leonard #Cohen #Rebecca #deMornay, #mindfulness, #FLATEARTH https://duckduckgo.com/?q=rebecca+de+mornay 18min - #NAROPA https://duckduckgo.com/?q=naropa+university Our #slideshow sucks !!!!! Kenn loves his #BIGSCREEN #TV #torrents 20min - #SAMSKARA https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samskara #Roy #Scheider http://www.steamshovel.press/2015/07/16/blues-for-roy-scheider/ #JohnLilly http://ultraculture.org/blog/2014/10/08/john-lilly-inventor-sensory-deprivation-tank/ 23min - #JoeRogan is put on #AmeriKa's #NOFLY list? NOT! #Activists = #TERRORISTS #FACEPALM 27min - #JimFetzer EVERYTHING is a #FALSEFLAG ????? #Orlando #Crisis #actors 29min - #FBI #JEdgar #Hoover #Freemasons #SPOOKS 31min - #Route66 #mindcontrol #predictive #programming #ROUTE66 "I'm Here to KILL a KING." filmed in #Niagara #Falls, #NY in 1963. This was scheduled to air on TV the night of November 22, 1963 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKJ1zAXkOOU " ... my father's name was Lee. What's this about killing a king?" @ 24:24 33min - The #LONE #Gunman, #revelation of the #method, The #Manchurian #Candidate, #Frank #Sinatra, The #Parallax #View https://duckduckgo.com/?q=revelation+of+the+method https://duckduckgo.com/?q=the+parallax+view 35min - Judge For Yourself #JohnJudge https://duckduckgo.com/?q=john+judge 36min - Mae #Brussell #sprouts Dave #Emory https://duckduckgo.com/?q=mae+brussell https://duckduckgo.com/?q=dave+emory 38min - Guy #deBord, Lenn #Bracken, The #Society of the #Spectacle, The #Shadow #Government, #POST911, #investigation https://duckduckgo.com/?q=guy+debord https://duckduckgo.com/?q=len+bracken+911 41min - Beverley Oliver, #FOIPA, David Lifton - BEST #Evidence, the #infamous #WINK, Albert Thomas on Airforce1, body switch, #surgical #alterations, #JD #Tippit https://duckduckgo.com/?q=beverly+oliver+jfk https://duckduckgo.com/?q=jfk+jd+tippit https://duckduckgo.com/?q=jfk+albert+thomas+wink Assassination Materials Review Board - WHAT's LEFT? #HSCA 44min - Timothy Leary, Mary Pinchot Meyer, Jim Garrison "On the Trail of the Assassins." https://duckduckgo.com/?q=mary+pinchot+meyer https://duckduckgo.com/?q=on+the+trail+of+the+assassins+jim+garrison 46min - Johnny Carson appearance https://duckduckgo.com/?q=jim+garrison+johnny+carson The Three Tramps (Hobos) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_tramps Fred #Crisman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Crisman Guy #Bannister https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guy_Banister Mark #Felt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Felt 48min - #Raphael #Cruz https://duckduckgo.com/?q=ted+cruz+sr+oswald+jfk 50min - #Sheepdipping http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=sheep%20dipped #Parapolitics https://wikispooks.com/wiki/Parapolitics LULZ! #LHO https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lee_Harvey_Oswald https://wikispooks.com/wiki/Lee_Harvey_Oswald Robert #MacNeil http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-25042713 https://duckduckgo.com/?q=robert+macneil+oswald #FACTCHECKING https://wikispooks.com/wiki/Category:JFK_Assassination 57min - #Maury #Island #UFO #incident https://duckduckgo.com/?q=maury+island+ufo 58min - #Kenneth #Arnold https://duckduckgo.com/?q=kenneth+arnold+ufo Bill #Birnes #UFOHunters - Future Theater Radio https://duckduckgo.com/?q=future+theater+radio #Shaver #mysteries https://duckduckgo.com/?q=richard+shaver+mysteries+deros Long Jong #Nebel https://duckduckgo.com/?q=long+john+nebel 1hr1min - The #Octopus #Wackenhut https://wikispooks.com/wiki/Document:The_Octopus 1hr6min - Speaking of FACT CHECKING http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/brad-pitt-prankster-placed-no-735625 1hr7min - #Cheech & #Chong http://cheechandchong.com/ #NiceDreams http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082163/ #Jimi #Hendrix https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=es97Atkw-_I https://duckduckgo.com/?q=jimi+hendrix+manager+murdered https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Jeffery_%28manager%29 1hr9min - #Fenton #Bressler https://duckduckgo.com/?q=who+killed+john+lennon+fenton+bresler Walking On Thin Ice https://vimeo.com/73108132 https://wikispooks.com/wiki/Mark_David_Chapman https://duckduckgo.com/?q=jose+perdomo+doorman+mark+david+chapman https://duckduckgo.com/?q=catcher+in+the+rye+assassination+conspiracy #Operation40 https://wikispooks.com/wiki/Operation_40 1hr12min - Derren Browne The #Assassin https://wikispooks.com/wiki/Sirhan_Sirhan Dr. Ewan Cameron https://duckduckgo.com/?q=dr+ewan+cameron #Sirhan https://wikispooks.com/wiki/Sirhan_Sirhan "Mind Control, Oswald & JFK" https://duckduckgo.com/?q=Mind+Control%2C+Oswald+%26+JFK Jose #Delgado https://wikispooks.com/w/index.php?search=jose+delgado Judyth Vary Baker https://duckduckgo.com/?q=judyth+vary+baker 1hr14min - #Piratasdedios #Ancestor #Stars 1hr15min - Chris Brown PRP Episode#17 https://www.podomatic.com/episodes/8062222 Dark Skies http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0115151/ #Dorothy #Kilgallen https://duckduckgo.com/?q=dorothy+kilgallen 1hr16min - Dr. #Timothy #Leary, #JanIrvin, #Kesey, Merry #Pranksters https://youtu.be/WtXg_Wp2NY0?list=PLJ0S88eyUTlb6UVPcegGXptSMl69ea1D6&t=1314 1hr19min - TURN OFF, TUNE OUT, PITCH IN™ 1hr20min - Dr. #Feelgood #LSD #ACID #Sixties #Vietnam https://duckduckgo.com/?q=dr+feelgood+jfk #Torbitt #document https://duckduckgo.com/?q=the+torbitt+document #Crowleyanity https://duckduckgo.com/?q=crowleyanity 1hr25min - Jack #Parsons #Feral House Adam #Parfrey #Sex and #Rockets #HBO #miniseries http://www.indiewire.com/2014/10/watch-why-ridley-scotts-amc-miniseries-about-jack-parsons-will-be-bonkers-68833/ 1hr26min - #JimKeith #FBI #Burningman https://duckduckgo.com/?q=fbi+burning+man Michael #Hastings https://duckduckgo.com/?q=michael+hastings+murdered #GaryWebb Danny #Casolaro #RonBonds #BillHicks #AcharyaS tumorless breast #weaponized #cancer ????? https://duckduckgo.com/?q=weaponized+cancer 1hr30min - Acharya_S@Yahoo.com #Solar #religions #HEARTSUTRA https://duckduckgo.com/?q=heart+sutra 1hr34min - Bill #HICKS https://duckduckgo.com/?q=bill+hicks+cancer+conspiracy 1hr36min - #Chemotherapy #CHANGE #KARMA #Newtonian #physics https://duckduckgo.com/?q=karma+third+law+of+newton https://duckduckgo.com/?q=reincarnation+law+of+conservation 1hr38min - #NAROPA "We're ALL HERE 2 GO." WS Burroughs #Popular #Alienation https://duckduckgo.com/?q=popular+alienation 1hr40min - #Korea #Conspiracy #Con ????? #Biometric #Beast #international #travel #fingerprinting #bodyscans - Kenn happy to announce #Seattle DEFEATS ALL #shoebombers !!!!! 1hr43min - SHOW WRAP w/ Pirate Larry http://pirate-radio-podcasts.com/ #MP3 #FREE #Archive http://space-pirate-radio.podomatic.com/ https://www.minds.com/PirateRadioNetwork https://plus.google.com/u/0/+PirateRadioPodcasts YOU-TUBE https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYKIn_QHoAtDO0608IcTIag SKYPE - https://join.skype.com/NxINdeHgvD06 LIVE STREAMING - http://tunein.com/user/pirate1radio/ Fringe Alternative News Network (FANN™) https://www.facebook.com/groups/1625940707672680/ https://twitter.com/JaphyRyder32 Acharya S, A Steamshovel Press tribute is now available as PDF for any $5 plus contribution to this PayPal address: acharya_s@yahoo.com The money will be forwarded to the trust fund for Acharya's young son. The PDF contains commentary by Kenn, Rob Sterling, Greg Bishop, and Adam Parfrey, plus photos and even a sketch Mr. Thomas once did of Acharya.

Pirate Radio Podcasts™
Episode #14 - GONZO Author Todd Brendan Fahey

Pirate Radio Podcasts™

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 24, 2016 126:21


Chief Communication Officer Japhy's INTRO / #SNAFU Mea Culpa 4min - #Kraken alert, stormy seas, tech issues & echoes https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kraken http://www.fargonebooks.com/high.html http://www.amazon.com/Todd-Brendan-Fahey/e/B001K91I5G https://medium.com/@ToddFahey/hell-bottled-up-chronicles-of-a-late-propaganda-minister-far-gone-books-2016-74b285b197c3#.xjpa63nse Hell Bottled Up is "an eye-opening, Gonzo journey into the dark heart of John McCain via the strange, twilight world of ultra-Right Arizona politics. Gut-wrenching, humorous and confrontational journalism issued by a propaganda specialist stationed at Ground Zero. Todd Brendan Fahey is one of the most illuminating, renegade minds in contemporary America" - Alex Burns, [former] Editor-in-Chief Disinfo.com 5min30sec - The Worlds' BIGGEST Ever Pirate Story 1989 #USC Professional Writing Program, dabbling in various #psychedelics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychedelia Paul Gillette #PlayMistyForMe http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0067588/ http://www.nytimes.com/1996/01/18/us/paul-gillette-58-wrote-play-misty.html #ClintEastwood, Dr. Humphrey Osmond, #AldousHuxley #FrankChurch #MKULTRA #LauraHuxley Al Hubbard is the co-protagonist of #WisdomsMaw: The Acid Novel [Far Gone Books, 1996]: http://www.amazon.com/Wisdoms-Maw-Todd-Brendan-Fahey-ebook/dp/B00FSG7NCE https://web.archive.org/web/20040214095925/ http://www.thememoryhole.org/hubbard/ 14min - #OSS, Wild Bill Donovan, #HankAlbarelli #FrankOlsen https://duckduckgo.com/?q=hank+albarelli+lsd https://duckduckgo.com/?q=frank+olson+lsd 17min30sec - Operation Midnight Climax https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Midnight_Climax 19min - George Hunter White, Political Blackmail, #AcidDreams https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_Dreams https://duckduckgo.com/?q=george+hunter+white+operation+midnight+climax 22min30sec - Todd drops an F-BOMB! ( on a Pirate Ship ) Fear & Loathing w/ Al Hubbard's "spooky" archivist, factionalized 30min - #ExclusiveInterview, living in an UN disclosed location, sick & tired of Korea 32min - A String Of Saturdays, 33min - #HellBottledUp 34min - Fear & Loathing in Amsterdam, #SmokeMagazine 38min - #TheWarOnSomeDrugs 39min - Let's Make A Book Deal, signed copies, PDF form, #AmazonReviews http://fargonebooks.com/wisdomsmaw/1/WMchap1.pdf 41min - Timothy Leary hated HST, #WisdomsMaw published 1996, Thompson's publisher #WilliamStankey 43:30min - #KrisMillegan, #TrineDay Publications 45min - #SPINMagazine, 46min - #FarGoneBooks 48min - Mike Kawitsky "Journey To Everywhere" http://www.amazon.com/Michael-Kawitzky/e/B00KX8K7LQ #Neuronauts, #TerrenceMcKenna 51min - #VICEMagazine, Kindle, Amazon bloodsuckers 52min - #DavidBowie, Oh You Pretty Things, #RUSirius, Kenn Goffman, MONDO 2000, True Mutations 56min - #DouglasRushkoff, #Mindsdotcom, take BACK the power 58min - Appear.in video conferencing platform, algorithms, Facebook's AWFUL hashtags 1hr - #EdwardSnowden #AnimalFarm, #BoingBoing Zine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Frauenfelder http://realitysandwich.com/260993/the- future-is-now-an-interview-with-douglas-rushkoff/ 1hr1min - #TPP legitimacy controversy 62min30sec - #JohnPerryBarlow https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Perry_Barlow https://www.youtube.com/results?q=declaration+independence+cyberspace #BlockChain Technology, decentralized, Digital #CryptoCurrency, #NetFreedom, #CreativeCommons, #TOR 1hr7min - Reality Sandwich.com, #DanielPinchbeck, #BillOttman, #WSBurroughs, The #BeatGeneration 1hr8min - #USENET, #USC, #HighTimes 1hr10min - #DouglasRushkoff, Program Or Be Programed, #WarrenZevon, Enjoy Every Sandwich, #DavidLetterman, #HST does stand-up comedy, #Hunter S. Thompson, Redondo Beach, The Strand Theater, Off the Record, #COCAINE http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=rapscallion Hunter as the Pirate King 1hr14min - Bohemian Grove, Todd's Bohemian Grove "friends", Alex Jones, HST infamous snuff allegations https://duckduckgo.com/?q=hunter+s+thompson+snuff+movie&ia=videos #FACTCHECK 1hr16min - #AdamGorightly & the EARLY Discordians, Greg Hill, Kerry Thornley, Robert Anton Wilson, #RAW 1hr18min - #RUSirius, #DavidBowie, #PhilipKDick, the PINK Beam 1hr20min - TBF on the supernatural & paranormal, Man-made UFOS as an #OpenSecret https://duckduckgo.com/?q=secret+man+made+ufos+triangular+tr+3B 1hr21min - #GregBishop, #RadioMisteriso, Pirate Radio Exclusive, Coast to Coast AM, #GeorgeKnapp, depression, suicide, professional struggles, lack of recognition, HST's personal note to TBF July 1997, & helping to save lives https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_Is_Not_the_End https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=death+is+not+the+end+dylan 1hr27min - #KittyDukakis drinks rubbing alcohol, #JimmyCarter and HST friends? #RUTHLESS https://duckduckgo.com/?q=hunter+s+thompson+on+jimmy+carter 1hr28min - #KennThomas, Konspiracy Kon in Korea ????? #Parapolitics #Spooks #Kooks 1hr31min - #ChejuDo #photography. Wisdom's Maw #screenplay "As your attorney, i advise you to ..." 1hr33min - TBF's CLASS vs. SHIT list, #PaulKrassner ( is NOT DEAD ..... yet ) http://www.paulkrassner.com/ #PaulKanter http://www.usatoday.com/story/life/music/2016/01/28/reports-jefferson-airplanes-paul-kantner-dies/79490508/ #AlAronowitz http://www.nysun.com/obituaries/al-aronowitz-77-a-writer-of-1960s-scene/18088/ 1h37min - Xenophobia in Korea Dr, David A Mason ( Episode #12 of Pirate Radio Poddcast ) http://space-pirate-radio.podomatic.com/entry/2016-03-28T22_20_40-07_00 1hr38min - Japhy meets Kesey & the Pranksters in #Edinburgh, #WheresMerlin Tour, Grateful Dead, Kesey's Farm, August 1992, #JerryGarcia collapses into diabetic coma http://www.key-z.com/who.htm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merry_Pranksters 1hr41min - #MagicBus #Furthur restored, #Pranksters 50th Anniversary Tour, more #ficitionalization, #HellBottledUp, #FranklinMoore, threats of lawsuits, TBF denied yet again 1hr43min - #ZaneKesey invites Japhy on #Further, #VanMorrison ( on Todd's CLASS list ), #CHANNEL4, #CH4, #JohnCassidy, #JB, #RosslynChapel, Japhy invites Pranksters, #HolyBloodHolyGrail, #DaVinciCode, #DanBrown 1hr45min - #Standford LSD experiments, #MenloPark Veterans Hospital, ground zero for the psychedelic 60's, did it lead to the END of #MKULTRA? FREE PDF download of Wisdom's Maw - Chapter One http://www.tokesignals.com/wisdoms-maw-the-acid-novel-how-it-all-began-2/ 1hr49min - The War on SOME "Drugs", #ERGOT, the #WarOnConsciousness, #MagicMushrooms, prohibiting nature, the Yage Letters, #AllenGinsberg, #Genesis1 https://www.amazon.co.uk/Yage-Letters-William-S-Burroughs/dp/0872860043/279-5116520-0451153 https://duckduckgo.com/?q=kesey+stanford+hospital+lsd 1hr50min - #BiometricBeast, #PoliticalPrisoners, #Fingerprinting, #RetinalScans, SouthKorea, #NannyState, #Confucianism, textbook #Fascism, #CHAEBOLS, "The SIXTIES never happened ..." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaebol 1hr53min - #RobertAntonWilson, #RAW, #Austin,Texas, Reverend #IvanStang, #ChurchOfSubGenius, #SantaCruz, #Disinfo DOT com, #ConspiracyCon, #DisinfoCon, TBF saves Uncle Bob's ass & becomes a bonafide POPE of #Discordia 1hr57min - Tech issues be DAMNED! Contact: fargonebooks@gmail.com for digital goodies 1hr58min - http://www.howtoteachenglishabroad.com/blog/9-celebrities-you-wont-believe-taught-english-abroad #MINDS dot com #FANN Fringe Alternative News Network (FANN™) https://www.facebook.com/groups/162594 0707672680/ Pirate-Radio-Podcasts.com https://www.facebook.com/groups/461356700723676/ Pirate Radio Calendar April 16th - Kris Millegan ( #SNAFU CANCELLED ) April 22nd/23rd - #ToddBrendanFahey #GONZO #Journalism April 25th - #EXCLUSIVE #MindsPanel April 29th/30th - #WilliamRamsey #Crowley & the #occult May 6th - #TammyFaye - #NYC Musician & performer May 13th - *Chris Brown #UFOContactee / Todd Winnipeg Alternative Press #WAM https://www.facebook.com/mcdooge May 20th - #AageNost May 27th - Seph N. Havens #MGTOW June first 2 weeks TBA - #JohnFord roundtable, #KrisMillegan June 17th https://www.facebook.com/peterdaley72 #SEWOL #KoreanCults June 24th/25th week #KennThomas #SteamshovelPress #Parapolitics July1st - WEED #Roundtable “Life is real; life is earnest. Death is not the goal” - Hunter S. Thompson to Todd Brendan Fahey, July 1997 Talk to Mark Frauenfelder about Blockchain. https://duckduckgo.com/?q=magic+bus+who+pranksters

Passport Podcast
Ep6 Road to Enlightenment

Passport Podcast

Play Episode Listen Later Feb 24, 2016 57:57


Fanny Renoir's childhood was spent wandering amongst Humboldt County's giant redwoods, reading Marcel Proust and chasing rainbows in search of elusive pots of gold.  Fanny attempted to live a conventional life, but the temptation of the hippie movement finally caught up with her in 1971 when she stood on the side of the road with her thumb out to hitchhike around America. Fanny's road and acid trips took her to an ashram in Tuscon, a Pensacola police station, Nashville night clubs and even a short stay at Ken Kesey's Oregon farm. Setting out looking for signs along the "Hippie Trail" Fanny took the road less traveled in search of enlightenment only to encounter beautiful souls and a few sadistic psychos - she discovered that being on the road could be both happy and harrowing. Following her dream of being a writer, poet and artist, Fanny eventually made her way to San Francisco's North Beach and soon found a home, literally and figuratively, at the famed Caffe Triest. Thirty-Two years later, she's a neighborhood fixture and can often be found hosting art and music shows, or holding court at the Caffe with a cadre of artistic souls and neighborhood eccentrics. Despite being in the neighborhood for seven years, our paths would often cross, but only recently did we meet for the very first time. Now, in this episode of the Passport Podcast, Fanny shares her remarkable story with us, and it's truly an enlightening adventure. Please listen, comment, like and share this episode of the Passport Podcast.

Jamcast
JamClassic - Kesey

Jamcast

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 8, 2016 56:22


Happy New Year JamCasters! This week we revisit the Ken Kesey episode of JamCast. Mike recalls his meeting, friendship, and visit with literary hero and cultural icon Ken Kesey, father of the psychedelic Merry Prankster movement. We've got a lot of great new episodes coming, but what a way to start 2016! Enjoy, and thank you for being a friend! Next week we discuss Phish NYE

Jamcast
Kesey

Jamcast

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 29, 2014 56:22


Mike talks about meeting Kesey at a Phish show in Saratoga, visiting him in Oregon and publishing his interview with Relix. Follow @jamcastpod @imaaronfriedman @mikefinoia and @standupnylabs. Visit www.StandUpNYLabs.com to listen to all our podcasts and go to www.StandUpNY.com to see whose performing live at Stand Up NY.

Dope Stories
Dope Stories 015 - Acid Test, Part 2: Furthur

Dope Stories

Play Episode Listen Later May 8, 2014 54:48


Description: Shane gifts Pauly a vinyl copy of Europe '72 by the Grateful Dead. John Lennon reminds us to thank the CIA and U.S. Army for LSD. Shane reviews the Magic Trip documentary and explains why he wouldn't want to travel on the Furthur bus with the Merry Pranksters. Shane and Pauly discuss Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and why Kesey's problems with the film version of his novel. Other stories include Shane's trip on a Green Tortoise adventure tour, teenaged Pauly "adopted" by older hippies on Grateful Dead tour, and Shane's encounter with a sketchy "leprechaun" in Central Park. Dope Media includes Searching for Sound by Phil Lesh, Pet Sounds by The Beach Boys, Free Your Mind... and Your Ass Will Follow by Funkadelic, Paul Krassner's Impolite Interviews, and The Eden Express: A Memoir of Insanity by Mark Vonnegut. http://dopestories.com

B4uLeap
Satire and Activism With Harry Shearer (Part 2)

B4uLeap

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 13, 2014 52:12


More from Harry Shearer, including Spinal Tap, The Big Uneasy, and more from Le Show, Paul Krassner on Lenny Bruce, Negin Farsad of "The Muslims Are Coming, and Brian Janosch of Cultivated Wit.

OPB's State of Wonder
Jan. 11 2014 FULL SHOW - Poets on Stafford, Kesey, Shaw Bros.

OPB's State of Wonder

Play Episode Listen Later Jan 11, 2014 51:16


This week, lots of love for William Stafford. Matthew Dickman, Jennifer Boyden, and Vince Wixon share some favorite works, and talk about their own writing. Also, remembering the films of the Shaw Brothers.00:45 - 20:53 Poets on William Stafford: Jennifer Boyden, Matthew Dickman, Vince Wixon20:55 - 37:20 Boyden, Dickman, and Wixon on their own work37:23 - 46:03 Oregon Experience - Ken Kesey46:20 - 50:25 Dan Halstead on Run Run Shaw

Otherppl with Brad Listi
Episode 207 — Roy Kesey

Otherppl with Brad Listi

Play Episode Listen Later Sep 11, 2013 79:55


Roy Kesey is the guest. His latest story collection, Any Deadly Thing, is now available from Dzanc Books. Elizabeth Crane says "Roy Kesey's stories in Any Deadly Thing are perfect, masterful portraits of an international cross-section of wise, broken souls—hopeful, brutal, funny as hell, and heart-crushing, every last one." And San Diego City Beat raves "Most short-story writers are like baseball pitchers. The really good ones have four or five different pitches, but most only have two or three that they've perfected and go to over and over again. Kesey is more like a five-tool outfielder: He can do it all. In Any Deadly Thing, he collects stories about lovable losers, tales of hardscrabble redemption, experimental fiction, Bosnian war stories and expat tales set in Beijing apartments and Peruvian jungles. There's no limit to the man's imagination." Monologue topics: mail, focusing the podcast on writing, Molly Ringwald, digressions, fame, voicemail, rapping, blushing.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

In A Perfect World
54: The NEXT STEP

In A Perfect World

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 13, 2011 83:02


A lecture given at the EntheoGenesis Australis Conference, Dec 3, 2011. At the height of the first wave of psychedelia Ken Kesey promoted the idea of the Next Step, which at the time he envisaged as "beyond acid". What if acid was merely the latest in a long line of entheogens secreted by the planet to regulate humans, and each one was merely a stepping-stone to the Gaian awareness of hyperdimensional connectivity? What if the Next Step was a post-human species upgrade seeded by entheogenesis, and synchronizing with the galactic alignment and intensified energetic bombardment? What if we all had it within us to be Gods, then what? In this provocative lecture experiential journalist Rak Razam weaves together strategic ideas from entheogenic elders and indigenous wisdom with the latest factual research from astrophysicists and other science to reveal the big picture of life on earth, the planetary changes we are now living through and the key role of entheogens as messengers and activators. The lecture has a particular examination of the notion of 'group mind' espoused by the Pranksters and the Grateful Dead and other psychedelic tribes of the 60s, the role of entheogens in creating that circuit of group consciousness, and why and how gestalt consciousness is a necessary evolutionary step that psychedelics and entheogens can empower. The NEXT STEP is a how-to handbook of strategic information for the current resurgence of planetary entheogenic culture to best understand itself and our place in the web of life, the 2012 target window of species opportunity, and how to successfully navigate the eschaton. Time is short, and the way is hard. But the call of the Other is ringing in our genes. In Plants We Trust. Are you ready to take the NEXT STEP? This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

In A Perfect World
53: The Further Adventures of Ken Kesey

In A Perfect World

Play Episode Listen Later Nov 3, 2011 61:48


To commemorate the 10th anniversary of the passing of the legendary Ken Kesey on Nov 10, 2001, experiential journalist Rak Razam interviews Ken Babbs, one of the last Merry Pranksters, to chat about the life and impact of Kesey and his coterie on the counterculture of the 1960s–and the world. Discover the origin of the Pranksters' name and the first-hand account of their infamous 1964 journey across America in the day-glo bus 'Further', blazing the first wave of psychedelia behind them. Learn the only thing that ever slowed Neal Cassady down–and it's not what you think! From the Acid Tests to Goa and Global Trance Culture, the Pranksters' legacy expands beyond the party to a deeper understanding of reality itself, to the idea of Group Mind–and how to play the Game. Absorbed by history into the tapestry of American folk-lore, the story of these psychedelic pioneers has been recounted in the recent documentary Magic Trip by Magnolia Films. But here join master storyteller Ken Babbs as we learn why the psychedelic outlaws of yesteryear deserve to be remembered as the heroes of today. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

Transpondency
127 - Suburban Transpondency

Transpondency

Play Episode Listen Later May 31, 2009 72:00


Timothy Francis Leary (October 22, 1920 – May 31, 1996) was an American writer, psychologist, futurist, and advocate of psychedelic drug research and one of the first people whose remains have been sent into space. An icon of 1960s counterculture, Leary is most famous as a proponent of the therapeutic and spiritual and emotional benefits of LSD. He coined and popularized the catch phrase "Turn on, tune in, drop out." Timothy Leary Video Archive & Audio Excerpts from Newspaper Taxis: Drugs, Cult Authors & The Boho Zone Melted Rubber Humans "Life Is But A Dream" Beyond Life With Timothy Leary A few Timothy Leary Quotes: Think for yourself and question authority. My advice to myself and to everyone else, particularly young people, is to TURN ON, TUNE IN, DROP OUT. By drop out, I mean to detach yourself from involvement in secular, external social games. But the dropping out has to occur internally before it can occur externally. I'm not telling kids just to quit school; I'm not telling people to quit their jobs. That is an inevitable development of the process of turning on and tuning in. "Turn on" meant go within to activate your neural and genetic equipment. Become sensitive to the many and various levels of consciousness and the specific triggers that engage them. Drugs were one way to accomplish this end. "Tune in" meant interact harmoniously with the world around you — externalize, materialize, express your new internal perspectives. Drop out suggested an elective, selective, graceful process of detachment from involuntary or unconscious commitments. "Drop Out" meant self-reliance, a discovery of one's singularity, a commitment to mobility, choice, and change. Unhappily my explanations of this sequence of personal development were often misinterpreted to mean "Get stoned and abandon all constructive activity." If you want to change the way people respond to you, change the way you respond to people. If you don't like what you're doing, you can always pick up your needle and move to another groove. In the information age, you don't teach philosophy as they did after feudalism. You perform it. If Aristotle were alive today he'd have a talk show. The universe is an intelligence test. Subscribe to my YouTube channel: transpondency Subscribe to transpondency.blip.tv Follow me on twitter & seesmic email: suburban@transpondency.com Call my voicemail: 1 (716) 402-1462

Future Primitive Podcasts
The Wisdom of Mountain Girl

Future Primitive Podcasts

Play Episode Listen Later May 20, 2008


Also known as Mountain Girl, Carolyn was a Merry Prankster and the wife of Jerry Garcia. In 1964 she met Neal Cassady who introduced her to Ken Kesey and his friends, one of whom gave her the name “Mountain Girl”. She quickly joined the inner circle of Pranksters and was romantically involved with Kesey. She […] The post The Wisdom of Mountain Girl appeared first on Future Primitive Podcasts.

Psychedelic Salon
Podcast 135 – “The Dead, and the Sixties”

Psychedelic Salon

Play Episode Listen Later Apr 14, 2008 90:40


Guest speaker: Carolyn “Mountain Girl” Garcia PROGRAM NOTES: In this podcast we hear a talk given at the World Psychedelic Forum in Basel, Switzerland in March of 2008. The speaker is the one and only Carolyn "Mountain Girl" Garcia, who has been a legendary figure in the psychedelic world since the early 1960s. Here is part of what Wikipedia has to say about Mountain Girl: Carolyn Adams, (born May 6, 1946),[1] later known as Mountain Girl and Carolyn Garcia, was a Merry Prankster and the wife of Jerry Garcia. After growing up near Poughkeepsie, New York, Adams met Neal Cassady in 1964; who introduced her to Kesey and his friends, one of whom gave her the name "Mountain Girl". Cassady took her to La Honda, Ken Kesey's base of operations, where she quickly joined the inner circle of Pranksters and was romantically involved with Kesey, having a daughter by him named Sunshine.[2] The Grateful Dead song "Here Comes Sunshine" may or may not be an allusion to Adams' and Kesey's daughter (the Dead were fond of lyrics having double, often personal meanings). Before actually marrying in 1981, Jerry Garcia and Adams had two daughters.[1] Garcia and Mountain Girl ultimately divorced in 1994,[1] however, they remained personal friends right up until Garcia's death a few months later. In her talk, Mountain Girl told many stories linking her time with Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters to the evolution of the Grateful Dead and her life with Gerry Garcia and the rest of the band. This is perhaps one of the best encapsulations of The Sixties you will hear. Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option

One Heat Minute
INCREMENT VICE - EPISODE #17: "...out at sea someplace..." with Peter Avellino

One Heat Minute

Play Episode Listen Later Dec 31, 1969 99:22


In his classic novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Ken Kesey wrote “McMurphy laughs. Rocking farther and farther backward against the cabin top, spreading his laugh across the water…laughing at all of it. Because he knows you have to laugh at the things that hurt you just to keep yourself in balance, just to keep the world from running you plumb crazy. He knows there’s a painful side…but he won’t let the pain blot out the humor no more’n he’ll let the humor blot out the pain.” If ever there was an author we suspect our ol pal Doc Sportello would enjoy (other than a certain reclusive fellow hiding on the other side of Gravity’s Rainbow), it’d be that acid-fried humanist Kesey, who also wrote something more than just a little pertinent to Inherent Vice in general and today’s scene in specific: “You had a choice: you could either strain and look at things that appeared in front of you in the fog, painful as it might be, or you could relax and lose yourself.” Goddamn, Ken…About the Guest - PETER AVELLINO"I'm a writer. I live in Los Feliz. Sometimes I go to the movies. There's more to tell, but not just now."Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/one-heat-minute-productions/donations