The 14-Hour Technicolor Dream
One event that gets far less publicity, but that was at the heart of everything that came both before and after it also sees its 40th anniversary this year. The 14-Hour Technicolor Dream took place on April the 29th 1967 and was the UK's first mass-participational all-night psychedelic freakout!

To celebrate the 40th anniversary of the 14-Hour Technicolor Dream, an array of rarely seen 60s films, full-on lightshows, avant-garde theatre and bands both old and new.

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Sly Stone’s Whole New Thing

These days Sly Stone blows people’s minds just by showing up. He stopped traffic at the Grammys last year when he materialized, like some intergalactic apparition, during a tribute performance. Last month, he defied steep odds and appeared at a gig at the Flamingo in Las Vegas.

Sadly, Sly is better known today as one of the ’60s’ more famous flameouts, recalled for his drug busts, reclusiveness, and strings of broken dates. To most, his innovations probably seem remote. But Epic/Legacy has rectified the situation with Sly & the Family Stone: The Collection, a limited-edition seven-CD box collecting the albums that permanently changed the face of music in the ’60s and ’70s. (The label will issue the individual albums, also in limited editions, on Tuesday.)

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Derailroaded: Inside The Mind Of Larry "Wild Man" Fischer is currently running on Sundance Channel.

Josh Rubin's strangely fascinating documentary parses the life of outsider musician Larry "Wild Man" Fischer. Growing up in the '50s, Fischer was an undiagnosed manic-depressive schizophrenic who, after attacking his mother with a knife, landed in a mental asylum.

Eventually he headed to California in the late '60s, where Frank Zappa discovered him singing his own strange compositions for a dime a song along Sunset Boulevard. In a strangulated growl somewhere between a possessed Tiny Tim and Bobcat Goldthwait, Fischer's music is something of an acquired taste. Zappa championed him and he led a convoluted career appearing on Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In and landing on the British Top 50 charts.

Derailroaded is interspersed with plenty of talking heads delivering anecdotes, as well as footage of Fischer performing, but ultimately this is a film not about music or fame, but about the ravages of mental illness. Despite many moments of levity—such as a completely bizarre re-enactment of an interview between Dr. Demento and Frank Zappa, done with puppets—it's a devastating portrait of delusion and fathomless despair.

You sure can see the Zappa influence but man, oh man, was the poor guy ever out there.

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Tai Chi master taught Lou some moves; Lou reciprocated when the master puts out a DVD and then writer attempts an interview.

"Is Lou Reed ('60s musician and heroin icon Lou Reed, he writes) even still alive?" was my first thought. "And what the hell is he doing being fit? Shouldn't he have, like, IVs of synthetic opiates trailing him on rolling cradles?"

Some junior tool is aghast that Lou Reed has the audacity to be in good physical shape. So what if he geezed a bit in his younger days. Do young disgressions preclude a fit lifestyle? And why must some media refer to Lou and heroin as if they're mutually exclusive of one another? He's newsworthy for being a musician, not for something he did 40 years ago. Damn.

He had a chance to write something new and fresh about Lou Reed and he blew it.

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Utopian Bliss Balls is a product exclusively available at Azarius. They are derived from the real Bliss Balls from the sixties, made of psychedelic LSA seeds and bee wax. This modern variety contains Hawaïan baby woodrose (Argyreia nervosa), fo ti tien (Centella asiatica), damiana (Turnera diffusa), ginseng (Panax ginseng) and bee pollen.

Very popular in the sixties among hippies and artists in California. Azarius gives them a brand new look! Made with the traditional ingredients like the Hawaiian baby woodrose seeds and damiana. Gives you an LSD-like trip.

Never heard of them, but it's sure got a great name.

2 Upcoming Films With Links To The 60s

Neal Cassady - From the bars of Denver to the Steel Mills of Utah to the avant-garde parties of Manhattan, across a nation whose heart is calling for a role-model, a leader, a hero... Neal Cassady's on the road again, and all his old pals are there with him--Jack Kerouac, Ken Kesey, The Merry Pranksters. They're searching for Neal's long-lost father, who holds the key to the great unwritten American novel. But in the end it's Neal alone, and in the rear-view fast-approaching are cops, groupies and the dark chimera of his own vanity.

Release Date: To Be Announced
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Across The Universe - A love story set against the backdrop of the 1960s amid the turbulent years of anti-war protest, mind exploration and rock 'n roll, the film moves from the dockyards of Liverpool to the creative psychedelia of Greenwich Village, from the riot-torn streets of Detroit to the killing fields of Vietnam. The star-crossed lovers, Jude (Jim Sturgess) and Lucy (Evan Rachel Wood), along with a small group of friends and musicians, are swept up into the emerging anti-war and counterculture movements, with "Dr. Robert" (Bono) and "Mr. Kite" (Eddie Izzard) as their guides. Tumultuous forces outside their control ultimately tear the young lovers apart, forcing Jude and Lucy – against all odds – to find their own way back to each other.

I don't know if I would like this one or not. I've read that it's more like a series of punctuated scenes and characters each represented by a Beatles song - 32 in all. Too much of a musical for me...maybe it has more of a story.

Now the Neal Cassady film sounds promising because the people are interesting. Cassady, Kesey, Kerouac, the the Pranksters, of whom I thought were the end-all and be-all of the universe when I was growing up.

Release Date: September 28, 2007.
View trailer
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James Brown dead at 73

My memory of James Brown comes from a 1969 concert in a small southern town high school gym with my friend Debbie and being the only white people in the audience.

We all knew he was a great singer and dancer, but being such a showman made seeing him live so special. When calling out "Maseo, come blow your horn" and "Watch me while I do the James Brown" while he did his signature slide dance with those little feet moving like lightning. He came to the stage with his cape on and someone takes it off. By the end, it's draped on his shoulders again, he's drenched in sweat and he's ushered off stage only to return for an encore as he throws the cape to the floor.

His singles played at every party in the mid 60s. His "Live At The Apollo" was my favorite album and it may still be here someplace. I know we still have some old 45s of his around here.

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TERRY RILEY

One of Terry Riley's recent projects has him paired with the Kronos Quartet working for NASA. Thanks in no small part to Kronos leader David Harrington, Riley is commissioned to compose music based on radio waves collected by the Voyager space shuttle." [NASA] has done a couple of music projects before," explains Riley. "This one is based on Voyager's exploration, which flew by all of the planets. On board Voyager was a device called the Plasma Wave Receptor, which was invented by a Dr. Gurnett in Iowa. This [device] is able to receive radio waves the planets themselves broadcast, and each planet has a different sound wave."

Riley is the perfect candidate for NASA's space-age string quartets. Here on Earth, he's spent his time creating music light years ahead of his peers. Riley made his giant leap in the '60s with In C, a towering obelisk of a composition that cast an influential shadow over Philip Glass, Brian Eno and Pete Townshend (remember the intro to "Baba O'Riley" from. Who's Next?) and blurred the boundaries between classical music, avant-garde experimentalism and trance-inducing improvisation for all who followed.

Terry influenced not only Steve Reich, Philip Glass and their protégés, such as John Adams, but his influence spread out to certain European rock groups, such as Daevid Allen's Gong, Can and Tangerine Dream. In the case of these rock groups, I think sometimes Terry was the direct link."

He's been around for a long time and is still making beautiful music.

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Jack Smith was a '60s underground legend. Before he was 30, this gay, Jewish, cross-dressing filmmaker had made one of the most influential films of all time, the 1963 avant-garde classic, "Flaming Creatures".

Though eventually banned in the state of New York for its array of bare breasts and flaccid penises, many bright lights of the New York underground hailed it as a masterpiece.

Purportedly made for just $300, Flaming Creatures features exotically dressed transvestites, a rape and enough bare-bones spectacle to make it the fringe cinema's answer to the exotic adventures like Arabian Nights (1942) that so enchanted Smith in his youth.

Avant-garde film enthusiast Andy Ditzler, who almost single-handedly has been keeping film culture alive in Atlanta, will man his blessedly creaky film projector to feature a 16mm print of Flaming Creatures in a one-night homage to some of the pioneers of American underground cinema, Carnivals of Ecstasy, at Eyedrum Gallery in Atlanta. The evening also features a new Ira Cohen work, "Brain Damage", as well as his new expanded "Invasion of Thunderbolt Pagoda".

The screening is part of Table of the Elements Festival No. 4: Bohrium, which presents five days of music (John Cale, Rhys Chatham, Captain Beefheart, ) and film that shuns the ivory tower for something that more closely resembles punk rock's outsider ethos and anti-establishment buck.

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Animeditaion - "Metasphere is consciousness of the septenary metaphysics of reality." An interactive site showing how every thread of consciousness will run through every sphere of reality.

via: 60s Beyond

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Sex (Circa 2006)

Is "oral" the new 2nd base? The "mostly" girls (as in mostly straight) keep on kissing girls. Do you have a friend "with privileges"? And the "bro job" has also arrived.

"So are you, like, gay now that Ernie sucked your wang?" "No! It was totally just a bro job. I loves the ladies."

No one is inhibited whatsoever. Everybody's "bi" or "mostly". My daughter is so free and uninhibited. We used to tell her to put some clothes ON. I never thought anything could compete with the sexual revolution of the sixties. What was once considered slutty-hoochie is now acceptable in dress and attitude and sexuality. I can't believe I'm saying it but pondering the evolution of today's sexual young adult is a mother's nightmare.

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From the website:

The Hippie Museuem's most cherished Fairy Godmother Alicia Bay Laurel, artist, musician, and author of "Living on the Earth", the more than famous Hippie "bible" of back to the land living, has just released a new cd, "What Living's All About". The description on the cover reads "Jazz, blues and other moist situations".. Read what Alicia has to say about it, and follow links to purchase it on her site, as well as listen to clips on cdbaby.com link

More News from the Hippie Museum...

What's Living in the Middle of America?
Hippie Museum member Alan SpringWind is about to embark on a 30 day bus trip to Ohio and elsewhere back towards the right side of Amerika. He used to hitch around the country back in the late 60's and early 70's. He's been in California most of the time since 1976., and is now going off to discover the current state of Amerika, from the perspective of his hippie roots and his anarchist-Christian perspective. He will be making regular reports here on the Hippie Museum. Stary Tuned! Check out Alan's blog ..... link

Shill Is A Shuck - A review by Pam Hanna
Some characters are undoubtedly modeled on real people, but even they are not fleshed out to resemble real human beings. I'm guessing that O'Bannon is Emmet Grogan, The Poet is Allen Ginsberg and the Riggers are most probably the Diggers. Tahiti was allowed to keep his own name but not developed as a character. I did recognize the man who lives near Silver City and makes his own beer but only because the author says it tastes like champagne and there could be only one such person. Otherwise, ... read more here: link

Forget the Haight and Woodstock

A new book makes a compelling case that Laurel Canyon, home to Joni, Zappa, Mama Cass and many more, was the true center of '60s rock.

The '60s were all about neighborhoods. Haight-Ashbury, Greenwich Village, Berkeley’s Telegraph Avenue, Watts, Tu Do Street, Harlem, Woodstock -- for Americans, at least, the decade was divided into a series of remarkable communities, some utopian and others nightmarish, each with a strong claim to being the epicenter of that turbulent epoch.

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SCENTS EVOKE SWEET MEMORIES
(or Incense, It's Not Just For Hippies)

Weirdpixie mentioned incense and I also began thinking about it -- the different types and scents, my favorites and where I was when I first smelled it.

It comes in sticks, ropes, powder, coils, dhoops, wood chips, cones. And comes from India, China, Japan, and all over the world. You can light it for rituals or light it 'just because'.

I've enjoyed many scents from the basic cheap to the handmade expensive and I always return to sandalwood. Or a sandalwood mix. It loyally permeated the sixties with me and followed me into the next century. Sandalwood has the history and the memory factor that none of the others have.

My first sandalwood incense experience began at a head shop in Daytona Beach, Florida. The 'after dinner' crowd was shopping and people watching on the sidewalks next to the beach. My senses were riveted with sounds of motorcycles, music by the Tams, kids screaming for snow-cones, Moms sipping on Singapore Slings and the freaks were stopping in the head shop to buy some new music or a peace sign patch. I could smell the incense long before I could see the head shop. I go inside and buy a ring with a large red stone. I hear Surrealistic Pillow on the turntable and we discuss the songs and talk about Grace Slick. I stood out like a sore thumb in my small town, but these were my people and I feel a real kinship with them.

Anticipation surrounded me that summer night and I felt I was in the midst of a beautiful memory that would last a lifetime. Permeated in a young girl's adolescence and the smell of sandalwood.

What do you think? A little long, but worth the consideration...

A man eats two eggs each morning for breakfast. When he goes to the grocery store he pays 60 cents a dozen. Since a dozen eggs won't last a week he normally buys two dozen at a time.

One day while buying eggs he notices that the price has risen to 72 cents. The next time he buys groceries, eggs are 76 cents a dozen. When asked to explain the price of eggs the store owner says, "the price has gone up and I have to raise my price accordingly."

This store buys 100 dozen eggs a day. I checked around for a better price and all the distributors have raised their prices. The distributors have begun to buy from the huge egg farms. The small egg farms have been driven out of business.

The huge egg farms sell 100,000 dozen eggs a day to distributors. With no competition, they can set the price as they see fit. The distributors then have to raise their prices to the grocery stores. And on and on and on. As the man kept buying eggs the price kept going up. He saw the big egg trucks delivering 100 dozen eggs each day. Nothing changed there.

He checked out the huge egg farms and found they were selling 100,000 dozen eggs to the distributors daily. Nothing had changed but the price of eggs. Then week before Thanksgiving the price of eggs shot up to $1.00 a dozen. Again he asked the grocery owner why and was told, "cakes and baking for the holiday." The huge egg farmers know there will be a lot of baking going on and more eggs will be used. Hence, the price of eggs goes up. Expect the same thing at Christmas and other times when family cooking, baking, etc. happen.

This pattern continues until the price of eggs is 2.00 a dozen. The man says "there must be something we can do about the price of eggs." He starts talking to all the people in his town and they decide to stop buying eggs. This didn't work because everyone needed eggs. Finally, the man suggested only buying what you need. He ate 2 eggs a day. On the way home from work he would stop at the grocery and buy two eggs. Everyone in town started buying 2 or 3 eggs a day.

The grocery store owner began complaining that he had too many eggs in his cooler. He told the distributor that he didn't need any eggs. Maybe wouldn't need any all week.

The distributor had eggs piling up at his warehouse. He told the huge egg farms that he didn't have any room for eggs and would not need any for at least two weeks. At the egg farm, the chickens just kept on laying eggs.

To relieve the pressure, the huge egg farm told the distributor that they could buy the eggs at a lower price. The distributor said, " I don't have the room for the %$&^*&% eggs even if they were free."

The distributor told the grocery store owner that he would lower the price of the eggs if the store would start buying again. The grocery store owner said, "I don't have room for more eggs. The customers are only buying 2 or 3 eggs at a time." "Now if you were to drop the price of eggs back down to the original price, the customers would start buying by the dozen again."

The distributors sent that proposal to the huge egg farmers. They liked the price they were getting for their eggs but, them chickens just kept on laying.

Finally, the egg farmers lowered the price of their eggs. But only a few cents. The customers still bought 2 or 3 eggs at a time. They said, "When the price of eggs gets down to where it was before, we will start buying by the dozen."

Slowly the price of eggs started dropping. The distributors had to slash their prices to make room for the eggs coming from the egg farmers. The egg farmers cut their prices because the distributors
wouldn't buy at a higher price than they were selling eggs for.

Anyway, they had full warehouses and wouldn't need eggs for quite a while. And them chickens kept on laying.

Eventually, the egg farmers cut their prices because they were throwing away eggs they couldn't sell. The distributors started buying again because the eggs were priced to where the stores could afford to sell them at the lower price. And the customers starting buying by the dozen again.

Now, transpose this analogy to the gasoline industry. What if everyone only bought $10.00 worth of gas each time they pulled to the pump. The dealers tanks would stay semi full all the time. The dealers wouldn't have room for the gas coming from the huge tank farms. The tank farms wouldn't have room for the gas coming from the refining plants. And the refining plants wouldn't have room for the oil being off loaded from the huge tankers coming from the Middle East.

Just $10.00 each time you buy gas. Don't fill it up. You may have to stop for gas twice a week but, the price should come down. Think about it.

As an added note...When I buy $10.00 worth of gas,that leaves my tank a little under half full. The way prices are jumping around, you can buy gas for $2.65 a gallon and then the next morning it can be $2.15. If you have your tank full of $2.65 gas you don't have room for the $2.15 gas. You might not understand the economics of only buying two eggs at a time but, you can't buy cheaper gas if your tank is full of the high priced stuff.

Also, don't buy anything else at the gas station, no cigarettes, no bread,milk or chewing gum, don't give them any more of your hard earned money than what you spend on gas, until the prices come down.

(hat tip to Richard @ 60s Beyond)

Monday WebTrail

The 28rd Annual St. Stupid’s Day Parade takes place this Saturday, April 1st in downtown San Francisco - [via]

Jarmusch directs Racounteurs video - Link

WeBeHigh.com - Worldwide Marijuana Travel Guide With Marijuana Prices, Spots & Legalization Status.
[Where to cop in Asheville]

60s Beyond - Survivors from the 60s and 70s. Busy and intimate Yahoo group that's fun and imformative.

"There is no end. There is no beginning. There is only the infinite passion of life."
-- Frederico Fellini

Bush: Star spangled bummer.

WebTrail - Thunderbolt Pagoda, NCAA, Droopy C**k, Used Condoms, Magick, Tantric Popart

"...so High '60s that you emerge from its 20-minute vision perched full-lotus on a cloud of incense, chatting with a white rabbit and smoking a banana." The ultimate comic-book attraction, however, is Ira Cohen's 1968 Invasion of Thunderbolt Pagoda—part "Dr. Strange," part Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome. Directed by Ira Cohen Link

Did you burst your bracket yet? Watch the NCAA Tournament live at work.

Tantric Pop-Art by Julian Murphy

From the page: "Do you mean Droopy C**k?" "It was as if I'd been smacked with a right hook. I started repeating 'Drew Peacock' over and over again. Then I thought - what have we done?" Link

AOL had this link on their homepage today about "The Cheapest Person I Know". One person washes and re-uses paper plates. One person orders water at a restaurant, adds lemon and sugar that's already on the table to make lemonade -- all for the price of a glass of water. Someone glued a quarter to the floor to razz their co-worker who finally bought a $2.00 device to pry it up. But the worst frugal item so far has got to be the one that re-uses condoms. Washes them out and re-uses them. That ain't frugal. That's just plain stupid.

Today's Quote
"It's far too late for anything but magick, as the future is clearly up for grabs." - Antero Alli

Stew Albert 1939 - 2006

Berkley 1968 - Portland 2002
Stew Albert a prominent anti-Vietnam war activist, an early supporter of the Black Panthers and a founder of the Yippie radical protest group, died Monday at age 66 in Portland, Oregon.

Initially diagnosed with Hepatitis C, he spent a whole year enduring grueling chemotherapy. He spoke openly about it on his website, documenting each day and each weekly shot. He was finally declared free of the disease only to be diagnosed with liver cancer this past December. The ultimate Fuck You. (My sister passed away this past Thanksgiving also from liver cancer from Hep C.) We spoke thru email about Hep C, how it sucked and how the treatment felt worse than the disease. I was always inspired by his spirit. From 1968 in Chicago throughout his life. People with true 60s ideals are a rare breed. Tom Robbins said, Disbelief in magic can force a poor soul into believing in government and business. Stew certainly believed in magic.

On his website...from Judy
"Stew will be buried tomorrow (Wednesday) in Jones Pioneer Cemetery in Portland. He will be wrapped in a tallis (Jewish prayer shaw), holding a stuffed flower from the Haight and wearing his kick-ass Frye boots and our wedding ring."

There are beautiful sentiments expressed on his website, Bay Area Indymedia, Infoshop News, SFGate, and on Counterpunch.


More On Hepatitis C
Allen Ginsberg died from complications of it. Phil Lesh of the Grateful Dead, and David Crosby of Crosby, Stills, & Nash, both had liver transplants and still suffer from it. Ken Kesey, author of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest”, suffered from it and died of liver cancer in 2001. Penny Arcade, the 55-year-old performance artist for the East Village avant-garde art scene since Andy Warhol roamed the city, also suffers from it.

Miles Keaton Andrew, a 52-year-old author who contracted it when he experimented with intravenous drugs as a teenager, has kept a blog, www.mkandrew.com, since 2001 about his experiences battling H.C.V. His blog has received a million hits in the past year. “I understand the whole stigma thing,” he told The Villager. "There are a lot of people like me who might have experimented with drugs. Some of us got sick from it and it isn’t anything to be ashamed about."

Hep C Life After Interferon is another blogger who documents his experience with it.

WEBTRAIL - Top 100, PETA, Ivins, Boomer, Mancuso, Garden of Delights, James Frey

Garden Of Delights is a good vintage vinyl site. One of 7 or 8 good ones I've found lately. Freaky Lady posts mostly rare 60s music. Not as rare in the weird sense as Cake & Polka Parade, which has it's own fun, but informative niche.

‘Love Saves The Day’, an essential new book, which charts the development of New York (and subsequently worldwide) club culture, takes it’s name from a party held on Valentines Day 1970 at the home of David Mancuso, a loft space at 647 Broadway & Bleeker, in NoHo, NYC. (via Autopoiesis & Cognition Conversations)

Please Sign This Petition if you agree that James Frey, Author of "A Million Little Pieces", Random House & Nan Telese,the Publisher of these lies should offer a refund of his book considering the controversy surrounding it.

Were you born between 1946 and 1964? Boomer Baby is asking you to send in your childhood toy memories. I enjoyed the "Easy Bake Oven" because YUM!, those little cakes that you baked by a lightbulb were seriously good eating. I also liked paper dolls. Betsy McCall came in a magazine each month with different outfits to cut out and put on. Try getting a small child today to get interested in paper dolls. Not going to happen. (via mousemusings)

Molly Ivins, 61, is again battling breast cancer. [More »] (via labkat)

China's Shocking Cat and Dog Fur Trade - Trent Reznor slams killing of cats and dogs for fur in shocking new PETA video.

2006 Q Magazine Readers' 100 Greatest Albums Ever. These lists are always subjective but always interesting.

WEBTRAIL - Dubya, TYA, Into The Mystic, Customers, Psym-who?, Gurus, Madness & Freaks

Defective Yeti has another humorous piece for you on George Bush. Iraqi Invasion: A Text Misadventure

Into The Mystic is a smart and soothing breath of fresh air.

If you like 60s music, Sonic Pollutions, is a good site that's blazing a trail on the blog circuit. Ten Years After featured today.

In case you forgot to save it the first time around --How to get a real live human when calling Customer Service.

Psymbiote is today's one of "6000 intriguing people you want to meet online before you die".

Everybody's doing it. Sudoku now in most newspapers will also be included in the Asheville C-T.

Guru Ratings - Yep, they're ALL there.

Today's Quote - Madness is not enlightenment, but the search for enlightenment is often mistaken for madness. ~Richard Davenport-Hines

Too many freaks, not enough circuses.

Sad News
From Gary Rhine's Website...

It is with great sorrow that we inform the readers of Rhino's Blog that Gary Rhine has passed away. Gary died while doing something he loved - flying a small plane. The plane crashed in Lancaster, California, on January 9th at 1:40 p.m.

The funeral will be in San Francisco
on Sunday the 15th of January:
Congregation Beth-Israel-Judea
625 Brotherhood Way
San Francisco, Ca. 94132
Services will begin at 1:30.

A memorial will be held in Los Angeles at a later date. That information will also be posted here when we know more.

If you would like to contact Gary's family, then you can e-mail his wife, Irene Romero, at: imromero@kifaru.com

The family thanks you for your concern. In lieu of flowers, you may choose to honor Gary by sending a contribution to one of the following two charitable organizations that Gary cared deeply about:

The Friendship House
56 Julian Street
San Francisco, Ca. 94103

Plenty USA
PO Box 394
Summertown
Tennessee, 38483
(on the memo line, please indicate that the funds should be directed to the Rhino/Katrina Building Fund)

Rhino's Blog : Political activism, commentary & satire from a 5th generation San Franciscan, filmmaker, father, paramedic, and Indigenous rights activist. Rhino's Blog

Imagine for a moment that you could take all the spin off the Iraq conflict from the main stream media, the administration, the pundits, etc. And think about the money spent on the current military, the loss of lives from the war, the weapons of mass destruction that never were...Colin Powell is extremely embarassed about that now.

Just consider the undisputable facts. Have you noticed the intensity at which the American public is speaking out against the war? It's not the radical militants demonstrating and raising hell like we did in the sixties, where we all knew each other or had similar lifestyles and beliefs. Now, it's a mixed bag. It's your neighbors, your grandmother, and your priest peacefully demonstrating and they're mad as hell.

As long as I've spoken out against war and marched and been cuffed and maced in the name of peace, I can tell you that this is an unprecedented and different vibe against the war. It's already more unpopular than Vietnam ever was. If the Iraq war continues much longer, I fully expect to see everybody in the street.

Bliss On Board

From Mongolian overtone chanting to Peruvian nose flutes to Catholic masses and Indian ragas, "music is part of every spiritual tradition," Ananda Marga monk Dada Nabhaniilananda recently reminded us.

There's also a long tradition of getting on the bus as a means of raising – or altering – consciousness. In the '60s, there were Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters. During 1970-71, Steven Gaskin, head of the Farm, led a caravan of 50 school buses on a speaking tour across the U.S. Fans followed the Grateful Dead and Phish, and continue to trail Widespread Panic, in livable vans. Budget travelers, looking for a change of scenery, hop aboard the Green Tortoise. Thousands of people each year caravan to the ever-changing Rainbow Gathering destinations.

The Kundalini Express, then, is an efficient way to disseminate a complex network of spiritual-music traditions – "a way to celebrate the anniversary with the different centers of Ananda Marga across the continent," explains tour coordinator Nirmal Kronenberg by phone. "We're conducting parties, sort of ... visiting [Ananda Marga] centers to inspire these people." The Kundalini Express stops off in Asheville on Friday, June 24 for a 6-8 p.m. concert. [more »]

Ananda Marga in Asheville

Animal Collective's forthcoming Prospect Hummer EP (also on Fat Cat, and already cruising file-sharing networks more than a month before its official May 16 release) refines and looks back at their many sounds. It’s a good entry point into their catalogue. And there’s a very special guest: Vashti Bunyan, the late-’60s British songstress whose recently rediscovered work has become a touchstone for folk artists who’ve arrived in the last two years. Bunyan disappeared onto the moors after her 1970 utopian-Britfolk debut, Just a Diamond Day, tanked on arrival. In 2003, she reappeared for "just this one time" collaborations with Piano Magic and Devendra Banhart. Animal Collective collaborating with Bunyan has been compared to Radiohead collaborating with Pink Floyd, but I'll reserve judgement until I've heard more.

If all goes according to plan, a select group of cocaine addicts could be lining up in Miami this April for a chance to get quickly and painlessly clean. Thanks to an anonymous donor, neurologist Deborah Mash can resume clinical studies of ibogaine--the drug that could be the best anti-drug the CIA never told you about. Ibogaine's history began in the 60's in New York, where college student and self-described recreational heroin user Howard Lotsof gets freebie capsules of ibogaine from a chemist friend cleaning out his freezer. Lotsof takes one for the hell of it. To his amazement, when he comes down his brain is washed clean of desire for any drug whatsoever. He hands out capsules to friends and soon realizes he is sitting on a gold mine.

Buy Blue's current campaign is about Progressive car insurance. I checked their rates online about 3 years ago and they were they same as my State Farm insurance, but I'm going to check it again. And see who Buy Blue says State Farm supports while I'm at it.

Pimpzilla, Mozilla Firefox Theme. See Screenshot

Pharmacotherapy or Neurocops? Internal Policing and the Future of the Drug War. Would you vaccinate your child against drugs? more...

Today is the last day of some of your life.

Psychedelic medicine: Mind bending, health giving
JOHN HALPERN clearly remembers what made him change his mind about psychedelic drugs. It was the early 1990s and the young medical student at a hospital in Brooklyn, New York, was getting frustrated that he could not do more to help the alcoholics and addicts in his care. He sounded off to an older psychiatrist, who mentioned that LSD and related drugs had once been considered promising treatments for addiction. "I was so fascinated that I did all this research," Halpern recalls. "I was reading all these papers from the 60s and going, whoa, wait a minute! How come nobody's talking about this?"

More than a decade later, Halpern is now an associate director of substance abuse research at Harvard University's McLean Hospital and is at the forefront of a revival of research into psychedelic medicine. He recently received approval from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to give late-stage cancer patients the psychedelic drug MDMA, also known as ecstasy. He is also laying the groundwork for testing LSD as a treatment for dreaded super-migraines known as cluster headaches.

Say, I wonder if my doc would be open to some psychedelic therapy? My own personal psychedelic therapy doesn't seem to help my cluster (fucking) headaches one damn bit.

(link via mousemusings via New Scientist)

Producer Don Was has said to Billboard that Mick Jagger and Keith Richards have been writing together and that what they have come up with is magic and they hope to release an album in mid-2005. Was said: "Mick and Keith are writing songs together in a collaborative fashion that probably hasn't been seen since the late '60s. Getting better with age, you know. more »

Today's Quote
Turn your face to the sun and the shadows fall behind you.~ Maori Proverb

saturday morning me//
hazelnut coffee #2/vitamins/
½ krispy kreme cheesecake dognut--too rich/
drawstring pants/olive henley/black long vest/yoga flats/
my christmas tree looks so lovely/
if only someone would bring it in from the porch/
listening: kashmir by led zeppelin/
so how about you?/

Everybody who's ready for the holidays, please form a line on the right and wait for your spanking.

:: {Tuesday Morning Webtrail}
May 4, 1970 - Four Dead In Ohio - Kent State Massacre. Today is the 34th annual Commemoration events with William Rivers Pitt the Keynote speaker this afternoon. [link]

::Torture At Abu Ghraib - A "do not miss" piece in the New Yorker by Seymour Hersh about the tortured and abused Iraqi soldiers. [link]; and another link of those revolting photos for the many website visitors coming by in search of it. I'm so heartsick over their treatment and humiliation that I want to rise up against the US. How do you think the other inhabitants of the planet feel about us?

:: Paul Krassner - Gadfly of the ’60s still buzzing sounds off on Bush, Nixon and Clay Aiken. [link]

:: Love Parade and Fuck Parade - both held in Berlin; Fuck Parade is on July 5 , Love Parade is July 10. The grassroots Fuck Parade was born in 1997, in Berlin, as a counter-demonstration to the commercialization of the Love Parade and to the creeping gentrification of the neighborhoods around the center of East Berlin. I'd like to see them both.[link]

:: Mondo Man's New Millenium - [link]

:: Keith Richards, Rickie Lee Jones, Ben Harper, Jerry Lee Lewis, along with several other music notables will toast Willie Nelson's 71st birthday by performing at a concert Wednesday in Los Angeles. The USA network is expected to air the event, titled Outlaws and Angels, on May 31. [link]

:: Jagger sings for Alfie. Mick Jagger and the Eurhythmics' Dave Stewart have collaborated on three new songs and the theme music for an upcoming remake of the classic 1966 film Alfie, which stars Jude Law. [link]

April 12, 1989 -- Abbie Hoffman, Yippie peace activist of the 60's, dead at 52. Fifteen years ago. Murder or suicide? Read about Abbie on Stew Albert's website as he describes Abbiestock, the day Abbie took over the NYSE. Stew and Abbie had many adventures together.

His Steal This Book was a must have. Another ode to Abbie at the Pax Acidus site. (also a great read)

{Abbie Hoffman Quote}
"Avoid all needle drugs, the only dope worth shooting is Richard Nixon."

::: ::: ::: ::: ::: ::: ::: ::: ::: :::

:: New York Dolls, (most of them) reunite at Morrissey's request - [link]

:: David Bowie has teamed up with carmaker Audi for a "mash-up" contest for a chance to win a 2004 Audi TT coupe. Enter the contest here. Who is NOT doing a car ad?

Moshes to Yanni.