“Our first big gig was the first Trips Festival at Longshoreman’s Hall,” said Fauerso. “I don’t know how we got it. There were at least 1,000 outside trying to get in. It was the first concert where the cops were suddenly aware of how many hippies there were.”
I went and got some books out of the Springfield Library three days ago, and opened one of them last night. I was startled to see Bernard Maybeck’s cottage that my friend, Bob, lived in for several years. I worked on this Hobbit-like structure. I took off layers of wax folks had put on the wood paneling, while Maybeck looked on. He was in his eighties, and would come down the hill from another of his homes to see my progress. I painted the interior of the green door that he painted on the outside. He would not let us touch the patina of his work. I got to know the mind of a great architect, who designed the Palace of Fine Arts.
Bob had become my art patron within twelve hours of our meeting. He took me to the an art store in Berkeley that his childhood friend, Tim Scully, managed. I had met Tim’s sister, and about five of her friends that came over to meet me. I assume their, and my friend, James Taylor, had told them about the “freak-out” we had on McClure’s Beach with the most powerful dose of LSD ever made. A month earlier, Owsley freaked out at Muir Beach where Kesey was playing some mind-games with the crowd. These were Owsley’s core people. Bob was one of them. He procured all the chemicals. He came over and put three coins in my hand and bid me to thrown them. He then is reading from the I-Ching. I had thrown The Army. It was now being suggested that I was……THE ONE!
Two weeks later, James rented a large Victorian house in West Oakland and invited the Loading Zone to come live with us. Here are four of the friends who lived in that house. Our history is all over the internet. I have gathered the core of it. Bob and his brother, Tim, turned on the Beatles, not personally, but they made sure they were shipped – the best!
I am having a health-crisis that may be fatal. I am going to try to get the core information out before I leave. I presented an idea before the Mayor and City Council that is the continuation of The Quest I went on two years ago. What I see in Ken Kesey Square is a Star Ship Labyrinth Walk with Hippie Museum, and Newspaper Museum. Maybeck is my inspiration. This will be a ‘The Palace of psychedelic Art’. It will do everything but – life off – and hurdle into space!
To elect homeless low-life people to carry on our vision – will not do! You can not pin on their chest a Kesey Star and elevate them to Hippie Nirvana because some people want to be seen as the Homeless Hippie Pied Piper. This idea does not – fly! These bottom dwellers will cry “Gentrification!” no matter what! I saw this for myself!
Bob was very much into gentrification. I did a painting with the colors Bib paid for, that my sister saw, and took up art. She was the highest paid artist in the world – and she was a woman! She signed her work by her middle name ‘Rosamond’. Fair Rosamond was put in the center of a labyrinth and was found by the clue of rouge thread.
Farewell to the homeless drug addict and his threatening pitbull! Get lost! The real citizens of Eugene are sick of your ugly costume party that we fund when constantly begged! You are not the gentrification – we deserve! We want to be in costume – too! We want our square back! Every bad dog has their day! Ken never had a vision of being the pastor of a homeless rescue mission. He came to – blow our minds – not suck our resources, bone dry! We have a real Scene for the Arts, with real Artists that need bodies, too, so they can pay their rent, pay their utility bill!
What killed the Height and the original Hippie Movement, was the influx of young people from all over America, who tapped into our limited resources – and broke the bank. Then, Reagan let all the mentally ill out of the Coo-Coo Nests and they went crazy on our streets. I took part in the Whiteaker Renaissance with my High School friend, Marilyn, and Jeff Pasternak. I had the first art gallery there. Now, the homeless drug addicts are back, and all the pioneers have been – moved out! It is not in our contract to take care of the homeless. We don’t want a letter from the Pope! We true Bohemians can barely take care of ourselves. No more!
Our Museum will be the work of the Muses! Our Labyrinth will attract people from all over the world. Our creative businesses and galleries will be provided with paying customers. Everyone will be inspired – and AMAZED! There will be thick glass around the image of Ken reading to the children under a great tree. When you touch parts of the glass, you have access to the Word Wide Web – for free! You can program your own Art Show and share it with others! You can read a real book, not a pretend one. This will be a Place, a Pallet, a Paradise, a Palace……for Children!
Ten years ago there was a Labyrinth Walk that charged $5 dollars. Our Labyrinth will charge $7 dollars for adults, and $5 for children. Half the proceeds will go to feed hungry children in Lane County, the other half for maintainance. At the entrance there will be a pedestal for payment by cellphone. You can pay as much as you want. Once a month, it will be free to everyone. Why do I see folks texting while they walk?
We Hippies made a mistake by attempting – too much! They hated us when we failed to…..stop the war and bring world peace; end pollution, end world hunger, end homelessness, stop global warming, adopt all stray animals, find a cure for cancer, make everyone equal, and so on and so on. Why don’t you go check your public records to see how much public funding we Hippies received for all our pet projects. Don’t bother! Here’s that figure;
$0
And, we got to take crap from bums for not being generous enough? No mas! These parasites and usurpers are wanna-bes. They wanna-be fed! They wanna-be sheltered, they wanna-be pretend artists and musicians! All of them want – FREE MONEY!
Let’s go get some of that tax on marijuana in order to get the Ken Kesey Museum and Labyrinth – off the ground! I know we can levitate! We got the power!
http://www.jeffsongs.com/about/
Our Magic Labyrinth will be like walking on a vinyl record. There will an incredible sound system with fantastic light-show. We will build a monument to the Grateful Dead and David Bowie. You will go on a – Trip!
I see electronic brushes being applied to our special Looking Glass! And folks who never painted before are doing so in public – for the edification of our community! Here is Denny Dent. He was part of the young Beatnik scene we had in Oakland – when we were fourteen. Nancy and Bill, artists three, gone gone, and I alone remain? Nay! We will never die, we will never fade away – if I can help it! Paint away – with me!
Bob was the core designer of the Grateful Dead sound system. He has an I.Q. of 200. At sixteen, Bob and his best friend in High School, Tim Scully, did experiments with the Nuclear Accelerator at Livermore. They were the Creative Children of the Future, their parents the best minds the world had to offer. Many of them came to Berkeley California to change the world! We are going FURTHER with our dream, and wondrous Renaissance!……………………………As far as our creative minds will take us!
Welcome Home my dear Hobbits and Wizards. Come home again to ‘Hoo-Hoo’ where you always belonged. Tis real! No, it is not a dream, or an unwelcome flash-back! It is yours! You earned it. You…..know who you are!
http://www.ppie100.org/on-this-day-march-5/
http://www.museumofvancouver.ca/exhibitions/exhibit/1960s-1970s-you-say-you-want-revolution
“Young people searching for an alternative way of life made Vancouver the hippie capital of Canada. Kitsilano, at the time a neighbourhood with cheap housing, became home to Vancouver’s radical youth. The 1960s and 1970s were a time of contention as the city grew in to itself and now internationally known “radical” groups like Greenpeace started right here on home turf. Groove on Vancouver, the cool city on the coast.
Visit the hippies’ communal house, try on macramé finery, and listen to great Vancouver bands from the late 1960s.
Look for your mom or dad, or yourself, in swinging footage of the Stanley Park Be-In.
Follow the action as Vancouverites – both hippie and straight – fought the freeway, saved their neighbourhoods, and changed the way city planning is done.”
Wait a minute! Hold your horses! I’m not done!
I see a geodesic dome capping the Kesey Museum. This will be a retreat for people who live, work, and visit the downtown. It will be ringed with community garden plots. One can bring a bag lunch, and eat it in peace – if you get my drift! It will cost $5 dollars to enter. Garden plots will go for $50 dollars. Annnnd – there will be a Starbucks in the center! In your face, wanna-be a activists! In your face!
Can I hear some Celtic Dome Music – Maestro!
Jon Presco
Copyright 2016
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosamund_Clifford
http://earthschooling.info/thebearthinstitute/waldorf-celebrations/
In 1914, Maybeck oversaw the building of the Maybeck Recital Hall in Berkeley, California. Maybeck also designed the domed Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco as part of the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition, and for the same fair he carried out his vision of the lumberman’s lodge, “House of Hoo Hoo”, made of little more than rough-barked tree trunks arranged in delicate harmony. The Palace of Fine Arts was seen as the embodiment of Maybeck’s elaboration of how Roman architecture could fit within a California context. Maybeck said that the popular success of the Palace was due to the absence of a roof connecting the rotunda to the art gallery building, along with the absence of windows in the gallery walls and the presence near the rotunda of trees, flowers and a water feature.[7]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Maybeck
http://www.eastbayexpress.com/oakland/loading-zone-reloaded/Content?oid=1091238
They were formed in Berkeley, California in 1966 by singer-keyboardist Paul Fauerso, following the dissolution of his jazz group The Tom Paul Trio. The original lineup was Fauerso, bassist Bob Kridle, drummer Ted Kozlowski (replaced by George Newcom), and guitarists Peter Shapiro and Steve Dowler,[2] both formerly of Berkeley psychedelic rock band The Marbles, who had supported Jefferson Airplane at the historic “Tribute to Dr. Strange”, the inaugural Family Dog promotion concert held at San Francisco’s Longshoreman’s Hall in October 1965.
The Loading Zone’s first major concert was the Trips Festival at the Longshoreman’s Hall in January 1966.[3] Although primarily an R&B band, The Loading Zone added contemporary psychedelic influences and soon became a popular attraction on the burgeoning Bay Area music scene. The Loading Zone was based at the Berkeley venue The New Orleans House, but performed numerous times at major venues including the Fillmore West.
Although The Loading Zone occasionally headlined, the group is better known for supporting some of the biggest acts of the period including Cream, The Who, The Byrds, Big Brother & the Holding Company, Grateful Dead, Howlin’ Wolf, Sam & Dave, Chuck Berry and Buddy Miles.[4][5]
In 1967 the band placed an advertisement in the San Francisco Chronicle seeking a new lead vocalist, which led to the recruitment of Linda Tillery, who joined just prior to the band’s signing with RCA Records.
Fauerso shared a background in jazz. He started his career in high school with the Tom Paul Trio. After a few months at San Francisco State, he decided to try his hand at music full-time. The Loading Zone’s first incarnation featured bassist Bob Kridle, drummer George Newcom, and guitarists Pete Shapiro and Steve Dowler, who had both left Berkeley’s early psychedelic rock band the Marbles.
“Our first big gig was the first Trips Festival at Longshoreman’s Hall,” said Fauerso. “I don’t know how we got it. There were at least 1,000 outside trying to get in. It was the first concert where the cops were suddenly aware of how many hippies there were.”
The repertoire consisted mostly of R&B covers, but the group mixed it up with some distortion, psychedelic, and jazz. By the time Fauerso put an ad in the San Francisco Chronicle seeking a new lead vocalist, the band had expanded with a two-piece horn section. At least half a dozen singers came by the band’s West Oakland Victorian to audition, but Tillery got the job almost before singing a note. She had called up beforehand and made sure she fit the bill.
“She said, I’m kind of big, like a Big Mama Thornton, and I play harmonica,” Fauerso recalled. “She walked through the door in a post office uniform, with little white cat-eyes glasses, and I said, that’s our girl. She just looked right. We evolved as a dance band with a fusion of R&B and rock, and we ended up as a psychedelic soul band once we added Linda. She was singing for us by the time we opened for Cream at Winterland. Her mother made her a floor-length ruffled red leather cape. It was very dramatic.”
The band finally landed a record deal with RCA in 1968, but the debut album disappointed both the group and Loading Zone fans. Still, the record sold about 100,000 copies, and the band toured as an opening act for Vanilla Fudge and the Jeff Beck Group. With Marsh’s facility for odd time signatures, they became increasingly experimental, which led to scenes straight out of the rockumentary This Is Spinal Tap. Opening for Jethro Tull, the band responded to a hostile audience with a jazz odyssey.
“We played a whole second set of free improv,” Fauerso said. “We started really quiet and built to this screaming wall of rage, and then all stopped on a dime.”
Fauerso produced Tillery’s first solo album before the band broke up for good, but by 1971 he was ready to leave the Bay Area to devote himself to teaching Transcendental Meditation. Rarely far from music, he wrote commercial jingles, did some film scores, recorded music for meditation, and produced several albums for Beach Boys’ Mike Love. But his ultimate bandstand thrill was a Loading Zone gig opening for soul legends Sam and Dave.
“Linda was singing with us and we played our hearts out,” Fauerso said. “Afterwards Sam Moore came up and said, ‘You guys are pretty good. If you keep doing what you’re doing, you’re going to be baaaad.'”
Alas, the Loading Zone never had a chance to live up to Moore’s prediction. But with three simpatico players reuniting for fresh musical exploration, the band is seizing the moment to find a new zone.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_Tests
The Marbles had the following members: Peter Shapiro on lead guitar, Steve Dowler on rhythm guitar, David Dugdale on bass and Ray Greenleaf on drums. The Marbles were a psychedelic and rock group whose most notable performances were at the Tribute to Dr. Strange at the Longshoremen’s Hall in San Francisco on October 15, 1965, and again at the same venue for The Trips Festival on January 21, 22 and 23 along with Jefferson Airplane, The Charlatans and The Great Society. Both Shapiro and Dowler went on to become members of Paul Fauerso’s The Loading Zone.[1][2]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Scully
Scully knew the government would move quickly to suppress LSD distribution, and he wanted to obtain as much of the main precursor chemical, lysergic acid, as possible. Scully soon learned that Owsley Stanley possessed a large amount (440 grams) of lysergic acid monohydrate. Owsley and Scully finally met a few weeks before the Trips Festival in the fall of 1965. The 30-year-old Owsley took the 21-year-old Scully as his apprentice[3] and they pursued their mutual interest in electronics and psychedelic synthesis.
Owsley took Scully to the Watts Acid Test on February 12, 1966, and they built electronic equipment for the Grateful Dead until late spring 1966. In July 1966 Owsley rented a house in Point Richmond, California and Owsley and Melissa Cargill (Owsley’s girlfriend who was a skilled chemist) set up a lab in the basement. Tim Scully worked there as Owsley’s apprentice. Owsley had developed a method of LSD synthesis which left the LSD 99.9% pure. The Point Richmond lab turned out over 300,000 tablets (270 micrograms each) of LSD they dubbed “White Lightning”. LSD became illegal in California on October 6, 1966, and Scully wanted to set up a new lab in Denver, Colorado.
Tim Scully first met William “Billy” Mellon Hitchcock, grandson of William Larimer Mellon and great-great-grandson of Thomas Mellon, through Owsley in April 1967. They became friends and Billy loaned Scully $12,000 for the second Denver lab in 1968. The product from the lab was distributed by the Brotherhood of Eternal Love; Scully was connected with the Brotherhood via Billy Hitchcock.
In December 1968 Nick Sand (through an intermediary) purchased a farmhouse in Windsor, California where he and Tim Scully set up a large LSD lab. Tim Scully and Nick Sand (another psychedelic chemist) produced over 3.6 million tablets (300 micrograms each) of LSD they dubbed “Orange Sunshine” by the summer of 1969. In May 1969 Tim Scully was arrested in California for the 1968 Denver lab.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Sand
http://belhistory.weebly.com/tim-scully.html
http://berkeleyfolk.blogspot.com/2010/06/march-3-4-1970-new-orleans-house.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_Tests
http://berkeleyfolk.blogspot.com/2010/06/march-3-4-1970-new-orleans-house.html
http://theinterrobang.com/bob-weirs-long-strange-trip/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renaissance
The Acid Tests were a series of parties held by author Ken Kesey in the San Francisco Bay Area during the mid-1960s, centered entirely around the use of, and advocacy of, the psychedelic drug LSD, also known as “acid.” LSD-25 was not made illegal until late in 1968.
The name “Acid Test” was coined by Kesey, after the term “acid test” used by gold miners in the 1850s. He began throwing parties at his farm at La Honda, California.[1] The Merry Pranksters were central to organizing the Acid Tests, including Pranksters such as Lee Quarnstrom and Neal Cassady. Other people such as Tim Scully were involved as well.
A correspondence with Tim ScullyIn 1966, Tim Scully lived with and built sound equipment for the Grateful Dead. He is also known as the sidekick of Owsley “Bear” Stanley, perhaps the most well-known manufacturer of LSD in the 1960s. The two set up a lab in Point Richmond, California, and started making acid together. Scully and Owsley parted company at the end of 1967 when Owsley was arrested. Scully set up his own lab and during this time he was briefly associated with The Brotherhood of Eternal Love, an organisation that was using LSD as a religious sacrament and distributed Scully’s acid. A year later he set up a third lab with Nick Sand, another chemist making psychedelics. Scully’s persona as one of the major acid manufacturers of the hippie era finally caught up with him, and he spent several years in prison in the 1970s. In 2003, I got in touch with Tim Scully. Back then, I was making research on The Brotherhood of Eternal Love, and my main reason for getting in touch with Scully was to learn more of his days with the organization. We corresponded by e-mail. The the text below is an edited version of these messages.Martin A. Lee and Bruce Shlain’s Acid Dreams tells us their story of The Brotherhood, and also frequently mention you. The book gives the impression that you once were a very devoted man, with a firm belief in the inherent spiritual qualities of acid.
— I can’t speak for everyone. Although when we took LSD we felt that we all understood each other and agreed on some deep level, I now think that feeling was sometimes an illusion.— When I took LSD, the experience was so magical that I wanted to share it with everyone and make it available to everyone who wanted it. I believed that this would make the world a better place, at a time when it was very troubled, e.g. the war in Vietnam . I believed that others would have experiences similar to those I had, if they tried LSD, and I believed that such an experience would make people gentler, more caring, more conscious and at one with the universe. I thought of LSD as an entheogen , though that term was not in use at the time. I also believed that this is what the Brotherhood [of Eternal Love] members believed.— Now, in hindsight, it appears that LSD doesn’t carry a specific message with it. I like the model presented in Acid Dreams, that LSD is an amplifier. Given the proper set and setting it can be a powerful entheogen. But with different set and setting it can be an interrogation aid for the CIA or a party drug or any number of other things. So I think a good cultural context is needed for entheogens to function, such as in Huxley’s Island or as in primitive cultures.— I have also learned that although many idealists were drawn to make and distribute LSD, that this scene was and is also a magnet for con artists. I think Ron Stark probably was a world class example. I’m currently skeptical of the theory that he was a CIA agent, by the way.— I only had close contacts with a few brothers during the time I was making acid, for security reasons. And the years I was making acid were from 1966-1970, with only the period from late 1968-mid 1970 overlapping with the Brotherhood. My main contacts were with John Griggs, Mike Randell and Ed May. I believe they were all sincere in sharing my beliefs. Of the three, only Mike Randell is still alive now. Since then, I have seen the testimony of several former brothers who became informers. I have read of the alleged involvement of some Brothers in dealing hard drugs. I don’t have any personal knowledge of the accuracy of this last allegation. I was always of the opinion that forcing entheogens into the same channels as other drugs would corrupt some people, and that certainly happened to some people. It is too bad we weren’t able to give them away.— I have met many people who took LSD. The vast majority believe they benefited from the experience. A few obviously did not and I feel bad about them. I think a higher percentage of the people who made or sold LSD were harmed by doing so.— With regard to the accuracy of Tendler and May’s book [The Brotherhood of Eternal Love], in many areas I am impressed with the research they did. I hope the Tendler and May book was inaccurate in saying that in later years the Brothers lost their idealism. Since I wasn’t in touch with them, I don’t know.You say that you only were in close contact with three of the Brothers. I understand your position as a major acid chemist was unique and that the security you mentioned was of great importance, but did you see yourself as a “Brother” or just somebody helping them doing a righteous thing?
— Many people shared the goal of turning on the world in the ’60s. There wasn’t nearly as formal an organization as the government seemed to believe. Nick [Sand] and I cooperated in obtaining raw materials, for example, but were in many ways working completely independently. Nick, Bear and I all got some help from Billy Hitchcock, but again, this was a very loose arrangement and not at all the kind of organization that most folks imagine. Perhaps it would be more accurate to describe it as a community of common interests or a network.— I don’t have a clear sense of how formal the Brotherhood was, but I suspect that it also was pretty informal, with various “members” doing their own thing but sharing resources. They made me an honorary member, giving me a necklace with a symbol which the members would recognize. But it was an extremely loose association.The psychedelic counterculture of today is now an underground phenomena and probably very different from what it was in the Sixties. It is more likely that people pick up a book by Terence McKenna rather than reading Timothy Leary’s manual based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead. McKenna made a big impact in the 1990s, but instead of LSD opting for the use of Psilocybin mushrooms and also DMT, saying LSD simply isn’t very spiritual in nature. McKenna’s view on acid as less spiritual seems to have become somewhat established.Could this shift in attitude possibly have anything to do with the degradation in the quality of acid? There are recent reports showing that the LSD of today is much weaker and also of inferior quality, while your Orange Sunshine was said to be even purer than that of the Sandoz laboratories.
— Yes, Bear and I both made every effort to make the purest possible LSD. We aimed to get 3600 doses per gram of pure crystalline LSD. We always dispersed it on tribasic calcium phosphate which was thereafter diluted with lactose. In the earliest period, Bear put the resulting mixture in #5 geletin capsules. Later we switched to tablets, either tablet triturates or compression molded, depending on the equipment we had available. The tribasic calcium phosphate had a strong affinity for the LSD and kept it evenly distributed throughout the tablet or capsule. This protected the labile LSD from decomposition due to exposure to UV light, extreme Ph, etc. Tablets were harder to counterfit or adulterate.— There was one small batch of acid which Bear combined with 1mg of STP as an experiment. He concluded that STP was a bad idea and reverted to pure LSD.— I gather from reading on the web that modern acid is usually distributed on blotters, a cheap but very bad distribution method since it leaves the acid vulnerable to rapid decomposition, and that a typical dose is not 50 micrograms. I don’t have much information yet on the purity of present-day street acid, though I’m looking for published reports.— I’d expect several factors to influence the kind of trips people have. Certainly the size of dose makes a big difference. After that I would rank set and setting with impurities coming in last, assuming they are not unusually toxic. That doesn’t mean I think purity is unimportant. I just suspect that the other factors may be substantially more of an influence in this case. One blessing of the small doses popular now is that extreme bad trips are more rare.Do you think acid will be around in the future and if so, will this drug be relevant in any spiritual or scientific way rather than just being the party drug it has become?
— I have met many people who are still using LSD for spiritual purposes. I doubt that will stop. If the current drug war ever abates, I think it is likely that scientific and medical research would resume. I also think that more frivolous uses of LSD will also continue.You still claim that it would have been better to give the acid away rather than selling it. Was this way of thinking shared by others in the community? Viewing LSD as a religious sacrament, like the early Brothers from Anaheim did, also makes the idea of selling it absurd. In what way did people justify charging money for it?
— Without a wealthy patron to finance the production and distribution, selling it was the most straightforward way of financing the costs, which were very substantial. The raw materials were very hard to buy and involved bribes, smuggling, etc. There were ever increasing legal expenses in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Setting up and operating a good clandestine lab is not cheap either. Tabletting is also expensive. The last tablet machine I was involved with, in 1970, cost $15,000. I read that one costing $100,000 was confiscated in one of Nick’s labs. A substantial fraction, perhaps 1/3, of the acid I made was given away.— Nevertheless, it appears to me that some people were corrupted by the money that flowed through the pipeline. And certainly having LSD in the same milieu as cocaine and heroin, particularly when government propaganda made every effort to erase the distinctions between drugs, led all too many people into deep trouble with hard drugs.— During the years when I was making LSD, I was very concerned with the likelihood that the authorities would make raw materials completely impossible to obtain at some point. I felt that we were in a race with time to garner enough raw material to make enough acid to turn on the world before it became impossible. I think others shared this view and labs scaled up as rapidly as raw materials and resources permitted.— At the time, we fantasized about various free distribution methods. One unrealized fantasy was to buy one of those postcard advertising inserts for a mass-market magazine such as LIFE and, after publication, tell everyone that there was a dose of LSD hidden on each postcard. But we never had the wherewithall to make that happen.
Out of curiosity, I’d also like to know how long you stayed on The Merry Pranksters’ Bus ? According to Acid Dreams you helped them install the sound equipment, is this right?
— I designed and built sound equipment for the Dead, lived with them and worked as a roadie for about the first 6 or 7 months of 1966. Then when the Point Richmond lab started up, the Dead wanted Bear and I to move out, so we did.
Rosamond Press 
Reblogged this on rosamondpress.