An interview with Nicholas Schou, author of Orange Sunshine: The Brotherhood of Eternal Love and Its Quest to Spread Peace, Love, and Acid to the World. The inside story of the infamous gang of dope-dealing surfers who played a key role in the counterculture of the Sixties. It’s a mindblowing—and improbable—tale of drug smuggling, large scale marihuana farming and LSD distribution—basically, it’s the hidden history of how America got turned on. The story of the Brotherhood might’ve gone to the grave with the participants if not for Nicholas Schou’s intriguing history. Highly recommended.
 

 
What follows below are a pair of newly uploaded Rock Music Exposed clips from YouTube channeler, Triplexity, and were apparently culled from the two-part ‘89 documentary, Hell’s Bells (which, to my knowledge, remains in VHS-only exile).

The intro, clip 1 of 36 (!) and found here, lays out the Hell’s Bells agenda, “to help people understand the big picture, peel back the veneer of pop culture, and gaze into the bedrock of truth that lies beneath.”

Since it also hopes to serve as, “a wake-up call, an alarm warning of the fire raging just down the hall,” you can bet your salvation its earnest-but-porny-looking narrator means a “Christian truth.”  I know, sounds like a snooze.  We’ve seen—and smirked—at this kind of crap on numerous occasions. 

But readers of Dangers Minds might find far more compelling the below clips, 12 and 13.  In them, Hell’s Bells puts under the Christian magnifying glass Kenneth Anger, Mick Jagger, Timothy Leary and The Beatles.

 
Australia’s 21.C, edited by Ashley Crawford, was probably the best magazine of the ‘90s—it was my favorite at least—and to be profiled in its pages and later to contribute to it, was an lot of fun for me.

21.C was the most unabashedly intellectual and forward-thinking journal that I have ever seen, anywhere. And it was a striking and beautifully designed product to hold in your hands. Each issue was finely crafted, I must say. To have my own writing published alongside the likes of Erik Davis, Mark Dery, Greil Marcus, Hakim Bey, Rudy Rucker, Bruce Sterling, R.U. Sirius and Kathy Acker was an honor. I also met Alex Burns via Ashley and Alex, of course, went on to edit the Disinformation website for many years.(I wrote about art for 21.C’s sister publication—also edited by Ashley Crawford—the quarterly glossy World Art. I know that I wrote an article about the product design of the Japanese pop combo Pizzicato 5, but I can’t remember what else.)

Now 21.C is back as an online magazine. There’s also a lot of still interesting archival pieces on subjects such as William Burroughs, Timothy Leary, Terence McKenna and Robert Anton Wilson that readers of this blog will find very interesting, I’m sure. There’s an interview with me from 1996 conducted by R.U. Sirius where I tell the nutty story of how Disinformation was started. Welcome back 21.C!
 

 

 
Tantalizing short excerpt from The Harvard Psychedelic Club over at The Daily Beast.  Don Lattin’s new book looks at the moment in time when Dr. TImothy Leary, Dr. Richard Alpert (AKA Ram Dass), Huston Smith, and lifestyle guru Andrew Weil (then a student) crossed paths at Harvard in the early 1960s setting off a revolution in consciousness that is still felt today. It’s fascinating to see Leary’s influence on culture beginning to become rehabilitated a decade after his passing. His legacy is difficult to ascertain, to be sure, but the man had a huge, huge effect on so many people’s lives—whether directly or indirectly via the fact that LSD use became widespread, you cannot untangle Leary from that fact. He certainly had a huge influence on me. I can’t wait to get my hands on this!

From the book:

Weil and Winston had both read The Doors of Perception, Huxley?

 
Timothy Francis Leary was born on this day in 1920. Leary lived one of the most out-sized lives in all of human history and his story is the story of the latter half of the twentieth century. He was a brilliant psychologist, philosopher, author and of course, the man who turned on the world with LSD.
 
Was Leary a great man? He was too complicated to be called a great man, but he was a great revolutionary. Nixon called him the “most dangerous man in America” and Leary most certainly lived up to that description. It’s been said of historical figures, especially controversial ones, that it takes 100 years after their deaths before history can properly judge them. If you divorce Leary the man (a charming Irish con man, basically) from the vast cultural changes he and other hippie leaders ushered in and all of the doors they broke down for future generations to live freer, more fulfilled lives, you’ll get a better perspective on how important of a character he was. He is a pivotal figure of the greatest era of social change in history, a spiritual revolutionary in the most profound sense.
 

 
Bonus clips:
 
Timothy Leary meets Cheech and Chong and Pee-wee Herman!
 
Timothy Leary in Folsom Prison

 
Straightforward article from AP about the 2012 doomsday silliness. Worth reading. The bit about kids and young mothers buying into this BS is sad and depressing.

Pure and simple this is Christian apocalyptism being projected onto the ancient Maya (in retrospect, even!) and various New Age theories (

 
After reading Ginia Bellafante‘s NYT review of Lords of The Revolution (last mentioned in these pages here), I’m now even less inclined to spend my 5 hours on the VH1 special.  That being said, Bellafante does single out for praise the installments profiling Timothy Leary and The Black Panthers.  Despite their generational link, though, Leary and the Panthers didn’t always see eye-to-eye. 

After escaping from prison in 1970, Leary found refuge in Algeria with the Panthers’ Eldridge Cleaver, who was himself on the lam for attempted murder.  But rather than receiving Leary as a kindred spirit—and displeased with his drug-touting ways—Eldridge kidnapped Tim and his wife, Rosemary Woodruff…er, placed them under “revolutionary arrest.”  Eldridge eventually freed the pair, but, in the clip above, you can still get a sense of their uneasy Algerian alliance.

 
I’m looking forward to next week’s VH1 series, Lords Of The Revolution, with an excitement approaching…apathy!  I mean, we all know the drill: yet another 5-parter assembled from already available footage both superior and less sanitized.  Still, with Leary, Warhol, Ali, Cheech & Chong, and The Black Panthers each spearheading a night, I’m keeping my fingers crossed. 

If you’re curious as to what it might look like, check out the VH1 trailer.  And for those of you who lack the time—or energy—to “tune in,” but still want a hit of era-defining idealism, click right here.