Augustus Owsley Stanley III, LSD Chef Also Known as Bear, is Dead at 76

[Phil Dragoo]

Nostalgia for a paradise lost, a golden age, the summer of love, Haight-Ashbury, 1967, full stop.


Then came methedrine, Altamont, a decade of assassination, Hippies like eloi eaten by morlocks.


Hug me, Honey, drug me; we never, never increase the dosageonly tonight because tonight is special.


Burroughs stuck his vehicle on the New Mexico forest road where my friend had his Carson Forest land and home; pulled the author of Naked Lunch from the reality.


And reality is a fine trip in its own write.


I submit.


Acid of any given description; mescaline in or out of bitter button; psilomushroom or being with one's breathinghow we laughed at our friend the Transcendental Meditation pro-fessional screaming at us in rage for making noise when he was desperately seeking satori.


You can be old and young or beautiful and ugly, as one woman from a book under the bar told me, "You can have as much as you can handle."


Copernicus the Space Cowboy bucking all the Reefer Madness paranoia of his day.


Despair grants the Illuminati monopoly of the All-Seeing Eye when it's everyman's ability.


When not beaten down with fatigue or juju.


Ginsberg made a big bear-face growl at me from the window of the van northbound to Colorado by the Rosario Cemetery--


--which made me realize I wasn't dead yet.

http://www.wat.tv/video/bob-dylan-george...hat1_.html

[Keith Millea]

Kesey-Pranksters-The Bus-Neal Cassidy-Acid Tests-Naked Hippies........

"Sunshine Daydream"-the full 1 hour thirty minute version.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pla...UHpx72ifdE

Grateful Dead 8-27-1972
Old Renaissance Fair Grounds Veneta, Oregon
(Benefit for Springfield Creamery)

00:08 Creamery Skit
01:40 Prankster clips - Acid tests
04:50 Setting up - Playing in the Band (background music)
10:47 Water and the Heat
13:37 Promised Land
18:20 Crisis
19:23 China Cat Sunflower
28:20 I Know You Rider
33:24 ...what ever happened to the truck that was going to spray the crowd
33:42 Jack Straw
38:53 Oregon Insanity (Please help us Jerry and Bob)
40:37 Dark Star
01:12:00 El Paso
01:16:30 ...and no one was hurt
01:16:50 Endings - Greatest Story in the background
01:22:15 Different angle of China Cat Sunflower
01:29:30 Different angle of I Know You Rider

The following text is from http://www.sfherald.com/columnists/...apozzola08.html

"In sitting down to watch 'Sunshine Daydream,' one gets a sense of revisiting history. Because this was an era of unprecedented accessibility, the Canis Major crew were able to station their cameras squarely on the wings of
the stage, mere feet from the band. The resulting footage allows the viewer to stand almost shoulder-to-shoulder with a very young Bob Weir, age 25, strumming a cherry-red hollow-body guitar; a bushy-haired Phil Lesh, dressed more like a surfer than a bassist, and belting unexpected harmony vocals; a fuzzily bearded Garcia, age 30, smiling, not a gray hair in sight; and, a tough-looking Bill Kreutzman, sitting squatly on his drum stool, chewing gum and wearing a railroad conductor's cap. Where most Dead fans only witnessed these musicians 20 years later, and from the remote mezzanine deck of a Checkerdome-Enormodome-Superstadium, here suddenly is Garcia's boot tapping on a rusty foot pedal, Phil Lesh leaping in front of Kreutzman during a jazzy drums and bass solo, and Bob Weir stepping timidly to the microphone after a long, haunting jam.

One can only speculate on just how psychedelically engaged Norris, Field, and DeGuere (along with third cameraman Lou Melson, and soundman Charlie Barreca) were as they recordeded the day's proceedings. The concert itself was organized by Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters, which helped to ensure a day of genuine acid craziness. But shot with synchronized, handheld cameras, the Canis Major team succeeded in capturing both the blissful playing of the musicians and the general ecstasy of the audience. The camera eye becomes almost a running commentary of the respective filmmakers' interior monologues.

Such chaotic filming succeeds precisely because of its extemporaneous nature. Almost accidentally, it captures the day's events in whirlwind fashion, fortuitously recording all the peripheral "noise" of the festival. In editing the film, DeGuere, Norris, and Field wisely provided some breathing room, interspersing performance clips with vintage moments of Kesey and the Pranksters. Additional background footage delivers candid shots of the festival's organizers as they try to cope with a water shortage amidst the day's 100-degree heat. The camera pans to crowds of men and women sharing plastic jugs of water. Overdubbed walkie-talkie chatter reveals the stage crew trying to bring in a fire truck to hose down the crowd.

In true Deadhead spirit, the film preserves an event that seem awfully remote in today's world of cable TV, Internet ticketing, and heavily policed gatherings. Early in the movie, an eager crew can be seen building a simple wooden stage. No cops, no security force trolling the grounds. No bags being searched, no one ejected for cigarette smoking. What one witnesses as the movie gets underway is 30,000 folks raving about in a big, sunny meadow while the local band plays on a hastily erected platform. Two flinty piles of amplifiers broadcast loud rock 'n roll out to the countryside. Amidst such casual planning, it seems forgivable that the festival's organizers forgot to incorporate stage lights. Providentially, this lack of concert lighting works to stunning effect later in the film. As the sun sets, and a cool breeze settles on the day's revelry, Garcia can be faintly seen crooning the plaintive "Sing Me Back Home," a mere silhouette of dark hair and beard against the gathering dusk.

Such a pastoral scene, of dogs and babies and children eating ice cream, hearkens back to a bygone era. 'Sunshine Daydream' never lectures, though, never complains that such days have passed. But in its quick cuts to footage of the Merry Pranksters, and their 1964 bus slogan "A vote for Barry [Goldwater] is a vote for fun," one sees the timeless political viability of street theater. And cutting back to the Dead in blazing performance, one is reminded that the most essential American liberty is freedom of expression."

HAPPY TRAILS