Bureau of Lost Culture

*In the summer of 1964, a very strange vehicle was seen making its way across America. it was a school bus covered in psychedelic colours, driven by NEAL CASSADY, a beat generation character made famous in JACK KEROUAC'S beat generation classic On the Road and piloted by KEN KESEY, the best selling author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.   *The bus contained a raggle-taggle crew of crazy psychonauts calling themselves The Merry pranksters allegedly dispensing LSD in orange kool aid to all and sundry in attempt to turn on America.   *In this episode, we leave Soho to travel to the far west of the USA, to a farm in Oregon to meet KEN BABBS the last of The Merry Pranksters.   *We talk of all sorts of things - Ken Kesey, the Magic Trip and the Acid Tests of course, plus Kerouac, Ginsberg, Viet Nam, Timothy Leary, spontaneity, the good life and dreams. *And at the end we hear some very positive news about a question that I suspect is troubling many of us   *For The Bureau of Lost Culture https://www.bureauoflostculture.com    #bureauoflostculture #kenkesey #kenbabbs #tarot #themerrypranksters #kerouac #ginsberg #themagicbus #lsd  #acid #tomwolfe #counterculture #psychedelic #thegratefuldead #acidtests #nealcassady #beatgeneration   

 

It is a tale of lost treasure, it is a tale of a lost - or rather forgotten - artist, a mystic, a cockney visionary.   •Curator Jonathan Allen comes to the Bureau to tell of AUSTIN OSMAN SPARE and the strange and wonderful Tarot Deck that lay for decades in the archives of The Magic Circle, undisturbed and forgotten.   •Now a growing influence on artists, writer and chaos magick  practitioners including Alan Moore and Jimmy Page, Spare became largely unnoticed in his lifetime.   •We hear of his curious, occult life in South London, his riches to rags story, cartomancy, divination and the discovery that may just change his future.    •And we hear of the efforts to bring that future into the present through a campaign by Strange Attractor Press that will make Spare's extraordinary visionary Tarot available for mystics, art lovers, collectors and the curious..   •For the Austin Spare Tarot Deck Kickstarter https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/strangeattractoruk/austin-osman-spare-occult-tarot-deck-and-book   •For the book Lost Envoy http://strangeattractor.co.uk/shoppe/lost-envoy/   •For The Bureau of Lost Culture https://www.bureauoflostculture.com   #bureauoflostculture #austinspare #austinosmanspare #tarot #lostenvoy #strangeattractor #strangeattractorpress #alanmoore #jimmypage #williamblake #pankhurst #mervynpeake #magiccircle #themagiccircle #tarotdeck #cartomancy #chaosmagick #magick #conjuring #southwark     

*Performance artist, actor and underground cabaret star Madame LePustra leads us on a journey back in time in search of the Berlin Cabaret and Kabarett of Weimar Republic era Berlin.   *We learn of the strange and progressive Golden Years of the 1920s when queer and trans identiities were accepted, even feted, within an underground culture that briefly flowered in the city between the wars.   *We meet some of the extraordinary women performers who pushed artistic, theatrical and social boundaries before the Nazis jackbooted the doors of the clubs and theatres and brought the era to a tragic close.   *And we hear of Madame Le Pustra’s work to remember and reinterpret the times through their re-imagined ‘Cabaret of the Nameless’.   For more on Madame Le Pustra https://madamelepustra.com  The Bureau of Lost Culture https://www.bureauoflostculture.com Image courtesy Madame Le Pustra  / Michel Dierickx    #berlincabaret #weimarcabaret #madamelepustra #cabaretofthenameless #counterculture

*"Teenage savages go wild in a jungle of lust and lawlessness!"   *Countercultural commentator and writer JOHN HIGGS comes to the Bureau. We head out into the feverish febrile pheromone filled phase of self consciousness, sex drugs and rock’n’roll known as adolescence as we investigate the birth of the teenage in the late 40s and 50s.     *Was it all really kicked off by Little Richard’s Tutti Frutti?       *We chart the rise of youth culture on both sides of the Iron Curtain and debate that while ‘all you need is love’, ‘you can’t always get what you want’ as we trace counterculture through beats, mods, hippies, punks, ravers, grunge and britpop, touch down briefly on gender politics and the death of Kurt Cobain and wonder if 70 will one day be the new seventeen.   For more on John https://johnhiggs.com   The Bureau of Lost Culture https://www.bureauoflostculture.com #counterculture #littlerichard #teenage #rockandroll #kurtcobain #beatles #rollingstones #hippie 

*Musician and actor TOM WAITS is one of the great countercultural artists of our time, His '70s albums documented low life America in an LA that no longer exists   *Filmmaker Alex Harvey, author of 'Song Noir: Tom Waits and the Spirit of Los Angeles’ comes to the Bureau to tell how Waits mined a rich seam of the city’s low-life locations and characters, letting the place feed his dark imagination.   *We hear how Tom blended real life with the mythic, turning autobiographical details into songs that were both romantic and disturbing -  and created a vision of LA as the warped, narcotic heart of his nocturnal explorations.   *For more on Alex http://alexanderharvey.org/ *For Song Noir: http://www.reaktionbooks.co.uk/display.asp?ISB=9781789146639 *For more on Tom Waits: http://www.tomwaits.com/ *For The Bureau of Lost Culture https://www.bureauoflostculture.com  #counterculture #tomwaits #rickieleejones  #thetropicana #LA #kathleenbrenan 

*Timothy Leary may have wanted to cause a revolution your head with LSD, The Beatles in your heart with Love, but countercultural activist and entrepreneur CRAIG SAMS went for the Gut.   *After bringing himself back from death’s door by curing the amoebic dysentery and hepatitis he contracted on the Central Asia hippie trail, he embarked on a mission to change the world and raise consciousness through food.   *We sit down with him for a feast of of fabulous food fables from feeding the freaks at The UFO club and the first Glastonbury festival, to co-founding Seed, London's first macrobiotic restaurant and the go-to healthy eatery for John and Yoko, The Stones and many other denizens of the London underground.   *Also on the menu: how he went on to co-found Whole Earth foods and then Green and Black's Chocolate, how macrobiotics will improve an LSD trip, how changing the way we eat can save us - and the planet - and how, at nearly eighty, he is still living the countercultural life. For More on Craig: https://www.craigsams.com   Join us at The Bureau of Lost Culture https://linktr.ee/bureauoflostculture #counterculture #macrobiotic #johnandyoko  #thebeatles #greenandblacks #wholeearth #craigsams

*DJ and broadcaster BOBBY FRICTION drops by the Bureau to tell the tale of how, in the early 90s, a bunch of British kids from immigrant families ripped it up, mixing their traditional musical roots with drum and bass, electronic beats and urban sounds to form a new countercultural genre all their own - the Asian Underground.   *We hear how the scene was a kind of counterpart to the way Western counterculture adapted and was inspired by Eastern mysticism and culture.   *It's a rollicking personal tale by Bobby who was there at the beginning and who has been championing the scene ever since, soundtracked by some choice musical cuts.   We dig deep into all sorts of other stuff too: growing up in 70s London, racism on the city streets, Bhangra, 'ghazals', ABBA, Prince,  daytime gigs, Sikh culture. radical politics, why 'Black' was cool but 'Asian' was apparently not in London club culture.   *And Bobby makes a plea for the British to realise the vision of becoming one people celebrating their diversity rather than splitting back into tribes.   *For more on Bobby: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01rydpz *For London Month of the Dead: https://www.londonmonthofthedead.com *For Continental Drifts: https://www.continentalDrifts.co.uk *The Bureau of Lost Culture: https://www.bureauoflostculture.com

*He is widely recognised as one of the best comic book writers in the English language with works like From Hell, Watchmen, V for Vendetta, Killing Joke, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and Swamp Thing. He's the author of modern literary classics, including Jerusalem, a 1,266-page experimental epic novel, that have led to his legendary status and critical acclaim. *He is also an occultist, a ceremonial magician and an anarchist.   *ALAN MOORE beamed into the Bureau for an afternoon  conversation about counterculture - in his own life and work and in the past, the present and in the future.   *We also dig deep into the 60s, the 70s, Thatcherism, Britpop, the power of The Arts Lab, why he doesn’t watch the adaptions of his work, the power of limitations to foster creativity and much much more.   *Alan’s storytelling course on BBC Maestro:  https://www.bbcmaestro.com LONDON MONTH OF THE DEAD http://www.londonmonthofthedead.com THE REAL TUESDAY WELD http://www.tuesdayweld.com Join us and support our wild endeavours https://www.bureauoflostculture.com #alanmoore #michaelmoorcock #counterculture #artslab #london #malcolmmclaren 

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

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

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#SydBarrett #Pink Floyd #Groupies #Frigidity #abortion #Ozmagazine #TheFemaleEunuch #germainegreer #jennyspires #theexplodinggalaxy