Whiskey, Mystics & Men - A Farewall To Albert Hofmann

April 29th, 2008; Professor Albert Hofmann, the man who discovered LSD, died, at the incredible age of 102. I for one am grateful that he lived a long life. Albert Hofmann changed the perception of life for so many people, including me amongst millions of others, through his experiments in his native Switzerland all the way back in the 1940's. Hofmann, without ever planning to, changed the course of western culture. There's loads I could say about him, his discovery of acid, but I'm sure many others have blogged similar thoughts already.

In discovering LSD, Hofmann allowed us all to discover LSD. I did, at 17 years old and it changed my life for the better. It's the old cliche, but it's a true one - LSD opened my doors of perception and roughly 90 trips on, I've never felt healthier in the head. I was listening to The Doors at the time (as I am right now funnily enough), and LSD was the ultimate nutaral complimentary substance to have by my side. I discovered an incredibly peaceful side of my nature that hadn't been aparant to me before I did LSD. That peace is something I carry with me now, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

LSD taught me what a Crystal Ship is, where the Octapus' Garden lies, why it was possible to have Too Much To Dream Last Night and why 7 & 7 Is.

I think as we move further away from the first golden psychadelic age, we'll be more able to look back objectively and judge just what a huge impact Albert Hofmann had on millions of people's way of life. I'm British, and therefore am pretty well exposed to Hofmann's influence, but it nonetheless pales into insignificance when I examine Hofmann's influence on American counter-culture. Albert's accidental discovery made planet Earth a more pleasant rock for a lot of us to live on, and to think on, and to create on. Leary 'turned up, tuned in and dropped out' rather infamously. I think LSD's true lesson is for people to 'turn up, try it, and tune in.' LSD taught me to be an influence in the world, not a passive observer.

Goodbye Albert Hofmann. I hope one day your discovery will be freely available to us all again. Because while it was, there was a brief optimistic moment before that great tragic wave of the illegisation of your 'medicine for the soul,' crashed onto the Pacific shoreline, when the truest revolution of all, the revolution of the human soul, seemed imminent. It was, and still is, your problem child, but LSD will grow up into a beautiful rebellious adult soon enough.

Albert Hofmann - January 11th 1906 - April 29th 2008

Bitter Observations And Instructions For A Post-Gonzonian World

Try it. Go ahead, try it. Try for a moment the simple exercise of re-enacting what Hunter S. Thompson wrote about in The Rum Diary or Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas. Try it here in Britain and I guarantee you, you will not succeed. Not because it's technically illegal, but because on this island (and large swathes of California, Nevada and New York too), because it isn't currently fashionable to the masses, you will not be allowed. You wanna take the trip, do a pile of ether, LSD, cocaine and alcohol, washed down with 40 Marlboro Reds, but everywhere you turn, there is a health official, or worse still, a member of the idiot public, not only telling you their perception of the folly of your's and Hunter's liberational ways, but actively involving the local community support officer (aka bubble-wrapped copper), preventing you from having the slightest slip of fun on the grounds that it is either a) not family friendly, b) not child friendly, c) not lung-friendly or d) in their opinion, just plain not friendly.

Why does everything in this life now have to correspond to the wishes of that wretch of a woman who takes her one incredibly spoiled brat of a daughter to her 'educational' factory of a local academy school in her 4x4 Chelsea Tractor? What has gone wrong here people and when did the balance shift from 'do as you wish as long as you don't actively harm others' to 'do as we say, because the state and the mother knows best?' To those who know me, I warned you all of these days to come, and you all laughed. You said 'Oh c'mon Daniel, they won't stop me having a ciggie with my beer at a concert.' They did it. You said 'Oh c'mon Daniel, they won't fine me half my wage for leaving my bin 1 inch open on bin-emptying days.' They did it. You can now be fined for polluting the earth by farting once too often the day after a good curry. I warned everyone sane enough to listen, but to no avail. This society is the living enactment of the tail that wags the dog. Next on the NHS/Nanny State/Nazi Mother hitlist is alcohol.

You know how you like to nip into your local town centre of a Saturday night, and have a quick 7 or 8 beers between the hours of 8pm and 4:00am? Trust me, that's coming to an end soon enough. Even if you never do any harm to anyone else except your own good self, it won't be a good enough defence for this society. This society is so hell-bent on saving NHS pennies to give to families as yet another 'tax credit' that working single bloke, who hands over a larger proportion of his income in tax than the average millionaire, is going to be fleeced still further. Congratulations, because if you think a 3 quid pint is bad, just wait till they cut your intake from it's natural 8 pints to 4. They won't settle for leaving the pint at 3 quid. They'll double it to keep the tax flowing, so from going from paying 3 quid x 8 to get pissed, you're going to be dropped to a state-enforced 4 pints at 6 quid a go. Think I'm nuts? Cool, no problem. I'll just sit and wait patiently while the silent majority of fun-loving INDIVIDUALS sleep-walk into a pathetically dull, sober existence.

Live the dream. You've read the books and seen the movie. You've gazed into the tantalising dream of living in a world where you're free to explore the corners of your mind through the imbibing of substances known to knacker the body with prolonged exposure. If you want to hold onto that tantalising possibility, than fight for your rights. Drink to excess, take the pills offered to you by 'the bad man' in the corner of the club you're going to this weekend, sleep with the girl (or boy) straight away who you'd like to jump on top of, but are too concerned about your rep to risk it, and for goodness sake, break, bend and shit all over the no-smoking regulations at every opportunity, ok? I fear it's all too late, but I have to scream out at the absence of freedom, especially when I live in a country where the local authorities use anti-terrorist legislation to follow dogs and their owners to see which patch of green Rover the Mutt has just shit on.

Listen to your Samoan lawyer - he's like the cool version of your conscience, and trust him, no matter what that sober wanker who's just taken over your pub with his ugly wife and three screaming brat-kids says. Listen to the sober wanker and you'll be dancing the goose-step, shooting the meek and weak in no time at all. And then you'll wake up sometime later, in the middle of the night, with beads of perspiration dripping down your neck, with the guilt of being an active member of the generation that destroyed personal liberty.

You know what I mean.

Thursday 10th April & Friday 11th April 2008 - Reverend And The Makers & Adam Green

Well, ok. It's been a while. But bless it, life's just been soooooo busy, I couldn't get round to writing anything about my two recent gigs - Reverend & The Makers, from Sheffield, and Adam Green, from the slightly more glamourous New York City.

Reverend & The Makers are quickly becoming a very well known band in the UK, where their back to Madchester sound has been a surprise to hear on a currently left-field dominated indie music scene. Don't get me wrong, I love the 'left-field indie' to bits, I really do, but there is something almost quaint about the Makers sound that leaves quite a Mark on their audiences (Makers...Mark....ged it?).

This one was at Manchester Ritz, the latest in a long line of venues to ban people from smoking outside, let alone inside. They will tell you health and safety, they will say it's 'policy'. Don't believe 'em - they're liars. If you read my blog regularly, you'll know my pro-smoking stance, even in the grip of my latest attempt to quit. Smokers deserve to be able to step outside for a cigarette, but are frequently prevented from doing so by fascist organisations like Manchester City Council, Manchester Apollo, Manchester Ritz and amazingly Manchester Academy 1 (but not Academies, 2, 3 and 4 - weird - but thank you). I'm going to go ahead and say the Academy aren't fascists, because three quarters of their buildings aren't covered by this ridiculous rule. I will settle on a polite 'schizophrenic.'

Back to the music. Rather brief really. Reverend & The Makers were good. Not startling, but good. They entertained, the lead singer show-boated, the band played well and the crowd enjoyed it. That's all though, I'm afraid. Have I come to ask too much of my musicians in the wake of great artists like Neil Young, Ray Manzarek, Robby Krieger, Mercury Rev et. al? Maybe. But if in the pursuit of greatness I abondon the worship of the merely good, that's not too high a price to pay in my opinion.

Well, that was Thursday at the Ritz. Friday at Academy 4 brought back to me an old friend, much missed and much loved - Adam Green. Most of you will know Mr. Green from his strange days as one half of fruit-loop wacko duet group The Moldy Meaches. Adam is nuts. By his own admission, he is in fact one fruit loop short of a fruit loop. But he's also a genius by most sensible people's musical standards. And anyone who's heard Tropical Island from his latest album, Sixes and Sevens, can testify to the geniosity contained therein. Down in the basement of a rockin' Academy 4, Green managed to not only bring back memories of The Moldy Peaches, but hopes that he can continue to prosper, entertain and delight 'thinking man gig goer' (thinking man gig goer is similar to Mondeo Man of the late 90's in his demographic importance, but unlike Mondeo Man, he's not an asshole, unless he's had his regulation three pints of lager and is hitting on all his friends girlfriends, one after the other). Adam Green is here I think to entertain 'thinking man gig goer,' (T.M.G.G. from here on in), in that he strikes me as a similar beast to T.M.G.G.; ever-charming, oft-funny in an unconvential kind of way, but always somewhat at risk of using his powers of intellect for evil, darkness and general absurdity.

Now just where am I going with this? What is the conclusion I hear you ask? Well, it is this. Adam Green was the highlight of April for me, because he is as entertaining as he is frustrating. We all want Green to prosper, become big and fat and famous and so on. But he has a habit of pulling back when faced with popularity and mainstream respect. God bless him for it I guess. It'll mean he'll always be the musical property of us, the minority of people who know the dark and dingy club halls where great musicians come from, as opposed to the majority of morons who think Simon Cowell invents music. Long may it continue Adam. I enjoy having you around.

God speed you all, you crazy beasts.