Bureau of Lost Culture

*We take a creep through dimly lit London streets populated with prostitutes, bohemians, charlatans, junkies, spiritualists, drunkards and lost souls following magician, author, occultist and drug fiend ALEISTER CROWLEY,'The Great Beast’, as he prowls Piccadilly in pursuit of pleasure, power and yet more prostitutes.   *'Do What Though Wilt shall be the whole of the law’   *Our guide is Phil Baker, author of ‘City of The Beast’, part Crowley biography, part psychogeographic odyssey and part London gazetteer. We seek the man beneath the myth, the flaneur beneath the fiend and ask why do  many still find the often deplorable Crowley so intriguing, even inspiring?   *Along the was we get fascinating glimpses into a lost era, a shadowy underworld of Victorian and Edwardian counterculture, Sex Magick, ether, drugs and .. snails..    *For The City of the Beast book : http://strangeattractor.co.uk/news/city-of-the-beast/   *For the O.T.O https://oto-usa.org/   *Sign up for The Bureau Newsletter: https://lp.constantcontactpages.com/su/N0ZYoFu/BOLC  * The Bureau Instagram https://www.instagram.com/bureauoflostculture/ #crowley #aleistercrowley #counterculture #magick #thegoldendawn #london #prostitution #occult #ether #666 #O.T.O. 

*In 1969, the poet, Beat generation godfather, countercultural guru and political activist ALLEN GINSBERG bought a farm in upstate New York to provide a creative hub and rehab refuge for his friends - a collection of poets, artists, washed-up drunks, strung-out junkies, ne’er do wells and exhausted underground figures, all reeling after the intensity of the 60s.   *One, his lifelong friend and biographer Barry Miles, chronicler of the counterculture, returns to the Bureau to tell of a bucolic summer he spent with Ginsberg and an assortment of crazy characters on the farm, archiving the poet's vast collection of tape recordings.   *We also visit The Chelsea Hotel and meet some the equally crazy characters who lived and loved there in 1970s Manhattan including Janis Joplin, Arthur Miller and Leonard Cohen - and along the way we discuss The Beats, Buddhism, Burroughs - and beards.     *Thanks to Stephen Cleary and The British Library Sound Archive for providing the recordings of Allen and to Peter Hale of The Ginsberg Estate for permission to use them.   *For More on Miles: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Miles *The Allen Ginsberg Project: https://allenginsberg.org *Sign up for The Bureau Newsletter: https://lp.constantcontactpages.com/su/N0ZYoFu/BOLC  * The Bureau Instagram https://www.instagram.com/bureauoflostculture/ *The British Library Sound Archive: https://sounds.bl.uk   #ginsberg #kerouac #williamburroughs #beatpoets #beatgeneration #counterculture

*Experimental treatment of the insane, secret tests by MI5 with volunteers thinking they were helping find a cure for the common cold, Cold War weapon research by the Ministry of defence on unsuspecting troops -  the early history of LSD in the UK was rather inauspicious.   *And then all hell - or heaven - broke loose..   *Britain's foremost psychedelic historian ANDY ROBERTS returns to the Bureau to take us on a trip through the revolutions in the head caused by Acid from the 1950s to now.   *Along the way we meet some of the characters who experimented, manufactured, dealt, swallowed and were transformed by it - as well as those who tried to stop them  - including an unlikely Breaking Bad style pharmacist in Islington, The Microdot Gang and even the Kray Twins..   *So sit back, relax, blow out the candles and kick off your sandals … (thanks The Lilac Time), tune in,  turn and ... *Andy and Albion Dreaming: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Albion-Dreaming-popular-history-Britain/dp/1905736274 * Sign up for The Bureau Newsletter to get countercultural treats https://lp.constantcontactpages.com/su/N0ZYoFu/BOLC  * The Bureau Instagram https://www.instagram.com/bureauoflostculture/ *The Real Tuesday Weld https://www.tuesdayweld.com

* From Colin Wilson to Tony Wilson, Patti Smith to Mark E Smith, what was it like coming of age in the counterculture of Manchester in the 60s, 70s and 80s?   * Johnny Marr has just released his latest record and his band's on tour with Blondie. He's worked with Billie Eilish on the Academy award winning theme for the Bond blockbuster No Time to Die and with all sorts of other artists including Hans Zimmer, Modest Mouse, The The and The Pretenders.   * He’s had chart hits with Electronic, and, oh yeah, he co-piloted one of the best loved and influential British bands of all time - The Smiths.   * We don’t really talk about that - but we do dig deep into archetypal psychology, northern peak experience, clothes, records, books, youth culture and reading the road signs along the way to your destiny..   * Image credit: Andy Cotterill   * For More on Johnny: https://johnnymarr.com   * The Bureau Home https://www.bureauoflostculture.com * The Bureau Instagram https://www.instagram.com/bureauoflostculture/ * The Bureau Newsletter  https://lp.constantcontactpages.com/su/N0ZYoFu/BOLC 

* He stepped off a plane from Barbados onto a wet and windy runway at Heathrow airport in 1965 aged 12. * Now he’s a DJ, multi-instrumentalist and producer of hundreds of records spanning reggae, lovers rock, soul, dub, punk and pop.     * Dennis Bovell's life in music is populated by a countercultural cornucopia of artists as wide ranging as Linton Kwesi Johnson, The Slits, Madness, Bananarama, the Pop Group, Fela Kuti, Orange Juice, Marvin Gaye, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Dexy’s Midnight Runners and most recently, Radiohead, The Animal Collective and Spoon. * He's even got an MBE. * We dig into all that - or as much as we can - plus Hendrix, sound systems, cutting dub plates, sound clashes with Lee Scratch Perry, police harrasment, wrongful imprisonment and the youthful joys of eating breadfruit on the beach. * For More on Dennis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_Bovell   * The Bureau Home https://www.bureauoflostculture.com * The Bureau Instagram https://www.instagram.com/bureauoflostculture/ * The Bureau Newsletter  https://lp.constantcontactpages.com/su/N0ZYoFu/BOLC 

* In 1967 and and 1968, an ordinary north London house contained an Exploding Galaxy - a psychedelic commune and carnival of theatrical performers, artists and performance poets bent on transforming the city through spontaneous happenings, countercultural interventions and street activism..   * One of them was only 15 years old. Now all grown up, JILL DROWER comes to the Bureau to talk about her time at 99 Balls Pond Road as a Galaxy member - how the whole crazy endeavour came about - and how it exploded into and out of existence   Alson the way we visit The UFO club, The 14 Hour Technicolour Dream, hear about  ‘scrudging’ , bent coppers intent on busting hippies for being hippies and the lost dream of peace, love and understanding that once might have changed everything.     * For More on The Exploding Galaxy http://www.djfood.org/category/bureau-of-lost-culture/     * For Kev's amazing psychedelic DJ FOOD archive https://djfood/org   * The Bureau Home https://www.bureauoflostculture.com * The Bureau Instagram https://www.instagram.com/bureauoflostculture/ * The Bureau Newsletter  https://lp.constantcontactpages.com/su/N0ZYoFu/BOLC   

* Withnail and I, Poets, Spiritualists, Irish, Spanish and Hugenot immigrants, Serial Killers, Artists, Railway workers, William Blake, Rimbaud and Verlaine, Walter Sickert, Sex, Drugs, Rock’n’Roll, Music Hall, Folk, Britpop, Levitation, The Roundhouse, Cecil Sharp House, The New Jerusalem, Markets, Markets, Markets..   * Writer, researcher and walker of Lost Rivers Tom Bolton leads us up and out of The Bureau to wander through the streets and stories of the London Borough of Camden - for decades, the down and dirty end of the countercultural city - in search of the strange spirits that still pervade its highways and byways.   * For more on Tom and his work https://tombolton.co.uk   * Bureau Home www.bureauoflostculture.com * Bureau Instagram https://www.instagram.com/bureauoflostculture/ * The Bureau Newsletter  https://lp.constantcontactpages.com/su/N0ZYoFu/BOLC 

* Ninja Tune head honcho and Coldcut co-pirate Jonathan More returns to the Bureau to talk about his adventures hi-jinxing and hi-jacking the airwaves in the Wild West of South London.  * For the second in our trilogy on illicit broadcasting, we hear tales of DJ derring-do during the birth Of Kiss Fm, once one of the coolest of the urban pirate radio stations and its transition to the commercial mainstream.   * And in the mix, we debate how the mainstream is dependent on the underground, the culture feeds on the counterculture, and along the way go crate-digging into how Jon caught the disease of collecting vinyl, putting on warehouse parties, life-changing meetings in London taxis, pirate TV, Coldcut's Solid Steel show - and nuclear power station ephemera..   * For Jon and Coldcut http://coldcut.net * Jon’s Soho Radio show Out to Lunch https://sohoradiolondon.com/profile/jon-more/  Thanks for audio samples and info: * DJ Food https://www.djfood.org/ * The Pirate Radio Archive https://www.thepiratearchive.net/ * AMFM.0rg https://www.amfm.org.uk/ * Death is Not the End https://deathisnot.bandcamp.com/album/london-pirate-radio-adverts-1984-1993-vol-1  Follow Us: * Bureau Home www.bureauoflostculture.com * Instagram https://www.instagram.com/bureauoflostculture/ * Get the Bureau Newsletter  https://lp.constantcontactpages.com/su/N0ZYoFu/BOLC 

Cannabis, psilocybin, mescaline and LSD were not enough to fulfil Joey Mellen’s quest to expand his consciousness to the furthest limits 'in search of the miraculous'. So in 1968 he used an electric drill to self-trepan himself by boring a hole into his skull.   Now a delightful and very lively 82, Joey visits the Bureau to tell how an upper middle class English public schoolboy tuned in, turned on and dropped out, became a psychonautic beatnik and carried out the act of self surgery that made him infamous in countercultural London.  Along the way we dig deep into acid evangelism, how to avoid bad trips, the blood chemistry of the ego and the strange life of Bart Hughes, the dutchman whose theories inspired Joey, Amanda Fielding and various others to seek enlightenment through trepanation.     And we ask Joey if he acheived his goal of getting high and never coming down.   This episode was sponsored by the artist known as The Real Tuesday Weld    Joey’s book Bore Hole   Get the Bureau's Newsletter   Support our wild endeavours   The Bureau of Lost Culture Home

The last violet seller in Piccadilly Circus, the Canvey Island Oil refinery, the bascule chamber of Tower Bridge, the song of The Muffin Man. In the twelve years before his early death in 2021, Ian Rawes engaged in a Quixotic endeavour to capture - and collect - the sound of London.    With over 2000 field recordings, historical audio pieces, sound maps, writings and images, The London Sound Survey he created is an idiosyncratic but wonderfully accessible, evocative and often arresting series of sonic snapshots that aim to track a changing city.   Tony Herrington of The Wire magazine comes to the Bureau to remember Ian and celebrate his work. We hear various selections from the Sound Survey and talk counterculture, field-recording, bells, anarcho-punk activism - and of course, independent music publishing, along the way.   SIGN UP TO JOIN US   The London Sound Survey Website   Tony's obituary for Ian   ---------- Get the Bureau's Newsletter   Support our wild endeavours   The Bureau of Lost Culture Home   Go on - follow, rate and review us - or be in touch directly bureauoflostculture@gmail.com We'd love to hear from you. -------------