Home | Community | Message Board


This site includes paid links. Please support our sponsors.


Welcome to the Shroomery Message Board! You are experiencing a small sample of what the site has to offer. Please login or register to post messages and view our exclusive members-only content. You'll gain access to additional forums, file attachments, board customizations, encrypted private messages, and much more!

Shop: Left Coast Kratom Kratom Powder For Sale   PhytoExtractum Maeng Da Thai Kratom Leaf Powder   Unfolding Nature Unfolding Nature: Being in the Implicate Order   Kraken Kratom Red Vein Kratom   North Spore Cultivation Supplies

Jump to first unread post Pages: 1 | 2 | Next >  [ show all ]
Some of these posts are very old and might contain outdated information. You may wish to search for newer posts instead.
OfflineLearyfanS
It's the psychedelic movement!
Male User Gallery


Registered: 04/20/01
Posts: 34,083
Loc: High pride!
Last seen: 20 hours, 45 minutes
Today in psychedelic history (12/04) * 1
    #13580925 - 12/04/10 09:33 AM (13 years, 1 month ago)

  • 1965:  The 2nd Acid Test takes place




Quote:

2nd Acid Test - San Jose Dec. 4, 1965 - After The Stones

  The San Jose Acid Test was the second Acid Test and the first to use any form of mass flyering or advertising. This, however, was limited to the night of the Rolling Stones concert and the event itself, as far as I have been able to gather.
  Posters were tacked to trees outside the show, and handbills were passed out to people on their way home after the show. The idea was to get them to go to the Acid Test right away. Some fortunate ones did, and the unlucky ones lost out. The posters and handbills were hand-drawn with crayons and had very primitive design, basically, all it was, was the lettering that reads, "Can You Pass the Acid Test? " and the location of Big Nig's house. Neither the poster nor the handbill which I know exist, have the date or name of the band on them.
  A Poster and a Handbill have finally turned up. The poster was tacked to a tree, and the handbill was picked up off the ground that night, by two sisters who later attended one or two of the events and saved the items all these years.

  "For three or four days the Pranksters searched for a hall in San Jose and couldn't come up with one-- naturally -- it really seemed natural and almost right that nothing should be definite until the last minute. All that was certain was that they would find one at the last minute. The Movie would create that much at least. And what if the multitudes didn't know where it was going to be until the last minute? Well, those who were meant to be there--those who were in the pudding--they would get there. You were either on the bus or off the bus, and that went for the whole world, even in San Jose, California. At the last minute Kesey talked a local boho figure known as Big Nig into letting them use his old hulk of a house.
  Kesey had hooked up with a rock 'n' roll band, the Grateful Dead, led by Jerry Garcia, the same dead-end kid who used to live in Palo Alto with Page Browning and other seeming no-counts, lumpenbeatnicks, and you had to throw them out when they came over and tried to crash the parties on Perry Lane. Garcia remembered--how they came down and used to get booted out "by Kesey and the wine drinkers." The wine drinkers--the middle-class bohemians of Perry Lane. They both, Kesey and Garcia, had been heading into the pudding, from different directions, all that time, and now Garcia was a, yes, beautiful person, quiet, into the pudding, and a great guitar player. Garcia had first named his group The Warlocks, meaning sorcerers or wizards, and they had been eking out a living by playing for the beer drinkers, at jazz joints and the like around Palo Alto. To the Warlocks, the beer drinker music, even whan called jazz, was just square hip. They were onto that distinction, too. For Kesey--they could just play, do their thing.
  The Dead had an organist called Pigpen, who had a Hammond electric organ, and they move the electric organ into Big Nig's ancient house, plus all the Grateful Dead's electrified guitars and basses and flutes and horns and the light machines and the movie projectors and the tapes and mikes and hi-fis, all of which pile up in insane coils and wires and gleams of stainless steel and winking amplifier dials before Big Nig's unbelievable eyes. His house is old and has wiring that would hardly hold a toaster. The Pranksters are primed in full Prankster regalia. Paul Foster has on his Importancy Coat and now has a huge head of curly hair, a great curly mustache pulling back into great curly mutton chops roaring off his face. Page Browning is the king of face painters. He becomes a full-fledged Devil with a bright orange face and his eyes become the centers of two great silver stars painted over the orange and his hair is silver with silver dust and he paints his lips silver with silver lipstick. This very night the Pranksters all sit down with oil pastel crayons and colored pens and at a wild rate start printing handbills on 8 1/2 X 11 paper saying CAN YOU PASS THE ACID TEST? and giving Big Nig's address. As the jellybean cocked masses start pouring out of the Rolling Stones concert at the Civic Auditorium, the Pranksters charge in among them. Orange and silver Devil, wild man in a coat of buttons -- Pranksters. Pranksters!--handing out the handbills with the challenge, like some sort of demons, warlocks verily, come to channel the wild pointless energy built up by the Rolling Stones inside.
  They come piling into Big Nig's, and suddenly acid and the worldcraze were everywhere, the electric organ vibrating through every belly in the place, kids dancing not rock dances, not the frug and the --what? --swim, mother, but dancing ecstacy, leaping, dervishing, throwing their hands over their heads like Daddy Grace's own stroked-out inner-courtiers--yes!--Roy Seburn's lights washing past every head. Cassady rapping, Paul Foster handing people weird little things out of his Eccentric Bag, old whistles, tin crickets, burnt keys, spectral plastic handles. Everybody's eyes turn on like lightbulbs, fuses blow, blackness ---wowwww!--the things that shake and vibrate and funnel and freak out in this blackness--and then somebody slaps new fuses in and the old hulk of a house shudders back, the wiring writhing and fragmenting like molting snakes, the organs vibro-massage the belly again, fuses blow, minds scream, heads explode, neighbors call the cops, 200, 300, 400 people from out there drawn into The Movie, into the edge of the pudding at least, a mass closer and higher than any mass in history, it seems most surely, and Kesey makes minute adjustment, small toggle switch here, lubricated with vasaline No. 634-3 diluted with carbon tetrachloride, and they ripple, Major, ripple, but with meaning, 400 of the attuned multitude headed toward the pudding, the first mass acid experience, the dawn of the Psychedelic, the Flower Generation and all the rest of it, and Big Nig wants the rent.
  "How you holding?"
  How you holding---
  "Yeah, I mean like," -- says Big Nig to Garcia. "I didn't charge Kesey nothing to use this place. like free, you know? and the procedure now is that every cat here contributes, man, to help out with the rent."
  With the rent--
  "Yeah, I mean like," -- says Big Nig. Big Nig stares at Garcia with the deepest look of hip spade soul authority you could imagine, and nice and officious, too--
  Yeah, I mean like---Garcia, for his part, however, doesn't know which bursts out first, the music or the orange laugh. Out the edges of his eyes he can see his own black hair framing his face--it is so long, to the shoulders, and springs out like a Sudanese soldier's--and then Big Nig's big earnest black face right in front of him flapping and washing comically out into glistening acid-glee red sea of faces out beyond them both in the galactic red lakes on the walls--
  "Yeah, I mean like, for the rent, man," says Big Nig, "you already blown six fuses."
  Blown! Six Fuses! Garcia sticks his hand into his electric guitar and the notes come out like a huge orange laugh all blown fuses electric spark leaps in colors upon the glistening sea of faces. It's a freaking laugh and a half. A new star is being born, like the lightbulb in the womb, and Big Nig wants the rent--A new star being born, a new planet forming, Ahura Mazda blazing in the world womb, here, before our very eyes--and Big Nig, the poor pathetic spade, wants his rent.
  A freaking odd thought, that one. A big funky spade looking pathetic and square. For twenty years in the hip life. Negroes never even looked square. They were the archtypal soul figures. But what is Soul, or Funky, or Cool, or Baby---in the new world of the ecstacy, the All-one...the kairos..." -- Electric Kool Aid Acid Test - Tom Wolfe - Pages 236-39


  "The next Acid Test was in San Jose on the night of the Rolling Stones concert, the second tour, and the door was kept by a cat called Big Nig, who very cordially set up a gig that made money for Big Nig and some of the musicians. That was one of the few Acid Tests that kept Kesey out of the money trough. The crowd was big and the guys in the band decided to put pressure on Kesey and Babbs to do a big production. The first Human Be-In was just around the corner." --- The Grateful Dead - Vanguard of a New Generation - Hank Harrison - Page 132


  "The next Test was in San Jose, at a house occupied by a friend of Kesey's known as "Big Nig". It was located down the street from the old San Jose coliseum, where the Rolling Stones were playing that night. We set up our equipment  on the other side of the room from the pranksters, an orientation that would later prove very productive. Kesey's avowed goal was to "diffuse the pyramid of attention" so that people weren't focused solely on the stage; we were after a more rounded experience, where many types of stimuli were occuring simultaneously.
  Unfortunately the room was very small, so all the attendees were crammed into the same space as the band, and the crush of bodies together with the wind-tunnel sound and flashing projections turned the Test into a mind-numbing blur of noise, light and heat. There was no way any one individual could be aware of everything going on in the place. It was a free-for-all, with untold amounts of input quanta streaming into one's sensory cortex all at the same time. The band was set up in one corner, with speaker columns so large one could crawl into the subwoofers and lie there. Across the room was Prankster Central, where the supplemental sound and some lights resided. The tape-loop master control was in Prankster hands; this ran a series of very long delays through the Mobius strip speaker setup, with speakers in all corners of the room, receiving input from microphones and other mixers scattered everywhere.
  Occasionally, the Thunder Machine -- Ron Boise's tuned metal sculpture bristling with contact microphones and festooned with areas marked "HIT ME!, STROKE ME, SCRAP ME, and other tender endearments designed to encourage participation -- would make an apperance. The output of this was also plugged into Prankster Central. And then there were the strobe lights: intensely powerful flashes of pure white light, which could be pulsed quickly or slowly, or anything in between. With several of these light sources operating at different speeds throughout the whole darkened space, the experience could be intensely disorienting, even phantasmagorical. The finest exemplar of strobe-light art was, of course, Neal Cassady. Even in broad daylight, his every move was part of a sacred dance of life --- under a strobe, the line was split up and reassembled in time, leaving me wondering: How on Earth can he catch that hammer in the dark, or in between those flashes? Neal was the closest thing to poetry in motion I've ever seen.
  The chaos at the San Jose Test didn't stop us from playing as long and as loud as we could, and we found that while high we were able to go very far out musically but still come back to some kind of recognizable space or song structure. I knew instantly that this combination -- acid and music -- was the tool i'd been looking for. After the cops closed the party down, it was low comedy at it's finest to watch Kesey, Babbs, and Billy divvy up the take (one dollar at the door) at the end of the evening. -- Searching for the Sound -- Phil Lesh


  "The second Acid Test happened on Dec. 4, 1965, in San Jose, on the night of a Rolling Stones concert. At the concert, the Pranksters passed out Crayon-lettered handbills for a house party. Their cryptic message was a street address and the words: "Can YOU Pass the Acid Test?" About 300 to 400 people showed up and the Grateful Dead played until the police broke up the party." -- On the Bus - Paul Perry - Page 115


  "The first [public] Acid Test was held on December 4, 1965, in San Jose at the home of a bohemian named "Big Nig". Page Browning, one of the Pranksters, was a friend of Garcia's from the Chateau and knew that Jerry would do something just for kicks. He called Garcia and told him about what was going down in San Jose and asked if the band would come. Garcia observed, "One day the idea was there: 'Why don't we have a big party, and you guys brings your instruments and play, and us Pranksters will set up our tape recorders and bullshit, and we'll all get stoned." That was the first Acid Test.
  Mountain Girl described what happened: San Jose was the first [public] Acid Test in 1965. It was a complete blowout -- manic bash. Nobody forgot it-- It was cataclysmic! The band played, everybody got high, weird and strange. LSD was legal then and people were taking high doses. Some poeple took their clothes off and it spilled out into the street.
  It was a watershed event that drew the public into the psychedelic adventure that Kesey and the pranksters had begun. The San Jose Acid Test was on the night of the Rolling Stones concert in the Bay Area, and the Pranksters had passed out handbills at the concert that read: "Can YOU Pass the Acid Test?" and giving the location of the event. About four hundred people showed up and the psychedelic revolution had begun.
  After that, the Pranksters got the idea to do it regularly. Garcia remembered, "After that first one we all got together, us and Kesey and everybody, and had a meeting about it, and thought, well, you know, that first one there had all those people there, but it was too weird 'cause it was somebody's house.
  ...We decided to keep on doing it, that was the gist of it...the idea was to move it to a different location each week." -- Captain Trips - Sandy Troy - Page 71-72
 

  Ram Dass: "I remember the first time that I saw, in the San Jose mercury, a story about a "drug orgy." I realized at that point that Ken and the group were forcing society to reckon with this stuff that we had hoped would stay underground a little longer. I felt that the Acid Tests forced drug legislation. It was our whole hope that before society caught onto the heresy that was inherent in acid, we could get more entrenched into the policy-making levels. We were spending time meeting with psychiatrists and turning on people connected with the government -- as well as major philosophers and poets -- people who could be a voice for this stuff that undercut established societal structures. Kesey brought it to the surface too fast." -- On the Bus - -Paul Perry - Page 148

(http://www.postertrip.com/)












--------------------
--------------------------------


Mp3 of the month:  The Apple-Glass Cyndrome - Someday



Edited by Learyfan (12/15/20 04:15 AM)


Extras: Filter Print Post Top
OfflineLearyfanS
It's the psychedelic movement!
Male User Gallery


Registered: 04/20/01
Posts: 34,083
Loc: High pride!
Last seen: 20 hours, 45 minutes
Re: Today in psychedelic history (12/04) [Re: Learyfan] * 1
    #13582214 - 12/04/10 04:07 PM (13 years, 1 month ago)

Quote:

Ram Dass: "I remember the first time that I saw, in the San Jose mercury, a story about a "drug orgy." I realized at that point that Ken and the group were forcing society to reckon with this stuff that we had hoped would stay underground a little longer. I felt that the Acid Tests forced drug legislation. It was our whole hope that before society caught onto the heresy that was inherent in acid, we could get more entrenched into the policy-making levels. We were spending time meeting with psychiatrists and turning on people connected with the government -- as well as major philosophers and poets -- people who could be a voice for this stuff that undercut established societal structures. Kesey brought it to the surface too fast." -- On the Bus - -Paul Perry - Page 148




^ I think this is a very interesting quote from Ram Dass/Richard Alpert.  Most people blame Leary and company for bringing too much attention to LSD.  Here's Ram Dass stating what I've thought all along, which is that the Pranksters were really the ones who first brought unwanted attention to it with the Acid Tests.  They dosed more people than the CIA, the psychothereputic community and Tim Leary combined.  Having said that, I'm still not blaming the Pranksters or anyone else.  The government is to blame. 













--------------------
--------------------------------


Mp3 of the month:  The Apple-Glass Cyndrome - Someday



Extras: Filter Print Post Top
OfflineLearyfanS
It's the psychedelic movement!
Male User Gallery


Registered: 04/20/01
Posts: 34,083
Loc: High pride!
Last seen: 20 hours, 45 minutes
Re: Today in psychedelic history (12/04) [Re: Learyfan] * 1
    #15463745 - 12/04/11 11:29 AM (12 years, 1 month ago)

Annual bump.















--------------------
--------------------------------


Mp3 of the month:  The Apple-Glass Cyndrome - Someday



Extras: Filter Print Post Top
OfflineInfiniteTrip13
Psychonaut
Male User Gallery


Registered: 07/15/10
Posts: 344
Loc: USA
Last seen: 11 years, 11 months
Re: Today in psychedelic history (12/04) [Re: Learyfan] * 2
    #15464684 - 12/04/11 02:30 PM (12 years, 1 month ago)

Awesome read!! Wish I was alive back then... I love these "Today in psychedelic history" post's.  :awetrippie:


--------------------
:lsd:Ignorance is Bliss.:bongload:
:getstoned:


Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Offlinepza
Stranger
 User Gallery

Registered: 12/29/05
Posts: 56
Last seen: 11 years, 11 months
Re: Today in psychedelic history (12/04) [Re: InfiniteTrip13] * 1
    #15464914 - 12/04/11 03:11 PM (12 years, 1 month ago)

Nice read.. makes me want to have some lucy for the occasion :smile:


Extras: Filter Print Post Top
InvisiblePsilosomniac
Registered: 09/14/10
Posts: 2,938
Re: Today in psychedelic history (12/04) [Re: pza] * 1
    #15464938 - 12/04/11 03:16 PM (12 years, 1 month ago)

Putting San Jose on the map, and the San Jose Mercury! :thumbup:  Thanks for the post.


Extras: Filter Print Post Top
OfflineLearyfanS
It's the psychedelic movement!
Male User Gallery


Registered: 04/20/01
Posts: 34,083
Loc: High pride!
Last seen: 20 hours, 45 minutes
Re: Today in psychedelic history (12/04) [Re: Psilosomniac] * 2
    #17331052 - 12/04/12 05:38 AM (11 years, 1 month ago)

Annual bump.















--------------------
--------------------------------


Mp3 of the month:  The Apple-Glass Cyndrome - Someday



Extras: Filter Print Post Top
OfflineLearyfanS
It's the psychedelic movement!
Male User Gallery


Registered: 04/20/01
Posts: 34,083
Loc: High pride!
Last seen: 20 hours, 45 minutes
Re: Today in psychedelic history (12/04) [Re: Psilosomniac] * 1
    #19226055 - 12/04/13 10:35 AM (10 years, 1 month ago)

Annual bump.















--------------------
--------------------------------


Mp3 of the month:  The Apple-Glass Cyndrome - Someday



Extras: Filter Print Post Top
OfflineLearyfanS
It's the psychedelic movement!
Male User Gallery


Registered: 04/20/01
Posts: 34,083
Loc: High pride!
Last seen: 20 hours, 45 minutes
Re: Today in psychedelic history (12/04) [Re: Learyfan] * 1
    #20926563 - 12/04/14 05:39 AM (9 years, 1 month ago)

Annual bump.

















--------------------
--------------------------------


Mp3 of the month:  The Apple-Glass Cyndrome - Someday



Extras: Filter Print Post Top
OfflinetheRealrollforever
I DID-DENT
 User Gallery


Registered: 08/31/13
Posts: 12,736
Loc: Bada-Bing!
Last seen: 1 day, 15 hours
Re: Today in psychedelic history (12/04) [Re: Learyfan] * 1
    #20933115 - 12/05/14 01:45 PM (9 years, 1 month ago)

thanks for the dedication on bumping these every day I've been enjoying the interesting beneath the surface details your reports usually involve for years now on a regular basis


--------------------


sunshine said:
The order has to be secret and no one is sure.


Edited by theRealrollforever (12/05/14 01:45 PM)


Extras: Filter Print Post Top
OfflineLearyfanS
It's the psychedelic movement!
Male User Gallery


Registered: 04/20/01
Posts: 34,083
Loc: High pride!
Last seen: 20 hours, 45 minutes
Re: Today in psychedelic history (12/04) [Re: theRealrollforever] * 1
    #22611759 - 12/04/15 06:20 AM (8 years, 1 month ago)

That's cool.  Glad you enjoy them, TRRF.  Maybe you'll also enjoy knowing that today is the 50th anniversary of the 2nd Acid Test as well as the 50th anniversary of The Warlocks going by the name The Grateful Dead.  :gd_icon:

Looks like the city of San Jose, the city where the 2nd Acid Test took place, will be honoring this occasion by going "tie-died".  Imagine that.  A major US city is honoring the anniversary of an LSD party.  Wow.  Also, it turns out that the site that used to be Big Nig's house is now city hall and they're kicking off the event by having a press conference on that very spot! 

:cheers:






Quote:

City Honors 50-Years of the Grateful Dead History Starting in San Jose, California With Tie-Dye Celebration

SAN JOSE, CA--(Marketwired - December 03, 2015) -

What: Media opportunity - All day tomorrow San José City Hall will be "tie-dyed" in tribute to the Grateful Dead's first performance on Dec. 4, 1965. Formerly known as "Mother McCree's Uptown Jug Champions", the newly named Grateful Dead played their first concert in a small house on 43 S. Fifth Street - the current site of San José City Hall. This is one of the world's most historic rock-'n'-roll sites.

In partnership with the City of San José, Team San Jose is tie-dying all digital assets for a "Dead-icated" All Dead All Day social media campaign on Twitter: @TeamSanJose and Facebook: Visit San Jose.

In addition, the City of San José will be lighting the City Hall Rotunda Thursday and Friday evenings to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Grateful Dead.

*Media interviews available upon request - please contact Kyle Schatzel, Team San Jose or David Vossbrink, City of San José

When: Friday - December 4, 2015, 12:00 a.m. - 11:59 p.m.

Where: San José City Hall, 200 E. Santa Clara Street, San Jose, CA 95113

Who: Dan Orloff, founder of Bay Area Rocks will host a kick-off press conference at 12:30 p.m. at City Hall at the site of the first performance.


(Link)
















--------------------
--------------------------------


Mp3 of the month:  The Apple-Glass Cyndrome - Someday



Extras: Filter Print Post Top
OfflineSade
Cheatin bastered
 User Gallery


Registered: 09/07/15
Posts: 729
Loc: Bigfoot Territory
Last seen: 6 years, 7 months
Re: Today in psychedelic history (12/04) [Re: Learyfan] * 1
    #22611876 - 12/04/15 07:12 AM (8 years, 1 month ago)

Fuck I really wanted to trip today too. Unfortunately have to wait until tomorrow. Busy season and have to work Saturday.


Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Offlinesanchothestoner
Satan's Grandson
I'm a teapot User Gallery


Registered: 12/06/11
Posts: 15,623
Loc: Bucketheadland
Last seen: 6 years, 7 months
Re: Today in psychedelic history (12/04) [Re: Sade] * 1
    #22612761 - 12/04/15 12:33 PM (8 years, 1 month ago)

Quote:

Sade said:
Fuck I really wanted to trip today too. Unfortunately have to wait until tomorrow. Busy season and have to work Saturday.




well what do ya know?
i ended up with 3 hits of acid today.

i've tripped on soooo many acid test anniversaries.


--------------------
I fucking hate you... God damn, I love you...
But we both know if we stick together, we'll just tear ourselves apart
You are my sunshine, my only sunshine, you make me happy, when skies are grey
You are my heroin, but there's an abscess... God damn, I miss the vein!


Extras: Filter Print Post Top
OfflineLearyfanS
It's the psychedelic movement!
Male User Gallery


Registered: 04/20/01
Posts: 34,083
Loc: High pride!
Last seen: 20 hours, 45 minutes
Re: Today in psychedelic history (12/04) [Re: sanchothestoner] * 1
    #23893997 - 12/04/16 01:43 PM (7 years, 1 month ago)

Quote:

sanchothestoner said:
i've tripped on soooo many acid test anniversaries.




Yeah?  That's pretty cool.  Well, here's your chance again.  :cool:














--------------------
--------------------------------


Mp3 of the month:  The Apple-Glass Cyndrome - Someday



Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Offlinethelastoneleft
Stranger

Registered: 11/08/12
Posts: 1,556
Last seen: 6 years, 3 months
Re: Today in psychedelic history (12/04) [Re: Learyfan]
    #23895477 - 12/04/16 11:03 PM (7 years, 1 month ago)

Tic Toc


Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Offlinesanchothestoner
Satan's Grandson
I'm a teapot User Gallery


Registered: 12/06/11
Posts: 15,623
Loc: Bucketheadland
Last seen: 6 years, 7 months
Re: Today in psychedelic history (12/04) [Re: Learyfan] * 1
    #23896228 - 12/05/16 09:11 AM (7 years, 1 month ago)

Quote:

Learyfan said:
Quote:

sanchothestoner said:
i've tripped on soooo many acid test anniversaries.




Yeah?  That's pretty cool.  Well, here's your chance again.  :cool:

















yup.  i've tripped on every single acid test date multiple times.  always on jerry, tim, ken, and others birthdays as well.  i like to trip on significant lsd dates :smilingpuppy:


--------------------
I fucking hate you... God damn, I love you...
But we both know if we stick together, we'll just tear ourselves apart
You are my sunshine, my only sunshine, you make me happy, when skies are grey
You are my heroin, but there's an abscess... God damn, I miss the vein!


Extras: Filter Print Post Top
OfflineLearyfanS
It's the psychedelic movement!
Male User Gallery


Registered: 04/20/01
Posts: 34,083
Loc: High pride!
Last seen: 20 hours, 45 minutes
Re: Today in psychedelic history (12/04) [Re: sanchothestoner] * 1
    #24825006 - 12/04/17 06:47 AM (6 years, 1 month ago)

That's cool! 




Quote:

And what did Kesey tell Wolfe? Well, after the first Acid Test was held on November 27, 1965, at Ken Babbs’ place near Santa Cruz, Kesey and the Pranksters thought it would be a good idea to do a bigger bash closer to the multitudes. The Rolling Stones would be playing the following weekend in San Jose, so why not host one there? Kesey knew a guy in San Jose, a “local boho figure,” as Wolfe describes him, and whom Kesey called “Big Nig.” To 2015 ears, Big Nig seems an obviously racist nickname for a large African American male, but it’s not much worse than Wolfe’s “poor pathetic spade” in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. Regardless, most Acid Test scholars give credence to Wolfe’s description of events:

“This very night,” Wolfe writes, “the Pranksters all sit down with oil pastel crayons and colored pens and at a wild rate start printing handbills on 8½ X 11 paper saying CAN YOU PASS THE ACID TEST? and giving Big Nig’s address. As the jellybean-cocked masses start pouring out of the Rolling Stones concert at the Civic Auditorium, the Pranksters charge in among them. Orange & silver Devil, wild man in a coat of buttons—Pranksters. Pranksters!—handing out the handbills with the challenge, like some sort of demons, warlocks verily, come to channel the wild pointless energy built up by the Rolling Stones inside.
Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters selected San Jose as the site of the second Acid Test because the Rolling Stones were in town.

Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters selected San Jose as the site of the second Acid Test because the Rolling Stones were in town.

“They come piling into Big Nig’s, and suddenly acid and the worldcraze were everywhere, the electric organ vibrating through every belly in the place, kids dancing not rock dances, not the frug and the—what?—swim, mother, but dancing ecstasy, leaping, dervishing, throwing their hands over their heads like Daddy Grace’s own stroked-out inner-courtiers—yes!—Roy Seburn’s lights washing past every head, Cassady rapping, Paul Foster handing people weird little things out of his Eccentric Bag, old whistles, tin crickets, burnt keys, spectral plastic handles. Everybody’s eyes turn on like lightbulbs, fuses blow, blackness—wowwww!—the things that shake and vibrate and funnel and freak out in this blackness—and then somebody slaps new fuses in and the old hulk of a house shudders back, the wiring writhing and fragmenting like molting snakes, the organs vibro-massage the belly again, fuses blow, minds scream, heads explode, neighbors call the cops, 200, 300, 400 people from out there drawn into The Movie, into the edge of the pudding at least, a mass closer and higher than any mass in history, it seems most surely, and Kesey makes minute adjustment, small toggle switch here, lubricated with Vaseline No. 634-3 diluted with carbon tetrachloride, and they ripple, Major, ripple, but with meaning, 400 of the attuned multitude headed toward the pudding, the first mass acid experience, the dawn of the Psychedelic, the Flower Generation and all the rest of it, and Big Nig wants the rent.
”

In contrast, Garcia remembers San Jose this way in Signpost: “It was in a house, right, after a Stones concert, the same night, the same night. We went there and played but, you know, shit, our equipment filled the room, damn near, and we were like really loud and people were just, ah… there were guys freakin’ out and stuff, and there were hundreds and hundreds of people all around, in this residential neighborhood, swarming out of this guy’s house.”

Wolfe’s account continues with a goofily stoned encounter between Garcia and Big Nig, who’s hitting up the guitarist for some scratch to help pay his bills. Money was actually an important element of the Acid Tests, although not for the purposes of gate-keeping. It was a symbol of the lack of distinction between performers and audience—everyone was supposed to participate equally.

“The Acid Test was a buck, but everybody paid it,” Garcia says in Signpost. “The musicians paid it, the electricians paid it, the guy that collected tickets paid it, everybody paid it, and if there was only one buck we’d all pay it over and over again. It was always an exchange, it cost you a buck and you stayed there all night.” Except at Big Nig’s, since San Jose’s finest broke up that Test in the early morning hours of December 5.

And who supplied the LSD at the December 4 Acid Test? “People are mighty skittish about ever, ever going into details like that,” Meriwether says. Imagine that.

As it turns out, unlike Wolfe, future “Rolling Stone” publisher Jann Wenner was actually at Big Nig’s in San Jose that night after the Rolling Stones concert. Not surprisingly given his future vocation, Wenner was a reporter for UC Berkeley’s “Daily Cal” at the time. As he recalls in his foreword to Signpost, “I wandered into a Kesey scene there that turned out to be the first Acid Test. I remember asking someone (who turned out to be Phil Lesh) who they were. ‘We’re the Grateful Dead,’ he said, and the impact, in my state of mind at that point, was severe.”

“First public Acid Test,” Wenner probably meant to write, since the first Test had actually been at Babbs’ place the previous week. In his defense, Wenner probably wasn’t overly focused on Acid Test chronology when he was writing his foreword in 1972—there’d be plenty of time one day in the future to get it all down for posterity, right?

    “Kesey and the Merry Pranksters were more aligned with the ‘turn on, tune in, drop out’ school of acid exegesis.”

What matters for our purposes is that Wenner, arguably the 20th century’s most important and influential rock journalist and publisher, got his scoop on the band’s name directly from the its bassist, Phil Lesh, who played an important role in giving the band its name—it was at Lesh’s home that Jerry Garcia came upon the phrase “The Grateful Dead” in “a big Oxford Dictionary,” as Garcia remembers it in Signpost. That may be why the name was so fresh in Lesh’s mind when he told Wenner “We’re the Grateful Dead.” But can a band have a name if there is no written record of it?

Given, though, the unimpeachability of these sources, December 4, 1965, appears to be the first time the Grateful Dead performed as the Grateful Dead, right?

Maybe. Part of the problem remains the inherent unreliability of Wenner’s “state of mind,” to use his coy phrase, or that of anyone else in attendance. But the larger issue may actually be the mercurial nature of the band’s name after its members decided to drop Warlocks as their moniker. As Garcia also recalls in Signpost, “We sort of became the Grateful Dead because we heard there was another band called Warlocks. We had about two or three months of no name and we were trying things out, different names, and nothing quite fit.”

Which two or three months Garcia is referring to is hard to say, but Meriwether has a suggestion. “Perhaps one thing that can help anchor the chronology,” he offers, “is the band’s demo in early November for Autumn Records, when they recorded as the Emergency Crew.” That would have been a very, very bad name for the band millions love as the Grateful Dead, but Meriwether says Deadheads might have been stuck with even worse—apparently Vanilla Plumbago and Mythical Ethical Icicle Tricycle were also briefly on the table.


(https://www.collectorsweekly.com)
















--------------------
--------------------------------


Mp3 of the month:  The Apple-Glass Cyndrome - Someday



Extras: Filter Print Post Top
OfflineLearyfanS
It's the psychedelic movement!
Male User Gallery


Registered: 04/20/01
Posts: 34,083
Loc: High pride!
Last seen: 20 hours, 45 minutes
Re: Today in psychedelic history (12/04) [Re: Learyfan] * 1
    #25656107 - 12/04/18 05:37 AM (5 years, 1 month ago)

Annual bump.











--------------------
--------------------------------


Mp3 of the month:  The Apple-Glass Cyndrome - Someday



Extras: Filter Print Post Top
OfflineLearyfanS
It's the psychedelic movement!
Male User Gallery


Registered: 04/20/01
Posts: 34,083
Loc: High pride!
Last seen: 20 hours, 45 minutes
Re: Today in psychedelic history (12/04) [Re: Learyfan] * 1
    #26360478 - 12/04/19 06:36 AM (4 years, 1 month ago)

Quote:

Big Nig's House, 43 S. Fifth Street, house moved to 635 St. James St.(Naglee Park), San Jose, CA

Big Nig's House
43 S. Fifth Street moved to 635 St. James Street (Naglee Park)
San Jose, California

Capacity 400
43 S. Fifth St., San Jose -- One of the world's most historic rock-'n'-roll sites. On Dec. 4, 1965, the Grateful Dead played its first gig here at an "Acid Test" organized by author and LSD advocate 
Ken Kesey. The Rolling Stones played a concert at San Jose Civic Auditorium earlier in the evening, and Kesey's followers handed out fliers inviting concertgoers to the DayGlo party at a large house 
near San Jose State University. A band from Palo Alto formerly known as the Warlocks provided the entertainment after changing its name to the Grateful Dead a few weeks earlier. The entire episode is 
documented in Tom Wolfe's book "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test." In former Rolling Stone Bill Wyman's autobiography, he writes that Keith Richards and Brian Jones also dropped by the party. Later, the place served as local headquarters for the radical Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). The house was moved when San Jose's new City Hall was constructed.

635 St. James St., San Jose -- New location of the Acid Test/Grateful Dead house. The San Jose Redevelopment Agency moved it here when a buyer offered to renovate the 1895 Victorian if it were moved to this lot. The interior renovation is under way, but the exterior has been redone spectacularly. Bill Ekern, the agency's director of project management, had no clue of the structure's past while he supervised the move. "I'll have to go back and read Wolfe's book," Ekern said. 
"We made a decision to save as many of the homes on the City Hall site as possible, and I'm glad." Another former resident of the house, Ron Cook, says it later was the home for his band, 
Throckmorton. Cook and his pals filled the basement walls with sand to create a soundproof rehearsal space, and it became a virtual open house for many musicians, including Moby Grape member Skip Spence, the future Doobie Brothers and Stevie Nicks, then a San Jose State student.


(http://jerrygarciasbrokendownpalaces.blogspot.com)















--------------------
--------------------------------


Mp3 of the month:  The Apple-Glass Cyndrome - Someday



Extras: Filter Print Post Top
OfflineLearyfanS
It's the psychedelic movement!
Male User Gallery


Registered: 04/20/01
Posts: 34,083
Loc: High pride!
Last seen: 20 hours, 45 minutes
Re: Today in psychedelic history (12/04) [Re: Learyfan] * 1
    #27071184 - 12/04/20 04:16 AM (3 years, 1 month ago)

55th anniversary of the second Acid Test today!










--------------------
--------------------------------


Mp3 of the month:  The Apple-Glass Cyndrome - Someday



Extras: Filter Print Post Top
Jump to top Pages: 1 | 2 | Next >  [ show all ]

Shop: Left Coast Kratom Kratom Powder For Sale   PhytoExtractum Maeng Da Thai Kratom Leaf Powder   Unfolding Nature Unfolding Nature: Being in the Implicate Order   Kraken Kratom Red Vein Kratom   North Spore Cultivation Supplies


Similar ThreadsPosterViewsRepliesLast post
* Psychedelic Books?
( 1 2 all )
Zoso_UK 11,649 37 12/06/22 04:38 AM
by Zeter.Turk
* good books about psychedelics? alexgaba 2,812 6 08/07/23 09:36 PM
by maensel
* FAQ 46. Is it true that psychedelics can trigger mental illness? RoseM 5,626 18 10/20/04 10:38 AM
by baraka
* Regressive self-therapy using psychedelics?
( 1 2 all )
ding 9,222 20 04/20/04 04:10 AM
by Arrakis
* should i use psychedelics?
( 1 2 3 all )
ncj 10,448 54 08/07/03 07:31 PM
by ncj
* why use psychedelics and not try to self-induced a better experience like meditating?
( 1 2 all )
hpnotiq 7,706 31 02/18/05 10:44 AM
by orichalc
* Is there hope for the psychedelic /drug culture?
( 1 2 all )
MOTH 5,953 23 04/03/04 06:38 AM
by lightset
* Rules and Information - The Psychedelic Experience Forum Annom 80,002 4 09/07/13 04:57 PM
by Rose

Extra information
You cannot start new topics / You cannot reply to topics
HTML is disabled / BBCode is enabled
Moderator: psilocybinjunkie, Rose, mushboy, LogicaL Chaos, Northerner, bodhisatta
4,138 topic views. 8 members, 61 guests and 12 web crawlers are browsing this forum.
[ Show Images Only | Sort by Score | Print Topic ]
Search this thread:

Copyright 1997-2024 Mind Media. Some rights reserved.

Generated in 0.032 seconds spending 0.007 seconds on 14 queries.