Special thanks to Douglas Rushkoff http://rushkoff.com/interactive-media-studies/
(former PTV keyboardist and brillant author)
who linked to thee archive to use the "Splinter Test Essay" HERE for his students in his
interactive media studies Spring 2010 course.
2/25 Week Five: Cut and Paste
8. ‘Happenings’ in the New York Scene. Allan Kaprow, 1961
9. The Cut Up Method of Brion Gysin, William S. Burroughs, 1961
10. Genesis P-Orridge, The Splinter Test genesisporridgearchive.blogspot.com/2009/10/splinter-test-essay.html?zx=237cd5c0bd8e1fcd
Any of Douglas's students lurking around here? Would you be interested in sharing any of your thoughts about the splinter test piece, especially if you were not familiar with it before? The splinter test essay has personally been one of my favorite works by Genesis. I would like to share any writings you had to complete for this course and what you took away from the "cut and paste week."
Friday, May 28, 2010
BOOK REVIEW by GENESIS BREYER P-ORRIDGE: RESISTING THE VIRTUAL LIFE
RESISTING THE VIRTUAL LIFE
“Beneath the media world lies our perceptual framework, and digital media
may change how we KNOW what we know”.
So insists Chris Carlsson in “The Shape Of Truth To Come” one of the more accessible of the 21 essays and political tracts anthologized within this book. And therein, in the theme “political”, lies the biggest problem
with this book. Everything revolves around post-modern socialist/marxist
philosophy.
“Resisting The Virtual Life” is very much a classic University text book with its own jargon, esoteric knowledge and politically correct jockeying for status. As dull, verbose, self-referential, opaque, presumptuous and complex in its structures and concepts as Scottish Freemasonry.
Don’t get me wrong, please, I myself am absolutely on the side of an immense skeptical suspicion of the “World Wide Web”. What a horrible title. Are we all the innocent little insects unwittingly trapped in a gluey
binary Armageddon of telephone lines? Who is the spider. Well, control of course. Corporations of course, increasingly insipid and acceleratingly effective bureaucratic governments.
The themes of enforced apathy and mobility of labor really circle each other like sumo wrestlers here. And it’s scary.
Which makes this the right time to re-assess the malignant cancer of personal computers; the intrusion into intellectual privacy and inner space; the surrender of autonomy; the detached prozac miasma of virtual passivity and loss of identity that comes with all this dull gray plastic.
Look at it this way, simplistic though it sounds. If “Virtual Life” is supported, proselytized and applauded by your worst enemies, and it is profitable for them, then why consent of your own volition to partake of this
“cure-all”.
No way is this medium benign! Far from it. It’s the greatest chance to survey all you can see from a great height, just like Jesus in the desert, and who was offering HIM that illusory empowerment?
Uh, uh. Please plow through this, despite the turgid and user unfriendly style and semantics. Because it will do you GOOD! The digital revolution is not benign. Don’t kid your self, or your SELF. You are as much fodder for this new economic miracle as your ancestors were when they were forced from the arable land to become a disposable raw material for the iron mills and cotton mills of the nineteenth century.
Worse still, once uprooted, they were trained to consume the surplus they were enslaved to produce. Now, with less need in the West for covert slavery, the primary purpose of the majority of the population is conveniently reduced to overt and insatiable consumption, in and of itself.
Oh, in case you wondered where the slaves are now. Well, occupied Haiti, Korea, Thailand and when the time comes Africa once again. It’s the perfect scam. Hell, they don’t even need a semi-educated and
minimally healthy immigrant workforce anymore. Why else did you think education and medical services are being encouraged to disintegrate?
A mediocratic middle class have unwittingly become the “new serfs”. They integrate enthusiastically with the insatiable “virtual life”. They are compelled to consume this quixotic future. They have even been trained to
measure their success by their acquisition of its artifacts and their access to an ever increasing amount of its software. Like lemmings they bless and feed the hand that signals the route to the final cataclysmic cliff.
As the introduction succinctly reminds us. Mobility of labor is the capitalist dream and computers realize the ultimate exploitative nightmare. All labor can now travel anywhere, without physically moving. Much cheaper and more efficient. Everything piped down a phone wire. Perfect! I don’t think so. Count me out. I unplugged my modem ages ago. Best thing I ever did for my creative mind. Unplug yours too. Read this book, privately. Think hard about it, privately. Practice talking, privately.
“Beneath the media world lies our perceptual framework, and digital media
may change how we KNOW what we know”.
So insists Chris Carlsson in “The Shape Of Truth To Come” one of the more accessible of the 21 essays and political tracts anthologized within this book. And therein, in the theme “political”, lies the biggest problem
with this book. Everything revolves around post-modern socialist/marxist
philosophy.
“Resisting The Virtual Life” is very much a classic University text book with its own jargon, esoteric knowledge and politically correct jockeying for status. As dull, verbose, self-referential, opaque, presumptuous and complex in its structures and concepts as Scottish Freemasonry.
Don’t get me wrong, please, I myself am absolutely on the side of an immense skeptical suspicion of the “World Wide Web”. What a horrible title. Are we all the innocent little insects unwittingly trapped in a gluey
binary Armageddon of telephone lines? Who is the spider. Well, control of course. Corporations of course, increasingly insipid and acceleratingly effective bureaucratic governments.
The themes of enforced apathy and mobility of labor really circle each other like sumo wrestlers here. And it’s scary.
Which makes this the right time to re-assess the malignant cancer of personal computers; the intrusion into intellectual privacy and inner space; the surrender of autonomy; the detached prozac miasma of virtual passivity and loss of identity that comes with all this dull gray plastic.
Look at it this way, simplistic though it sounds. If “Virtual Life” is supported, proselytized and applauded by your worst enemies, and it is profitable for them, then why consent of your own volition to partake of this
“cure-all”.
No way is this medium benign! Far from it. It’s the greatest chance to survey all you can see from a great height, just like Jesus in the desert, and who was offering HIM that illusory empowerment?
Uh, uh. Please plow through this, despite the turgid and user unfriendly style and semantics. Because it will do you GOOD! The digital revolution is not benign. Don’t kid your self, or your SELF. You are as much fodder for this new economic miracle as your ancestors were when they were forced from the arable land to become a disposable raw material for the iron mills and cotton mills of the nineteenth century.
Worse still, once uprooted, they were trained to consume the surplus they were enslaved to produce. Now, with less need in the West for covert slavery, the primary purpose of the majority of the population is conveniently reduced to overt and insatiable consumption, in and of itself.
Oh, in case you wondered where the slaves are now. Well, occupied Haiti, Korea, Thailand and when the time comes Africa once again. It’s the perfect scam. Hell, they don’t even need a semi-educated and
minimally healthy immigrant workforce anymore. Why else did you think education and medical services are being encouraged to disintegrate?
A mediocratic middle class have unwittingly become the “new serfs”. They integrate enthusiastically with the insatiable “virtual life”. They are compelled to consume this quixotic future. They have even been trained to
measure their success by their acquisition of its artifacts and their access to an ever increasing amount of its software. Like lemmings they bless and feed the hand that signals the route to the final cataclysmic cliff.
As the introduction succinctly reminds us. Mobility of labor is the capitalist dream and computers realize the ultimate exploitative nightmare. All labor can now travel anywhere, without physically moving. Much cheaper and more efficient. Everything piped down a phone wire. Perfect! I don’t think so. Count me out. I unplugged my modem ages ago. Best thing I ever did for my creative mind. Unplug yours too. Read this book, privately. Think hard about it, privately. Practice talking, privately.
Monday, May 24, 2010
BOOK REVIEW by GENESIS BREYER P-ORRIDGE: ED WOOD - NIGHTMARE OF ECSTASY by Rudolph Grey
ED WOOD - NIGHTMARE OF ECSTASY by RUDOLPH GREY
The movies of Ed Wood are really an acquired taste, though at this stage in the growth of his expanded cinema “cult” the peer pressure to claim to love them is almost as overwhelming as the ridicule they received when he first wrote and directed them. However, interest or not in his films has no essential bearing upon an appreciation the incredible life and times, obsessions and addictions exposed and celebrated in this book.
Of course, most of us know the movie based on this book featuring Johnny Depp, Bill Murray, Patricia Arquette and Martin Landau, but what becomes clear very quickly whilst reading through the original biography is how much hilarious and heartbreaking; courageous and eccentric material was left out. Needless to say much of this additional information centers upon sex and drugs and aberrant activities, making the plethora of supplementary anecdotes an unexpectedly sordid (which in this context is a positive value)
and fabulous bonus.
Take this little gem from the memory lane of writer, producer, director,Tony Cardoza for example:-
“In India they sent a 13 year old girl up to Tor’s hotel room. So he’s sucking her breast and it tastes kind of bad, and so he turns on the light, and finds that she was dirty, not dark-skinned! And her tit was white where she was sucking it.”
Rudolph Grey has chosen to collect who knows how many interviews and then painstakingly sifted and assembled these to form a powerful and compelling biography that flows uncannily well. The fractured persona of Ed Wood, transvestite, dreamer, inept hustler and, probably, naive genius is scarily believable and contemporary. It might be easy in the 90’s with Ru Paul on national television and Hollywood making movies on a seemingly regular basis about drag queens and transvestitism to forget the recklessly courageous honesty exemplified by Ed Wood’s “coming out” in Glen & Glenda. No matter how kitsch his treatment might now seem, make no mistake, he was brave, and he was risking everything when he introduced us
all to the now mythologised pink angora sweater.
Apart from the fascinating interplay of wild and bizarre characters around Ed Wood, and of course his intense friendship with Bela Lugosi, we learn just how truly prolific he was. Apart from the central core of 32 movies that he more or less completed, there were at least 155 television commercials as well, and even more surprising and pleasing for me was finding out about 48 books that he wrote too. These in particular beg to be re-printed as seminal explorations of transvestitism, cross-dressing and 50’s era hustler
Hollywood.
Rudolph Grey prints a synopsis of all of these books, and they certainly give an impression from these descriptions alone of being the closest we’ll ever get to an autobiography of Ed Wood. Ostensibly written for a sexploitation publisher of cheesy paperbacks the excerpts selected suggest a richness and brutally revealing serial confessional that can only consolidate and increase the reverence in which we might hold this extraordinary man.
Ed Wood died an impoverished and delirious alcoholic, something that Tim Burton’s film really should have addressed to lend an agonizing realism to his demise. For, in the end, what really becomes most apparent and undeniable, and what makes this book and the heroic life it so vividly describes absolutely essential, is all the deeply serious implications concerning identity and self and artistic expression symbolised and personified by the conclusion we inevitably must draw that... it takes a real man to wear a pink angora sweater with pride. You gotta love him!
All hail Ed Wood, saint of the gender defused.
GENESIS P-ORRIDGE 620 Words
The movies of Ed Wood are really an acquired taste, though at this stage in the growth of his expanded cinema “cult” the peer pressure to claim to love them is almost as overwhelming as the ridicule they received when he first wrote and directed them. However, interest or not in his films has no essential bearing upon an appreciation the incredible life and times, obsessions and addictions exposed and celebrated in this book.
Of course, most of us know the movie based on this book featuring Johnny Depp, Bill Murray, Patricia Arquette and Martin Landau, but what becomes clear very quickly whilst reading through the original biography is how much hilarious and heartbreaking; courageous and eccentric material was left out. Needless to say much of this additional information centers upon sex and drugs and aberrant activities, making the plethora of supplementary anecdotes an unexpectedly sordid (which in this context is a positive value)
and fabulous bonus.
Take this little gem from the memory lane of writer, producer, director,Tony Cardoza for example:-
“In India they sent a 13 year old girl up to Tor’s hotel room. So he’s sucking her breast and it tastes kind of bad, and so he turns on the light, and finds that she was dirty, not dark-skinned! And her tit was white where she was sucking it.”
Rudolph Grey has chosen to collect who knows how many interviews and then painstakingly sifted and assembled these to form a powerful and compelling biography that flows uncannily well. The fractured persona of Ed Wood, transvestite, dreamer, inept hustler and, probably, naive genius is scarily believable and contemporary. It might be easy in the 90’s with Ru Paul on national television and Hollywood making movies on a seemingly regular basis about drag queens and transvestitism to forget the recklessly courageous honesty exemplified by Ed Wood’s “coming out” in Glen & Glenda. No matter how kitsch his treatment might now seem, make no mistake, he was brave, and he was risking everything when he introduced us
all to the now mythologised pink angora sweater.
Apart from the fascinating interplay of wild and bizarre characters around Ed Wood, and of course his intense friendship with Bela Lugosi, we learn just how truly prolific he was. Apart from the central core of 32 movies that he more or less completed, there were at least 155 television commercials as well, and even more surprising and pleasing for me was finding out about 48 books that he wrote too. These in particular beg to be re-printed as seminal explorations of transvestitism, cross-dressing and 50’s era hustler
Hollywood.
Rudolph Grey prints a synopsis of all of these books, and they certainly give an impression from these descriptions alone of being the closest we’ll ever get to an autobiography of Ed Wood. Ostensibly written for a sexploitation publisher of cheesy paperbacks the excerpts selected suggest a richness and brutally revealing serial confessional that can only consolidate and increase the reverence in which we might hold this extraordinary man.
Ed Wood died an impoverished and delirious alcoholic, something that Tim Burton’s film really should have addressed to lend an agonizing realism to his demise. For, in the end, what really becomes most apparent and undeniable, and what makes this book and the heroic life it so vividly describes absolutely essential, is all the deeply serious implications concerning identity and self and artistic expression symbolised and personified by the conclusion we inevitably must draw that... it takes a real man to wear a pink angora sweater with pride. You gotta love him!
All hail Ed Wood, saint of the gender defused.
GENESIS P-ORRIDGE 620 Words
BOOK REVIEW by GENESIS BREYER P-ORRIDGE :THE PRIVATE DIARY OF LYLE MENENDEZ by Mike Walker
THE PRIVATE DIARY OF LYLE MENENDEZ
Mike Walker also wrote “NICOLE BROWN SIMPSON-THE PRIVATE DIARY OF A LIFE INTERRUPTED” which tends to confirm one’s impression of him from this book, particularly from his introduction, as a self-serving and barely literate parasite.
As for the disgracefully adolescent Norma Novelli ... “What a pathetic loser she was!” I use a past tense in reference to her because she was nothing before she attached herself to Lyle Menendez in a menopausal crush, and she has returned to being less than nothing since.
Lyle’s conviction for the “brutal shotgun slayings” of his parents is supposedly exposed and analyzed by this tedious book and its unique angle of having reprinted “actual diaries”. The usual pseudo-psychological;
society’s right to know; prevention of future murder by familiarity with the “mind of a cold killer” and righteous curiosity reasons are glibly trotted out as justification. I resent having wasted my precious time, an irreplaceable part of my life trying to read this garbage.
Yes! A plague upon thee and all who doth sail in thee, oh morass of apathy and puss drenched conformity that be suburbia! I say. Oh, that feels better!
If you do seriously wish to enter uncannily into the existential world of a sociopathic serial killer and the obsessive mind of a sadistic pervert more completely and shatteringly than you could ever have imagined; complete with the inclusion of his journal entries, his drawings of death scenes and poems, even self-searching dialogues by the murderer himself. A lost soul chillingly and articulately trying to understand how it came to this, and what could possibly have possessed him, then I cannot recommend highly enough
“KILLING FOR COMPANY - The Case Of Dennis Nilsen” by BRIAN MASTERS published by Jonathan Cape in 1985.
After all, any right thinking person and socially sensitive observer would have to concur, that an all consuming, uncontrollable hatred for that very suburbia from which so many serial executors are drawn is really the primary common factor in all these sobering tales.
Furthermore, and potentially more disturbing to the self-deceiving, I must grudgingly suggest that any right thinking and sensitive person would also have to empathize with that hatred, whilst being careful not to condone necessarily these particularly gruesome expressions of it.
So, anyway, returning reluctantly to the onerous task I have pledged to fulfill; this is a vile book reveling in vicarious consumption on every possible level. It is a gratuitous consumer product in and of itself so
superficial and dull in content that it makes tabloids in the genus of National Enquirer sparkle like James Joyce’s “Ulysses” in comparison.
The Menendez brothers are consumed with such immature and ineffective greed compounded by a mental retardation that acknowledging this the only shocking aspect of this drivel. Suburbia was for the post-Warholian 15 minutes or so, consumed with vicarious fascination. Norma was consumed
with a blatantly self-deceiving obsession for Lyle (Of course this dreadful, dreadful housewife wanted to fuck him!). Erik and Lyle consumed the media attention. The public consumed the media sensationalism. And on and on...A typical American fable of rags to body bags.
Really, all you can say is. What a bunch of repulsive people. Stupid, mundane, unglamorous, uninspired, disposable, vacuous middle-class foolish, repulsive people. Bungling, masturbatory, opportunist, amoral,
vainglorious, unattractive, repulsive people.
Blessedly, this cast of idiots have either crawled back under the rank stones from whence they came, or been consigned officially under more architecturally demanding, but equally dank, official stones.
Which would be fine and dandy if it was an interesting tale well told. But it’s not. It’s a “crock of shit” as you americans would say, and I can only wholeheartedly concur, european though I am.
Genesis P-Orridge
Mike Walker also wrote “NICOLE BROWN SIMPSON-THE PRIVATE DIARY OF A LIFE INTERRUPTED” which tends to confirm one’s impression of him from this book, particularly from his introduction, as a self-serving and barely literate parasite.
As for the disgracefully adolescent Norma Novelli ... “What a pathetic loser she was!” I use a past tense in reference to her because she was nothing before she attached herself to Lyle Menendez in a menopausal crush, and she has returned to being less than nothing since.
Lyle’s conviction for the “brutal shotgun slayings” of his parents is supposedly exposed and analyzed by this tedious book and its unique angle of having reprinted “actual diaries”. The usual pseudo-psychological;
society’s right to know; prevention of future murder by familiarity with the “mind of a cold killer” and righteous curiosity reasons are glibly trotted out as justification. I resent having wasted my precious time, an irreplaceable part of my life trying to read this garbage.
Yes! A plague upon thee and all who doth sail in thee, oh morass of apathy and puss drenched conformity that be suburbia! I say. Oh, that feels better!
If you do seriously wish to enter uncannily into the existential world of a sociopathic serial killer and the obsessive mind of a sadistic pervert more completely and shatteringly than you could ever have imagined; complete with the inclusion of his journal entries, his drawings of death scenes and poems, even self-searching dialogues by the murderer himself. A lost soul chillingly and articulately trying to understand how it came to this, and what could possibly have possessed him, then I cannot recommend highly enough
“KILLING FOR COMPANY - The Case Of Dennis Nilsen” by BRIAN MASTERS published by Jonathan Cape in 1985.
After all, any right thinking person and socially sensitive observer would have to concur, that an all consuming, uncontrollable hatred for that very suburbia from which so many serial executors are drawn is really the primary common factor in all these sobering tales.
Furthermore, and potentially more disturbing to the self-deceiving, I must grudgingly suggest that any right thinking and sensitive person would also have to empathize with that hatred, whilst being careful not to condone necessarily these particularly gruesome expressions of it.
So, anyway, returning reluctantly to the onerous task I have pledged to fulfill; this is a vile book reveling in vicarious consumption on every possible level. It is a gratuitous consumer product in and of itself so
superficial and dull in content that it makes tabloids in the genus of National Enquirer sparkle like James Joyce’s “Ulysses” in comparison.
The Menendez brothers are consumed with such immature and ineffective greed compounded by a mental retardation that acknowledging this the only shocking aspect of this drivel. Suburbia was for the post-Warholian 15 minutes or so, consumed with vicarious fascination. Norma was consumed
with a blatantly self-deceiving obsession for Lyle (Of course this dreadful, dreadful housewife wanted to fuck him!). Erik and Lyle consumed the media attention. The public consumed the media sensationalism. And on and on...A typical American fable of rags to body bags.
Really, all you can say is. What a bunch of repulsive people. Stupid, mundane, unglamorous, uninspired, disposable, vacuous middle-class foolish, repulsive people. Bungling, masturbatory, opportunist, amoral,
vainglorious, unattractive, repulsive people.
Blessedly, this cast of idiots have either crawled back under the rank stones from whence they came, or been consigned officially under more architecturally demanding, but equally dank, official stones.
Which would be fine and dandy if it was an interesting tale well told. But it’s not. It’s a “crock of shit” as you americans would say, and I can only wholeheartedly concur, european though I am.
Genesis P-Orridge
BOOK REVIEW by GENESIS BREYER P-ORRIDGE :“MAD LOVE” - by ANDRE BRETON
BOOK REVIEW by GENESIS BREYER P-ORRIDGE :“MAD LOVE” - by ANDRE BRETON
I recall sitting more than once with Brion Gysin in his Paris apartment discussing so, so extremely earnestly, the implications of his exploration and proseletisation of “Cut-Ups” as a metaphorical direction for the creative arts to follow in the parallel wake of splitting the atom. It seemed then, and continues to seem to me now, that this entire post-war, post-modern era can only begin to make sense, and through that making sense, function as a necessary “circumstantial magick”, in relation to an all pervading awareness
of the incisive cultural fragmentation grenade that “cutting-up” the matter of consensus reality has lobbed into our exterior and interior cultural immune systems.
Gysin knew Breton in the earliest surrealist group times. In fact Breton kicked him out of the very First Surrealist Show of drawings held in Paris in 1935, supposedly for an imaginal decadence and apolitical artistic approach.
I can only assume today, with hindsight, that Brion at some point early on read “MAD LOVE”. He was certainly in proximity to it, and fluent in French, unlike most of us probably on both counts. In fact, he often hinted to me that the radical structural seed, scattered with such abandon by Breton throughout “Mad Love”, could well have been the fecund source of what germinated within Gysin’s fertile first, second, and third minds in a direct line of genetic descent from this text.
Well, here is the other amazingly good news! This book is not the dogmatic surrealist stream of consciousness satirizing romantic love you might expect.
It is actually a deeply sentimental treatment of the chivalrous search for the biggest love possible. A love that explodes with “convulsive beauty” and represents from the depths of “ the human crucible” a preordained
demonstration at its most ecstatic and passionate vibrancy, decanted directly from the joyous melting pot of memory.
Mad Love moves anecdotally between Breton’s passionate search for ideal love; ideal art and ideal chance as a unifying factor and valediction of everything. This is dense and charming, clarifying and inspiring. It is so
refreshing to see romantic love included in the philosophy of revelation through “random chance”.
I always wondered about the artistic lineage of the “Cut-Up” for I felt sure there truly must be an essential missing-link between Gysin’s “Cut-Ups” and Breton’s Surrealist “fortuitous” automatism. Well, here, at long, long last we have it confirmed. “MAD LOVE”, therefore, absolutely insists that it is filed, well-thumbed, on your “Cut-Up” reference bookshelves right next to Brion Gysin’s “THE THIRD MIND”; “LET THE MICE IN” and “HERE TO GO”. These are the foundation stones of any and all credible past, present and future investigations of romantic art, romantic life, and romantic love; which are, you see, quite incontrovertibly and sacredly insisting that they are one and the same quest and process.
Anything built from or for less than total love, total gender and total war on any thing habituated as culture or character by our mindlessly billowing species is simply littering existence with cheap distractions that pointlessly extol built in obsolescence with the sole, paltry function of consuming forever the last traces of nobility and purpose.
As Brion Gysin, Andre Breton and the debacle of contemporary semantics so invitingly invite us to... ”Let’s cut it up, to see what it really says.”
FOREVER!
Genesis P-Orridge
I recall sitting more than once with Brion Gysin in his Paris apartment discussing so, so extremely earnestly, the implications of his exploration and proseletisation of “Cut-Ups” as a metaphorical direction for the creative arts to follow in the parallel wake of splitting the atom. It seemed then, and continues to seem to me now, that this entire post-war, post-modern era can only begin to make sense, and through that making sense, function as a necessary “circumstantial magick”, in relation to an all pervading awareness
of the incisive cultural fragmentation grenade that “cutting-up” the matter of consensus reality has lobbed into our exterior and interior cultural immune systems.
Gysin knew Breton in the earliest surrealist group times. In fact Breton kicked him out of the very First Surrealist Show of drawings held in Paris in 1935, supposedly for an imaginal decadence and apolitical artistic approach.
I can only assume today, with hindsight, that Brion at some point early on read “MAD LOVE”. He was certainly in proximity to it, and fluent in French, unlike most of us probably on both counts. In fact, he often hinted to me that the radical structural seed, scattered with such abandon by Breton throughout “Mad Love”, could well have been the fecund source of what germinated within Gysin’s fertile first, second, and third minds in a direct line of genetic descent from this text.
Well, here is the other amazingly good news! This book is not the dogmatic surrealist stream of consciousness satirizing romantic love you might expect.
It is actually a deeply sentimental treatment of the chivalrous search for the biggest love possible. A love that explodes with “convulsive beauty” and represents from the depths of “ the human crucible” a preordained
demonstration at its most ecstatic and passionate vibrancy, decanted directly from the joyous melting pot of memory.
Mad Love moves anecdotally between Breton’s passionate search for ideal love; ideal art and ideal chance as a unifying factor and valediction of everything. This is dense and charming, clarifying and inspiring. It is so
refreshing to see romantic love included in the philosophy of revelation through “random chance”.
I always wondered about the artistic lineage of the “Cut-Up” for I felt sure there truly must be an essential missing-link between Gysin’s “Cut-Ups” and Breton’s Surrealist “fortuitous” automatism. Well, here, at long, long last we have it confirmed. “MAD LOVE”, therefore, absolutely insists that it is filed, well-thumbed, on your “Cut-Up” reference bookshelves right next to Brion Gysin’s “THE THIRD MIND”; “LET THE MICE IN” and “HERE TO GO”. These are the foundation stones of any and all credible past, present and future investigations of romantic art, romantic life, and romantic love; which are, you see, quite incontrovertibly and sacredly insisting that they are one and the same quest and process.
Anything built from or for less than total love, total gender and total war on any thing habituated as culture or character by our mindlessly billowing species is simply littering existence with cheap distractions that pointlessly extol built in obsolescence with the sole, paltry function of consuming forever the last traces of nobility and purpose.
As Brion Gysin, Andre Breton and the debacle of contemporary semantics so invitingly invite us to... ”Let’s cut it up, to see what it really says.”
FOREVER!
Genesis P-Orridge
BOOK REVIEW by GENESIS BREYER P-ORRIDGE :MICHAEL JACKSON WAS MY LOVER
MICHAEL JACKSON WAS MY LOVER
Forget Lydia Lunch, Nick Zed, Henry Rollins, Michael Gira and all thosecontemporary writers trying to achieve an ultimate expression of sordid nihilism and depravity layer by layer. This is the shit! This book outstrips them all. Superstar diarrhea dribbling into shoes; tampons up the ass to plug the loose anal sphincter; physically damaging excessive enemas; paedophiliac consensual cocksucking; prostitution of their very own minors consummated via the feigned naivete of compliant parents; gross out greed and paltry pay-offs; a virile, rampant, eruption of egomania that makes Hitler’s megalomaniac ambition a withered stump by comparison, all this pure filth and Macaulay Caulkins warm, wet lips too!
Yippee! Nobody can ever compete. Everyone should at the very least have this book in their toilet for guests as a matter of decadent etiquette. Perfect water closet reading for the closet cases.
Forget the relentless character assassination of Goldman’s Lennon book. Or any Elvis expose. Here we have achieved a nirvana of the gratuitous. Thank you Victor, Oh, thank you Victor!
All my life I hoped that a book that proclaimed it told you “the whole unexpurgated, shocking story” would really do it. 50 years after my birth, here it is. This is the most perfectly fabulous and amoral book about the
excess and undeserved privilege accorded the celebrated, successful and rich in America ever to be inked onto dead trees. Everything it claims to contain is contained within its hallowed bowels, and more, and more.
Fantastic. I can’t believe that it’s not exposed prominently in every cornershop Bodega, supermarket and bookstore chain across America and number one in the best sellers lists everywhere! As the back says: “The Boy Reveals how he got to know Jackson (and sex);
Trips to Foreign countries with Jackson (and sex); What he saw when Jackson got naked in front of him (and sex); the sexual games he played with Jackson (and more sex). There are snapshots, love notes, depositions, even spindly drawings of Michael’s malodorous and “smelly” penis by the boy; (oh, “the boy”, by the way, is Jordie Chandler who rather surprisingly is credited with having co-written the screenplay for “Robin Hood-Men In Tights” with his father at age 10. Go figure!)
It has to be noted however, that, falling temporarily prey to his acute sense of social responsibility and his principles of investigative journalism with integrity, Victor M. Gutierrez does dwell a little too much upon the mundane legal ramifications and maneuverings of all the parties involved for my prurient tastes. Although, I guess, upon reflection, I am forced to concede that it probably is, in the end, important to be led through the opportunist treacle that glues every character forever together in Michael “Willy Wonka” Jackson’s sexual Chocolate Factory.
After all, this is a real-life (real?), fairy-tale with multiple professedly happy endings. A terminally degraded Michael Jackson gets his man, or rather his boy, and gets away with it. Jordie Chandler gets his man, or rather his paedomorphic superhero and millions of dollars in perpetuity. Daddy Chandler gets his boys, notoriety and access to millions of dollars. Mummy Chandler gets vacations with her endearing superstar, nice gifts of expensive watches and jewelry, and the rewarding parental pleasure of seeing her beloved son taken good care of by the man, or rather boy, Jackson. Victor gets his man, mother and boys, and, I sincerely hope because he deserves to, his own share of dollars. Yes, sirree, it’s that good old fashioned American success story once again.
This kind of shameless self-corruption is what made America great; and I for one am deeply grateful. There is something calming, and infinitely reassuring about having ones deepest cynicism about human nature and its
innate badness confirmed so rapidly, uproariously and completely. I can sleep better now, safe in the knowledge that the poor scum get banged up, but that the rich and famous scum are, and will always remain, pillars of the community in any truly democratic, and free, society. All hail the American
dream.
Genesis P-Orridge
Forget Lydia Lunch, Nick Zed, Henry Rollins, Michael Gira and all thosecontemporary writers trying to achieve an ultimate expression of sordid nihilism and depravity layer by layer. This is the shit! This book outstrips them all. Superstar diarrhea dribbling into shoes; tampons up the ass to plug the loose anal sphincter; physically damaging excessive enemas; paedophiliac consensual cocksucking; prostitution of their very own minors consummated via the feigned naivete of compliant parents; gross out greed and paltry pay-offs; a virile, rampant, eruption of egomania that makes Hitler’s megalomaniac ambition a withered stump by comparison, all this pure filth and Macaulay Caulkins warm, wet lips too!
Yippee! Nobody can ever compete. Everyone should at the very least have this book in their toilet for guests as a matter of decadent etiquette. Perfect water closet reading for the closet cases.
Forget the relentless character assassination of Goldman’s Lennon book. Or any Elvis expose. Here we have achieved a nirvana of the gratuitous. Thank you Victor, Oh, thank you Victor!
All my life I hoped that a book that proclaimed it told you “the whole unexpurgated, shocking story” would really do it. 50 years after my birth, here it is. This is the most perfectly fabulous and amoral book about the
excess and undeserved privilege accorded the celebrated, successful and rich in America ever to be inked onto dead trees. Everything it claims to contain is contained within its hallowed bowels, and more, and more.
Fantastic. I can’t believe that it’s not exposed prominently in every cornershop Bodega, supermarket and bookstore chain across America and number one in the best sellers lists everywhere! As the back says: “The Boy Reveals how he got to know Jackson (and sex);
Trips to Foreign countries with Jackson (and sex); What he saw when Jackson got naked in front of him (and sex); the sexual games he played with Jackson (and more sex). There are snapshots, love notes, depositions, even spindly drawings of Michael’s malodorous and “smelly” penis by the boy; (oh, “the boy”, by the way, is Jordie Chandler who rather surprisingly is credited with having co-written the screenplay for “Robin Hood-Men In Tights” with his father at age 10. Go figure!)
It has to be noted however, that, falling temporarily prey to his acute sense of social responsibility and his principles of investigative journalism with integrity, Victor M. Gutierrez does dwell a little too much upon the mundane legal ramifications and maneuverings of all the parties involved for my prurient tastes. Although, I guess, upon reflection, I am forced to concede that it probably is, in the end, important to be led through the opportunist treacle that glues every character forever together in Michael “Willy Wonka” Jackson’s sexual Chocolate Factory.
After all, this is a real-life (real?), fairy-tale with multiple professedly happy endings. A terminally degraded Michael Jackson gets his man, or rather his boy, and gets away with it. Jordie Chandler gets his man, or rather his paedomorphic superhero and millions of dollars in perpetuity. Daddy Chandler gets his boys, notoriety and access to millions of dollars. Mummy Chandler gets vacations with her endearing superstar, nice gifts of expensive watches and jewelry, and the rewarding parental pleasure of seeing her beloved son taken good care of by the man, or rather boy, Jackson. Victor gets his man, mother and boys, and, I sincerely hope because he deserves to, his own share of dollars. Yes, sirree, it’s that good old fashioned American success story once again.
This kind of shameless self-corruption is what made America great; and I for one am deeply grateful. There is something calming, and infinitely reassuring about having ones deepest cynicism about human nature and its
innate badness confirmed so rapidly, uproariously and completely. I can sleep better now, safe in the knowledge that the poor scum get banged up, but that the rich and famous scum are, and will always remain, pillars of the community in any truly democratic, and free, society. All hail the American
dream.
Genesis P-Orridge
BOOK REVIEW by GENESIS BREYER P-ORRIDGE: SATANIC CRIME
SATANIC CRIME
Presumably this book is intended for the fundamentally handicapped.We are severely morally challenged and our gullibility retarded if we evenconsider this any more than preaching to the willfully converted. It’s a bit
like books for people who construct model airplanes, but only model airplanes of Rhodesian Biplanes built between 1924 and 1925. Unless you have an obsessive vested interest and need confirmation of your mania, it’s meaningless.
Oh, and by the way, the factual and even circumstantial evidence, of a thriving Biplane Construction Industry in Rhodesia between 1924 and 1925 is far more compelling and believable than this!
GENESIS P-ORRIDGE
Presumably this book is intended for the fundamentally handicapped.We are severely morally challenged and our gullibility retarded if we evenconsider this any more than preaching to the willfully converted. It’s a bit
like books for people who construct model airplanes, but only model airplanes of Rhodesian Biplanes built between 1924 and 1925. Unless you have an obsessive vested interest and need confirmation of your mania, it’s meaningless.
Oh, and by the way, the factual and even circumstantial evidence, of a thriving Biplane Construction Industry in Rhodesia between 1924 and 1925 is far more compelling and believable than this!
GENESIS P-ORRIDGE
AGENT OF CHANGE - THE LSD CHRONICLES
AGENT OF CHANGE - THE LSD CHRONICLES
compiled by Boris Hießerer (Pyromania Arts Foundation & Doors Of Perception Ethic Committee)
I’ve often been called “the father of LSD” and that raises the question: Who is the mother? The mother is “Ergot”, a mushroom called “Mutterkorn” (mother-corn) in German. She gave birth to some of my pharmaceutical children. The first was “Metagin” with birth-supporting effects. The second was the “LSD”. While “Metagin” helps to give birth to a physical child, LSD has proved itself to be very helpful to bear the spiritual child, which lies latent in all Human beings. LSD is acting upon the spiritual world, this constellation is no coincidence but the intention of a higher authority.“
Dr. Albert Hofmann, Santa Cruz, California (USA
‘ERGOT’ or ‘MOTHERCORN’- the mother of LSD
11.000 BC The nomadic hunters and collectors of the early ice age start a settled existence in the area of the Taurus- and Zagros mountains of upper Mesopotamia and begin to collect wild wheats. First stone buildings are erected in the mids of this ‘Eden’ like cereal cradle of ‘Gobekli Tepe’ between Iran and Irak.
7000-6000 BCThe first farmers move from the mountains down to the Persian Gulf and found the first highly sophisticated civilisation: ‘Sumer’. The Sumerian sage contains references to the “paradise mountain Do-ku”, to “the flood” and to the “first earth-born human couple”.
3500 BC In old Egyptian religion ‘Osiris’, the god of vegetation, death and resurrection is an embodiment of the wheat crops.
2900 BC In China, Mesopotamia and central Europa the vegetation- and grain-goddesses are honoured as transmitters of knowlegde, responsible for technological quantum leaps as dyke building, writing and agriculture. Sumerian frescos appear, showing how mycelial fruits are growing from the shoulders of the grain goddess ‘Nisaba’ or ‘Ninhursag’.
1750-1200 BC Das ökumenische ‘KonzilThe ‘Rig Veda’ (indish book of wisdom) mentiones the hallucinogen qualities of the drink of the god’s, called ‘soma’. *** In Greece ‘Ambrosia’ or ‘Amrita’ (sanskrit for immortality) is the life’s elixier and food of the gods.
1500 BC Europe’s most famous initiation rites are the “Mysteries of Eleusis”. Honoring the grain goddess “Demeter” and her daughter “Persephone”, pilgrims walk from Athens to Eleusis. Here they receive a drink known as ‘Kykeon’, a psychoactive beverage containing Ergot (Mutter- or motherkorn) a mushroom parasite on rye. Homer praises the utterly purifying experience in a hymn as well as the initiants Cicero & Pinar.
650-600 BC The heroe of the Gilgamesh Epos finds a ‘plant of immortality’ wich transforms into a snake. *** The Assyrians mention a “harmful pustule in the corns ear”.
450 BC Hippocrates mentions abortion in certain women after a wet winter and dry spring (supporting the ergot parasites growth), and elsewhere he attributes an oxytocic action to barley (assumed to be ergotized).
350 BC The Parner hold evidence that corn seeds have a harmful effect to pregnant woman: resulting in uterine prolapses and the sudden death’s of unborn children.
200 BC The creation story of the bible’s in the old testament is drawn up by a jewish rabby. In his version of ‘Eden’s first drug bust’ the ‘tree of knowledge’ and the ‘tree of immortality’ play an important role. He uses the apple as the tree’s magical fruit, as “malus” (bad) was earlier translated with ‘apple’ into latin.
300-325 AD The god ‘Attis’ symbolizes the harvested corn and cutten crop in the area between Turkey and Iran. *** The ‘Concilum of Nicaeum’ results in the official condemnation of all cults, opposing the catholic doctrine. The gnostic knowledge with it’s “Great Mystery” cults and ancient goddess-whorshipping rites, is driven underground.
395 AD The Eleusian temples are destroyed by the gothic king Alarich. *** With the christianisation the ancient “mystery cults”, having existed in ‘Eleusis’ and elsewhere, for more than 2000 years, disappear.
875 The first historical data of people intoxicated by ergot-parasitized flour. “Ergotism”, the first historical known mass-hysteria spreads in Xanten, northern Germany during the middle ages. *** In Spain the plague is called “Magdalena lichen”. In Europe’s south, tarantula spiders are held responsible for the poisoning, although it is clear that most cases are unrelated to spiders.
994 About 40.000 citizens of Aquitaine and Limousin (France) die from hunger, holy fire and pestilence. The ergotism and the ergot alkaloids receive their name after the french “argot” - it is related to the parasite on wheat and barley crops.
1021 Starving people eat rye-flower from infected crops. Ergot epidemic appears all across Europe. *** The treatment of ergotism-victims begins (1100). Religious ceremonies exorcise the ergotism as if it is the work of demons. The plague and the people”s wounds are termed “Antonius Fire” as St. Antonius becomes the patroned saint of the poisoned.
1207 Rumi Masnavi the founder of the Turkish dervish order writes In his Ma’navi poetry about the gnosis revealing, transformative character of the wheat seed.
1278 The name “Choros-“, “St. Vitus-”or “Maniac Dancing” was adopted after a group of 200 people danced so spiritedly on a bridge, above the Maas river in Germany, that it collapsed, killing many. Survivors were treated in the nearby chapel St. Vitus. *** A group of people in Aix-la-Chapelle uncontrollably dancing in the streets until exhaustion, foaming from the mouth, convulsing and hallucinating (1374). The “Dancing sickness” in Germany: in Cologne 500, in Metz 1100 people dance in the streets. Music and dance seem to be the only effective remedy against the ergot-gangrene. The mania reaches Strasbourg in the year 1418 when thousands of dancers fill the streets to “rock around the clock”.
1500 Jheronimus Bosch paints the “Temptation of St. Antonius” as well as “Holy Antonius fire” victims with leg- and arm amputations. *** In his “Herbal Book”, botanic doctor Adam Lonitzer publishes the first exact description of “mutterkorn” (Claviceps purpurea) growing on grain and responsible for the epidemic “Ergotism” (1582) *** In central Europe healers & witches are wisdom-keepers of advanced herbal knowledge *** Johann VI. kindles up the witch hunt in Germany. Around Berlin 306 people in 20 villages are burnt to death.
1600 While ergotism slowly disappears, the “manic dancing” becomes a subject of medical research. “St. Vitus dance” is stripped of its unhallowed character as a work of demons by Dr. Paracelsus. *** Ergotism returns in the french district Sologne (1630, 1676, 1709, 1747, 1770, 1777) as well as in Germany, Russia and Scandinavia. *** The Frenchman Tuillier feeds chickens with ergot-infected grain, to detect the reason for the spreading of the so called “Antonius fire”, also named “holy Sanctus” (1630) *** The effects of ergotism leads to a witch hunt hysteria in Salem, Massachusetts (1692), described in detail in Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible” (1953).*** Angelus Silesius experiences singularity using the ‘philosophers Stone.
1700 Dungeon, torture and death as punishment for participation in the mushroom-cult are strong motives for the alchemists to keep their practice of self-intoxication disquised. *** Knowing that midwifes have used Ergot “Secale cornutum” since ages to trigger labour contractions, Rudolf Jakob Camerarius turns “Pulvis ad partum” into one of the most important birth supporting medicines used until 1907. ***
1770 “Ergotism” spreads like the plague in central Europe: Celle, Hamburg, Duisburg *** 20.000 deaths alone in the army of “Peter the Great” (1772) *** 8.000 die during a mass-intoxication in Sologne (France).*** Finally in Germany a doctor Johann Taube recognizes “Mutterkorn” as the cause for “Ergotism”. He terms it “Kriebel sickness”. *** The farmers revolt (begin of the French Revolution) and rich and commercial cities become the scene of ruinous disorder (1789). Messengers are sent out to inform farmers and people about the facts leading to ergot-plagues & the so called Antonius disease.
1808 The “Roggenmuhme” (grain or rye-mother) appears in german folklore. Through the work and study of the US-American doctor John Stearns, the uterus-contracting ‘Ergot’ enters officially into medicine (Gynecology).
1824 Because of its toxicity the critic Dr. Hosack terms Camerarius’s“Pulvis ad partum” “Pulvis ad mortum”.
1918 At the swisse Sandoz laboratories Dr. Werner Arthur Stoll succeeds in isolating the most important functional ingredients of alkaloid derivates in “Ergot” or “mothercorn”.
1927 11000 people in the Ukraine (USSR) are infected with the horrible ergot-disease.
1931 Dr. Barger edits and publishes the history of “mutterkorn” and ergot related sicknesses in his Monograph “Ergot and Ergotism”.
1933 Publication of Leo Peruz’s novel “St. Petri Schnee” (St. Peters snow) describes the extraction of a medicine from “Mutterkorn”, to experience psychic reactions similar to religious ecstasy and deep happiness.
LSD-25 (LYSERGIC ACID DI-ETHYLAMIDE) - the child
1938 LSD-25 (the 25th compound in a series of semi-synthetic lysergic acid amides produced by a laboratory syntheses of ergot alkaloids, is formulated by Dr. Albert Hofmann at Sandoz Pharmaceutical Laboratories in Basel. Tested on laboratory animals it is making them “restless”. LSD-25 is not deemed sufficiently interesting to test further. (Other lysergic acid derivatives are proven useful obstetrics, geriatrics and the treatment of migraine headaches.)
1942 Ergot poisoning: in “Mighty Mouse vs. The Ergot”, the cartoon character - “Here I come to save the day” - experiences hallucinatoric states of consciousness.
1943 (April 16th) Dr. Hofmann experiences “a peculiar presentiment” that LSD-25 might well be valuable as a circulatory or respiratory stimulant and decides intuitively to re-synthesize this compound. (April 16) Performing with LSD-25 at his Sandoz laboratory, Hofmann accidentally absorbs a miniscule amount of the substance through the skin of his finger. The amount is probably equal to a dose of 50 micrograms. He experiences “a strange inebriation … a kaleidoscopic play of colors” that lasted 3-4 hours.
1943 (April 19th) Dr. Hofmann deliberately ingests what he considers to be the smallest, most conservative amount of the compound LSD-25. 250 microgram, (a full trip). He commences to write laboratory notes after he notices the effect within an hour. But soon he can no longer write anything and decides to ride home on his bicycle. The effects then get much stronger and his trip becomes fully blown. Suffering great anxiety, he calls for the doctor. The next morning he feels unusually good, no hangover despite the profound effects - in fact, he writes “excellent physical & mental condition”. Within the next weeks the drug is tested by Dr. Hofmann”s colleagues, whom confirm his reactions. No substance yet known to mankind acts psychoactively in such infinitely small amounts.
1943 Announcement of the synthesis of lysergic acid diethyl-amide-25(LSD) appears in a Swiss chemical journal, without mentioning its mental effects.
1947 Appearance (by Werner A. Stoll in a Swiss medical journal) of the first report of the mental effects of LSD & the results of 19 administrations to 16 normal subjects and twenty occasions to six schizophrenics at Zürich University. The results convince Sandoz to send out LSD samples to psychiatric hospitals worldwide. LSD-25’s brand name becomes “Delysid”.
1949 CIA-leader Allan Dulles initiates a secret program code named “Operation Bluebird” to discover the potential use of LSD. *** Three further papers on the mental effects of LSD by W. Stoll”s Swiss team are published *** Dr. Max Rinkel, research psychiatrist at the Boston Psychopathic Hospital is the first doctor working with LSD-25. He brings it into the USA. The first trip is taken by Dr. Hyde, Rinkel”s associate who resists the drug and experiences paranoia. Another one of Rinkel”s early experimental subjects is a Boston cab driver; the LSD experience helps him to move out of his mother”s home. *** Dr. Nicholas Bercel, a Los Angeles psychiatrist is given LSD by Stoll; he takes it to L.A., to begin testing on subjects in his private practice.
1950 Drs. Rinkel & Hyde report to the American Psychology Association (APA) on the results of testing LSD on 100 subjects. *** At the same meeting Dr. Paul Hoch introduces the “psychotromimetic” (psychosis-mimicking theory of LSD), raising hopes that schizophrenia may have a biochemical basis that could be duplicated in a laboratory and someday used in finding a cure. *** Drs. A. Busch & W. C. Johnson are the first to use LSD in a psychotherapy and to publish a report on their believe that it can shorten treatments. *** Reports of LSD”s “madness-provoking” qualities reach the CIA, which immediately sees the possibility of using the drug as a weapon for chemical warfare. Also against the drug being used against Americans by their enemies in Russia, whom (as it is erroneously) reported, had “just purchased 50 Million doses LSD from Sandoz”.
1951 Dr. Albert Hofmann isolates the psychoactive ‘Psylocibin’ from the “magic mushrooms” brought to him by the english banker Gordon Wasson, as well as LSA from the ‘Ololiqui’ seeds, two ceremonial drugs from Mexico. The new discovery is that LSD belongs to the family of sacred native mexican witchcraft plants. *** Albert Hofmann tripped on LSD with writer Ernst Jünger *** Operation Bluebird is renamed “Operation Artichoke”, as the CIA”s drug program becomes more ambitious and wide ranging. *** The citizens of the french village Pont-Saint-Espirit are suddenly and mysteriously struck down with mass insanity and hallucinations. At least five people die, dozens are interned in asylums and hundreds afflicted.
1952 Charles Savage publishes the first study on the use of LSD to treat depression. *** At Weyburn Hospital in Saskatchewan, a team of psychiatrists lead by Abram Hoffer, Humphrey Osmond, J. R. Smythies and Duncan Blewett begin clinical research with mescaline and later LSD, developing biochemical models. They successfully treat alcoholics and mentally sick patients.
1953 The first LSD-clinic opens in England under Dr. Ronald Sandison; leading to the conduction of clinical research in other European countries, with the ‘psycholytic’ model (giving repeated low doses) prevailing. *** “Operation MK-ULTRA” headed by Richard Helms & Dr. Sidney Gottlieb are in charge use POW from Korea as Artichoke-test subject; the agency tries to purchase 10 kilograms of LSD (100,000,000 doses) from Sandoz for $240,000. The CIA receives 100 grams a week. It secretly funds the work of American researchers and finances the ‘Josiah Macy conferences’ where the LSD and mescaline research is presented. Over the next 12 years MK-ULTRA runs 149 separate LSD projects at 154 institutions, frequently they use ‘dirty tricks’ - none of them made public attention; some deaths and many mental breakdowns were the result. *** Army Bacteriologist and CIA member Frank Olson dies in Front of New Yorks Pennsylvania Hotel after a covered CIA assassination. *** Aldous Huxley takes mescaline, provided by Humphry Osmond in Los Angeles and finds it not unlike a state of gratuitous grace. *** With the “magic mushrooms” Robert Gordon Wasson re-discovers remains of the ancient mexican plant-therapeutic science and mushroom cults.
1954 Medical student Stanislav Grof begins experimenting with LSD in the Psychiatric Research Institute in Prague. *** Huxley publishes “The Doors of Perception.” *** CIA service staff take LSD. OSS (former CIA) operative Captain Al Hubbard, reformed by LSD, purchases 4,000 vials from Sandoz and begins distributing it by airplane from Vancouver to California. He’s championing LSD as a mystical drug with great psychotherapeutic potential and introduces the concept of high-dose (psychedelic) therapy. *** Publication of classified CIA memorandum about LSD as a potential new agent for unconventional warfare. *** Encouraged by the CIA, the Eli Lilly Pharmaceutical Company breaks the secret formula held by Sandoz and begins producing LSD for (legal and illegal) U.S. government research programs.
1955 Dr. Oscar Janinger, Los Angeles psychotherapist receives LSD from Sandoz and initiates large-scale experiments with 875 artists, actors, and other members of the creative community (ex. Cary Grant, James Coburn, Anais Nin, Jack Nicholson, Rita Monero, Anre Pervin) *** Huxley begins self-experimenting with LSD; he and his wife Laura guide each other’s trips. *** First conferences devoted exclusively to LSD & mescaline take place in Atlantic City and Princeton, NJ. *** Wassons participates in a “Velada”, a mexican psilocybin mushroom ritual with shaman (Curandera) Maria Sabina. *** Lord Christopher Mayhew takes mescaline at a BBC-recording studio, the film disappears in the archives for more than 20 years.
1956 R. R. Gordon Wasson has the idea that indo-alkaloids might have been the base for the “Kykeon” drink in the great mystery cult of Eleusis. *** Huxley publishes ‘Heaven and Hell’, the sequel to ‘The Doors of Perception’. *** R. H. Ward’s “A Drug Taker’s Note”, the first personal account of the LSD therapy is published in England.
1957 Life Magazine’s publication of Gordon Wasson’s adventure with “magic” mushrooms introduces the notion of psychedelic experience to a mainstream audience. Mrs. Wasson publishes her account in “This Week”. *** Hofmann synthesizes Psylocibin, the active agent of the mexican mushrooms and the CIA immediately purchases these pills for experiments. *** Humphrey Osmond introduces the term “Psychedelic” at the New York Academy of Sciences conference. His research team in Saskatchewan begins using single high doses of LSD in therapy with alcoholics; an approach adopted also by Ron Hubbard (Church of Scientology founder) at the Hollywood Hospital in Vancouver.
1958 Drs. Sidney Cohen and Keith Ditman begin large-scale experiments with LSD at the VA Hospital at UCLA. *** Duncan Blewett & Nick Chwelos published the first handbook for using LSD in individual and group psychotherapy in Sasketchewan.*** Actor Cary Grant discusses the positive effects of his LSD sessions in a magazine interview.
1959 Cary Grant after his LSD Trip: “I was reborn”.*** Writers Alan Ginsberg and Ken Kesey take LSD at the VA Hospital in Palo Alto and Menlo Park in a research study secretly founded and sponsored by the CIA; subjects were paid 150 US-Dollar for a LSD session. *** Hofmann extracts lysergic acid amides from the seeds of the morning glory flower (used by ancient mesomexicans under the name “”Ololiqui”), proving that LSD can exist in higher plants.
1960 Harvard invites psychology professor Timothy Leary “to study the change of human behaviour”. Leary ingests psylocibin mushrooms in Cuernavaca, Mexico, returns to Harvard to set up a psychedelic research project with Frank Barron. He invites Huxley, Alan Watts, Arthur Koestler, Beat writers Ginsberg, Peter Orlovsky, William Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, Neil Cassady, Charles Olson, jazz musician Maynard Ferguson, etc. *** John Beresford buys one gramm of LSD-25 from Sandoz for 269 US-Dollar thinking that it would be four portions instead of four-thousand. This magic gramm went into a couple of thousand people, among them Tim Leary, Jean Houston, Keith Richards, Paul McCartney a.m.o..
1961 Aldous Huxley and Tim Leary give lectures on LSD and behaviour change at an international psychology conference in Copenhagen. *** Prof. Richard Alpert and graduate student Ralph Metzner join Leary’s group, which develops the concept of “set and setting” as trip determinants. *** Concord Prison Project commences, in which psilocybin is taken together by Harvard researchers and prisoners, reversing rates of recidivism for the latter group. *** Publication of Exploring Inner Space is the first personal account of LSD therapy in the U.S. by nutritionist Adelle Davis.
1962 The first LSD song appears on a record by The Gamblers. *** “Good Friday” psilocybin experiment conducted by Walter Houston Clark, Walter Pahnke, and Huston Smith in Boston University chapel proves LSD’s value as a sacred drug inducing religious experience. *** The LSD foundation “Agora Scientific Trust” is started by John Beresford, Jean Houston and Robert Masters in New York City. *** The LSD research Center “International Federation for Advanced Study”, is started by Myron Stolaroff and associates in Menlo Park, CA. *** Bernard Roseman and Bernard Copley manufacture the first black market LSD (62.000 tablets); they are later arrested and imprisoned on the false charges of smuggling it from Israel, since manufacturing was illegal there at that time. *** Michael Hollingshead brings his mayonnaise jar containing 5.000 doses of LSD (half on Beresford”s gram obtained from Sandoz) to Harvard and” turns on” Leary, other members of the Harvard research group and later many key british rock “n Roll musicians. *** Harvard Research Group establishes a summer colony in Zihuatanejo in Mexico to explore LSD. *** Alan Watts publishes the “Joyous Cosmology”, Aldous Huxley published “Island”. *** William McGlothlin publishes the first study ever done on the long-lasting effects of LSD. *** President John Kennedy is introduced to LSD by his lover Mary Pinchot Meyer, who received guidelines on tripping sessions from Leary; allegedly they “tripped” in the White House. *** Oklahoma: The scientists West, Pierce and Thomas send the first elephant on an acid trip. Tusko dies during an LSD-Experiment after the fatal injections of LSD, followed by a neuroleptica and a sedative.
1963 Aldous Huxley visiting Dr. Hofmann in Basel, calles LSD the true moksha-medicine of his new novel “Island”. *** The first journal devoted to psychedelic drugs “Psychedelic Review” is launched in Cambridge, MA. *** The first liquid underground LSD appears in the Cambridge area as impregnated sugar cubes. *** More & more articles about LSD appear in the mainstream media (Life; Look; Saturday Evening Post). *** Fired from Harvard, Professor Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert, immediately launche a LSD research program called I.F.I.F. (International Federation for Internal Freedom) in Newton Center, MA. He trains guides to conduct psychedelic sessions; the group is later forced to leave Mexico and Dominica. ***The first modern psychedelic church “Church of the Awakening” incorporated by the Aikens in New Mexico. *** Spring Grove State Hospital, Maryland, becomes a major research center for testing the potential of LSD in psychotherapy. *** Dr. Eric Kast administers LSD in psychotherapy and to terminally ill patients and successfully reduces their pain and anxiety. *** Six hours before his own death in Los Angeles Aldous Huxley requests and is given 100 mg LSD intramuscularly by his wife Laura Hours after he received the news of John F. Kennedy assassination *** Lysergic acid amides extracted from the Baby Hawaiian Wood rose.
1964 Publication of the ‘Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead’ by Leary, Metzner & Alpert, which has never been out of print. *** Leary”s group establishes an LSD cultural research center called Castalia Foundation on the Hichcock estate in Milbrook, New York, and develops the “experimental typewriter” for a meta-communication during the LSD plateau. *** John C. Lilly experiments in the Virgin Islands giving LSD to dolphins and taking it in the samahdi- or isolation tank, which he developed. *** Alexander (Sasha) Shulgin synthesizes DOM, a strong, long-lasting psychedelic. *** Psychedelic Information Centers spring up in Cambridge, Washington DC and elsewhere.
1965 Owsley Acid aka “White Lightening”, “Purple Haze”, “Blue Sheer” etc. (LSD manufactured by Augustus Owsley Stanley) begins to appear in North California in the first large-scale underground LSD manufacturing and distribution (contra-)operation. *** Founding of the Neo-American Church by Art Kleps. *** Hollingshead opens World Psychedelic Center in London and turns on british cultural elite. *** The Beatles inadvertently take their first LSD trip, when a dentist friend of Harrison puts 200 Microdots of LSD in their coffee. *** Lysergic acid amides extracted from Baby Hawaiian Wood rose.
1966 Millbrook raided by sheriff G. Gordon Liddy. *** Kyoki Izumi wins architecture prize for his LSD-inspired mental hospital design. *** First non-academic LSD Conference in San Francisco. *** The League for Spiritual Discovery, an LSD-based religion formed by Leary, produces Psychedelic Celebrations in major cities. *** Acid Tests organized by Kesey’s Merry Pranksters culminate in a “Hippie-Festival” in San Francisco. *** ‘Congressional Hearings on the LSD “epidemic”; Leary, Ginsberg and Kleps testify. *** LSD is made illegal with heavy penalties, October the 6th; the “Love Pageant Rally” is celebrated in Haights-Ashbury on the same day. *** Publishing of ‘The San Francisco Oracle’.
1967 The first “Human Be-In” held at San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. *** Owsley Stanley captured with 200 grams (one million doses) of LSD. *** Appearance of DOM (under the name STP) in San Francisco in high dose tablets causing overdoses. *** Summer of Love apex of LSD counterculture in San Francisco, LA, NYC, London & elsewhere; flourishing of psychedelic poster art, rock music, newspapers (SF Oracle), fashion & lifestyle; Toronto LSD conference; Jimi Hendrix’s “Are You Experienced?”; the Beatles “Sergeant Pepper” album; first LPs by Jefferson Airplane and Grateful Dead.
1968 The manufacturing, sale & distribution of LSD is made illegal by President Lyndon B. Johnson. LSD becomes classified as a category one drug *** Appearance of “Orange Sunshine” (tablet) LSD, manufactured by Tim Scully & Nick Sand. For the following four years it is distributed worldwide by the Brotherhood of Eternal Love (with the involvement of probab le government agent Ronald Stark) . *** Appearances of Leary’s “High Priest & Politics of Ecstasy”; Metzner’s “Ecstatic Adventure”, Laura Huxley’s “Memories of Aldous”. *** First book on psychedelic art. *** Allan Coult starts the International Society for Psychedelic Anthropology.
1969 Woodstock mega-rock-festival. *** The Beatles White Album is published *** Charles Manson triggers the LSD influenced minds of his hippie gang members into the “Tate & La Bianca murders” in Hollywood.
1970 Appearance of “Windowpane” aka “Clearlight” (jelly) underground LSD. *** Founding of Fitz Hugh Ludlow Memorial Library, a psychedelic archive/research center in San Francisco. *** Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher Dock Ellis pitches no-hitter in San Diego while under the influence of LSD. *** Bad Acid vibes at Alamont Rock concert.
1972 Blotter Acid emerges as the primary type of underground LSD; dosages are generally lower than past forms. *** Before leaving office CIA head Richard Helmes secretly orders the destruction of most of the agency”s self-incrimating mind drug research files.
1973 Leary writes “Neurologic”, “Starseed” & “Terra 2′ while imprisoned in U.S. jails.
1974 Alan Ginsberg presents 44 questions about Timothy Leary during the P.I.L.L. (People Investigate Leary”s Lies) press conference in St. Francis Hotel, San Francisco.
1975 The last formal LSD research program is terminated at the Spring Grove Hospital, Maryland. *** Under the influence of LSD Steven Jobs & Steve Wozniak develop “Apple1″, the first suitcase-sized personal computer. *** Stan Grof publishes his theory on perinatal and trans-personal experiences in LSD sessions. *** Alexander Shulgin re-synthesizes MDMA aka. Ecstasy from a 1914 formula by Merck Pharmacies in Darmstadt, Germany.
1976 President Ford narrowly missed being dosed from LSD-laced coffee in Chicago. *** Leary is released from prison *** The Apple computer corporation is founded.
1977 Hofmann, Wasson and Ruck announce the discovery that the sacred hallucinogenic beverage used in the Eleusinian mystery rite in Ancient Greece was a preparation made from ergot from nearby grown barley. *** Senate hearings on the misuse of LSD and the complete disregard for the safety of their experimental subjects in the CIA and the Army Chemical Corps over a 25 year period. *** Peter Stafford publishes Psychedelics Encyclopedia; Aldous Huxley”s writings on psychedelics are collected and published in Moksha.
1978 LSD tabs were swallowed until the first designed blotter LSD , the “red dragon” appears.
1979 Hofmann publishes “My Problem Child” his first book LSD; Grinspoon & Bakalar publish the book “Psychedelic Drugs Revisited”.
1980 LSD overdose! A Californian woman accidentally ingests several thousand doses of crystal LSD, although she looses her consciousness for several hours she experiences no other ill after-effects. *** The last mass intoxication from ergot infected flour in Germany is called the “Frankenberger Epidemic”.
1981 The first major Psychedelic Conference in 15 Years is held at UC-Santa Cruz
1982 UCLA scientist Ronald Siegel feeds LSD to two elephants, a male and a female, and disproves the theory of West, Pierce und Thomas from 1962.
1984 A psychedelic conference is held at UC-Santa Barbara. *** Founding of the Pyromania Arts Foundation in Utrecht, Netherlands.
1985 Martin Lee’s & Shlain’s “Acid Dreams: The CIA, LSD & the Sixties Rebellion” is published.
1987 The Blotter Art Exhibition “Cure Of Souls”, documenting the art of designers tours in the U.S.A. *** Pickard’s LSD-lab in Mountain View, produces LSD and synthetic Mescaline. *** Tim Leary performs live at ‘The Stone’ in San Francisco.
1988 The neo-psychedelic movement flourishes in England. *** Marshall Jefferson’s & DJ Pierre’s “Acid Tracks” inspire the band “Psychic TV” to import the Acid House from Chicago via London to Europe. Castalia Records is PTV’s label before the release of the Vinyl “Pure Acid” Techno Acid Beat *** LSD and MDMA boost the House- and Rave-culture and influencing new rhythms, lifestyles, (illegal) locations and leading to open-air-festivals. *** Multiple Association of Psychedelic Studies (M.A.P.S.) psychedelics conference in Berkeley, CA.
1990 California-M.A.P.S. benefit “Psychedelics in the 1990’s” conference. *** On his Gig in Germany Timothy Leary calls Terence McKenna the most important scientist & poet, linking the psychedelic & shamanic experience. *** The ‘Burning Man’ festival - one of the “trippiest” gathering of the planet - moves to the “Black Rock” salt desert, Nevada (1990 -2007).
1991 Research reveals eight ex-nazi scientists (Kurt Blohme, who had experimented on humans in various concentration camps) brought to the U.S. in “Operation Paperclip”, were active in CIA- and Army- LSD-experiments at Edgewood Arsenal, MD during the 1950’s. *** Bridge conference on psychedelics in Palo Alto. *** Hakim Bey’s book “Temporary Autonomous Zone” (TAZ) is published.
1992 Oppressed by authorities, the british Rave scene becomes nomadic. Near Castlemorton the first “country-rave” can unfold it’s function as a collective rite of modern mass therapy. *** Thomas D & Michi Beck, german rappers of the Band ‘Die Fantastischen Vier’ get turned on to LSD and write the song ‘Ein Tag am Meer’. *** Hans Carl Leuner inaugurates the first convention of the ‘European Collegium of Conciousness Study’ (ECBS) in Göttingen, Germany. *** The ‘Pharmakon’ conference on psychedelics gathers in Brighton, England.
1993 The 50th anniversary of the discovery of LSD is celebrated worldwide *** Release of the vinyl “50th anniversary of LSD - a tribute to Albert Hofmann” (Germany) and the CD “50 Years of sunshine” (USA)*** “50 Years & beyond” *** M.A.P.S. & CAL NORML psychedelic conference held at UC-Santa Cruz *** Many of San Francisco’s acid-heads, DJ’s & new pagans of the Bay Area tribal rave scene have hyperspace experiences when Pyromania Arts introduce “NN-DMT”.
1995 In Time magazine Steward Brand reveals that the computer revolution is the real legacy of the 60’s generation *** Riccardo Villalobos gets turned on to LSD during a sun-eclipsed rave in Chile and starts his international DJ career.
1996 The 2′nd international ECBS-convention ‘Worlds Of Conciousness’ in Heidelberg. *** Albert Hofmann signs the ‘Heidelberger Deklaration’, a ‘no-jail-for-drug-users’-campaign by Werner Pieper’s publishing company ‘MedieneXperimente’. *** Alex Grey publishes his first book “The Sacred Mirrors” including many artworks (and “Transfigurations” in 2001) that are created under the influence of LSD (and other mind expanding molecules). *** Pyromania Arts Foundation publishes the CDROM/CD compilation entitled “Der Alchemistische Kongress - a Cybertribe Logfile” with works of 300 shaman, scientists, cutting-edge artists, philosophers and musicians. Many of them tour European clubs & open-air trance parties - propagating LSD as a necessary cultural enzyme, to prepare the human mind for the global village.
1997 The ECBS-Congress ‘Worlds of Conciousness’ takes place in Leibzig, Germany.
1998 The “Psychoactivity” conference on Plants, Shamanism & Conciousness’ takes place at the Royal Tropical Institut in Amsterdam, Netherland.
1999 The ‘3rd international ECBS Convention’ takes place in Basel, Swisse. *** Terence McKenna invites the psychedelic research community to the ‘AllChemical-Arts Conference’ on the big Island of Hawaii. *** “Can you pass the Acid Test?” at the Parallel YoUniverse rave “The Warp” (Millennium Dome, London UK)
2000 Again Leonard Pickard, chemical & Harvard docent is trying to save humanity with LSD, when government agents arrest him with a Ergotamin-Base worth 600.000 Dollars (15 Million hits) and send him to jail in Topeka, USA *** The amount of “busted” Acid is decreasing 73% worldwide. The largest amount of confiscated Acid is 26.000 hits in the UK.
2001 Alex Grey publishes his psychedelically inspired art in his second book “Transfigurations” with a foreword of LSD inventor Dr. Albert Hofmann.
2003 The “Ethnovisions” convention is held in Berlin For the first time. *** Peter Mettler’s Film “Gambling, Gods & LSD” is an attempt to experience the phenomena of transcendence.*** The ‘Pollem Plus Corporation’ of the ‘Lochow-Petkus GMBH’ launche the website www.Mutterkorn.de
2004 40.000 Acids (LSD hits) and more than two million doses of Exstasy pills confiscated in Germany. *** Founding of the ‘Doors Of Perception Ethic Committee’ by Boris Hiesserer in Heidelberg, Germany. *** Peter Webster publishes his thesis ‘The First Supper- Eden where & when?’.
2005 “Mind bending, health giving”: John Horgan’s article on psychedelic medicine is released in “New Scientist” health section *** Dr. Halpern (associate director of substance abuse research at Harvard) lays the groundwork, that Dr. R. Andrew Sewell (and other scientists of Harvard University’s McLean Hospital) can report about the positive effects of LSD (and psylocibin) on 53 cluster-headache patients in the “American Academy of “Neurology’s magazine”. *** The D.OP.E.C. releases “The MediaShaman” - a 5-CD mp3 Set with lectures, media samples and music; bridging 63 Years of LSD research in Science & Subculture.
2006 Dr. Albert Hofmanns 100th birthday is celebrated with the“LSD - the spirit of Basel” Symposium . researchers and friends of the worldwide psychedelic consciousness research movement, fFrom over 37 countries, gather in Swisse. *** The molecular tuning of LSD. Based on Hans Cousto’s ‘Cosmic Octave’, the data measured in the infrared-specter of the LSD molecule can be octaved to the range of the human ear. Based on this groundwork the “Akasha-Project” developed a compositional principle of direct transmodulation of molecular vibrations (MDMA, THC & LSD) in hearable Sounds.*** Globalizing “MediaShamanism” - Boris Hiesserer presents Drs. Hofmann, Leary, McKenna a.o. international researchers on a HearBook-DVD.
2007 Kevin Herbert, technology expert of the network assessment Corporation CISCO, reports that over the years, he regularly used LSD to solve the most important technological obstacles. During an event, honoring the 100-year-old inventor Dr. Albert Hofmann, Herbert demands to banish the drug tests from CISCO employees. *** Quantum music: Morphon, Brain Entertainment Laboratory, Orbital Dolphins, Star Sound Orchestra, Acid Test, Sci-Rom. *** A psychedelic afternoon at the ‘Horizons - contemporary perspectives on psychedelics’ conference in New York City’s Judson Memorial Church. *** LSD agent John Beresford dies september 2′nd. *** Anita Hofmann - who as Dr. Albert Hofmanns wife has shared & tried out everything with her husband for 75 years (for example participating in the mushroom ceremony of Maria Sabina in Mexico) - dies on the 20th of December peacefully at home in her bed.
“LSD helps against one of the most elemental problems of our times.
We’ve dis-connected from nature and lost the feeling of beeing a part of the living creation.”
Dr. Dr. h.c.mult. Albert Hofmann
compiled by Boris Hießerer (Pyromania Arts Foundation & Doors Of Perception Ethic Committee)
I’ve often been called “the father of LSD” and that raises the question: Who is the mother? The mother is “Ergot”, a mushroom called “Mutterkorn” (mother-corn) in German. She gave birth to some of my pharmaceutical children. The first was “Metagin” with birth-supporting effects. The second was the “LSD”. While “Metagin” helps to give birth to a physical child, LSD has proved itself to be very helpful to bear the spiritual child, which lies latent in all Human beings. LSD is acting upon the spiritual world, this constellation is no coincidence but the intention of a higher authority.“
Dr. Albert Hofmann, Santa Cruz, California (USA
‘ERGOT’ or ‘MOTHERCORN’- the mother of LSD
11.000 BC The nomadic hunters and collectors of the early ice age start a settled existence in the area of the Taurus- and Zagros mountains of upper Mesopotamia and begin to collect wild wheats. First stone buildings are erected in the mids of this ‘Eden’ like cereal cradle of ‘Gobekli Tepe’ between Iran and Irak.
7000-6000 BCThe first farmers move from the mountains down to the Persian Gulf and found the first highly sophisticated civilisation: ‘Sumer’. The Sumerian sage contains references to the “paradise mountain Do-ku”, to “the flood” and to the “first earth-born human couple”.
3500 BC In old Egyptian religion ‘Osiris’, the god of vegetation, death and resurrection is an embodiment of the wheat crops.
2900 BC In China, Mesopotamia and central Europa the vegetation- and grain-goddesses are honoured as transmitters of knowlegde, responsible for technological quantum leaps as dyke building, writing and agriculture. Sumerian frescos appear, showing how mycelial fruits are growing from the shoulders of the grain goddess ‘Nisaba’ or ‘Ninhursag’.
1750-1200 BC Das ökumenische ‘KonzilThe ‘Rig Veda’ (indish book of wisdom) mentiones the hallucinogen qualities of the drink of the god’s, called ‘soma’. *** In Greece ‘Ambrosia’ or ‘Amrita’ (sanskrit for immortality) is the life’s elixier and food of the gods.
1500 BC Europe’s most famous initiation rites are the “Mysteries of Eleusis”. Honoring the grain goddess “Demeter” and her daughter “Persephone”, pilgrims walk from Athens to Eleusis. Here they receive a drink known as ‘Kykeon’, a psychoactive beverage containing Ergot (Mutter- or motherkorn) a mushroom parasite on rye. Homer praises the utterly purifying experience in a hymn as well as the initiants Cicero & Pinar.
650-600 BC The heroe of the Gilgamesh Epos finds a ‘plant of immortality’ wich transforms into a snake. *** The Assyrians mention a “harmful pustule in the corns ear”.
450 BC Hippocrates mentions abortion in certain women after a wet winter and dry spring (supporting the ergot parasites growth), and elsewhere he attributes an oxytocic action to barley (assumed to be ergotized).
350 BC The Parner hold evidence that corn seeds have a harmful effect to pregnant woman: resulting in uterine prolapses and the sudden death’s of unborn children.
200 BC The creation story of the bible’s in the old testament is drawn up by a jewish rabby. In his version of ‘Eden’s first drug bust’ the ‘tree of knowledge’ and the ‘tree of immortality’ play an important role. He uses the apple as the tree’s magical fruit, as “malus” (bad) was earlier translated with ‘apple’ into latin.
300-325 AD The god ‘Attis’ symbolizes the harvested corn and cutten crop in the area between Turkey and Iran. *** The ‘Concilum of Nicaeum’ results in the official condemnation of all cults, opposing the catholic doctrine. The gnostic knowledge with it’s “Great Mystery” cults and ancient goddess-whorshipping rites, is driven underground.
395 AD The Eleusian temples are destroyed by the gothic king Alarich. *** With the christianisation the ancient “mystery cults”, having existed in ‘Eleusis’ and elsewhere, for more than 2000 years, disappear.
875 The first historical data of people intoxicated by ergot-parasitized flour. “Ergotism”, the first historical known mass-hysteria spreads in Xanten, northern Germany during the middle ages. *** In Spain the plague is called “Magdalena lichen”. In Europe’s south, tarantula spiders are held responsible for the poisoning, although it is clear that most cases are unrelated to spiders.
994 About 40.000 citizens of Aquitaine and Limousin (France) die from hunger, holy fire and pestilence. The ergotism and the ergot alkaloids receive their name after the french “argot” - it is related to the parasite on wheat and barley crops.
1021 Starving people eat rye-flower from infected crops. Ergot epidemic appears all across Europe. *** The treatment of ergotism-victims begins (1100). Religious ceremonies exorcise the ergotism as if it is the work of demons. The plague and the people”s wounds are termed “Antonius Fire” as St. Antonius becomes the patroned saint of the poisoned.
1207 Rumi Masnavi the founder of the Turkish dervish order writes In his Ma’navi poetry about the gnosis revealing, transformative character of the wheat seed.
1278 The name “Choros-“, “St. Vitus-”or “Maniac Dancing” was adopted after a group of 200 people danced so spiritedly on a bridge, above the Maas river in Germany, that it collapsed, killing many. Survivors were treated in the nearby chapel St. Vitus. *** A group of people in Aix-la-Chapelle uncontrollably dancing in the streets until exhaustion, foaming from the mouth, convulsing and hallucinating (1374). The “Dancing sickness” in Germany: in Cologne 500, in Metz 1100 people dance in the streets. Music and dance seem to be the only effective remedy against the ergot-gangrene. The mania reaches Strasbourg in the year 1418 when thousands of dancers fill the streets to “rock around the clock”.
1500 Jheronimus Bosch paints the “Temptation of St. Antonius” as well as “Holy Antonius fire” victims with leg- and arm amputations. *** In his “Herbal Book”, botanic doctor Adam Lonitzer publishes the first exact description of “mutterkorn” (Claviceps purpurea) growing on grain and responsible for the epidemic “Ergotism” (1582) *** In central Europe healers & witches are wisdom-keepers of advanced herbal knowledge *** Johann VI. kindles up the witch hunt in Germany. Around Berlin 306 people in 20 villages are burnt to death.
1600 While ergotism slowly disappears, the “manic dancing” becomes a subject of medical research. “St. Vitus dance” is stripped of its unhallowed character as a work of demons by Dr. Paracelsus. *** Ergotism returns in the french district Sologne (1630, 1676, 1709, 1747, 1770, 1777) as well as in Germany, Russia and Scandinavia. *** The Frenchman Tuillier feeds chickens with ergot-infected grain, to detect the reason for the spreading of the so called “Antonius fire”, also named “holy Sanctus” (1630) *** The effects of ergotism leads to a witch hunt hysteria in Salem, Massachusetts (1692), described in detail in Arthur Miller’s “The Crucible” (1953).*** Angelus Silesius experiences singularity using the ‘philosophers Stone.
1700 Dungeon, torture and death as punishment for participation in the mushroom-cult are strong motives for the alchemists to keep their practice of self-intoxication disquised. *** Knowing that midwifes have used Ergot “Secale cornutum” since ages to trigger labour contractions, Rudolf Jakob Camerarius turns “Pulvis ad partum” into one of the most important birth supporting medicines used until 1907. ***
1770 “Ergotism” spreads like the plague in central Europe: Celle, Hamburg, Duisburg *** 20.000 deaths alone in the army of “Peter the Great” (1772) *** 8.000 die during a mass-intoxication in Sologne (France).*** Finally in Germany a doctor Johann Taube recognizes “Mutterkorn” as the cause for “Ergotism”. He terms it “Kriebel sickness”. *** The farmers revolt (begin of the French Revolution) and rich and commercial cities become the scene of ruinous disorder (1789). Messengers are sent out to inform farmers and people about the facts leading to ergot-plagues & the so called Antonius disease.
1808 The “Roggenmuhme” (grain or rye-mother) appears in german folklore. Through the work and study of the US-American doctor John Stearns, the uterus-contracting ‘Ergot’ enters officially into medicine (Gynecology).
1824 Because of its toxicity the critic Dr. Hosack terms Camerarius’s“Pulvis ad partum” “Pulvis ad mortum”.
1918 At the swisse Sandoz laboratories Dr. Werner Arthur Stoll succeeds in isolating the most important functional ingredients of alkaloid derivates in “Ergot” or “mothercorn”.
1927 11000 people in the Ukraine (USSR) are infected with the horrible ergot-disease.
1931 Dr. Barger edits and publishes the history of “mutterkorn” and ergot related sicknesses in his Monograph “Ergot and Ergotism”.
1933 Publication of Leo Peruz’s novel “St. Petri Schnee” (St. Peters snow) describes the extraction of a medicine from “Mutterkorn”, to experience psychic reactions similar to religious ecstasy and deep happiness.
LSD-25 (LYSERGIC ACID DI-ETHYLAMIDE) - the child
1938 LSD-25 (the 25th compound in a series of semi-synthetic lysergic acid amides produced by a laboratory syntheses of ergot alkaloids, is formulated by Dr. Albert Hofmann at Sandoz Pharmaceutical Laboratories in Basel. Tested on laboratory animals it is making them “restless”. LSD-25 is not deemed sufficiently interesting to test further. (Other lysergic acid derivatives are proven useful obstetrics, geriatrics and the treatment of migraine headaches.)
1942 Ergot poisoning: in “Mighty Mouse vs. The Ergot”, the cartoon character - “Here I come to save the day” - experiences hallucinatoric states of consciousness.
1943 (April 16th) Dr. Hofmann experiences “a peculiar presentiment” that LSD-25 might well be valuable as a circulatory or respiratory stimulant and decides intuitively to re-synthesize this compound. (April 16) Performing with LSD-25 at his Sandoz laboratory, Hofmann accidentally absorbs a miniscule amount of the substance through the skin of his finger. The amount is probably equal to a dose of 50 micrograms. He experiences “a strange inebriation … a kaleidoscopic play of colors” that lasted 3-4 hours.
1943 (April 19th) Dr. Hofmann deliberately ingests what he considers to be the smallest, most conservative amount of the compound LSD-25. 250 microgram, (a full trip). He commences to write laboratory notes after he notices the effect within an hour. But soon he can no longer write anything and decides to ride home on his bicycle. The effects then get much stronger and his trip becomes fully blown. Suffering great anxiety, he calls for the doctor. The next morning he feels unusually good, no hangover despite the profound effects - in fact, he writes “excellent physical & mental condition”. Within the next weeks the drug is tested by Dr. Hofmann”s colleagues, whom confirm his reactions. No substance yet known to mankind acts psychoactively in such infinitely small amounts.
1943 Announcement of the synthesis of lysergic acid diethyl-amide-25(LSD) appears in a Swiss chemical journal, without mentioning its mental effects.
1947 Appearance (by Werner A. Stoll in a Swiss medical journal) of the first report of the mental effects of LSD & the results of 19 administrations to 16 normal subjects and twenty occasions to six schizophrenics at Zürich University. The results convince Sandoz to send out LSD samples to psychiatric hospitals worldwide. LSD-25’s brand name becomes “Delysid”.
1949 CIA-leader Allan Dulles initiates a secret program code named “Operation Bluebird” to discover the potential use of LSD. *** Three further papers on the mental effects of LSD by W. Stoll”s Swiss team are published *** Dr. Max Rinkel, research psychiatrist at the Boston Psychopathic Hospital is the first doctor working with LSD-25. He brings it into the USA. The first trip is taken by Dr. Hyde, Rinkel”s associate who resists the drug and experiences paranoia. Another one of Rinkel”s early experimental subjects is a Boston cab driver; the LSD experience helps him to move out of his mother”s home. *** Dr. Nicholas Bercel, a Los Angeles psychiatrist is given LSD by Stoll; he takes it to L.A., to begin testing on subjects in his private practice.
1950 Drs. Rinkel & Hyde report to the American Psychology Association (APA) on the results of testing LSD on 100 subjects. *** At the same meeting Dr. Paul Hoch introduces the “psychotromimetic” (psychosis-mimicking theory of LSD), raising hopes that schizophrenia may have a biochemical basis that could be duplicated in a laboratory and someday used in finding a cure. *** Drs. A. Busch & W. C. Johnson are the first to use LSD in a psychotherapy and to publish a report on their believe that it can shorten treatments. *** Reports of LSD”s “madness-provoking” qualities reach the CIA, which immediately sees the possibility of using the drug as a weapon for chemical warfare. Also against the drug being used against Americans by their enemies in Russia, whom (as it is erroneously) reported, had “just purchased 50 Million doses LSD from Sandoz”.
1951 Dr. Albert Hofmann isolates the psychoactive ‘Psylocibin’ from the “magic mushrooms” brought to him by the english banker Gordon Wasson, as well as LSA from the ‘Ololiqui’ seeds, two ceremonial drugs from Mexico. The new discovery is that LSD belongs to the family of sacred native mexican witchcraft plants. *** Albert Hofmann tripped on LSD with writer Ernst Jünger *** Operation Bluebird is renamed “Operation Artichoke”, as the CIA”s drug program becomes more ambitious and wide ranging. *** The citizens of the french village Pont-Saint-Espirit are suddenly and mysteriously struck down with mass insanity and hallucinations. At least five people die, dozens are interned in asylums and hundreds afflicted.
1952 Charles Savage publishes the first study on the use of LSD to treat depression. *** At Weyburn Hospital in Saskatchewan, a team of psychiatrists lead by Abram Hoffer, Humphrey Osmond, J. R. Smythies and Duncan Blewett begin clinical research with mescaline and later LSD, developing biochemical models. They successfully treat alcoholics and mentally sick patients.
1953 The first LSD-clinic opens in England under Dr. Ronald Sandison; leading to the conduction of clinical research in other European countries, with the ‘psycholytic’ model (giving repeated low doses) prevailing. *** “Operation MK-ULTRA” headed by Richard Helms & Dr. Sidney Gottlieb are in charge use POW from Korea as Artichoke-test subject; the agency tries to purchase 10 kilograms of LSD (100,000,000 doses) from Sandoz for $240,000. The CIA receives 100 grams a week. It secretly funds the work of American researchers and finances the ‘Josiah Macy conferences’ where the LSD and mescaline research is presented. Over the next 12 years MK-ULTRA runs 149 separate LSD projects at 154 institutions, frequently they use ‘dirty tricks’ - none of them made public attention; some deaths and many mental breakdowns were the result. *** Army Bacteriologist and CIA member Frank Olson dies in Front of New Yorks Pennsylvania Hotel after a covered CIA assassination. *** Aldous Huxley takes mescaline, provided by Humphry Osmond in Los Angeles and finds it not unlike a state of gratuitous grace. *** With the “magic mushrooms” Robert Gordon Wasson re-discovers remains of the ancient mexican plant-therapeutic science and mushroom cults.
1954 Medical student Stanislav Grof begins experimenting with LSD in the Psychiatric Research Institute in Prague. *** Huxley publishes “The Doors of Perception.” *** CIA service staff take LSD. OSS (former CIA) operative Captain Al Hubbard, reformed by LSD, purchases 4,000 vials from Sandoz and begins distributing it by airplane from Vancouver to California. He’s championing LSD as a mystical drug with great psychotherapeutic potential and introduces the concept of high-dose (psychedelic) therapy. *** Publication of classified CIA memorandum about LSD as a potential new agent for unconventional warfare. *** Encouraged by the CIA, the Eli Lilly Pharmaceutical Company breaks the secret formula held by Sandoz and begins producing LSD for (legal and illegal) U.S. government research programs.
1955 Dr. Oscar Janinger, Los Angeles psychotherapist receives LSD from Sandoz and initiates large-scale experiments with 875 artists, actors, and other members of the creative community (ex. Cary Grant, James Coburn, Anais Nin, Jack Nicholson, Rita Monero, Anre Pervin) *** Huxley begins self-experimenting with LSD; he and his wife Laura guide each other’s trips. *** First conferences devoted exclusively to LSD & mescaline take place in Atlantic City and Princeton, NJ. *** Wassons participates in a “Velada”, a mexican psilocybin mushroom ritual with shaman (Curandera) Maria Sabina. *** Lord Christopher Mayhew takes mescaline at a BBC-recording studio, the film disappears in the archives for more than 20 years.
1956 R. R. Gordon Wasson has the idea that indo-alkaloids might have been the base for the “Kykeon” drink in the great mystery cult of Eleusis. *** Huxley publishes ‘Heaven and Hell’, the sequel to ‘The Doors of Perception’. *** R. H. Ward’s “A Drug Taker’s Note”, the first personal account of the LSD therapy is published in England.
1957 Life Magazine’s publication of Gordon Wasson’s adventure with “magic” mushrooms introduces the notion of psychedelic experience to a mainstream audience. Mrs. Wasson publishes her account in “This Week”. *** Hofmann synthesizes Psylocibin, the active agent of the mexican mushrooms and the CIA immediately purchases these pills for experiments. *** Humphrey Osmond introduces the term “Psychedelic” at the New York Academy of Sciences conference. His research team in Saskatchewan begins using single high doses of LSD in therapy with alcoholics; an approach adopted also by Ron Hubbard (Church of Scientology founder) at the Hollywood Hospital in Vancouver.
1958 Drs. Sidney Cohen and Keith Ditman begin large-scale experiments with LSD at the VA Hospital at UCLA. *** Duncan Blewett & Nick Chwelos published the first handbook for using LSD in individual and group psychotherapy in Sasketchewan.*** Actor Cary Grant discusses the positive effects of his LSD sessions in a magazine interview.
1959 Cary Grant after his LSD Trip: “I was reborn”.*** Writers Alan Ginsberg and Ken Kesey take LSD at the VA Hospital in Palo Alto and Menlo Park in a research study secretly founded and sponsored by the CIA; subjects were paid 150 US-Dollar for a LSD session. *** Hofmann extracts lysergic acid amides from the seeds of the morning glory flower (used by ancient mesomexicans under the name “”Ololiqui”), proving that LSD can exist in higher plants.
1960 Harvard invites psychology professor Timothy Leary “to study the change of human behaviour”. Leary ingests psylocibin mushrooms in Cuernavaca, Mexico, returns to Harvard to set up a psychedelic research project with Frank Barron. He invites Huxley, Alan Watts, Arthur Koestler, Beat writers Ginsberg, Peter Orlovsky, William Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, Neil Cassady, Charles Olson, jazz musician Maynard Ferguson, etc. *** John Beresford buys one gramm of LSD-25 from Sandoz for 269 US-Dollar thinking that it would be four portions instead of four-thousand. This magic gramm went into a couple of thousand people, among them Tim Leary, Jean Houston, Keith Richards, Paul McCartney a.m.o..
1961 Aldous Huxley and Tim Leary give lectures on LSD and behaviour change at an international psychology conference in Copenhagen. *** Prof. Richard Alpert and graduate student Ralph Metzner join Leary’s group, which develops the concept of “set and setting” as trip determinants. *** Concord Prison Project commences, in which psilocybin is taken together by Harvard researchers and prisoners, reversing rates of recidivism for the latter group. *** Publication of Exploring Inner Space is the first personal account of LSD therapy in the U.S. by nutritionist Adelle Davis.
1962 The first LSD song appears on a record by The Gamblers. *** “Good Friday” psilocybin experiment conducted by Walter Houston Clark, Walter Pahnke, and Huston Smith in Boston University chapel proves LSD’s value as a sacred drug inducing religious experience. *** The LSD foundation “Agora Scientific Trust” is started by John Beresford, Jean Houston and Robert Masters in New York City. *** The LSD research Center “International Federation for Advanced Study”, is started by Myron Stolaroff and associates in Menlo Park, CA. *** Bernard Roseman and Bernard Copley manufacture the first black market LSD (62.000 tablets); they are later arrested and imprisoned on the false charges of smuggling it from Israel, since manufacturing was illegal there at that time. *** Michael Hollingshead brings his mayonnaise jar containing 5.000 doses of LSD (half on Beresford”s gram obtained from Sandoz) to Harvard and” turns on” Leary, other members of the Harvard research group and later many key british rock “n Roll musicians. *** Harvard Research Group establishes a summer colony in Zihuatanejo in Mexico to explore LSD. *** Alan Watts publishes the “Joyous Cosmology”, Aldous Huxley published “Island”. *** William McGlothlin publishes the first study ever done on the long-lasting effects of LSD. *** President John Kennedy is introduced to LSD by his lover Mary Pinchot Meyer, who received guidelines on tripping sessions from Leary; allegedly they “tripped” in the White House. *** Oklahoma: The scientists West, Pierce and Thomas send the first elephant on an acid trip. Tusko dies during an LSD-Experiment after the fatal injections of LSD, followed by a neuroleptica and a sedative.
1963 Aldous Huxley visiting Dr. Hofmann in Basel, calles LSD the true moksha-medicine of his new novel “Island”. *** The first journal devoted to psychedelic drugs “Psychedelic Review” is launched in Cambridge, MA. *** The first liquid underground LSD appears in the Cambridge area as impregnated sugar cubes. *** More & more articles about LSD appear in the mainstream media (Life; Look; Saturday Evening Post). *** Fired from Harvard, Professor Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert, immediately launche a LSD research program called I.F.I.F. (International Federation for Internal Freedom) in Newton Center, MA. He trains guides to conduct psychedelic sessions; the group is later forced to leave Mexico and Dominica. ***The first modern psychedelic church “Church of the Awakening” incorporated by the Aikens in New Mexico. *** Spring Grove State Hospital, Maryland, becomes a major research center for testing the potential of LSD in psychotherapy. *** Dr. Eric Kast administers LSD in psychotherapy and to terminally ill patients and successfully reduces their pain and anxiety. *** Six hours before his own death in Los Angeles Aldous Huxley requests and is given 100 mg LSD intramuscularly by his wife Laura Hours after he received the news of John F. Kennedy assassination *** Lysergic acid amides extracted from the Baby Hawaiian Wood rose.
1964 Publication of the ‘Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead’ by Leary, Metzner & Alpert, which has never been out of print. *** Leary”s group establishes an LSD cultural research center called Castalia Foundation on the Hichcock estate in Milbrook, New York, and develops the “experimental typewriter” for a meta-communication during the LSD plateau. *** John C. Lilly experiments in the Virgin Islands giving LSD to dolphins and taking it in the samahdi- or isolation tank, which he developed. *** Alexander (Sasha) Shulgin synthesizes DOM, a strong, long-lasting psychedelic. *** Psychedelic Information Centers spring up in Cambridge, Washington DC and elsewhere.
1965 Owsley Acid aka “White Lightening”, “Purple Haze”, “Blue Sheer” etc. (LSD manufactured by Augustus Owsley Stanley) begins to appear in North California in the first large-scale underground LSD manufacturing and distribution (contra-)operation. *** Founding of the Neo-American Church by Art Kleps. *** Hollingshead opens World Psychedelic Center in London and turns on british cultural elite. *** The Beatles inadvertently take their first LSD trip, when a dentist friend of Harrison puts 200 Microdots of LSD in their coffee. *** Lysergic acid amides extracted from Baby Hawaiian Wood rose.
1966 Millbrook raided by sheriff G. Gordon Liddy. *** Kyoki Izumi wins architecture prize for his LSD-inspired mental hospital design. *** First non-academic LSD Conference in San Francisco. *** The League for Spiritual Discovery, an LSD-based religion formed by Leary, produces Psychedelic Celebrations in major cities. *** Acid Tests organized by Kesey’s Merry Pranksters culminate in a “Hippie-Festival” in San Francisco. *** ‘Congressional Hearings on the LSD “epidemic”; Leary, Ginsberg and Kleps testify. *** LSD is made illegal with heavy penalties, October the 6th; the “Love Pageant Rally” is celebrated in Haights-Ashbury on the same day. *** Publishing of ‘The San Francisco Oracle’.
1967 The first “Human Be-In” held at San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park. *** Owsley Stanley captured with 200 grams (one million doses) of LSD. *** Appearance of DOM (under the name STP) in San Francisco in high dose tablets causing overdoses. *** Summer of Love apex of LSD counterculture in San Francisco, LA, NYC, London & elsewhere; flourishing of psychedelic poster art, rock music, newspapers (SF Oracle), fashion & lifestyle; Toronto LSD conference; Jimi Hendrix’s “Are You Experienced?”; the Beatles “Sergeant Pepper” album; first LPs by Jefferson Airplane and Grateful Dead.
1968 The manufacturing, sale & distribution of LSD is made illegal by President Lyndon B. Johnson. LSD becomes classified as a category one drug *** Appearance of “Orange Sunshine” (tablet) LSD, manufactured by Tim Scully & Nick Sand. For the following four years it is distributed worldwide by the Brotherhood of Eternal Love (with the involvement of probab le government agent Ronald Stark) . *** Appearances of Leary’s “High Priest & Politics of Ecstasy”; Metzner’s “Ecstatic Adventure”, Laura Huxley’s “Memories of Aldous”. *** First book on psychedelic art. *** Allan Coult starts the International Society for Psychedelic Anthropology.
1969 Woodstock mega-rock-festival. *** The Beatles White Album is published *** Charles Manson triggers the LSD influenced minds of his hippie gang members into the “Tate & La Bianca murders” in Hollywood.
1970 Appearance of “Windowpane” aka “Clearlight” (jelly) underground LSD. *** Founding of Fitz Hugh Ludlow Memorial Library, a psychedelic archive/research center in San Francisco. *** Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher Dock Ellis pitches no-hitter in San Diego while under the influence of LSD. *** Bad Acid vibes at Alamont Rock concert.
1972 Blotter Acid emerges as the primary type of underground LSD; dosages are generally lower than past forms. *** Before leaving office CIA head Richard Helmes secretly orders the destruction of most of the agency”s self-incrimating mind drug research files.
1973 Leary writes “Neurologic”, “Starseed” & “Terra 2′ while imprisoned in U.S. jails.
1974 Alan Ginsberg presents 44 questions about Timothy Leary during the P.I.L.L. (People Investigate Leary”s Lies) press conference in St. Francis Hotel, San Francisco.
1975 The last formal LSD research program is terminated at the Spring Grove Hospital, Maryland. *** Under the influence of LSD Steven Jobs & Steve Wozniak develop “Apple1″, the first suitcase-sized personal computer. *** Stan Grof publishes his theory on perinatal and trans-personal experiences in LSD sessions. *** Alexander Shulgin re-synthesizes MDMA aka. Ecstasy from a 1914 formula by Merck Pharmacies in Darmstadt, Germany.
1976 President Ford narrowly missed being dosed from LSD-laced coffee in Chicago. *** Leary is released from prison *** The Apple computer corporation is founded.
1977 Hofmann, Wasson and Ruck announce the discovery that the sacred hallucinogenic beverage used in the Eleusinian mystery rite in Ancient Greece was a preparation made from ergot from nearby grown barley. *** Senate hearings on the misuse of LSD and the complete disregard for the safety of their experimental subjects in the CIA and the Army Chemical Corps over a 25 year period. *** Peter Stafford publishes Psychedelics Encyclopedia; Aldous Huxley”s writings on psychedelics are collected and published in Moksha.
1978 LSD tabs were swallowed until the first designed blotter LSD , the “red dragon” appears.
1979 Hofmann publishes “My Problem Child” his first book LSD; Grinspoon & Bakalar publish the book “Psychedelic Drugs Revisited”.
1980 LSD overdose! A Californian woman accidentally ingests several thousand doses of crystal LSD, although she looses her consciousness for several hours she experiences no other ill after-effects. *** The last mass intoxication from ergot infected flour in Germany is called the “Frankenberger Epidemic”.
1981 The first major Psychedelic Conference in 15 Years is held at UC-Santa Cruz
1982 UCLA scientist Ronald Siegel feeds LSD to two elephants, a male and a female, and disproves the theory of West, Pierce und Thomas from 1962.
1984 A psychedelic conference is held at UC-Santa Barbara. *** Founding of the Pyromania Arts Foundation in Utrecht, Netherlands.
1985 Martin Lee’s & Shlain’s “Acid Dreams: The CIA, LSD & the Sixties Rebellion” is published.
1987 The Blotter Art Exhibition “Cure Of Souls”, documenting the art of designers tours in the U.S.A. *** Pickard’s LSD-lab in Mountain View, produces LSD and synthetic Mescaline. *** Tim Leary performs live at ‘The Stone’ in San Francisco.
1988 The neo-psychedelic movement flourishes in England. *** Marshall Jefferson’s & DJ Pierre’s “Acid Tracks” inspire the band “Psychic TV” to import the Acid House from Chicago via London to Europe. Castalia Records is PTV’s label before the release of the Vinyl “Pure Acid” Techno Acid Beat *** LSD and MDMA boost the House- and Rave-culture and influencing new rhythms, lifestyles, (illegal) locations and leading to open-air-festivals. *** Multiple Association of Psychedelic Studies (M.A.P.S.) psychedelics conference in Berkeley, CA.
1990 California-M.A.P.S. benefit “Psychedelics in the 1990’s” conference. *** On his Gig in Germany Timothy Leary calls Terence McKenna the most important scientist & poet, linking the psychedelic & shamanic experience. *** The ‘Burning Man’ festival - one of the “trippiest” gathering of the planet - moves to the “Black Rock” salt desert, Nevada (1990 -2007).
1991 Research reveals eight ex-nazi scientists (Kurt Blohme, who had experimented on humans in various concentration camps) brought to the U.S. in “Operation Paperclip”, were active in CIA- and Army- LSD-experiments at Edgewood Arsenal, MD during the 1950’s. *** Bridge conference on psychedelics in Palo Alto. *** Hakim Bey’s book “Temporary Autonomous Zone” (TAZ) is published.
1992 Oppressed by authorities, the british Rave scene becomes nomadic. Near Castlemorton the first “country-rave” can unfold it’s function as a collective rite of modern mass therapy. *** Thomas D & Michi Beck, german rappers of the Band ‘Die Fantastischen Vier’ get turned on to LSD and write the song ‘Ein Tag am Meer’. *** Hans Carl Leuner inaugurates the first convention of the ‘European Collegium of Conciousness Study’ (ECBS) in Göttingen, Germany. *** The ‘Pharmakon’ conference on psychedelics gathers in Brighton, England.
1993 The 50th anniversary of the discovery of LSD is celebrated worldwide *** Release of the vinyl “50th anniversary of LSD - a tribute to Albert Hofmann” (Germany) and the CD “50 Years of sunshine” (USA)*** “50 Years & beyond” *** M.A.P.S. & CAL NORML psychedelic conference held at UC-Santa Cruz *** Many of San Francisco’s acid-heads, DJ’s & new pagans of the Bay Area tribal rave scene have hyperspace experiences when Pyromania Arts introduce “NN-DMT”.
1995 In Time magazine Steward Brand reveals that the computer revolution is the real legacy of the 60’s generation *** Riccardo Villalobos gets turned on to LSD during a sun-eclipsed rave in Chile and starts his international DJ career.
1996 The 2′nd international ECBS-convention ‘Worlds Of Conciousness’ in Heidelberg. *** Albert Hofmann signs the ‘Heidelberger Deklaration’, a ‘no-jail-for-drug-users’-campaign by Werner Pieper’s publishing company ‘MedieneXperimente’. *** Alex Grey publishes his first book “The Sacred Mirrors” including many artworks (and “Transfigurations” in 2001) that are created under the influence of LSD (and other mind expanding molecules). *** Pyromania Arts Foundation publishes the CDROM/CD compilation entitled “Der Alchemistische Kongress - a Cybertribe Logfile” with works of 300 shaman, scientists, cutting-edge artists, philosophers and musicians. Many of them tour European clubs & open-air trance parties - propagating LSD as a necessary cultural enzyme, to prepare the human mind for the global village.
1997 The ECBS-Congress ‘Worlds of Conciousness’ takes place in Leibzig, Germany.
1998 The “Psychoactivity” conference on Plants, Shamanism & Conciousness’ takes place at the Royal Tropical Institut in Amsterdam, Netherland.
1999 The ‘3rd international ECBS Convention’ takes place in Basel, Swisse. *** Terence McKenna invites the psychedelic research community to the ‘AllChemical-Arts Conference’ on the big Island of Hawaii. *** “Can you pass the Acid Test?” at the Parallel YoUniverse rave “The Warp” (Millennium Dome, London UK)
2000 Again Leonard Pickard, chemical & Harvard docent is trying to save humanity with LSD, when government agents arrest him with a Ergotamin-Base worth 600.000 Dollars (15 Million hits) and send him to jail in Topeka, USA *** The amount of “busted” Acid is decreasing 73% worldwide. The largest amount of confiscated Acid is 26.000 hits in the UK.
2001 Alex Grey publishes his psychedelically inspired art in his second book “Transfigurations” with a foreword of LSD inventor Dr. Albert Hofmann.
2003 The “Ethnovisions” convention is held in Berlin For the first time. *** Peter Mettler’s Film “Gambling, Gods & LSD” is an attempt to experience the phenomena of transcendence.*** The ‘Pollem Plus Corporation’ of the ‘Lochow-Petkus GMBH’ launche the website www.Mutterkorn.de
2004 40.000 Acids (LSD hits) and more than two million doses of Exstasy pills confiscated in Germany. *** Founding of the ‘Doors Of Perception Ethic Committee’ by Boris Hiesserer in Heidelberg, Germany. *** Peter Webster publishes his thesis ‘The First Supper- Eden where & when?’.
2005 “Mind bending, health giving”: John Horgan’s article on psychedelic medicine is released in “New Scientist” health section *** Dr. Halpern (associate director of substance abuse research at Harvard) lays the groundwork, that Dr. R. Andrew Sewell (and other scientists of Harvard University’s McLean Hospital) can report about the positive effects of LSD (and psylocibin) on 53 cluster-headache patients in the “American Academy of “Neurology’s magazine”. *** The D.OP.E.C. releases “The MediaShaman” - a 5-CD mp3 Set with lectures, media samples and music; bridging 63 Years of LSD research in Science & Subculture.
2006 Dr. Albert Hofmanns 100th birthday is celebrated with the“LSD - the spirit of Basel” Symposium . researchers and friends of the worldwide psychedelic consciousness research movement, fFrom over 37 countries, gather in Swisse. *** The molecular tuning of LSD. Based on Hans Cousto’s ‘Cosmic Octave’, the data measured in the infrared-specter of the LSD molecule can be octaved to the range of the human ear. Based on this groundwork the “Akasha-Project” developed a compositional principle of direct transmodulation of molecular vibrations (MDMA, THC & LSD) in hearable Sounds.*** Globalizing “MediaShamanism” - Boris Hiesserer presents Drs. Hofmann, Leary, McKenna a.o. international researchers on a HearBook-DVD.
2007 Kevin Herbert, technology expert of the network assessment Corporation CISCO, reports that over the years, he regularly used LSD to solve the most important technological obstacles. During an event, honoring the 100-year-old inventor Dr. Albert Hofmann, Herbert demands to banish the drug tests from CISCO employees. *** Quantum music: Morphon, Brain Entertainment Laboratory, Orbital Dolphins, Star Sound Orchestra, Acid Test, Sci-Rom. *** A psychedelic afternoon at the ‘Horizons - contemporary perspectives on psychedelics’ conference in New York City’s Judson Memorial Church. *** LSD agent John Beresford dies september 2′nd. *** Anita Hofmann - who as Dr. Albert Hofmanns wife has shared & tried out everything with her husband for 75 years (for example participating in the mushroom ceremony of Maria Sabina in Mexico) - dies on the 20th of December peacefully at home in her bed.
“LSD helps against one of the most elemental problems of our times.
We’ve dis-connected from nature and lost the feeling of beeing a part of the living creation.”
Dr. Dr. h.c.mult. Albert Hofmann
R.I.P. “BIG BOY” BREYER P-ORRIDGE
drops his body to be with Lady Jaye
4pm Friday 14th May 2010.
Dearest friends and One True TOPI Tribe
Today, after battling various symptoms courageously, our BELOVED and ADORED best friend and superbly loving being dropped his body. He had been suffering from mixed symptoms that were a result of lymph cancer that had spread throughout his body. All of which got more intense and debilitating until he chose to move on to another form of being.
“Biggie” was cradled in my arms as he let go of this form of existence and we told him to look for his “Mummy” Lady Jaye. As we spoke those words he looked up to me, licked my left hand directly on the two wedding rings and then kissed my face looking directly into my eyes. We felt a shiver run through us as Lady Jaye and Big Boy connected with each other and then with my SELF….
In the two plus y-eras since Lady Jaye dropped her body that we have been almost lost and disabled by grief “BigBoy” a/k/a “Biggie” has been my solace, my constant source of love and consolation. Without his loyal and unconditional love we’d have been totally lost. He was rescued from being abandoned, tied to a fence on xmas eve. We count our SELF blessed by his arrival in our lives.
R.I.P. “BIG BOY” BREYER P-ORRIDGE
Friday, May 21, 2010
upcoming Tues, June 1st / 9pm
MISHKA & CHRONIC YOUTH PRESENT:
OFFICIAL RELEASE PARTY FOR
MISHKA & FERAL HOUSE'S
THE PROCESS CHURCH OF THE FINAL JUDGEMENT T-SHIRT CAPSULE COLLECTION
Hosted by Genesis Breyer P-Orridge
$10 / Tues, June 1st / 9pm
Performances by:
Blessure Grave
White Ring
Passions
The Sabbath Assembly
DJ Star Eyes
Thursday, May 20, 2010
The Pandrogeny Project lecture
The Pandrogeny Project lecture was presented Monday May 12th at 70 North 6th st. Loft Space, Brooklyn, NY
Genesis Breyer P-Orridge from Rija Munfar on Vimeo.
Genesis Breyer P-Orridge from Rija Munfar on Vimeo.
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Complete (?) Psychic TV live shows listing
NOTE: a huge undertaking in progress...additions/corrections underway
2 October 1982 - The Final Academy, Ritzy, Brixton, London, England
First live performance. Part of the Final Academy Event. Artists also performing included Cabaret Voltaire, 23 Skidoo, William Burroughs, Brian Gysin, etc
1983
23 June 1983 - Foundation Raelienne
6 November 1983 - The Ritz, Manchester, England
Originally scheduled for Clifton House, Prestwich Mental Hospital, Manchester
on 4 November.
November 1983 - Reykjavik, Iceland
18 November 1983 - Danceteria, New York City, USA
19 November 1983 - Danceteria, New York City, USA
2 December 1983 - Atonal Festival, Pankehallen, Berlin, W.Germany
21 April 1984 - Reykjavik, Iceland
1984
22 April 1984 - Eventworks 1984, Mass. College Of Art, Boston, USA
26 April 1984 - Club 950, Chicago, USA
PTV were: Genesis & Paula P-Orridge, John Gosling, Monte Cazazza
17 May 1984 - Circumanie Festival, Gottingen, W.Germany
With Cassiber, Helmut Nadolsky "Hell Mood", Jeye Licht Performance.
Festival ran from 17 to 20 May
1 June 1984 - Exo 7, Rouen, France
28 July 1984 - Temporary Temple, Drayton Park, London, England
Secret 4 date tour of London began with word-of-mouth gig at empty synagogue in Drayton Park
1 August 1984 - ICA, The Mall, London, England
Background muzak for a reading on "war" by Kathy Acker
August 1984 - Holloway Road Music Hall, London, England (secret)
15 August 1984 - Everyman Theatre, Hampstead, England
Evening of psychic television and newtelevision. 4 hours of film, video, soundtrack. With featured work/collaborations by PTV, Cerith Wyn Evans, Derek Jarman, Antony Balch
17 August 1984 - Hammersmith Town Hall, London, England
With A Certain Ratio. "A fully integrated video and music event". A week (13-18 August) of music and film at the Everyman Theatre. Other artists taking part included the Go-Betweens, Pete Shelley and Virginia Astley. Each artist performed a live set followed by a film of their choice.
late 1984 - Zap Club, Brighton, England
Video performance
16 September 1984 - Klecks Theatre, Hamburg, W.Germany
22 September 1984 - Pandoras Music Box Festival, De Doelen, Rotterdam, Netherlands
23 September 1984 - Futurama 84, Zaal Brielpoort, Deinze, Belgium
16 October 1984 - La Edad De Oro, Madrid, Spain
With Vagina Dentata Organ. Performance on live TV show.
5 November 1984 - Hacienda, Manchester
30 November 1984 - Karen, Goteborg, Sweden
December 1984 - Oslo, Norway
3 December 1984 - Club 77, Helsinki, Finland
6 December 1984 - Stockholm, Sweden
7 December 1984 - Jagtvej 69, Kopenhagen, Denmark
8 December 1984 - Stadt Hamburg, Malmo, Sweden
10 December 1984 - Batschkapp, Frankfurt, W.Germany
11 December 1984 - Odeon, Munster, W.Germany
12 December 1984 - Paard van Troje, Den Haag, Netherlands
13 December 1984 - Arena, Rotterdam, Netherlands
14 December 1984 - Paradiso, Amsterdam, Netherlands
15 December 1984 - De Effenaar, Eindhoven, Netherlands
23 December 1984 - Heaven, London, England
With Monte Cazazza
1985
19 May 1985 - Hammersmith Palais, London, England
The Fabulous Feast of Flowering Light (The Starlight Mire)
Also on the bill were: The Virgin Prunes, Mantis Dance Company, Kathy Acker, Bee The Process, Kukl, The Simonics, The Weeds, Zaghurhim, The Waking Room, Death And Beauty Foundation, John Maybury and Derek Jarman, Claude Bessy's Church Of The Cathode Ray Tube
PTV's new line up was reported to be: Genesis P-Orridge, Paula P-Orridge and Alex Fergusson, joined by Max from the Weekend Swingers and Rema Rema on drums, Mouse on bass, Monte Cazazza from Factrix on guitar and Hilmar Orn Himarsson from Icelandic band Theyr on keyboards and drums.
September or October (?) 1985 - Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester, England
With Mantis Dance & Impossible Dreamers
13 October 1985 - Rimini, Italy
14 October 1985 - The Big Club, Turin, Italy
15 October 1985 - Limelight, Kortrijk, Netherlands
16 October 1985 - Bregenz, Austria
17 October 1985 - Vienna, Austria
19 October 1985 - Munich, Germany
21 October 1985 - Berlin, Germany
22 October 1985 - Bochum, Germany
23 October 1985 - Gronningham, Netherlands
25 October 1985 - Tivoli, Utrecht, Netherlands
26 October 1985 - Apeldoorn, Netherlands
27 October 1985 - Paradiso, Netherlands
Additional dates in: Gabice, Italy; Leiden, Netherlands; Dusseldorf, Germany
13 December 1985 - The Arena, Rotterdam, Netherlands
December 1985 - Budapest, Hungary
1985 - Assembly Rooms, Stoke Newington, England
1986
16 January 1986 - Nakano Public Hall, Tokyo, Japan
17 January 1986 - Nakano Public Hall, Tokyo, Japan
18 January 1986 - Nakano Public Hall, Tokyo, Japan
February 1986 - Zurich, Switzerland
11 February 1986 - Triangle Arts Centre, Birmingham, England
12 February 1986 - Warehouse, Leeds, England
13 February 1986 - Riverside, Newcastle, England
14 February 1986 - University, Liverpool, England
16 February 1986 - Rooftops, Glasgow, Scotland
19 February 1986 - Metropol, Aachen, W.Germany
13 March 1986 - National Ballroom, Kilburn High Road, London, England
With Zodiac Mindwarp & The Love Reaction, Annie Anxiety, The Golden Horde
10 April 1986 - Virgin Megastore, London, England
20 May 1986 - Marquee, London, England
8 June 1986 - Elysée, Montmartre, Paris, France
22 June 1986 - Dusseldorf, Germany
Additional German dates in Hamburg; Nurnberg; Frankfurt; Freiburg; Karlsruhe
3 July 1986 - 3rd St, 3 Cromwell Road, London, England
A memorial wake up party for Brian Jones
13 July 1986 - Town Hall, Basildon, England
Basildon Peace Festival. Other bands included Erasure.
1 August 1986 - The Farm, San Francisco, USA
2 August 1986 - The Mabuhay Gardens, San Francisco, USA
With Trial
3 August 1986 - The Roxy, Hollywood, USA
Additional US dates in Milwaukee; Chicago; Detroit; Los Angeles (Roxy - possibly three shows)
9 August 1986 - Cabaret Metro, Toronto, Canada
5 October 1986 - Town & Country Club, London, England
With Shock-Headed Peters, The Godfathers & The Shamen
23 December 1986 - London, England
Additional 1986 dates in
International, Manchester, England
Leadmill,Sheffield, England
Kerouacs Club, Hackney, London, England
June or July 1987 - Mardi Gras Club, Nottingham, England
13 July 1987 - Hackney Empire, London, England
With Tiny Lights, English Boy On The Love Ranch, Turning Shrines, Webcore, Zoskia, Kenny Morris
25 July 1987 - Finsbury Park, London, England
17 August 1987 - Riverside Centre, Newcastle, England
Benefit for the Centre
24 September 1987 - Electric Ballroom, London, England
With Angry Love Orchestra, Webcore, The Missing Link, Zoskia Meets Sugardog, Weeds, Spacemen 3
30 September 1987 - Empire, Hackney, London
With Alien Sex Fiend, Seething Wells (No More Censorship Campaign benefit)
1988
April 1988 - Variety Arts Centre, Los Angeles, USA
30 April 1988 - Astoria, London, England
With Spacemen 3, Hiding Place
29 June 1988 - Fridge, Brixton, London, England
With Stitched-Back Foot Airman (Black Rhino benefit)
16 July 1988 - Fields Park, London, England
17 September 1988 - Thames River Boat Trip, England
27 September 1988 - Berkely, California, USA
29 September 1988 - I-Beam, San Francisco, USA
5 October 1988 - Town & Country Club, London, England
Originally scheduled for 21 September 1988
Oct. 13, 1988. Live at The Park Elevator, Charlotte, NC Oct. 13, 1988.
US tour with dates in Columbus; Washington; Richmond (Rockitz); Syracuse (NY); San Diego; Denver; Dallas; Los Angeles; Detroit; Atlanta; Salt Lake City; Houston (Axiom); Austin (Plantarium); Cleveland (Phantasy Niteklub): plus Canadian dates in Toronto and Montreal
3 November 1988 - Pyramid, New York City, USA
5 November 1988 - Norman, Oklahoma, USA
25 November 1988 - Club Rodon, Athens, Greece
26 November 1988 - Club Rodon, Athens, Greece
4 December 1988 - Mayfair, Glasgow, Scotland
5 December 1988 - Pink Toothbrush, Rayleigh
8 December 1988 - Polytechnic, Manchester, England
11 December 1988 - Leadmill, Sheffield, England
16 December 1988 - Astoria, Charing Cross, London, England
Played as Throbbing Gristle Ltd
1989
25 January 1989 - Dingwalls, London, England
February 1989 - PTV had to cancel 10 of 15 gigs on UK tour including bans from the Astoria and Town & Country Club
4 March 1989 - "Cave Of Desire", Heaven, London, England
With The Irresistible Force, Dehli For Dehli, Jolly Rodger, Chesere
27 March 1989 - Bielefeld, Germany
28 March 1989 - Dortmund Germany
30 March 1989 - Vienna Austria
31 March 1989 - Linz, Austria
1 April 1989 - Gammelsdorf, Germany
2 April 1989 - Stuttgart, Germany
3 April 1989 - Frankfurt, Germany
4 April 1989 - Cologne, Germany
5 April 1989 - Hannover, Germany
6 April 1989 - Loft, Berlin, Germany
7 April 1989 - Coesfeld, Germany
8 April 1989 - Bremen, Germany
9 April 1989 - Hamburg, Germany
12 April 1989 - Den Haag, Netherlands
13 April 1989 - Amsterdam, Netherlands
October 1989 - New York, USA
With The Master Musicians of Joujouka
1 November 1989 - Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
13 December 1989 - Mean Fiddler, London, England
1990
11 April 1990 - Subterania, London, England
17 May 1990 - Denver, Colorado, USA
25 May 1990 - I Beam, San Francisco, USA
29 May 1990 - Riverside, California, USA
1 June 1990 - Los Angeles, California, USA
11 June 1990 - Axis, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
27 June 1990 - 930 Club, Washington D.C., USA
25 August 1990 - Reading Festival, England
20 December 1990 - Mean Fiddler, London, England
16 January 1991 - Zap Club, Brighton, England
(Dolphin Freedom Party)
6 March 1991 - Subterania, London, England
March/June 1991 - Ireland
11 June 1991 - Zap Club, Brighton, England
13 June 1991 - Powerhaus, Islington, London
With Dave Harrow, Greedy Beat Syndicate
15 June 1991 - International, Manchester, England
17 June 1991 - Mayfair, Glasgow, Scotland
27 November 1991 - Subterania, London, England
With The Greedy Beat Syndicate, Gini Ball, Dave Harrow
1992
27 March 1992 - Rocket "Mega Dog", Holloway, London
With Fini Tribe
August 1992 - Ceasars Latin Palace, San Francisco, USA
5 August 1992 - The Edge, Palo Alto, California, USA
3 April 1993 - Psychosis Rave, Chicago, USA
14 October 1993 - Wow Hall, Eugene, Oregon, USA
PTV were Genesis P-Orridge, Craig Ellenwood
8 April 1994 - Wow Hall, Eugene, Oregon, USA
PTV were Genesis P-Orridge, Larry Thrasher, Paula Whitewolf
1995
20 July 1995 - Club 1015 Folsom, San Francisco, California, USA
"Trip Reset" benefit concert to raise money for Genesis' medical bills. Band consisted of Billy Goodrum - bass / Michael Campagna - guitar / Larry Thrasher - keyboards, percussion / Scott Breadman - percussion
25 July 1995 - Trocadero, San Francisco, California, USA
29 April 1999 - Arts Centre, Colchester, England
1 May 1999 - Royal Festival Hall, London, England
Psychic TV/Master Musicians of jajouka / ? and The Mysterious / Quentin Crisp (by Videolink) / Scanner/
Psychic TV features Genesis P-Orridge, Alex Fergusson & Friends. The Master Musicians are sacred Moroccans, their trance music predating current sounds by around 500 years. ? & The Mysterious deliver utterly original Mexican-American garage, their most famous hit, 96 Tears. Scanner is a late 90s dance music sensation and if you need to know who Quentin Crisp is, you're probably better not coming.
2007: PTV3 Tour
2007-09-15 Russia-Moscow IKRA Club
2007-09-17 UK-Bristol BierKeller
2007-09-18 UK-Birmingham Carling Academy
2007-09-19 UK-Leeds Rios
2007-09-20 UK-Glasgow ABC2
2007-09-22 KC Belgie Belgium-Hasselt
2007-09-23 Netherlands-Tilburg ZXZW Festival@013
2007-09-24 Germany-Berlin Knaack
2007-09-25 Germany-Münster Gleis 22
2007-09-26 Germany-Hamburg Hafenklang
2007-09-28 Denmark-Copenhagen TBA
2007-09-19 Norway-Oslo Bla
2007-09-30 Sweden-Stockholm Nalen
Additional 2007 tour dates (October/November) were cancelled due to the death of Lady Jaye Breyer P-Orridge.
2 October 1982 - The Final Academy, Ritzy, Brixton, London, England
First live performance. Part of the Final Academy Event. Artists also performing included Cabaret Voltaire, 23 Skidoo, William Burroughs, Brian Gysin, etc
1983
23 June 1983 - Foundation Raelienne
6 November 1983 - The Ritz, Manchester, England
Originally scheduled for Clifton House, Prestwich Mental Hospital, Manchester
on 4 November.
November 1983 - Reykjavik, Iceland
18 November 1983 - Danceteria, New York City, USA
19 November 1983 - Danceteria, New York City, USA
2 December 1983 - Atonal Festival, Pankehallen, Berlin, W.Germany
21 April 1984 - Reykjavik, Iceland
1984
22 April 1984 - Eventworks 1984, Mass. College Of Art, Boston, USA
26 April 1984 - Club 950, Chicago, USA
PTV were: Genesis & Paula P-Orridge, John Gosling, Monte Cazazza
17 May 1984 - Circumanie Festival, Gottingen, W.Germany
With Cassiber, Helmut Nadolsky "Hell Mood", Jeye Licht Performance.
Festival ran from 17 to 20 May
1 June 1984 - Exo 7, Rouen, France
28 July 1984 - Temporary Temple, Drayton Park, London, England
Secret 4 date tour of London began with word-of-mouth gig at empty synagogue in Drayton Park
1 August 1984 - ICA, The Mall, London, England
Background muzak for a reading on "war" by Kathy Acker
August 1984 - Holloway Road Music Hall, London, England (secret)
15 August 1984 - Everyman Theatre, Hampstead, England
Evening of psychic television and newtelevision. 4 hours of film, video, soundtrack. With featured work/collaborations by PTV, Cerith Wyn Evans, Derek Jarman, Antony Balch
17 August 1984 - Hammersmith Town Hall, London, England
With A Certain Ratio. "A fully integrated video and music event". A week (13-18 August) of music and film at the Everyman Theatre. Other artists taking part included the Go-Betweens, Pete Shelley and Virginia Astley. Each artist performed a live set followed by a film of their choice.
late 1984 - Zap Club, Brighton, England
Video performance
16 September 1984 - Klecks Theatre, Hamburg, W.Germany
22 September 1984 - Pandoras Music Box Festival, De Doelen, Rotterdam, Netherlands
23 September 1984 - Futurama 84, Zaal Brielpoort, Deinze, Belgium
16 October 1984 - La Edad De Oro, Madrid, Spain
With Vagina Dentata Organ. Performance on live TV show.
5 November 1984 - Hacienda, Manchester
30 November 1984 - Karen, Goteborg, Sweden
December 1984 - Oslo, Norway
3 December 1984 - Club 77, Helsinki, Finland
6 December 1984 - Stockholm, Sweden
7 December 1984 - Jagtvej 69, Kopenhagen, Denmark
8 December 1984 - Stadt Hamburg, Malmo, Sweden
10 December 1984 - Batschkapp, Frankfurt, W.Germany
11 December 1984 - Odeon, Munster, W.Germany
12 December 1984 - Paard van Troje, Den Haag, Netherlands
13 December 1984 - Arena, Rotterdam, Netherlands
14 December 1984 - Paradiso, Amsterdam, Netherlands
15 December 1984 - De Effenaar, Eindhoven, Netherlands
23 December 1984 - Heaven, London, England
With Monte Cazazza
1985
19 May 1985 - Hammersmith Palais, London, England
The Fabulous Feast of Flowering Light (The Starlight Mire)
Also on the bill were: The Virgin Prunes, Mantis Dance Company, Kathy Acker, Bee The Process, Kukl, The Simonics, The Weeds, Zaghurhim, The Waking Room, Death And Beauty Foundation, John Maybury and Derek Jarman, Claude Bessy's Church Of The Cathode Ray Tube
PTV's new line up was reported to be: Genesis P-Orridge, Paula P-Orridge and Alex Fergusson, joined by Max from the Weekend Swingers and Rema Rema on drums, Mouse on bass, Monte Cazazza from Factrix on guitar and Hilmar Orn Himarsson from Icelandic band Theyr on keyboards and drums.
September or October (?) 1985 - Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester, England
With Mantis Dance & Impossible Dreamers
13 October 1985 - Rimini, Italy
14 October 1985 - The Big Club, Turin, Italy
15 October 1985 - Limelight, Kortrijk, Netherlands
16 October 1985 - Bregenz, Austria
17 October 1985 - Vienna, Austria
19 October 1985 - Munich, Germany
21 October 1985 - Berlin, Germany
22 October 1985 - Bochum, Germany
23 October 1985 - Gronningham, Netherlands
25 October 1985 - Tivoli, Utrecht, Netherlands
26 October 1985 - Apeldoorn, Netherlands
27 October 1985 - Paradiso, Netherlands
Additional dates in: Gabice, Italy; Leiden, Netherlands; Dusseldorf, Germany
13 December 1985 - The Arena, Rotterdam, Netherlands
December 1985 - Budapest, Hungary
1985 - Assembly Rooms, Stoke Newington, England
1986
16 January 1986 - Nakano Public Hall, Tokyo, Japan
17 January 1986 - Nakano Public Hall, Tokyo, Japan
18 January 1986 - Nakano Public Hall, Tokyo, Japan
February 1986 - Zurich, Switzerland
11 February 1986 - Triangle Arts Centre, Birmingham, England
12 February 1986 - Warehouse, Leeds, England
13 February 1986 - Riverside, Newcastle, England
14 February 1986 - University, Liverpool, England
16 February 1986 - Rooftops, Glasgow, Scotland
19 February 1986 - Metropol, Aachen, W.Germany
13 March 1986 - National Ballroom, Kilburn High Road, London, England
With Zodiac Mindwarp & The Love Reaction, Annie Anxiety, The Golden Horde
10 April 1986 - Virgin Megastore, London, England
20 May 1986 - Marquee, London, England
8 June 1986 - Elysée, Montmartre, Paris, France
22 June 1986 - Dusseldorf, Germany
Additional German dates in Hamburg; Nurnberg; Frankfurt; Freiburg; Karlsruhe
3 July 1986 - 3rd St, 3 Cromwell Road, London, England
A memorial wake up party for Brian Jones
13 July 1986 - Town Hall, Basildon, England
Basildon Peace Festival. Other bands included Erasure.
1 August 1986 - The Farm, San Francisco, USA
2 August 1986 - The Mabuhay Gardens, San Francisco, USA
With Trial
3 August 1986 - The Roxy, Hollywood, USA
Additional US dates in Milwaukee; Chicago; Detroit; Los Angeles (Roxy - possibly three shows)
9 August 1986 - Cabaret Metro, Toronto, Canada
5 October 1986 - Town & Country Club, London, England
With Shock-Headed Peters, The Godfathers & The Shamen
23 December 1986 - London, England
Additional 1986 dates in
International, Manchester, England
Leadmill,Sheffield, England
Kerouacs Club, Hackney, London, England
June or July 1987 - Mardi Gras Club, Nottingham, England
13 July 1987 - Hackney Empire, London, England
With Tiny Lights, English Boy On The Love Ranch, Turning Shrines, Webcore, Zoskia, Kenny Morris
25 July 1987 - Finsbury Park, London, England
17 August 1987 - Riverside Centre, Newcastle, England
Benefit for the Centre
24 September 1987 - Electric Ballroom, London, England
With Angry Love Orchestra, Webcore, The Missing Link, Zoskia Meets Sugardog, Weeds, Spacemen 3
30 September 1987 - Empire, Hackney, London
With Alien Sex Fiend, Seething Wells (No More Censorship Campaign benefit)
1988
April 1988 - Variety Arts Centre, Los Angeles, USA
30 April 1988 - Astoria, London, England
With Spacemen 3, Hiding Place
29 June 1988 - Fridge, Brixton, London, England
With Stitched-Back Foot Airman (Black Rhino benefit)
16 July 1988 - Fields Park, London, England
17 September 1988 - Thames River Boat Trip, England
27 September 1988 - Berkely, California, USA
29 September 1988 - I-Beam, San Francisco, USA
5 October 1988 - Town & Country Club, London, England
Originally scheduled for 21 September 1988
Oct. 13, 1988. Live at The Park Elevator, Charlotte, NC Oct. 13, 1988.
US tour with dates in Columbus; Washington; Richmond (Rockitz); Syracuse (NY); San Diego; Denver; Dallas; Los Angeles; Detroit; Atlanta; Salt Lake City; Houston (Axiom); Austin (Plantarium); Cleveland (Phantasy Niteklub): plus Canadian dates in Toronto and Montreal
3 November 1988 - Pyramid, New York City, USA
5 November 1988 - Norman, Oklahoma, USA
25 November 1988 - Club Rodon, Athens, Greece
26 November 1988 - Club Rodon, Athens, Greece
4 December 1988 - Mayfair, Glasgow, Scotland
5 December 1988 - Pink Toothbrush, Rayleigh
8 December 1988 - Polytechnic, Manchester, England
11 December 1988 - Leadmill, Sheffield, England
16 December 1988 - Astoria, Charing Cross, London, England
Played as Throbbing Gristle Ltd
1989
25 January 1989 - Dingwalls, London, England
February 1989 - PTV had to cancel 10 of 15 gigs on UK tour including bans from the Astoria and Town & Country Club
4 March 1989 - "Cave Of Desire", Heaven, London, England
With The Irresistible Force, Dehli For Dehli, Jolly Rodger, Chesere
27 March 1989 - Bielefeld, Germany
28 March 1989 - Dortmund Germany
30 March 1989 - Vienna Austria
31 March 1989 - Linz, Austria
1 April 1989 - Gammelsdorf, Germany
2 April 1989 - Stuttgart, Germany
3 April 1989 - Frankfurt, Germany
4 April 1989 - Cologne, Germany
5 April 1989 - Hannover, Germany
6 April 1989 - Loft, Berlin, Germany
7 April 1989 - Coesfeld, Germany
8 April 1989 - Bremen, Germany
9 April 1989 - Hamburg, Germany
12 April 1989 - Den Haag, Netherlands
13 April 1989 - Amsterdam, Netherlands
October 1989 - New York, USA
With The Master Musicians of Joujouka
1 November 1989 - Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
13 December 1989 - Mean Fiddler, London, England
1990
11 April 1990 - Subterania, London, England
17 May 1990 - Denver, Colorado, USA
25 May 1990 - I Beam, San Francisco, USA
29 May 1990 - Riverside, California, USA
1 June 1990 - Los Angeles, California, USA
11 June 1990 - Axis, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
27 June 1990 - 930 Club, Washington D.C., USA
25 August 1990 - Reading Festival, England
20 December 1990 - Mean Fiddler, London, England
16 January 1991 - Zap Club, Brighton, England
(Dolphin Freedom Party)
6 March 1991 - Subterania, London, England
March/June 1991 - Ireland
11 June 1991 - Zap Club, Brighton, England
13 June 1991 - Powerhaus, Islington, London
With Dave Harrow, Greedy Beat Syndicate
15 June 1991 - International, Manchester, England
17 June 1991 - Mayfair, Glasgow, Scotland
27 November 1991 - Subterania, London, England
With The Greedy Beat Syndicate, Gini Ball, Dave Harrow
1992
27 March 1992 - Rocket "Mega Dog", Holloway, London
With Fini Tribe
August 1992 - Ceasars Latin Palace, San Francisco, USA
5 August 1992 - The Edge, Palo Alto, California, USA
3 April 1993 - Psychosis Rave, Chicago, USA
14 October 1993 - Wow Hall, Eugene, Oregon, USA
PTV were Genesis P-Orridge, Craig Ellenwood
8 April 1994 - Wow Hall, Eugene, Oregon, USA
PTV were Genesis P-Orridge, Larry Thrasher, Paula Whitewolf
1995
20 July 1995 - Club 1015 Folsom, San Francisco, California, USA
"Trip Reset" benefit concert to raise money for Genesis' medical bills. Band consisted of Billy Goodrum - bass / Michael Campagna - guitar / Larry Thrasher - keyboards, percussion / Scott Breadman - percussion
25 July 1995 - Trocadero, San Francisco, California, USA
29 April 1999 - Arts Centre, Colchester, England
1 May 1999 - Royal Festival Hall, London, England
Psychic TV/Master Musicians of jajouka / ? and The Mysterious / Quentin Crisp (by Videolink) / Scanner/
Psychic TV features Genesis P-Orridge, Alex Fergusson & Friends. The Master Musicians are sacred Moroccans, their trance music predating current sounds by around 500 years. ? & The Mysterious deliver utterly original Mexican-American garage, their most famous hit, 96 Tears. Scanner is a late 90s dance music sensation and if you need to know who Quentin Crisp is, you're probably better not coming.
2007: PTV3 Tour
2007-09-15 Russia-Moscow IKRA Club
2007-09-17 UK-Bristol BierKeller
2007-09-18 UK-Birmingham Carling Academy
2007-09-19 UK-Leeds Rios
2007-09-20 UK-Glasgow ABC2
2007-09-22 KC Belgie Belgium-Hasselt
2007-09-23 Netherlands-Tilburg ZXZW Festival@013
2007-09-24 Germany-Berlin Knaack
2007-09-25 Germany-Münster Gleis 22
2007-09-26 Germany-Hamburg Hafenklang
2007-09-28 Denmark-Copenhagen TBA
2007-09-19 Norway-Oslo Bla
2007-09-30 Sweden-Stockholm Nalen
Additional 2007 tour dates (October/November) were cancelled due to the death of Lady Jaye Breyer P-Orridge.
Sunday, May 9, 2010
Genesis p-orridge online archive facebook extension...
I have just set up a facebook extension to the archive...search "Thee Archive"
or go straight to www.facebook.com/theearchive
...friend this ASTORY project, why don't you?
or go straight to www.facebook.com/theearchive
...friend this ASTORY project, why don't you?
Jim Hayes Skyscraper magazine interview with Genesis March 2003
Archive reader Jim Hayes contributed this interview he conducted with Gen in March 2003 for Skyscraper magazine..thanks Jim!
Check out Jims blog http://assemblyplantmarietta.blogspot.com/
Jim's Introduction. I had the opportunity to chat with Genesis Breyer P-Orridge for an interview that was published in the magazine Skyscraper. This is the whole transcript. I hope you enjoy it. I certainly did!
Genesis Breyer P-Orridge interview 30 March 03
(Numbers being punched. Ring, ring, ring. Dial tone, different numbers being punched.)
Genesis Breyer P-Orridge: Hello.
Jim: Hey Genesis, this is Jim Hayes in Georgia.
GBP-O: Hi.
Jim: Good time? Bad time?
GBP-O: No it’s fine.
Jim: Awesome, I’m sorry I took a little nap when I got home from work.
GBP-O: It’ll be okay.
Jim: I was telling a friend of mine that we have done the interview yet but he’s a brilliant conversationalist so I just love talking to the guy…so how are you how do you feel?
GBP-O: Oh I feel great.
Jim: Well what I was wondering was…do you have any…
GBP-O: (murmurs off phone to a male voice in the background).
Jim: You all right?
GBP-O: Yeah yeah I’m fine, the neighbor’s cat’s been escaping and coming upstairs and then we think he started peeing.
Jim: Ut oh.
GBP-O: I can’t get any rest, aah!
Jim: I forget to tell you had an Austin Spare moment a couple of months ago. It was my first day of work at this department store thing and I had masturbated and I went out to the back porch to smoke and one of the pipes above the garage burst.
GBP-O: (laughter)
Jim: I was thinking about him and I thought that’s great.
GBP-O: That’s funny cos for the article that they’re reprinting about Austin Spare I sent a couple of scans of pictures to Richard Metzger and I got an email back from him saying as he opened the file to look at the illustrations, there was an earthquake! (laughter)
Jim: Oh that’s awesome.
GBP-O: I thought you’d be amused…cos it’s actually the file of Mrs. Paterson, actually it was the first time I sent the scan of Mrs. Paterson to him.
Jim: Now that was the lady that taught him.
GBP-O: Yeah.
Jim: Were you ever old enough to meet him?
GBP-O: No, well I was technically old enough, he died in ’56 and I was six years old and I didn’t. (laughter)
Jim: Okay.
GBP-O: No I never met him. I met an old guy that did used to hang out with him, that had loads of stuff, through a book dealer I knew in Brighton. So there were a few contemporaries that lived longer and were around. I think Zack, ahh I forget his name, his name escapes me, whoever it was the old man wrote kind of a rather, a rather inept attempt at biography but he was just an old guy he wasn’t really anyone, he wasn’t a writer or anything…
Jim: Well you know people do the best they can…
GBP-O: (high voice) I’ve heard that rumor.
Jim: You’ve heard that rumor! What was I gonna say…
GBP-O: You’re lucky you called, I wrote down 8’oclock.
Jim: I took a nap, I’m sorry.
GBP-O: I was just saying to Jack, okay it’s nine o’clock, I’ll keep the phone near me but I’m gonna start working.
Jim: What would you be working on tonight?
GBP-O: Finishing up the Burroughs/Gysin one.
Jim: It’s an essay?
GBP-O: The one about Burroughs and Gysin.
Jim: Oh for (Richard) Metzger.
GBP-O: Yeah.
Jim: Well I was thinking that since this is a rock and roll magazine, so the TG reissue is done, is it selling at all?
GBP-O: It’s a bit crackly, is that you or me?
Jim: You.
GBP-O: Let’s see if I can find a good spot…nyah nan an an. (hums in high voice)…
Jim: You there?
GBP-O: This is like doing yoga…let’s find somewhere where it stays okay. Tell me when it’s okay, hang on…how’s that?
Jim: That’s great.
GBP-O: Good.
Jim: So you did the reissue box set, is that selling at all? Do you know?
GBP-O: Umm, we did-have you seen it?
Jim: No I haven’t it yet.
GBP-O: Oh okay, it’s actually really, really a beautiful production. It’s a grey kind of semi-fabric box that it’s in. TG’s 24 on the top in black in a little rectangle so that when you open it, it has a brown envelope, like the one’s they use for legal documents and that has a piece of string wrapped around it and they put a wax seal on here.
Jim: Okay.
GBP-O: It’s sealed with sealing wax with a TG flash symbol in the sealing wax. So every single box was complicated to put together cos there’s lots of different mementos that can only be put together by hand. Then you break the seal and inside is the original Industrial News from Nineteen Seventy-whenever it was-let me get you the date cos I do have it here-(sings) la la la la la so it says Industrial News and it is l979, the um, some of the things from the Industrial News letter we did in l979 and then a new Industrial News that’s from December 2002, on the 23rd of December of course and it’s got lots of new essays. Everybody wrote a new statement with a sort of hindsight vibe and there’s an article on sound effects, using noise as a weapon and so on. There’s an obituary for Brion Gysin, an obituary for William Burroughs, Robert Rental, Derek Jarman.
Jim: I didn’t know that Robert Rental died.
GBP-O: He also passed away, yes.
Jim: Oh that’s too bad.
GBP-O: And then there’s an article by Jack Sargent about mysterious death by bio-terrorism labs. Cosey wrote a really good essay about terrorist memo teach (sp?) and I did a statement about TG and punk and what made them so different from each other. So it’s really good and you also get full color post cards of new collages by all the members of re-TG and new badges with the TG flash and the TG 24, new combinations, an embroidered patch that says “TG 24” and a circular TG embroidered patch with the flash in silver, stickers: a new one that says “assume all communications are tapped.”
Jim: Yeah yeah, who doesn’t?
GBP-O: So it’s all upgraded with the same aesthetic, it’s beautiful and then you get your 24 CDs and of course there’s notes on all the CDs. Chris did a really detailed breakdown of what was there, how it was picked-
Jim: Is that every gig?
GBP-O: No, no, it’s not every gig.
Jim: What about the other gigs?
GBP-O: Well…that’s a very good question, given that this is a conceptual piece as well, of course, it had to have 24 hours. If people get it directly from Industrial Records through Mute cos we reformed Industrial Records.
Jim: Oh you have.
GBP-O: Yeah. So we reformed Industrial Records, the four of us, and this is the first release on Industrial Records 2002.
Jim: Are you going to release all the other stuff? All the Monte Cazzaza stuff, the Leather Nun-
GBP-O: What we want to do is just blow the-work all way through all the worthwhile rarities that either have been really badly bootlegged or have been never known about cos there’s still things that no one has actually heard or seen. And we have, I would imagine, we’ll ignore the call waiting for a second, I would imagine that we have maybe another seventy or eighty hours-
Jim: Oh really?
GBP-O: -of studio jams and ideas and demos and sketches and so on. The technical quality is probably a bit like the Velvet Underground and some of Andy Warhol’s movies, but that has a certain charm.
Jim: Did you hear that Velvet bootleg, the Quine tapes?
GBP-O: Which one is that, is that with the long instrumental jams?
Jim: Yeah.
GBP-O: Yeah I really liked that.
Jim: Yeah I really liked that too, you’re right the sound isn’t that great but who cares.
GBP-O: Exactly, there comes a point when it becomes charming and valid in its own write. If it was neat and tidy it wouldn’t be a historical document, it would be-something else.
Jim: So it was the first time in twenty years that you’ve gone back and saw them (TG). How did it go? I mean was it water under the bridge…
GBP-O: Yeah it was November last year the first time the four of us had all been one room at the same time. Um, and uh, I think I told you…
Jim: Yeah you did-
GBP-O: Jackie took a photograph of that moment-
Jim: Cool-
GBP-O: So we probably should think about utilizing that, if you want to-
Jim: I’d love to but y’know, did you guys say, “uhh hi how y’doin?” and just go from there-
GBP-O: Mute put us all in the same hotel, so we all arrived at slightly different times, I think Sleazy came from somewhere abroad, I came from New York with Ms. Jackie, actually I should say Lady Jayeaye cos her name is officially now Lady Jaye-
Jim: Yeah I remember that part.
GBP-O: Oh you do, that’s so much easier. And Chris and Cosey came down from the North of England where they live. We met the first evening when we went for coffee together and…It was strange, because it was almost as if, even to each other it felt, to me it’s nothing like a subjective sensation how it felt. It was almost like all of us had become fictional characters or kind of distant. It’s if TG is for me as much of a myth it is for anyone else at this point. It was kind of like: ‘oh they are real, we really did know each other and it really did happen,’ kind of thing! (Laughs)
Jim: Right right right.
GBP-O: There was a little moment of it being very surreal and then it was Cosey that said that what surprised her was how quickly we all slipped back into…communicating like, almost like a Third Mind y’know.
Jim: Right.
GBP-O: We did interviews, the reason we were all there together was to do interviews with the Press to promote (24 Hours) and announce the fact that it was out and we did the classic thing of all being in a room and then the PR person from Mute would bring in a different journalist or journalists every hour on the hour all day long.
Jim: Oh really?
GBP-O: Yeah. Mainly European magazines-
Jim: Well you always had a bigger influence in Europe rather than the United States.
GBP-O: Well I don’t know about influence, I think we got more press. That was primarily cos we only did those two gigs in America and we didn’t have a big machine behind us. (indistinct)…there was some (?) hope of having three major labels with a lot of hype before they came over…and our own label doing everything with money we borrowed.
Jim: Wasn’t the first couple of PTV records on CBS?
GBP-O: Yeah. But that’s a whole separate story.
Jim: Well how did that happen?
GBP-O: Well one thing at a time.
Jim: (laughs)
GBP-O: I’m answering the other question.
Jim: Okay okay, you’re right you’re right.
GBP-O: Yes. So um, Cosey had mentioned that we just knew, almost without, even without body language, we just naturally remembered how we would just look or glance at each other so that whoever was appropriate would answer the question. One person would answer a certain amount, the others would then take over one by one and add to it and embellish and expand upon it. It happened so naturally as if it was yesterday that we were being TG on that level. So the TG mind, y’know the special Third Mind of TG, instantly kicked back in. And likewise with photographs, it was actually, surprisingly, natural. So there was this whole thing of like on one level like meeting each others’ ghosts, even my own. And on another level it was completely natural, like going around the shop again. Sorta meeting the neighbors. It was interesting. Interesting, it was much less confusing then I expected. It was a happy time.
Jim: well did you think you were going to be over there and at each other’s throats?
GBP-O: We never were. Y’see this is one of these great myths that people have seem to assumed. But in fact, that’s not my or anybodies recollection. We just, all for our reasons we knew it was time to stop. And, uh, that was that. I mean as you know, I mean for example if we were at each other’s throats I wouldn’t have been in Psychic TV with Sleazy. But people kind of make these kind of weird distinctions like “oh yes, then you all hated each other.” But then I spent several years working with one of these people that I supposedly wasn’t speaking to y’know? I don’t know why the public are like that. They seem to want to invent things. For example, I am so bored with reading things like (high whiney voice): TG split up cos Cosey and Chris were together and they became lovers. But they became lovers in early 1978.
Jim: Right.
GBP-O: And we did, and after Cosey had moved out with Chris, and with my full knowledge obviously. We recorded Dead On Arrival, 20 Jazz Funk Greats, Heathen Earth, Adrenalin and Distant Dreams, Discipline- all those classic records after that. And it was three years later before we decided to end the mission. Y’know, it’s like people are trying to imply that I didn’t notice for three years and that all of a sudden the day after I remarried somebody and Cosey was already six months pregnant (voice mockingly quivers) I was supposed to be really upset and I’m not gonna be in this band anymore! Y’know the inability of people to add up chronology is baffling. (laughs)
Jim: Yeah yeah, I see what you’re saying but I never knew why Sleazy left PTV and I attribute that to I just never read anything about it.
GBP-O: Well that’s just a matter of…it was Brion Gysin who, he actually wrote in Latin on a tape he gave me about Brian Jones and on that tape he was talking about his interpretation about happened when they were all in Morocco together cos he was there. He wrote in Latin the equivalent of “don’t speak ill of the dead”. Well, obviously, (laughs) Chris and Cosey and Sleazy and myself aren’t dead but…uh…
Jim: I understand what you’re saying.
GBP-O: It just didn’t seem to be anyone else’s business to go into that. I personally think it never reads well. You read about bands in the heat of the moment, or because of the business strategy they bitch about each other afterwards.
Jim: Then it becomes real.
GBP-O: Yeah exactly. And so we never did that but people chose to try and invent stories but never having information, so they made it up. It only takes one person to write something and give the impression that that was the story. But even so, y’kinda look and y’think can’t anyone figure out that there’s three years here and that entire time all four, err all the other three had keys to my house at Beck Road (?) all the time cos Industrial Records was the downstairs of the house. It’s just ridiculous, we were all working together everyday. Chris would come around everyday and work downstairs with me duplicating the cassette tapes of the original cassette version of 24 Hours. I never did understand it. It can get really frustrating but my overall policy is that someday someone is gonna wake up and realize that’s obviously ludicrous. And this ridiculous story about our readjustment. Who’s invested in it I don’t know, why people invest in it.
Jim: It’s easier to understand.
GBP-O: You think?
Jim: It’s easier to understand rather than the ideas.
GBP-O: I’ll have to take your word for it! (laughs)
Jim: Well it’s easier for me to talk about why you hate somebody as why the group broke up rather than the group was a flux, a changing principle.
GBP-O: Right.
Jim: You could buy one Psychic TV record and never know what the other one’s sounded like and think that’s what Psychic TV sounded like.
GBP-O: Yeah well that caused lots of agitation and I can see why that would happen. People would buy something maybe they had read or heard rumors, maybe they’d been to a gig and then they’d go out and buy something and it would be nothing like they heard at the gig. Or nothing like they heard or read reviewed and they would either be really pleased about that or sometimes be really annoyed about it. In fact with Psychic TV, because Throbbing Gristle was so meticulous and in a way so beautifully and clearly defined as an aesthetic. TG was very clear and it unfolded designed way actually. With Psychic TV I definitely wanted it to be much more challenging. I didn’t want to be constrained by anybodies’ expectations. And often we would do a recording or change a style simply to completely and utterly contradict the previous statement. Almost like a mathematical formula. What did we do last time? Did they like it? Yes, let’s do the opposite this time. Or, what did we do last time? Did they hate it? Let’s do the opposite this time. The thing with Psychic TV was I had felt in the end, and I think the others felt in different ways that we were boxed in by our own success of TG. The more and more people who decided they liked it, the less they thought about what we were doing. And they started to go “yes TG, do…”
Jim: That guy on the “Heaven” tape screaming “Hamburger Lady”.
GBP-O: Yeah. So in some ways I almost worked, who am I to argue with hindsight? (Indistinct) overly hard to keep contradicting previous statements with Psychic TV but it was the only strategy I could feel, uhh, gave me space to think independently of the pressure from outside.
Jim: Well what’s the strategy with The Majesty?
GBP-O: With Thee Majesty?
Jim: With Thee Majesty.
GBP-O: With Thee Majesty what happened was, after the fire in Los Angeles.
Jim: Right.
GBP-O: At Harry Houdini’s old mansion, I quite literarily had to take a minimum of a year off, a year or two because of the physical injuries, the posttraumatic stress disorder and everything else.
Jim: Pardon me, but how are you doing with the injuries?
GBP-O: Uhh, well my left arm still hurts everyday. It’s one of those things that anybody with an ongoing injury will tell you that you adjust to a certain level of discomfort.
Jim: You broke the shoulder right?
GBP-O: No the elbow was smashed to pieces. The elbow was, I think in more than thirty pieces. They said it was like someone had got a steel hammer and then just put my arm…cos it hit the edge of a concrete step, it was like they put it on a piece of concrete and just smashed it with a steel hammer.
Jim: You jumped out a window didn’t you?
GBP-O: Well I fell. Yeah I had to climb out of the window to escape the fire and then I slipped on all this dust and fell backwards and landed on concrete steps so the edge of this one step hit my wrist and broke my wrist. Most of the impact, in a way, thank goodness, you can tell how hard it was, the elbow of the left arm just exploded into fragments and broke three ribs underneath the elbow as well. So if you can imagine that kind of pressure. And I also I got, my leg didn’t break but to this day the whole outside edge of the left thigh has nerve damage and I got a pulmonary embolism, blood clots from the impact as well. That’s what nearly killed me too.
Jim: What’s a pulmonary embolism?
GBP-O: A clot that goes to the lungs, it stops your breathing.
Jim: Ohh.
GBP-O: A coronary is when they go into the heart and pulmonary is in the lungs. And it was in my lungs so basically I almost suffocated to death cos of these blood clots to the lungs. I was in intensive care for ten days.
Jim: That was out in California right?
GBP-O: Yeah. So all of that combined with, and this, this is honest. I mean my last memory more or less before the agony of, heh heh, of hitting the ground is opening a door and looking down the corridor of this huge kind of, it looked like (indistinct) this tar like plastic smoke swirling towards me like Hell. Like the doors of hell, y’know. There was all this carpet burning and it was coming through the walls at the same time. It was these wooden walls with gaps in them, y’know what I mean?
Jim: Right.
GBP-O: Hollow walls and I closed the door and that door started getting hotter and hotter and hotter. I was like ‘ut oh, when that door goes I’m fried, literally.’ So, err, it was, I didn’t think I-I mean they told me that I had very severe post traumatic stress disorder and at the beginning I didn’t believe them cos it seemed kinda wussy…
Jim: Yeah yeah.
GBP-O: No no no, I just nearly died. (laughs) But actually as time went by I realized that it had an incredibly profound psychological effect on me. And that gets back to your question.
Jim: So you took a year off?
GBP-O: Lucky for me Lady Jayeaye, um, we were already engaged but she obviously rushed to my side. She heard, from MTV of all things, it was on the MTV News and then she got a phone call. She rushed to my side. She is also, very fortunately a nurse, a registered nurse, coincidentally, she said her gift to me was “I’ll take care of you and I’ll take care of everything and you just get well.” And that she said something that was really, really significant. She said: “You don’t ever have to do anything again if you don’t want to. You’re not obliged to make music just because people expect you to or people want you to and you don’t have to do anything in public anymore and rock and roll isn’t the be all and end all of life. Just take your time and think about what you want and what it is that you want to feel and get from life. Y’know, whatever it is, I’ll support you in that, y’know.” So in a way she liberated me from my um, British Protestant work ethic idea of my duty to keep working, to keep trying, bashing my head on the brick wall of culture. Saying ‘please please wake up and start trying to behave with a little bit more common sense, creativity is a healthy thing.
Jim: So you stepped back in where you started doing the visual arts and stuff.
GBP-O: For a long time I didn’t know what I wanted, I just decided, yeah I’m not gonna do anything else. Maybe I’ll change my name and just disappear y’know a bit like that Dadaist-
Jim: Arthur Craven?
GBP-O: Craven, yes.
Jim: He just got in a boat and sailed off.
GBP-O: I kinda thought well that’s not such a bad idea. Maybe I should change my name to Arthur Craven and go off.
Jim: Yeah yeah, but remember he had the title fight with Jack Johnson? And Johnson beat him up. GBP-O versus Mike Tyson-
GBP-O: Yeah, so I kinda went through all those things and then finally I stopped worrying about it. And after about a year I sort of able to look at things and say to myself what is it that I really love to do. What is it that really still intrigues me and excites me and I thought: I love words. I just love playing with words, writing them, changing them around, setting random things and when you alter this combination and cutting them up. So I love language and words and I love messing with the human voice as well. Not singing per se but just words, voice and then I thought I like just sounds. Sounds at the service of words to illustrate. Like in a movie you have light and camera angles and settings in order to enhance the method for the actual story. That’s kind of my interest in music. More than making sort of good or technical music. I’m not really interested in composition as music for music’s sake.
Jim: can you read or write music?
GBP-O: I used to. A little known fact is that when I was younger, from the age of eleven to fourteen I was in school choir. In (indistinct) Grammar School. I used to read music and sing in Latin, (indistinct) I used to sing alto. So that’s why I like all these harmonies, strange semi-atonal harmonies is because alto is the one between tenor and uh, the high one. And it has that kind of weird medieval, slightly flat sounding harmonies. That’s what I used to sing in the school choir. I even sang in the cathedral and stuff a few times, with one of those nice outfits with the big collar and red robe and everything. So I used to do that and read with my music teacher we’d sit and look-we’d have to listen to, say a symphony with all the music for all the instruments in front of us and then he’d suddenly stop the record you’d have to tell him exactly which note which instrument was playing as soon as he’d sort of said your name y’know? To prove you all were reading the music. So I did all of that and of course I also had piano lessons as well, the guy stood at the piano. So yeah, I used to read music. Now, if you had a gun to my head I couldn’t read music.
Jim: Well don’t you think it’s in there someplace?
GBP-O: Well obviously. My feeling is with a lot of technical things is that you absorb them at the beginning and then, some of some people, artists musicians, some people who’s life is dedicated to creativity choose to begin to push the edges of what they’ve been told the rules are or what the uhh specifications of equipment are or whatever and improvise if you like, in the shorthand. So once I became obsessed with things like cut-ups and free form jazz improvisations it was less and less relevant to me to follow music in the old style.
Jim: You said ‘free form jazz’ did you listen to Coltrane and Miles Davis?
GBP-O: Coltrane and Albert Ayler, many people like that, a lot.
Jim: I never knew you were into that stuff.
GBP-O: It was a long time ago. We’re talking about the mid-sixties. I was into that the same time I was listening to the Rolling Stones, early Pink Floyd and then the Velvet Underground.
Jim: so you were hip to the Velvets the first time around?
GBP-O: Yeah it was funny. I hadn’t heard them but my friend at school, (indistinct), he told me that he had been listening to John Peel on this pirate radio broadcast from some boat, Radio Caroline out on the river or something, the days of pirate radio in England. He heard this band playing this track and they were called the Velvet Underground and had somebody he thought was playing an electric violin. I had already got hold of an old violin and stuck a tape recorder microphone in it and was sort of playing an electrified violin in my, in the loft in my house. You know in the roof of the house and experimenting with that with tape recorders and the amplifiers so I was recording it as it fed back. So he, because there was this electric viola, he told me that I should listen to them if I get the chance. And then I went to the local record store which was the equivalent of Duane Reeds, which was Boots and it was actually a chemist shop. In those days they had a little record section and you were allowed to go upstairs and listen to the first track of the record, and then decide if you want to buy it or not. And I went in and asked them and they said no we don’t have it but we’re getting it in on Friday and that Friday was right in the middle of when I was doing my exams. The first lot of exams that you do in England before going to University. I had a scooter. I used to be a bit of a mod with a Vesper, so I actually did an exam and ran out of the class room, got on my Vesper zoomed down to the shop. Ran upstairs with money that I’d saved up ran in and said ‘have you got that record by the Velvet Underground? It was released today and you got one copy.’ So I ran into the listening booth and they put on, uh the first track on side two and I just couldn’t believe what I was hearing. And I just ran back: yes, yes, yes I’ll buy it! Grabbed it, went back to school and carried on taking examinations and I took it home and I played the whole album that night and it was one of those old record players where you could leave the arm up and it would keep going back to the beginning and playing it over and over. And I used to leave it on, one side and then the other side until it actually wore out the record. That was in a way, of all the records in the entire world, The Velvet Underground and Nico was the most directly influential, I mean all levels of my consciousness knows it backwards and forwards, upside down even. I played it thousands and thousands of times. I’ve even listened to it for hours when I’ve been asleep.
Jim: (laughs) is it better awake or asleep?
GBP-O: So…my father also, I think you already know from Painful but Fabulous was a drummer in a dance band, like a Buddy Rich type band, yeah. So I grew up playing the drums too. I remember playing the drums at a wedding reception when I was between three and four years old. Before TG even with Coum Transmissions up in Yorkshire I had a room in the Ho-Ho funhouse with my big drum wheel and all my drums set up with a drum kit. I used to play everyday, three or four hours a day and the same in London when we moved down to London. I had the drum kit set up. I think there’s a couple of photos in the Wreckers book where you can see it in the background. I used to play drums very, very consistently everyday for years, hours and hours I would play. And in those days I could even do rolls, y’know one handed rolls?
Jim: Right right right. (laughter)
GBP-O: All that kind of stuff. (laughter) and I used to play along with stuff by Captain Beefheart. That was one of the things I’d like to drum along to.
Jim: I love Captain Beefheart.
GBP-O: Yeah, I mean the rhythms and the syncopations, fabulous.
Jim: I also saw a parallel between him and you. To the general public you’re both really unknown but to anyone who’s paid any attention to you has just fallen in love with both you and your work, it’s always been an influence.
GBP-O: Well…that’s a compliment. I think I told you, did I ever tell you the anecdote about Don Van Vliet, Captain Beefheart?
Jim: No.
GBP-O: When we finally came to America to do the two Throbbing Gristle gigs before we packed it in. We played at this place called…the Veteran’s Auditorium-
Jim: yeah, Kezar Stadium-
GBP-O: No Kezar was in San Francisco, it was Culver City, Culver City. I think somewhere I have a photo but I don’t know if I could find it. It might be in one of the books. They wouldn’t put the name up outside the hall, where they usually put the name up of whoever’s playing, in big letters, plastic letters. So they just put “modern concert”.
Jim: yeah I’ve seen the photo.
GBP-O: Okay. That was because they wouldn’t put up the words “Throbbing Gristle”. And that night we were supported by SLA, no SWA rather which was really Black Flag and then we had 45 Grave, Don from the Germs. And, umm, before the gig, it was one of those ‘you had to be there nights’-y’know ‘this mythological crazy band from England that’s beyond punk is here y’know. Let’s check it out.’ All these people are coming and going in the dressing room and stuff. And all of a sudden this really nice guy about the same size as me very, very charming and polite, well mannered man came up with a bit of a beard and stuff and introduced himself. And it was Don Preston.
Jim: No shit?!?!
GBP-O: from the original Mothers of Invention and so I of course was really, really excited. I said, y’know you probably don’t care, but the day I decided not to go back to University I hitchhiked to Manchester England from Hull to see you play at the Free Trade Hall with the Mothers of Invention playing “Uncle Meat”.
Jim: Wow.
GBP-O: It’s true I still got the program with the ticket and everything.
Jim: Really.
GBP-O: Yeah. I keep everything. (laughter). And he said “oh wow, y’know” and I came backstage partly to say I really love your album “Second Annual Report” and also I got a message for from Don Van Vliet, Captain Beefheart. I was like: what! And he goes, yeah he said to tell you he thinks the music’s fantastic and he plays it when he’s painting.
Jim: Wow.
GBP-O: I was just flabbergasted. I was awestruck because y’know the early Mothers and the way they improvised-all the issues that you heard I was interested in free form jazz stuff. That helped me get into the Mothers “Uncle Meat” then the Jon Luc Ponty stuff cos of the electric violin so I was all into that for quite some time. And obviously Captain Beefheart in his day.
Jim: Did you ever hear those Don “Sugarcane” Harris albums?
GBP-O: No.
Jim: He was the electric violinist with the Mothers who was a rhythm and blues guy. He made some really good jazz records in the seventies.
GBP-O: No I don’t remember that. So that was one of my all time special moments. If someone had said who would you like to appreciate what you’re trying to do. Captain Beefheart would be definitely up there. So that was just before I went on stage. I was l like I can’t believe it. We’d done something right. And people I respect get it. It was a great moment. Kind of ironic considering I had already decided that was it. Those two gigs were the end of the whole thing.
Check out Jims blog http://assemblyplantmarietta.blogspot.com/
Jim's Introduction. I had the opportunity to chat with Genesis Breyer P-Orridge for an interview that was published in the magazine Skyscraper. This is the whole transcript. I hope you enjoy it. I certainly did!
Genesis Breyer P-Orridge interview 30 March 03
(Numbers being punched. Ring, ring, ring. Dial tone, different numbers being punched.)
Genesis Breyer P-Orridge: Hello.
Jim: Hey Genesis, this is Jim Hayes in Georgia.
GBP-O: Hi.
Jim: Good time? Bad time?
GBP-O: No it’s fine.
Jim: Awesome, I’m sorry I took a little nap when I got home from work.
GBP-O: It’ll be okay.
Jim: I was telling a friend of mine that we have done the interview yet but he’s a brilliant conversationalist so I just love talking to the guy…so how are you how do you feel?
GBP-O: Oh I feel great.
Jim: Well what I was wondering was…do you have any…
GBP-O: (murmurs off phone to a male voice in the background).
Jim: You all right?
GBP-O: Yeah yeah I’m fine, the neighbor’s cat’s been escaping and coming upstairs and then we think he started peeing.
Jim: Ut oh.
GBP-O: I can’t get any rest, aah!
Jim: I forget to tell you had an Austin Spare moment a couple of months ago. It was my first day of work at this department store thing and I had masturbated and I went out to the back porch to smoke and one of the pipes above the garage burst.
GBP-O: (laughter)
Jim: I was thinking about him and I thought that’s great.
GBP-O: That’s funny cos for the article that they’re reprinting about Austin Spare I sent a couple of scans of pictures to Richard Metzger and I got an email back from him saying as he opened the file to look at the illustrations, there was an earthquake! (laughter)
Jim: Oh that’s awesome.
GBP-O: I thought you’d be amused…cos it’s actually the file of Mrs. Paterson, actually it was the first time I sent the scan of Mrs. Paterson to him.
Jim: Now that was the lady that taught him.
GBP-O: Yeah.
Jim: Were you ever old enough to meet him?
GBP-O: No, well I was technically old enough, he died in ’56 and I was six years old and I didn’t. (laughter)
Jim: Okay.
GBP-O: No I never met him. I met an old guy that did used to hang out with him, that had loads of stuff, through a book dealer I knew in Brighton. So there were a few contemporaries that lived longer and were around. I think Zack, ahh I forget his name, his name escapes me, whoever it was the old man wrote kind of a rather, a rather inept attempt at biography but he was just an old guy he wasn’t really anyone, he wasn’t a writer or anything…
Jim: Well you know people do the best they can…
GBP-O: (high voice) I’ve heard that rumor.
Jim: You’ve heard that rumor! What was I gonna say…
GBP-O: You’re lucky you called, I wrote down 8’oclock.
Jim: I took a nap, I’m sorry.
GBP-O: I was just saying to Jack, okay it’s nine o’clock, I’ll keep the phone near me but I’m gonna start working.
Jim: What would you be working on tonight?
GBP-O: Finishing up the Burroughs/Gysin one.
Jim: It’s an essay?
GBP-O: The one about Burroughs and Gysin.
Jim: Oh for (Richard) Metzger.
GBP-O: Yeah.
Jim: Well I was thinking that since this is a rock and roll magazine, so the TG reissue is done, is it selling at all?
GBP-O: It’s a bit crackly, is that you or me?
Jim: You.
GBP-O: Let’s see if I can find a good spot…nyah nan an an. (hums in high voice)…
Jim: You there?
GBP-O: This is like doing yoga…let’s find somewhere where it stays okay. Tell me when it’s okay, hang on…how’s that?
Jim: That’s great.
GBP-O: Good.
Jim: So you did the reissue box set, is that selling at all? Do you know?
GBP-O: Umm, we did-have you seen it?
Jim: No I haven’t it yet.
GBP-O: Oh okay, it’s actually really, really a beautiful production. It’s a grey kind of semi-fabric box that it’s in. TG’s 24 on the top in black in a little rectangle so that when you open it, it has a brown envelope, like the one’s they use for legal documents and that has a piece of string wrapped around it and they put a wax seal on here.
Jim: Okay.
GBP-O: It’s sealed with sealing wax with a TG flash symbol in the sealing wax. So every single box was complicated to put together cos there’s lots of different mementos that can only be put together by hand. Then you break the seal and inside is the original Industrial News from Nineteen Seventy-whenever it was-let me get you the date cos I do have it here-(sings) la la la la la so it says Industrial News and it is l979, the um, some of the things from the Industrial News letter we did in l979 and then a new Industrial News that’s from December 2002, on the 23rd of December of course and it’s got lots of new essays. Everybody wrote a new statement with a sort of hindsight vibe and there’s an article on sound effects, using noise as a weapon and so on. There’s an obituary for Brion Gysin, an obituary for William Burroughs, Robert Rental, Derek Jarman.
Jim: I didn’t know that Robert Rental died.
GBP-O: He also passed away, yes.
Jim: Oh that’s too bad.
GBP-O: And then there’s an article by Jack Sargent about mysterious death by bio-terrorism labs. Cosey wrote a really good essay about terrorist memo teach (sp?) and I did a statement about TG and punk and what made them so different from each other. So it’s really good and you also get full color post cards of new collages by all the members of re-TG and new badges with the TG flash and the TG 24, new combinations, an embroidered patch that says “TG 24” and a circular TG embroidered patch with the flash in silver, stickers: a new one that says “assume all communications are tapped.”
Jim: Yeah yeah, who doesn’t?
GBP-O: So it’s all upgraded with the same aesthetic, it’s beautiful and then you get your 24 CDs and of course there’s notes on all the CDs. Chris did a really detailed breakdown of what was there, how it was picked-
Jim: Is that every gig?
GBP-O: No, no, it’s not every gig.
Jim: What about the other gigs?
GBP-O: Well…that’s a very good question, given that this is a conceptual piece as well, of course, it had to have 24 hours. If people get it directly from Industrial Records through Mute cos we reformed Industrial Records.
Jim: Oh you have.
GBP-O: Yeah. So we reformed Industrial Records, the four of us, and this is the first release on Industrial Records 2002.
Jim: Are you going to release all the other stuff? All the Monte Cazzaza stuff, the Leather Nun-
GBP-O: What we want to do is just blow the-work all way through all the worthwhile rarities that either have been really badly bootlegged or have been never known about cos there’s still things that no one has actually heard or seen. And we have, I would imagine, we’ll ignore the call waiting for a second, I would imagine that we have maybe another seventy or eighty hours-
Jim: Oh really?
GBP-O: -of studio jams and ideas and demos and sketches and so on. The technical quality is probably a bit like the Velvet Underground and some of Andy Warhol’s movies, but that has a certain charm.
Jim: Did you hear that Velvet bootleg, the Quine tapes?
GBP-O: Which one is that, is that with the long instrumental jams?
Jim: Yeah.
GBP-O: Yeah I really liked that.
Jim: Yeah I really liked that too, you’re right the sound isn’t that great but who cares.
GBP-O: Exactly, there comes a point when it becomes charming and valid in its own write. If it was neat and tidy it wouldn’t be a historical document, it would be-something else.
Jim: So it was the first time in twenty years that you’ve gone back and saw them (TG). How did it go? I mean was it water under the bridge…
GBP-O: Yeah it was November last year the first time the four of us had all been one room at the same time. Um, and uh, I think I told you…
Jim: Yeah you did-
GBP-O: Jackie took a photograph of that moment-
Jim: Cool-
GBP-O: So we probably should think about utilizing that, if you want to-
Jim: I’d love to but y’know, did you guys say, “uhh hi how y’doin?” and just go from there-
GBP-O: Mute put us all in the same hotel, so we all arrived at slightly different times, I think Sleazy came from somewhere abroad, I came from New York with Ms. Jackie, actually I should say Lady Jayeaye cos her name is officially now Lady Jaye-
Jim: Yeah I remember that part.
GBP-O: Oh you do, that’s so much easier. And Chris and Cosey came down from the North of England where they live. We met the first evening when we went for coffee together and…It was strange, because it was almost as if, even to each other it felt, to me it’s nothing like a subjective sensation how it felt. It was almost like all of us had become fictional characters or kind of distant. It’s if TG is for me as much of a myth it is for anyone else at this point. It was kind of like: ‘oh they are real, we really did know each other and it really did happen,’ kind of thing! (Laughs)
Jim: Right right right.
GBP-O: There was a little moment of it being very surreal and then it was Cosey that said that what surprised her was how quickly we all slipped back into…communicating like, almost like a Third Mind y’know.
Jim: Right.
GBP-O: We did interviews, the reason we were all there together was to do interviews with the Press to promote (24 Hours) and announce the fact that it was out and we did the classic thing of all being in a room and then the PR person from Mute would bring in a different journalist or journalists every hour on the hour all day long.
Jim: Oh really?
GBP-O: Yeah. Mainly European magazines-
Jim: Well you always had a bigger influence in Europe rather than the United States.
GBP-O: Well I don’t know about influence, I think we got more press. That was primarily cos we only did those two gigs in America and we didn’t have a big machine behind us. (indistinct)…there was some (?) hope of having three major labels with a lot of hype before they came over…and our own label doing everything with money we borrowed.
Jim: Wasn’t the first couple of PTV records on CBS?
GBP-O: Yeah. But that’s a whole separate story.
Jim: Well how did that happen?
GBP-O: Well one thing at a time.
Jim: (laughs)
GBP-O: I’m answering the other question.
Jim: Okay okay, you’re right you’re right.
GBP-O: Yes. So um, Cosey had mentioned that we just knew, almost without, even without body language, we just naturally remembered how we would just look or glance at each other so that whoever was appropriate would answer the question. One person would answer a certain amount, the others would then take over one by one and add to it and embellish and expand upon it. It happened so naturally as if it was yesterday that we were being TG on that level. So the TG mind, y’know the special Third Mind of TG, instantly kicked back in. And likewise with photographs, it was actually, surprisingly, natural. So there was this whole thing of like on one level like meeting each others’ ghosts, even my own. And on another level it was completely natural, like going around the shop again. Sorta meeting the neighbors. It was interesting. Interesting, it was much less confusing then I expected. It was a happy time.
Jim: well did you think you were going to be over there and at each other’s throats?
GBP-O: We never were. Y’see this is one of these great myths that people have seem to assumed. But in fact, that’s not my or anybodies recollection. We just, all for our reasons we knew it was time to stop. And, uh, that was that. I mean as you know, I mean for example if we were at each other’s throats I wouldn’t have been in Psychic TV with Sleazy. But people kind of make these kind of weird distinctions like “oh yes, then you all hated each other.” But then I spent several years working with one of these people that I supposedly wasn’t speaking to y’know? I don’t know why the public are like that. They seem to want to invent things. For example, I am so bored with reading things like (high whiney voice): TG split up cos Cosey and Chris were together and they became lovers. But they became lovers in early 1978.
Jim: Right.
GBP-O: And we did, and after Cosey had moved out with Chris, and with my full knowledge obviously. We recorded Dead On Arrival, 20 Jazz Funk Greats, Heathen Earth, Adrenalin and Distant Dreams, Discipline- all those classic records after that. And it was three years later before we decided to end the mission. Y’know, it’s like people are trying to imply that I didn’t notice for three years and that all of a sudden the day after I remarried somebody and Cosey was already six months pregnant (voice mockingly quivers) I was supposed to be really upset and I’m not gonna be in this band anymore! Y’know the inability of people to add up chronology is baffling. (laughs)
Jim: Yeah yeah, I see what you’re saying but I never knew why Sleazy left PTV and I attribute that to I just never read anything about it.
GBP-O: Well that’s just a matter of…it was Brion Gysin who, he actually wrote in Latin on a tape he gave me about Brian Jones and on that tape he was talking about his interpretation about happened when they were all in Morocco together cos he was there. He wrote in Latin the equivalent of “don’t speak ill of the dead”. Well, obviously, (laughs) Chris and Cosey and Sleazy and myself aren’t dead but…uh…
Jim: I understand what you’re saying.
GBP-O: It just didn’t seem to be anyone else’s business to go into that. I personally think it never reads well. You read about bands in the heat of the moment, or because of the business strategy they bitch about each other afterwards.
Jim: Then it becomes real.
GBP-O: Yeah exactly. And so we never did that but people chose to try and invent stories but never having information, so they made it up. It only takes one person to write something and give the impression that that was the story. But even so, y’kinda look and y’think can’t anyone figure out that there’s three years here and that entire time all four, err all the other three had keys to my house at Beck Road (?) all the time cos Industrial Records was the downstairs of the house. It’s just ridiculous, we were all working together everyday. Chris would come around everyday and work downstairs with me duplicating the cassette tapes of the original cassette version of 24 Hours. I never did understand it. It can get really frustrating but my overall policy is that someday someone is gonna wake up and realize that’s obviously ludicrous. And this ridiculous story about our readjustment. Who’s invested in it I don’t know, why people invest in it.
Jim: It’s easier to understand.
GBP-O: You think?
Jim: It’s easier to understand rather than the ideas.
GBP-O: I’ll have to take your word for it! (laughs)
Jim: Well it’s easier for me to talk about why you hate somebody as why the group broke up rather than the group was a flux, a changing principle.
GBP-O: Right.
Jim: You could buy one Psychic TV record and never know what the other one’s sounded like and think that’s what Psychic TV sounded like.
GBP-O: Yeah well that caused lots of agitation and I can see why that would happen. People would buy something maybe they had read or heard rumors, maybe they’d been to a gig and then they’d go out and buy something and it would be nothing like they heard at the gig. Or nothing like they heard or read reviewed and they would either be really pleased about that or sometimes be really annoyed about it. In fact with Psychic TV, because Throbbing Gristle was so meticulous and in a way so beautifully and clearly defined as an aesthetic. TG was very clear and it unfolded designed way actually. With Psychic TV I definitely wanted it to be much more challenging. I didn’t want to be constrained by anybodies’ expectations. And often we would do a recording or change a style simply to completely and utterly contradict the previous statement. Almost like a mathematical formula. What did we do last time? Did they like it? Yes, let’s do the opposite this time. Or, what did we do last time? Did they hate it? Let’s do the opposite this time. The thing with Psychic TV was I had felt in the end, and I think the others felt in different ways that we were boxed in by our own success of TG. The more and more people who decided they liked it, the less they thought about what we were doing. And they started to go “yes TG, do…”
Jim: That guy on the “Heaven” tape screaming “Hamburger Lady”.
GBP-O: Yeah. So in some ways I almost worked, who am I to argue with hindsight? (Indistinct) overly hard to keep contradicting previous statements with Psychic TV but it was the only strategy I could feel, uhh, gave me space to think independently of the pressure from outside.
Jim: Well what’s the strategy with The Majesty?
GBP-O: With Thee Majesty?
Jim: With Thee Majesty.
GBP-O: With Thee Majesty what happened was, after the fire in Los Angeles.
Jim: Right.
GBP-O: At Harry Houdini’s old mansion, I quite literarily had to take a minimum of a year off, a year or two because of the physical injuries, the posttraumatic stress disorder and everything else.
Jim: Pardon me, but how are you doing with the injuries?
GBP-O: Uhh, well my left arm still hurts everyday. It’s one of those things that anybody with an ongoing injury will tell you that you adjust to a certain level of discomfort.
Jim: You broke the shoulder right?
GBP-O: No the elbow was smashed to pieces. The elbow was, I think in more than thirty pieces. They said it was like someone had got a steel hammer and then just put my arm…cos it hit the edge of a concrete step, it was like they put it on a piece of concrete and just smashed it with a steel hammer.
Jim: You jumped out a window didn’t you?
GBP-O: Well I fell. Yeah I had to climb out of the window to escape the fire and then I slipped on all this dust and fell backwards and landed on concrete steps so the edge of this one step hit my wrist and broke my wrist. Most of the impact, in a way, thank goodness, you can tell how hard it was, the elbow of the left arm just exploded into fragments and broke three ribs underneath the elbow as well. So if you can imagine that kind of pressure. And I also I got, my leg didn’t break but to this day the whole outside edge of the left thigh has nerve damage and I got a pulmonary embolism, blood clots from the impact as well. That’s what nearly killed me too.
Jim: What’s a pulmonary embolism?
GBP-O: A clot that goes to the lungs, it stops your breathing.
Jim: Ohh.
GBP-O: A coronary is when they go into the heart and pulmonary is in the lungs. And it was in my lungs so basically I almost suffocated to death cos of these blood clots to the lungs. I was in intensive care for ten days.
Jim: That was out in California right?
GBP-O: Yeah. So all of that combined with, and this, this is honest. I mean my last memory more or less before the agony of, heh heh, of hitting the ground is opening a door and looking down the corridor of this huge kind of, it looked like (indistinct) this tar like plastic smoke swirling towards me like Hell. Like the doors of hell, y’know. There was all this carpet burning and it was coming through the walls at the same time. It was these wooden walls with gaps in them, y’know what I mean?
Jim: Right.
GBP-O: Hollow walls and I closed the door and that door started getting hotter and hotter and hotter. I was like ‘ut oh, when that door goes I’m fried, literally.’ So, err, it was, I didn’t think I-I mean they told me that I had very severe post traumatic stress disorder and at the beginning I didn’t believe them cos it seemed kinda wussy…
Jim: Yeah yeah.
GBP-O: No no no, I just nearly died. (laughs) But actually as time went by I realized that it had an incredibly profound psychological effect on me. And that gets back to your question.
Jim: So you took a year off?
GBP-O: Lucky for me Lady Jayeaye, um, we were already engaged but she obviously rushed to my side. She heard, from MTV of all things, it was on the MTV News and then she got a phone call. She rushed to my side. She is also, very fortunately a nurse, a registered nurse, coincidentally, she said her gift to me was “I’ll take care of you and I’ll take care of everything and you just get well.” And that she said something that was really, really significant. She said: “You don’t ever have to do anything again if you don’t want to. You’re not obliged to make music just because people expect you to or people want you to and you don’t have to do anything in public anymore and rock and roll isn’t the be all and end all of life. Just take your time and think about what you want and what it is that you want to feel and get from life. Y’know, whatever it is, I’ll support you in that, y’know.” So in a way she liberated me from my um, British Protestant work ethic idea of my duty to keep working, to keep trying, bashing my head on the brick wall of culture. Saying ‘please please wake up and start trying to behave with a little bit more common sense, creativity is a healthy thing.
Jim: So you stepped back in where you started doing the visual arts and stuff.
GBP-O: For a long time I didn’t know what I wanted, I just decided, yeah I’m not gonna do anything else. Maybe I’ll change my name and just disappear y’know a bit like that Dadaist-
Jim: Arthur Craven?
GBP-O: Craven, yes.
Jim: He just got in a boat and sailed off.
GBP-O: I kinda thought well that’s not such a bad idea. Maybe I should change my name to Arthur Craven and go off.
Jim: Yeah yeah, but remember he had the title fight with Jack Johnson? And Johnson beat him up. GBP-O versus Mike Tyson-
GBP-O: Yeah, so I kinda went through all those things and then finally I stopped worrying about it. And after about a year I sort of able to look at things and say to myself what is it that I really love to do. What is it that really still intrigues me and excites me and I thought: I love words. I just love playing with words, writing them, changing them around, setting random things and when you alter this combination and cutting them up. So I love language and words and I love messing with the human voice as well. Not singing per se but just words, voice and then I thought I like just sounds. Sounds at the service of words to illustrate. Like in a movie you have light and camera angles and settings in order to enhance the method for the actual story. That’s kind of my interest in music. More than making sort of good or technical music. I’m not really interested in composition as music for music’s sake.
Jim: can you read or write music?
GBP-O: I used to. A little known fact is that when I was younger, from the age of eleven to fourteen I was in school choir. In (indistinct) Grammar School. I used to read music and sing in Latin, (indistinct) I used to sing alto. So that’s why I like all these harmonies, strange semi-atonal harmonies is because alto is the one between tenor and uh, the high one. And it has that kind of weird medieval, slightly flat sounding harmonies. That’s what I used to sing in the school choir. I even sang in the cathedral and stuff a few times, with one of those nice outfits with the big collar and red robe and everything. So I used to do that and read with my music teacher we’d sit and look-we’d have to listen to, say a symphony with all the music for all the instruments in front of us and then he’d suddenly stop the record you’d have to tell him exactly which note which instrument was playing as soon as he’d sort of said your name y’know? To prove you all were reading the music. So I did all of that and of course I also had piano lessons as well, the guy stood at the piano. So yeah, I used to read music. Now, if you had a gun to my head I couldn’t read music.
Jim: Well don’t you think it’s in there someplace?
GBP-O: Well obviously. My feeling is with a lot of technical things is that you absorb them at the beginning and then, some of some people, artists musicians, some people who’s life is dedicated to creativity choose to begin to push the edges of what they’ve been told the rules are or what the uhh specifications of equipment are or whatever and improvise if you like, in the shorthand. So once I became obsessed with things like cut-ups and free form jazz improvisations it was less and less relevant to me to follow music in the old style.
Jim: You said ‘free form jazz’ did you listen to Coltrane and Miles Davis?
GBP-O: Coltrane and Albert Ayler, many people like that, a lot.
Jim: I never knew you were into that stuff.
GBP-O: It was a long time ago. We’re talking about the mid-sixties. I was into that the same time I was listening to the Rolling Stones, early Pink Floyd and then the Velvet Underground.
Jim: so you were hip to the Velvets the first time around?
GBP-O: Yeah it was funny. I hadn’t heard them but my friend at school, (indistinct), he told me that he had been listening to John Peel on this pirate radio broadcast from some boat, Radio Caroline out on the river or something, the days of pirate radio in England. He heard this band playing this track and they were called the Velvet Underground and had somebody he thought was playing an electric violin. I had already got hold of an old violin and stuck a tape recorder microphone in it and was sort of playing an electrified violin in my, in the loft in my house. You know in the roof of the house and experimenting with that with tape recorders and the amplifiers so I was recording it as it fed back. So he, because there was this electric viola, he told me that I should listen to them if I get the chance. And then I went to the local record store which was the equivalent of Duane Reeds, which was Boots and it was actually a chemist shop. In those days they had a little record section and you were allowed to go upstairs and listen to the first track of the record, and then decide if you want to buy it or not. And I went in and asked them and they said no we don’t have it but we’re getting it in on Friday and that Friday was right in the middle of when I was doing my exams. The first lot of exams that you do in England before going to University. I had a scooter. I used to be a bit of a mod with a Vesper, so I actually did an exam and ran out of the class room, got on my Vesper zoomed down to the shop. Ran upstairs with money that I’d saved up ran in and said ‘have you got that record by the Velvet Underground? It was released today and you got one copy.’ So I ran into the listening booth and they put on, uh the first track on side two and I just couldn’t believe what I was hearing. And I just ran back: yes, yes, yes I’ll buy it! Grabbed it, went back to school and carried on taking examinations and I took it home and I played the whole album that night and it was one of those old record players where you could leave the arm up and it would keep going back to the beginning and playing it over and over. And I used to leave it on, one side and then the other side until it actually wore out the record. That was in a way, of all the records in the entire world, The Velvet Underground and Nico was the most directly influential, I mean all levels of my consciousness knows it backwards and forwards, upside down even. I played it thousands and thousands of times. I’ve even listened to it for hours when I’ve been asleep.
Jim: (laughs) is it better awake or asleep?
GBP-O: So…my father also, I think you already know from Painful but Fabulous was a drummer in a dance band, like a Buddy Rich type band, yeah. So I grew up playing the drums too. I remember playing the drums at a wedding reception when I was between three and four years old. Before TG even with Coum Transmissions up in Yorkshire I had a room in the Ho-Ho funhouse with my big drum wheel and all my drums set up with a drum kit. I used to play everyday, three or four hours a day and the same in London when we moved down to London. I had the drum kit set up. I think there’s a couple of photos in the Wreckers book where you can see it in the background. I used to play drums very, very consistently everyday for years, hours and hours I would play. And in those days I could even do rolls, y’know one handed rolls?
Jim: Right right right. (laughter)
GBP-O: All that kind of stuff. (laughter) and I used to play along with stuff by Captain Beefheart. That was one of the things I’d like to drum along to.
Jim: I love Captain Beefheart.
GBP-O: Yeah, I mean the rhythms and the syncopations, fabulous.
Jim: I also saw a parallel between him and you. To the general public you’re both really unknown but to anyone who’s paid any attention to you has just fallen in love with both you and your work, it’s always been an influence.
GBP-O: Well…that’s a compliment. I think I told you, did I ever tell you the anecdote about Don Van Vliet, Captain Beefheart?
Jim: No.
GBP-O: When we finally came to America to do the two Throbbing Gristle gigs before we packed it in. We played at this place called…the Veteran’s Auditorium-
Jim: yeah, Kezar Stadium-
GBP-O: No Kezar was in San Francisco, it was Culver City, Culver City. I think somewhere I have a photo but I don’t know if I could find it. It might be in one of the books. They wouldn’t put the name up outside the hall, where they usually put the name up of whoever’s playing, in big letters, plastic letters. So they just put “modern concert”.
Jim: yeah I’ve seen the photo.
GBP-O: Okay. That was because they wouldn’t put up the words “Throbbing Gristle”. And that night we were supported by SLA, no SWA rather which was really Black Flag and then we had 45 Grave, Don from the Germs. And, umm, before the gig, it was one of those ‘you had to be there nights’-y’know ‘this mythological crazy band from England that’s beyond punk is here y’know. Let’s check it out.’ All these people are coming and going in the dressing room and stuff. And all of a sudden this really nice guy about the same size as me very, very charming and polite, well mannered man came up with a bit of a beard and stuff and introduced himself. And it was Don Preston.
Jim: No shit?!?!
GBP-O: from the original Mothers of Invention and so I of course was really, really excited. I said, y’know you probably don’t care, but the day I decided not to go back to University I hitchhiked to Manchester England from Hull to see you play at the Free Trade Hall with the Mothers of Invention playing “Uncle Meat”.
Jim: Wow.
GBP-O: It’s true I still got the program with the ticket and everything.
Jim: Really.
GBP-O: Yeah. I keep everything. (laughter). And he said “oh wow, y’know” and I came backstage partly to say I really love your album “Second Annual Report” and also I got a message for from Don Van Vliet, Captain Beefheart. I was like: what! And he goes, yeah he said to tell you he thinks the music’s fantastic and he plays it when he’s painting.
Jim: Wow.
GBP-O: I was just flabbergasted. I was awestruck because y’know the early Mothers and the way they improvised-all the issues that you heard I was interested in free form jazz stuff. That helped me get into the Mothers “Uncle Meat” then the Jon Luc Ponty stuff cos of the electric violin so I was all into that for quite some time. And obviously Captain Beefheart in his day.
Jim: Did you ever hear those Don “Sugarcane” Harris albums?
GBP-O: No.
Jim: He was the electric violinist with the Mothers who was a rhythm and blues guy. He made some really good jazz records in the seventies.
GBP-O: No I don’t remember that. So that was one of my all time special moments. If someone had said who would you like to appreciate what you’re trying to do. Captain Beefheart would be definitely up there. So that was just before I went on stage. I was l like I can’t believe it. We’d done something right. And people I respect get it. It was a great moment. Kind of ironic considering I had already decided that was it. Those two gigs were the end of the whole thing.
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