Andy Letcher RSS feed

Albert Hofmann RIP

info@andyletcher.co.uk — 2008-04-30T08:52:14+01:00

I shall ride my bicycle today for Albert Hofmann, who died yesterday aged 102. More here.

Some evidence at last!

info@andyletcher.co.uk — 2008-04-27T10:56:47+01:00

It seems that archaeologists near Colchester have uncovered the grave of an Iron Age man, a healer, that they suppose may have been a druid.

Alongside his remains were a board game, some surgical tools, some metal rods (perhaps for divination) and, get this, a tea strainer. And in it, mushrooms? Alas not, but perhaps more interestingly plant remains belonging to the genus Artemesia.

Artemesia contains both Wormwood and Mugwort, both of which have psychoactive properties. Mugwort grows commonly on waste ground and along road sides. It was known as 'gypsy tobacco' or 'sailor's tobacco' because if smoked the dried leaves produce a groggy, cannabis-like high, with interesting effects on the inner vision, mild but tangible. It can also be made into a tea.

Wormwood, on the other hand, was the active ingredient of absinthe about which enough has been said already.

Archaeologists have suggested that the Artemesia tea might have been used for healing (indeed) but it seems fairly safe to conclude that it might also have been used for magical working and/or its psychoactive properties.

Evidence at last!

Read more here.

Moses on drugs

info@andyletcher.co.uk — 2008-03-05T18:49:48+00:00

According to Benny Shanon, respected author of The Antipodes of the Mind, Moses was probably on drugs when he received the ten commandments - link here.

I've never understood quite why psychedelicists are so determined to prove that the Abrahamic religions were founded on hallucinogenic experiences. If true wouldn't that make them the worst possible advert for psychedelics? I mean, are they the best we can come up with?

Armistead Maupin on dope

info@andyletcher.co.uk — 2007-11-26T13:10:28+00:00

Yes, you did hear that right. Appearing on BBC Radio 4's flagship interview programme, Desert Island Discs this Sunday, the American author Armistead Maupin requested a 'vaporizer' for his luxury item.

What's that, some effete San Fran essential-oil accoutrement?

Nah, it's for inhaling dope without smoke - much better for the lungs.

'I'd like a supply of grass on my desert island" he added.

All across the BBC you could hear the buttocks tightening...

Here it again this friday 30th Nov at 9.00am.

Altered States - should be good

info@andyletcher.co.uk — 2007-11-24T17:11:58+00:00

Research Centre for Religion and Popular Culture

_________________________
Altered States
Reflections on Induced Transcendence in Popular Culture
_________________________

1-3 February 2008
_________________________

Throughout the history of religion thinkers have sought and recorded altered states as well as, of course, warning of the dangers of so doing. It is not surprising, therefore, that over the last two hundred years, there has accumulated a vast body of work exploring altered states and transcendence. From Thomas De Quincey and Charles Baudelaire to Aldous Huxley and William S. Burroughs, and from Ken Russell to The Beatles, psychedelic art and contemporary electronic dance music, there is a rich vein of popular culture devoted to the spiritual significance of induced altered states.
_________________________

St. Deiniol’s Library
Church Lane, Hawarden, Flintshire, North Wales CH5 3DF, UK
Tel: + 44 (0)1244 532350
Fax: + 44 (0)1244 520643
Conference fee (including bed, dinner, and continental breakfast): £100

To book, please email Ms Karen Parry: deiniol.visitors@btconnect.com
Website: http://www.st-deiniols.org/
Programme

Friday 1 February 2008

5:30 Welcome Drink
7:00 Dinner
8:00-9:00 Dr Brian Baker (Lancaster University) The Pleasures of Dissolution: 2001: A
Space Odyssey, Solaris, Altered States

Saturday 2 February 2008

8:30 Breakfast
10:00–11.00 Anna Powell (Manchester Metropolitan University) Pharmacoanalysis and Ken
Russell’s Altered States
11:00-11:30 Coffee
11:30-12.30 Charlie Blake (Liverpool Hope University) The Elves Of Disintegration:
Immanence, Transcendence and The Spirit Of Velocity
12:30-1.30 Rina Arya (University of Chester) Transcendental States in Surrealism
1:30-3:30 Lunch
3:30-4:30 Fabrizio Ferrari (University of Chester) ‘No sex, no drugs: just do something
mystical!’. The cultural rehab of the Bauls of Bengal, from esoteric practitioners
to bourgeois heroes and world music icons.
4:30-5:00 Coffee
5:00-6:00 Chris Christodoulou (London South Bank University) Warrior Stance: Kinesis,
Control, and Martial Arts Spirituality in Drum ‘n’ Bass
6:00-8:00 Dinner
8:00-9:00 Hillegonda Rietveld (London South Bank University) Cyborg Spirituality in
Nomadic Electronic Dance Cultures

Sunday 3 February 2008

8:30 Breakfast
9:30-10.30 Andy Letcher Hyperspace or hyperbole? Terence McKenna’s debt to Teilhard
de Chardin and what this implies about psychedelic consciousness
10.30-11:00 Coffee
11.00-12:00 Stella S. Lau (Hong Kong University) Club Culture and Christianity: The Altered
States and ‘Spirituality’ in Electronic Dance Music
12:30-1:30 Lunch & Departure

Shrooms promo

info@andyletcher.co.uk — 2007-11-23T11:39:23+00:00

Well, I suppose I don't look too ridiculous...

Shrooms the facts.

News

info@andyletcher.co.uk — 2007-11-18T19:22:09+00:00

I've been fairly busy recently with music. Telling the Bees are recording an album and we're doing it all ourselves (and very happy with the results we are too). So my mind has been elsewhere, but I'm planning on updating this site soon - when I get a spare afternoon or two!

I got asked to do an interview as part of the promotion surrounding the teen horror-flick, Shrooms. Went down to a swanky office in Kentish town and did my three minutes - look out for it on youtube - it should be up soon. Have to say that teen-horror movies, erm, aren't my thing, but I'm sure Shrooms is destined to become a friday night student classic. No, really.

And I'm getting ready to appear at Synergy this coming friday. Jeff has assembled an excellent panel so should be a good night. See you down there, and do come and say hello.

The Synergy Project

info@andyletcher.co.uk — 2007-11-04T10:30:26+00:00

Andy will be appearing at The Synergy Project on November 23rd, speaking as part of a panel on 'The Future of Psychedelics'. Be great to see you there!

TURN ON, TUNE IN, DROP OUT-MODED THINKING: THE SYNERGY 'FUTURE OF PSYCHEDELICS SYMPOSIUM'

A panel of seasoned UK Psychedelic voyagers from various generations will help us look into the future of Psychedelics in general and into the future of the UK Psychedelic scene specifically. We will go backwards to go forwards, in time and place and see how the ideas of 'psychedelic gurus' such as Aldous Huxley,Tim Leary,Terrence and Dennis McKenna, Ken Kesey, Fraser Clark and others relate to the coming generation of psychedelic users.

We will look at the history of the Psychedelic scene (particularly in the UK) and what went right and what went wrong.

We will also look at Psychedelics in the context of women and various 'ethnic' groups, subject too often ignored.

Both the first and second Summers of Love will be explored in relation to Psychedelic usage and the development of the role of Psychedelics in Alternative Clubbing and Alternative Festivals will also be analysed.

Various Psychedelic drugs old and new, synthetic and natural will be looked at and analysed for their future role in the Psychedelic scene. LSD, DMT, Magic Mushrooms, Ayahuasca, MDMA, Psilosybin, Mescaline, Cannabis, Ecstasy and many others. Synergy clubbers will be encouraged to relate their experiences with various Psychedelics.

We will also look at the changes in the legal situation on relation to psychedelics over the last 60 years focusing on the UK. Education about Psychedelics, a rarely discussed topic will be explored.

Then the Synergy panelists and the Synergy audience will brainstorm together to see how the Psychedelic scene might look in the future.

The panel will include Fraser Clark (former editor of 'Encyclopedia Psychedelica' and the founder of UK Alternative Psychedelic clubbing via 'Megatripolis' and 'The Warp Experience'), Mark Heley (who brought Alternative Psychedelic clubbing to America from the UK via 'ToonTown' and has recently been involved in the Sunrise Celebration and WaveForm Festivals), Andy Letcher (author of the controversial best seller 'Shroom which has upset some well established psychedelic icons), Samantha Bennett (who has led Ayahuasca workshops at Synergy) and others to be announced.

This is a don't miss event.

Dutch magic mushroom ban

info@andyletcher.co.uk — 2007-10-12T09:18:19+01:00

From The Times
October 12, 2007
Mushrooms lose their magic

David Charter, Europe Correspondent

The sale of hallucinogenic magic mushrooms is about to be banned by the Dutch Government in the latest sign of a conservative backlash against Amsterdam’s relaxed attitude towards sex and drugs.

A series of high-profile deaths and injuries linked to magic mushroom trips has proved too much for ministers, who are expected to discuss prohibition proposals from Ab Klink, the Health Secretary, at a Cabinet meeting today.

The move follows growing official impatience with the unforeseen consequences of traditional Dutch tolerance, which instead of normal-ising drug taking and prostitution has drawn in people-traffickers, dealers and organised crime gangs from across Europe.

Mr Klink’s push for a ban on the mushrooms follows plans by the Mayor of Amsterdam for an upgrade of the city’s infamous red-light district, including the closure of many of its prostitute windows and coffee shops where cannabis is openly sold.

Job Cohen, the mayor, has also proposed a three-day “cooling-off” period between ordering mushrooms and buying them, to put off Amsterdam’s many weekend tourists, but that did not go far enough for Mr Klink.

Fresh mushrooms — as opposed to dried fungi which are already banned — are legally on sale at so-called smart shops, about 40 of which have sprung up in the capital selling all manner of herbal and chemical compounds.

The sale of hallucinogenic mushrooms is illegal in most other countries and the dramatic rethink in the Netherlands has followed a rise in medical emergencies in Amsterdam linked to mushroom use.

Ambulance call-outs rose from 70 in 2005 to 128 last year, with nine out of ten cases involving tourists. Britons were the largest group among them.

In July an 18-year-old from Iceland threw himself out of a hotel window, breaking both his legs.

But what really caught the public imagination was the death of a 17-year-old French girl who jumped from a bridge over one of Amsterdam’s canals to her death in March, apparently under the influence of magic mushrooms.

In May, Mr Klink ordered the national health institute to carry out a fresh study on the risks of mushrooms, following an earlier report that played down the health dangers and led to a continuation of the tolerant approach.

Magic mushrooms are not addictive, but can have severe psychological consequences. Over the past six years mushrooms in dried and fresh form have been banned in Britain, Denmark and Ireland. In Britain, freshly picked magic mushrooms have been classified as Class A drugs for two years. The Drugs Act 2005 brought the law on fresh mushrooms into line with dried specimens. Britain acted after a significant rise in the amount of imported magic mushrooms.

Defenders of the tolerant Dutch approach gave warning yesterday that a ban would leave magic mushroom trading to street dealers. A spokesman for the Amsterdam Drugs Advisory Bureau said: “This is not a mushroom problem, it is a tourist problem. But the ban would hit Dutch users.”

Peter van Dijk, a researcher at the Utrecht-based Trimbos Institute, which studies drug addiction, said: “A mushroom is not very dangerous. It is not as toxic as, for example, heroin or cocaine.” The real danger came from a blend of alcohol, cannabis and mushrooms that led people “to do things they normally would not”, he added.

Joep Oomen, of the European Coalition for Just and Effective Drug Policies, a pressure group calling for the legalisation of drugs, said that a ban would drive the drug culture back underground.

“Prohibition will not stop the sale of hallucinogenics. It will move towards an illegal market and users will be forced to start using things they do not really want with no indication of the dosage and the risks,” he said.

Natural high

— The Liberty Cap and the Fly Agaric are the most common "magic mushrooms" in Britain

— Among the Koryak people of Siberia the ceremonial use of Fly Agaric involved the shaman ingesting the mushroom, after which others would drink his urine to partake of its effects

— Reindeer in northern Europe are also attracted to the Fly Agaric and Siberian people would slaughter them and get high by eating the meat

— Recently Sienna Miller, while publicising her film Factory Girl, in which she plays Andy Warhol's drug-addicted muse Edie Sedgwick, admitted being very fond of magic mushrooms - causing outcry among anti-drugs campaigners

Sources: lycaeum.org, Thames Valley Police, treesforlife.org.uk, tv.com

Was it you?

info@andyletcher.co.uk — 2007-09-13T14:36:02+01:00

Over the summer someone got in touch asking where they might get copies of some of my academic papers. I'm afraid I lost the email, so if it was you please get in touch again.

Mad Thoughts on Mushrooms

info@andyletcher.co.uk — 2007-09-13T14:33:21+01:00

Happy to announce that my paper, Mad Thoughts on Mushrooms, is finally due to appear in print in the November issue of Anthropology of Consciousness. Of all the academic work I've done this is the bit of which I am most proud - it details the theoretical position which underlies most of my thinking and which inspired Shroom.

Future Loop Foundation

info@andyletcher.co.uk — 2007-08-08T22:12:32+01:00

This is quite the best electronica I've heard in a long, long time. Beautiful, intelligent, sensitively done. Lovely.

Letcher vs. Pinchbeck, Round One

info@andyletcher.co.uk — 2007-08-08T19:52:27+01:00

As something of a birthday treat I got to meet Daniel Pinchbeck this weekend at the Big Green Gathering. Daniel, as I’m sure you’ll know, is the New York journo turned psychedelic guru, author of 'Breaking Open the Head' and '2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl', both of which recount his psychedelic, ever more shamanistic adventures. It’s fair to say that we got on well but that at times our extended chai-tent discussion was ‘full and frank’.

Though we clearly both enjoy intellectualising about psychedelics we part company over just how far we are prepared to go. Daniel is a champion of 2012, the McKenna-instigated idea that some major ‘ingression of novelty’ or ‘global transformation of consciousness’ is due to happen in our Olympic year (read Shroom to get the low-down on why). Though, given the current state of the world, I would rule nothing out, I am not a fan. To me it smacks of a re-hashed (pun intended) Judaeo-Christian millenarianism, pitting the psychedelic saved versus the unenlightened masses. It promotes quietism, navel-gazing while Rome burns. If the ship’s going down, I wanna be fighting all the way.

I sense that Daniel thinks my academic scepticism an impediment to spiritual advancement, a symptom of being stuck in the head, a wilful refusal to accept the evidence of my senses. On the contrary I reject any clichéd anti-intellectualism that pits questioning as opposed to spirituality. To me the two are inseparably bound. My scepticism is as vital to me as an organ or a limb – the lodestone by which I steer my way along the narrow path. I’d no more throw it away than I would my glasses. I’ll always be the one asking difficult questions. Always, always I wanna know, what if we're wrong?

What experience, Daniel asked in return, would it require for me to abandon my scepticism? ‘None’ was my reply – for though I have had my fair share unusual experiences I question them all. What if I were simply deluding myself? ‘Then’, he barked back, voice raised, heckles up, ‘you are denying the truth of experience!’ The trouble is (and you don’t need to be a philosopher to work this out) we can be, and very often are, easily fooled by experience. A complex mix of perception and expectation, experience can never be an indubitable foundation upon which to act with certainty. Think faces in the clouds.

What lies at the heart of our disagreement is, I think, a cultural difference. It seems to me not insignificant that all the global psychedelic gurus have been American (barring Huxley, of course, but he was living in LA at the time – and no, I don’t think Laing quite made the grade). Theirs is an optimism born of the New World; ours is an Old European scepticism, a world-weary ennui from having been round the block. We’ve seen it all before. We’re done with gurus and prophecies. Technology to save the world? Pah! It never fucking works.

In the end we agreed to disagree, a tense stalemate. I look forward to the next bout, though perhaps we’ll only really know who’s right come December 22nd 2012.

Don't believe the hype 2

info@andyletcher.co.uk — 2007-07-31T15:05:20+01:00

Some close friends of mine were caught up in the Oxford floods last week - with bad luck they happened to moor their canal boat home just at the point where the Thames burst it's banks. For a couple of days it looked like their home might, if not get washed away, then get pulled under as the rising water strained against the mooring ropes.

Apparently it was a media circus down there. Colin got interviewed by ITN who asked him what the worst-case scenario was. Patiently he explained that he could lose his home. But when they broadcast the interview they cut the question and made it sound as though he was literally about to see his boat sink to the bottom. Quite naturally he was bombarded by anxious phonecalls by friends and family, worried sick on his behalf.

Surely the media aren't guilty of engineering the facts to make their tawdry half-hour 'news' programmes a little more dramatic? Perish the thought...

Don't believe the hype

info@andyletcher.co.uk — 2007-07-30T09:05:15+01:00

Got this from the Guardian:

Cannabis data comes to the crunch
Ben Goldacre
The Guardian
Saturday July 28 2007

You know when cannabis hits the news you're in for a bit of fun, and this week's story about cannabis causing psychosis was no exception. The paper was a systematic review and then a "meta-analysis" of the data which has already been collected, looking at whether people who smoke cannabis are subsequently more likely to have symptoms of "psychosis" or diagnoses of schizophrenia. Meta-analysis is, simply, where you gather together all of the numbers from all the studies you can find into one big spreadsheet, and do one big calculation on all of them at once, to get the most statistically powerful result possible.

Now I don't like to carp, but it's interesting that the Daily Mail got even these basics wrong, under their headline "Smoking just one cannabis joint raises danger of mental illness by 40%". Firstly "the researchers, from four British universities, analysed the results of 35 studies into cannabis use from around the world. This suggested that trying cannabis only once was enough to raise the risk of schizophrenia by 41%."

In fact they identified 175 studies which might have been relevant, but on reading them, it turned out that there were just 11 relevant papers, describing seven actual datasets. The Mail made this figure up to "35 studies" by including 24 separate papers which the authors also found on cannabis and depression, although the Mail didn't mention depression at all.

They also said that "previous studies have shown a clear link between cannabis use in the teenage years and mental illness in later life". They then described some of these previous studies. These were the very studies that are summarised in the new Lancet paper.

But what was left out is as interesting as what was added in. The authors were clear - as they always are - that there were problems with a black-and-white interpretation of their data, and that cause and effect could not be stated simply. For ongoing daily users, as an example, it's difficult to be clear that cannabis is causing people to have a mental illness, because their symptoms may simply be due to being high on cannabis all the time. Perhaps they'd be fine if they were clean.

It was also interesting to see how the risk was numerically reported. The most dramatic figure is always the "relative risk increase", or rather: "cannabis doubles the risk of psychosis", "cannabis increases the risk by 40%". Because schizophrenia is comparatively rare, translated this into real numbers this works out - if the figures in the paper are correct, and causality is accepted - that about 800 yearly cases of schizophrenia are attributable to cannabis. This is not belittling the risk, merely expressing it clearly.

But what's really important, of course, is what you do with this data. Firstly, you can mispresent it, and scare people. Obviously it feels great to be so self-righteous, but people will stop taking you seriously. After all, you're talking to a population of young people who have worked out that you routinely exaggerate the dangers of drugs, not least of all with the ridiculous "modern cannabis is 25 times stronger" fabrication so beloved by the media and politicians.

And craziest of all is the fantasy that reclassifying cannabis will stop six million people smoking it, and so eradicate those 800 extra cases of psychosis. If anything, for all drugs, increased prohibition may create market conditions where more concentrated and dangerous forms are more commercially viable. We're talking about communities, and markets, with people in them, after all: not molecules and neuroreceptors.

Toe-Curling Drug Cliche of the Week Award

info@andyletcher.co.uk — 2007-07-08T13:12:54+01:00

Winner of the Toe-Curling Drug Cliche of the Week Award has to go to BBC & HBO's uber-violent but strangely compelling romp, Rome - otherwise known as Dynasty in togas. Reclining at a somewhat lame orgy the self-consciously hemp-smoking Jocasta shrieked 'are the walls melting? They are! The walls are melting!'. Dear oh dear. How long before she defenestrates herself to an unpleasant drug-addled death?

Saint Chartier

info@andyletcher.co.uk — 2007-07-08T13:09:19+01:00

Just off to France to the Saint Chartier festival and a week of whirling, twirling and bagpipe skirling. Can't bloody wait. Particularly looking forward to seeing L'Ham de Foc, and sipping chai as the moon rises over the turrets of the crumbling chateau. Nothing like it.

Alan Johnston

info@andyletcher.co.uk — 2007-07-04T10:06:00+01:00

It's not every day of the week that, half asleep, coming round, you turn on the radio and hear good news. But how wonderful, how genuinely uplifting to hear the news this morning that Alan Johnston is alive, well and free. Respect to him and all the journalists in the world who risk their lives to bring us the stories we need to hear. A great day.

Look on the bright side...

info@andyletcher.co.uk — 2007-07-03T23:26:02+01:00

...all this rain has got to be good for the shrooms.

Chronicle Book Review

info@andyletcher.co.uk — 2007-06-26T10:05:30+01:00

This from StoptheDrugWar.org

British historian (and psychedelic folk band member) Andy Letcher has produced a charmingly written, carefully researched, revisionist history of psychedelic mushrooms. While his findings may disappoint the most severely committed mushroom spiritualists, the journey is an eye-opening pleasure for anyone with an interest in matters psychedelic.

In the past half-century, thanks to intrepid psychedelic adventurers like banker-turned-mystic Gordon Wasson, anthropologist-turned-shaman Michael Harner, and myco-promoter Terence McKenna, a wonderful and powerful mythology has grown up around the fantastic fungus.

It goes something like this: Through sacred use of the magic mushrooms, shamans from Siberia to Mexico were able to see visions, heal the sick, and talk with the gods. Santa Claus himself, with his gnomic appearance and red and white attire, is a symbolic representation of the amanita muscaria, or fly-agaric, mushroom. The mushroom was the mystery in ancient Greece's Eleusinian Mysteries, it was the soma of the Riga Veda, it -- not bread and wine -- is what Jesus ate at the last supper. The Druids used it at Stonehenge. The magic mushroom is the basis of religion, and evidence of its hidden cult can be found on everything from medieval Catholic church doors to ancient rock-paintings in the African desert.

There's more: Mushrooms are actually a "machine consciousness" representing a different dimension… or something like that. I get a little fuzzy on the finer arcana of myco-mythology.

Letcher, historian that he is, takes these claims on one by one, examines them, and, sadly for the myco-cultists, finds them lacking in historical substance. "There is not a single instance of a magic mushroom being preserved in the archaeological record anywhere," he writes. "We really do not know, one way or the other, whether the ancients worshipped the holy spores of God. If they did, they left not a single piece of evidence of having done so."

There is little evidence of sacramental, shamanic mushroom yet except for isolated tribes in Siberia, and even there, the evidence suggests that mushrooms were as much to be partied with as to be worshiped. Also in Mexico, where Gordon Wasson famously met Mazatec curandera (shaman) Maria Sabina and ate the "flesh of the gods" in 1956. As Letcher notes, Maria Sabina was hardly the primitive priestess of myth, but mythic she became, especially after Wasson ushered in the beginning of the psychedelic age with his publication of an article in Life magazine about his experiences.

That was certainly a seismic shift in Western attitudes toward the magic mushroom. Up until the mid-20th Century, magic mushroom intoxication was rare, almost always accidental, and almost always considered as poisoning. Man, how things have changed! While interest in psychedelic mushrooms, particularly the psilocybes, took a back seat to LSD in the tripped-out 1960s, the relatively milder mushrooms have remained popular among the psychedelic set ever since.

Although they are illegal in the US, aficionados here can legally purchase "idiot proof" spore kits (which contain no psilocybin, the prescribed ingredient), and the shrooms themselves remain fuzzily legal in some European countries. England banned the sale of and possession of mushrooms in 2005, as did Japan, but there is little evidence Bobbies are out chasing down mushroom-pickers.

Still, while it appears the magic mushroom is here to stay, it is decidedly an acquired taste. Most people who try them try them only once or twice; only a relative handful become serious shroom-heads. And while Letcher tries resolutely to stay clear of politics, the relative rareness of mushroom use and the lack of demonstrated harms leads him to criticize the British prohibition as "heavy-handed, motivated more by political concerns than any sensible evaluation of the evidence." Indeed, Letcher writes, "prohibition may prove to be a retrograde step in terms of harm reduction," as hapless users pick the wrong mushrooms, are sold substitutes, or are afflicted by a criminal justice system more harmful than the shrooms themselves.

Shroom is a cultural history worth reading, rigorous in its analysis, incisive in its reporting, and enticing with its descriptions of bemushroomed reality. It makes me want to go out and order one of those "idiot proof" kits myself.

Glastonbury Blues

info@andyletcher.co.uk — 2007-06-26T09:58:45+01:00

Is there anything more crap than sitting at home watching Glastonbury on the telly? I mean, I know the weather was bad and all that but it just ain't no substitute. All you get on the TV is the main stages, none of the Green Field craziness, the acoustic cafe jams, the sunrise from the stone circle. I'll bloody well be there next year, I will!

Solstice

info@andyletcher.co.uk — 2007-06-22T12:10:54+01:00

Another good solstice in the Avebury environs, away from the hurly-burly, in the company of Dr Matthew Watkins (he of the 'the Watkins Objection') and some Welsh friends (strictly speaking some friends from Crystal Palace, but you get my drift). We played music, we talked maths and philosophy and magic and conspiracy, we drank copious amounts of tea. At dawn we were joined by old timers Dave and Candy. The crepusculum, as ever, was exquisite and I now understand that larks really do get up at the crack of dawn. All is well.

New York Times review

info@andyletcher.co.uk — 2007-06-01T12:36:15+01:00

Happy to report that Dick Teresi of the New York Times gave 'Shroom' a great review. Here's a snippet (read the full article here):

“Even if read while sober, Andy Letcher’s “Shroom: A Cultural History of the Magic Mushroom,” is a near-transcendent experience. Well written and thoughtfully researched, the book works on the limbic system too: after reading it, one is tempted to hit the streets in search of a religious-experience-in-a-fungus. Letcher has contributed a delightful, journalistic addition to the genre known as trip lit.”

Andrew Marr

info@andyletcher.co.uk — 2007-05-29T22:22:45+01:00

Just two words sum up Andrew Marr's History of Modern Britain on BBC2: bloody brilliant. The parallels between Eden/Blair and Suez/Iraq are extraordinary. If you missed it I believe you can watch it on-line - do.

Times Literary Supplement

info@andyletcher.co.uk — 2007-05-17T08:09:40+01:00

Am happy to report that Shroom finally got reviewed in the TLS (April 20th 2007) who called it 'hugely engaging', an 'excellent book, which successfully treads the line between popular and academic.'

Green Man

info@andyletcher.co.uk — 2007-05-10T18:13:04+01:00

Am gonna be speaking at this summer's Green Man festival. I shall be in Acid Folk heaven!!

May Morning

info@andyletcher.co.uk — 2007-05-10T18:03:33+01:00

As is now becoming traditional we (that is, The Whirly Band - a collective of local folk musicians, poets, artists and ne'erdowells) went out playing music on the streets of Oxford at 6.00am on May Morning. The crowd was a bit smaller than last year but the magic was there. Here's a photo - click it for more:

Lancaster Hurdy-Gurdy festival

info@andyletcher.co.uk — 2007-04-23T19:15:47+01:00

Very glad to have been at this - it was a rip-roaring success. I performed on the Saturday night, playing pipes with the Steve Tylor band - I think it went well. The gig was videoed so expect a YouTube posting soon.

As ever some of the best bits occurred around the fringe. Slightly delirious from just three hours sleep I played in a fabulous session over Sunday lunchtime. There I met a wild fiddler with the Cumbrian Hills in her soul, a sound as rough as a smoker's cough and who beat merry hell out of her instrument. Together we thrashed out some fast and furious northern tunes (3/2 hornpipes and the like - not something I get to do often in Oxford) and it was glorious, absolutely fucking glorious. Amazing how folk music makes perfect sense when played in the place where it emerged. She most definitely had it - the spirit of the Wyresdale fiddlers was with her.

Alcohol

info@andyletcher.co.uk — 2007-04-23T19:07:29+01:00

The news about Boris Yeltsin's death has led, inevitably, to much comment about his achievements and failings. On the Radio4 news I heard the following: "he liked a drink"; "rumours of a drink problem"; and "bizarre behaviour related to drink". Would the same degree of sensitivity, the same tip-toeing around the subject, have been applied had he been addicted to, say, heroin or cocaine rather than alcohol?

Compared to recent scare stories about cannabis the media seems remarkably reluctant to question the health risks of alcohol. When, I wonder, will alcohol addiction be referred to as just that: an addiction?

Technicolor Dream Revisited

info@andyletcher.co.uk — 2007-04-10T13:19:38+01:00

From the Independent, gutted I can't be there:

Revisiting Britain's Technicolor Dream, 40 years on

The 14-hour psychedelic spectacular that changed a nation is to be brought back to life
By Anthony Barnes, Arts and Media Correspondent
Published: 08 April 2007

Oil-light projections slither across the walls while dancers high on acid flail their hair to a seemingly never-ending soundtrack of otherworldly songs. Welcome to the legendary 1967 psychedelic "happening", the 14-Hour Technicolor Dream, seen as one of the most important events in the British counter-culture and the appetiser for the summer of love.

Forty years on, the heady vibe, music and theatrics are to be recreated at an event designed to help relive and celebrate the anniversary of that key moment in culture. Later this month, the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London will host "Our Technicolor Dream", featuring some of the acts that headlined the original show, including the Pretty Things and Arthur Brown, who later topped the charts with "Fire". Films, light-shows and a play will also rekindle the spirit of the original.

Funded by the underground newspaper International Times, the Technicolor Dream was said to have drawn up to 10,000 people to north London's Alexandra Palace on 29 April 1967. There they mingled with figures such as John Lennon, heard Pink Floyd perform mind-numbing riffs as the sun came up, and smoked banana-skin spliffs or dropped an LSD-related drug called STP.

For just £1 a head, they were promised "30 top groups", though no one really knew who would be on the bill. Some of the action was captured in Tonite Let's All Make Love in London, Peter Whitehead's film about swinging London.

Arthur Brown told The Independent on Sunday: "It was really the big gig where the underground ceased to be underground and became part of the mainstream. It was a bittersweet experience because this underground movement became a big commercial phenomenon. You had people like John Lennon and his mates who came down and absorbed it all and took it to a wider audience, although of course we didn't know that at the time.

"There were a lot of drugs around but at that time I wasn't touching it at all. That was part of what you came to these things for. You came in from the provinces and got a bit smashed and stoned."

Hugh Dellar, one of the organisers of the ICA event, said: "It was really the first of the all-night illegal drug parties and was sort of a template for all that went on after that. It scattered seeds in all sorts of directions. It was similar to punk in the sense that it unified people and then sent them off in all sorts of different directions.

"I'm 38 and I grew up fascinated by the 14-hour Technicolor Dream. The more I learned about it, the more interested I became because it contained all the elements of what had come before it and all the seeds for what would come after. In many ways it was the pinnacle of British youth culture. The people who were involved in it went on to be key figures in other areas. Mick Farren, who was one of the organisers, was at the forefront of punk."

The new event, which takes place on 21 April, will feature films of leading trippy lightshow artists the Boyle Family, whose work was at the original show, and a play inspired by Syd Barrett, the late Pink Floyd frontman. Original organisers Barry Miles and John "Hoppy" Hopkins will discuss their involvement in the gig.

"We're trying to celebrate it without copying it," said Mr Dellar. "It is not strictly a recreation of the original: that would be insane. We wanted it to be a blurring between a curated event - which is why we've involved some of the key figures to talk about it - and a big rave warehouse party."

Retired Colonel

info@andyletcher.co.uk — 2007-04-09T21:49:27+01:00

Did my good deed for the day. A fourteen year old kid had overdone the beer and weed and was pulling a whitey outside my flat: in fact, in the full throws of panic, he was screaming for someone to call an ambulance. Sensing that what was required was a bit of quiet reassurance I went out, talked him down, made him a cup of tea, sat with him until he was steady enough to limp home, tail between his legs. Poor chap thought he was having a heart attack.

Now, I don't want to sound like a retired Colonel from Tunbridge Wells, but surely, surely, this is not a good state of affairs when fourteen year olds, wet behind the ears and unable to distinguish up from down, have such ready access to weed (and beer come to think of it)?

Gyruscope

info@andyletcher.co.uk — 2007-04-09T21:44:15+01:00

Gyrus, an interesting British writer on matters psychedelic and arcane, has written this engaging review of Shroom. Obviously I don't agree with all his points, but it's rewarding to find that people are really reading Shroom closely and engaging with its ideas.

Forgive me this indulgence

info@andyletcher.co.uk — 2007-04-02T12:18:11+01:00

From the Washington Times:

This magic mushroom moment
Published April 1, 2007
Advertisement
SHROOM: A CULTURAL HISTORY OF THE MAGIC MUSHROOM
By Andy Letcher
HarperCollins, $25.95, 360 pages
REVIEWED BY JACOB SULLUM

Not long ago, at a party in Amsterdam, I was about to swallow some psilocybin mushrooms when the host interceded. Dividing the pieces into two piles, he twirled a small metal ball hanging from a thin chain above each, dangled the same "dowsing" device over my hand, and after some contemplation pointed me to the pile that was right for me. He also predicted, using amazingly precise but unverifiable numbers, exactly how the mushrooms would affect me along several different personality dimensions. This ceremony, akin to an unsolicited palm, aura or astrological chart reading, did not enhance my mushroom experience.
If you, like me, prefer your shrooms without the New Age baggage, Andy Letcher's book is for you. In "Shroom: A Cultural History of the Magic Mushroom," Mr. Letcher, a British writer and musician with a doctorate in ecology and another in religious/cultural studies, is careful to separate the truth about his subject from a "fantastical history . . . dreamed up on the basis of wishful thinking and overworked evidence."
Without dismissing the potential for mushroom-assisted mystical experiences (a phenomenon explored in a government-funded study by researchers at Johns Hopkins University that made headlines last year), Mr. Letcher rejects the idea that psychoactive fungi inevitably lead people in a specific spiritual or ideological direction. At the same time, he scolds politicians for overreacting to a practice that poses minimal risks and brings much-needed "enchantment" to quotidian life.
Mr. Letcher emphasizes that the significance of mushrooming, like that of other drug experiences, is "culturally contingent." In the 1960s, Americans and Europeans began to seek an experience they had until then equated with poisoning, reinterpreting effects that were once treated as signs of insanity or imminent death as an opportunity to explore inner worlds and see the outer one in a new light. Mr. Letcher's witty, entertaining and surprising book tells the story of how this happened, chronicling the contributions of explorers, naturalists, mycologists, philosophers, authors, charlatans, rock musicians and psychedelic visionaries.
Some of the facts Mr. Letcher confirms are at least as strange as the legends he debunks. Siberians, for instance, really do have a history of consuming fly-agaric mushrooms not only directly but also "distilled via human kidneys." Mr. Letcher speculates that they discovered the psychoactive properties of the mushroom itself, and of the urine excreted by people who have eaten it, by observing the antics of reindeer. In the winter, the animals supplement their meager diet of lichen by lapping up human urine, presumably for its mineral content.
In addition to the Siberian example, which goes back centuries at least, and there is substantial archeological evidence that psilocybin mushroom use in Mexico and Central America, observed by Europeans at the time of the Spanish conquest, has been going on for thousands of years. Mr. Letcher notes that both the Siberians and the Aztecs used psychoactive mushrooms recreationally as well as for healing and prognostication.
But Mr. Letcher finds little or no evidence to support most of the too-good-to-check claims about the role of intoxicating mushrooms in human history. Do experiences with the fly-agaric mushroom lie behind the legend of Santa Claus and his flying reindeer? Did witches, Druids and whoever built Stonehenge partake? Was a fungus at the heart of early Christianity, Vedic soma rituals and the Eleusinian mysteries of ancient Greece? Did prehistoric use of psilocybin mushrooms give birth to religion? Probably not, Mr. Letcher concludes, although in many cases the answer is unknowable.
Given the fly-agaric mushroom's unpredictable psychoactivity and its unpleasant side effects (including nausea and twitching), it is remarkable that it figures so prominently in speculation of this sort, not to mention in children's stories such as "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" and fantasy writing for adults. Mr. Letcher suggests the fly-agaric's fictional popularity can be traced largely to its distinctive appearance: red with white spots in a classic toadstool shape, perfect for fairy tale illustrations. The more user-friendly psilocybin mushrooms, which come from several species and take various shapes, do not have the same iconic form.
The main conclusion Mr. Letcher draws after sorting fact from fancy is that deliberate use of psychoactive mushrooms by Westerners is a phenomenon of the last half century. He argues that stories about ancient and momentous mushroom use can be understood mainly as attempts to validate a modern practice by giving it deep religious roots. In reality, he says, now is the magic mushroom moment, not some vaguely remembered time when a fungus-centered society lived in harmony with nature because it drew wisdom from a psychoactive sacrament.
It may be true that magic mushrooms have never been more popular, but they remain a distinctly minority taste. Even in Amsterdam, where psilocybin mushrooms are available over the counter in "smart shops," a 2001 survey found that less than 8 percent of the population had ever tried them, while only 0.3 percent had used them in the previous month. The risks this small minority runs, which include bad trips, accidents and exacerbation of pre-existing psychological problems, hardly seem to justify the costs of prohibition.
In fact, as Mr. Letcher notes, prohibition tends to increase the hazards to users by forcing them to rely on the black market, encouraging potentially deadly amateur mushroom hunting and creating negative associations that make bad trips more likely. Around the time Mr. Letcher wrapped up his book, the British government closed a drug law loophole that had allowed possession and sale of fresh psilocybin mushrooms, a move he describes as "motivated more by political concerns than by any sensible assessment of the evidence."
A Labor Party M.P. objected to the hastily imposed ban. "We cannot make nature illegal," he said. "Magic mushrooms are part of the natural world. Some might describe them as a gift from God." If that sentiment sounds naive, how should we describe the attempt to purge the world of chemicals that produce politically incorrect states of consciousness, including chemicals contained in mushrooms that spontaneously pop up on cow patties and rotting wood all over the world? The mushrooms may not have magical powers, but neither do the prohibitionists.

Jacob Sullum, a senior editor at Reason magazine, is the author of "Saying Yes: In Defense of Drug Use" (Tarcher/Penguin).

Women's Visionary Congress

info@andyletcher.co.uk — 2007-03-27T12:53:18+01:00

As I noted in Shroom, the psychedelic scene is predominantly a male dominated one. To that end a woman philanthropist has set up the Women's Entheogen Fund to support women who spend much of their lives researching the matter of entheogens. They are having a congress this year - click the link the find out more. Now, can anyone fund me to go...?

Moyshe McStiff and the Tartan Lancers of the Sacred Heart

info@andyletcher.co.uk — 2007-03-24T10:20:24+00:00

I finally got my hands on this album by COB (Clive's Original Band), courtesy of those nice chaps at The Freak Emporium. One of those 'legendary' and obscure Acid Folk albums from the 1970s - expect to pay a lot of money for an original vinyl copy - I'm pleased to say that it is every bit as good as the hype suggests. Some albums from that era now sound very dated but MM&tTLotSH has aged well. It has a timeless, enchanted quality to it; the performances are all very real, sung and played from the heart. 'Pretty Kerry' - a song of regret for a travesty done - is achingly beautiful, while 'Eleven Willows' - a trippy walk along the river bank against an eleven beat cycle - is one of the best songs I've heard in a long long time. So so good. A bardic work straight from the heart of Albion.

Dose Nation Interview

info@andyletcher.co.uk — 2007-03-24T09:28:15+00:00

Here's an e-interview I did for Dose Nation:

Interview with Andy Letcher, author of 'Shroom'
by James Kent
Andy Letcher is a writer of non-fiction, specializing in shamanism, contemporary paganism, psychedelics and other aspects of alternative culture. His first book, Shroom: A Cultural History of the Magic Mushroom was reviewed by DoseNation earlier this week. Andy was nice enough to take the time to answer our burning questions about the text via e-mail. Please enjoy.

---

How did you first get interested in magic mushrooms?

I first heard about magic mushrooms via the rumour mill when I was at school during the early 80s. This would have been shortly after the peak of the first UK magic mushroom craze. I subsequently went to Sheffield University (originally to read Physics and Astronomy, but changing to Pure & Applied Ecology after a year) and joined the student Pagan society: a bunch of scruffy, free-festival-loving green-anarchists. I studied mycology formally as part of my degree but it was through the Pagans that I was initiated into hippy culture and myconautica -- the hills around Sheffield being particularly abundant. My curiosity aroused, I managed to find both Roger Heim's Les Champignons Hallucinogenes and Gordon Wasson's Persephone's Quest in the University library. Even then I thought that I would like to write a book on the subject -- it just turned out to take rather longer than expected.

You take the opportunity to slam Wasson's amateur back-door approach to scholarship, essentially saying that what he possessed in academic enthusiasm he lacked in academic rigor. Seeing as how his work is often taken as gospel, and that the bulk of modern popular psychedelic thought has been forwarded on the similar fits and starts of presumptuous outsiders, what do you think that says about our particular field of study?

Well, the very nature of psychedelics is that they challenge our habitual categories of thought and invite colourful speculation! I have no problem at all with what we might call 'folk-philosophy', with people trying to unriddle their experiences in the best way they can, using the best critical tools available to them. That, after all, is what we have always done.

My difficulty with Wasson is that he wanted to be taken seriously as a scholar but refused to play by the accepted rules of scholarship. Had he subjected his ideas to peer review by anthropologists he would have been forced to abandon them at an early stage. Instead he used his charisma, his considerable talents as a rhetorician (not to mention his wealth) to convince people of his primitive mushroom cult thesis (and to berate non-believers as mycophobes). I am not surprised that so many were believed him: an authoritative presence, he was very persuasive.

I think the wider problem is that psychedelics are so marginalised within mainstream Western culture that for nigh on forty years it has been a political no-no for academics even to attempt to address the matter. That, as we know, is beginning to change with the promising developments in Anthropology, Ethnobotany, Neuropharmacology, the Philosophy of Consciousness and the study of Psychedelic Spiritualities within Religious Studies. But in the absence of formal scientific and philosophical investigations we can hardly blame people for wanting to fill the gap themselves.

You take a great deal of time dismantling the modern Wasson/McKenna mushroom mythology piece by piece, essentially undoing the fabric of a modern fairy tale that began when Wasson walked through Maria Sabina's door. You go after Soma, Eleusis, the Druids, all post-Wasson scholars who claim mushroom cults are at the center of all the world's religions, and then go on to junk "Food of the Gods" along with the rest of them. You realize you are slaughtering some pretty sacred cows here. Are you worried at all about backlash from hardcore Wassonians and New Age McKenna fans?

Yes, of course! I've had many a sleepless night worrying whether I'll get lynched at the next psychedelic conference! It's not the easiest of roles being a mythbuster, pointing at the emperor's new clothes. But how Shroom is received will certainly be a test of whether all that talk about 'radical alterations of consciousness' is just a load of hot air. Will the psychedelic community prove to be just as susceptible to fundamentalism as any other? As I say to unenthusiastic audiences "It's a trip man. Just breathe deeply, go with it, don't fight it, and remember it'll all be over in a few hours!"

Now, though I am a sceptic I hope people will see that I am not a closed sceptic like James Randi or Richard Dawkins. Rather, I am an open sceptic, a 'doubting Thomas'. I would dearly love all that shamanistic stuff to be true, it's just that if I can't shove my fingers in the wound, as it were, then I find it impossible to believe. What I wanted to do with Shroom was to pare back the more excessive claims made on behalf of magic mushrooms and to ask instead what the evidence actually allows us to conclude.

One rather hurtful UK review accused me of being 'anti-psychedelic' (which, though I identify myself as a Pagan rather than a Psychonaut, came as something of a surprise to those who know me). In fact I have the best interests of the psychedelic community at heart. Really! I am tired of being forever labelled, marginalised and stigmatised by the mainstream as irresponsible, infantile, escapist, a criminal (you know the litany) for having used mushrooms and found value in the myconautical experience. Irrespective of whether or not such claims are true, to state that magic mushrooms triggered the evolution of language, or that Christianity is actually a degenerate fly-agaric cult, does nothing to change mainstream opinion about psychedelic users. In the present climate such claims place us squarely in the 'nut' category. But if we can present our case based on evidence and carefully reasoned argument, rather than wishful thinking, then the mainstream has no choice but to take us seriously. That, at least, has been my intention -- time will tell to what extent I have succeeded.

You talk at length about the relationship between Gordon Wasson and Maria Sabina -- who is widely considered among mushroom culture to be a saint -- yet only hint at the fact that she had no idea what was in for her once she let Wasson into her ceremony. Since other curanderos had flatly refused Wasson (who he later dismissed as "inferior"), wasn't Sabina equally at fault for her own undoing when she let him in? And if Maria Sabina traded fame and a few dollars for the eventual destruction of her life and livelihood -- not to mention the watering-down of her persona and spirituality into a primitive occult brand -- isn't this a fairly scathing indictment of her own predictive powers?

In the book I argue that Sabina must take some of the blame for what happened and that she does not emerge with a spotless reputation. For example though she denied ever taking money for holding mushroom ceremonies it is quite evident that she did. However her cultural horizons were so narrow in comparison to Wasson's that there is no possible way that she could have known what consequences would follow from her actions. She was not in full possession of the facts. She was the classic victim of the unequal power-relationships that exist within post-colonial encounters. How could she have known about the psychedelic revolution that was just erupting across the Western world? How could she have known that the media-driven West would make her into some kind of celebrity noble-savage? Her days were measured in corn to be ground and bellies to be filled.

Equally one cannot blame her for wanting to extract some money from the wealthy hippies -- millionaires by comparison -- who came knocking on her door: she spent most of her life in abject poverty after all. The trouble is that sudden, unexpected increases in personal wealth are always socially destabilising. Entheo-tourism is now causing exactly the same problems in the Amazon and in Gabon as people go looking for the authentic 'shamanic' experience.

Now, picturing exactly what Sabina thought is very difficult because her words have always been filtered through the distorting lens of Western fantasies and expectations -- unedited transcripts of her interviews are not available in the public domain. I am unaware of Sabina ever claiming to have predictive powers, other than with regard to illness -- determining the cause of an illness and gleaning whether the patient would live or die. Rather, it is we in the West who invest 'shamans' with miraculous powers of prognostication and so on, so, again, it is hardly Sabina's fault that she did not see what was coming.

I noticed you did not mention anything about supposed mushroom cults in South Asia, where it is widely known that cubensis mushrooms grow in the lawns at Angor Wat in Cambodia, and there are at least a few instances ancient statues of the Buddha sitting under tiers of blossoming mushrooms (see one image at tripzine.com) in India. I realize the focus of your book was more a cultural history of mushroom use in the West, but I was wondering if you left out Asia because the scholarship is not as dense, or if it is simply a personal blind spot.

Well, if I'm honest, a bit of both -- I did my best to cover everything, but there you go. Hopefully I might one day get the chance to revise the book for a second edition.

But what I would say is this. Up till now what most writers have done is to assume a priori that magic mushrooms have been intentionally used when and wherever they grow. Writers then assume that anything resembling a mushroom in ancient art or archaeology is, indeed, a magic mushroom. The argument then becomes circular as other writers take the art as proof of the existence of a mushroom cult, and round and round it goes. We need to move beyond this naive wishful thinking -- it does us no favours.

Firstly, not everything that looks like a mushroom is a mushroom (see the Hildesheim door example in Shroom, where the supposed 'mushroom' is actually a fig tree). Secondly not everything that is a mushroom is a magic mushroom. And finally the presence of a magic mushroom in art does not indicate the existence of a mushroom cult (could we make that conclusion from a study of today's plethora of mushroomic art?). To posit intentional religious mushroom use on the basis of iconographic homology is to make several unwarranted inductive leaps -- unless there is supporting evidence, of course, but typically there is not.

So in meso-America we have seventy or so psychoactive mushroom species, we have documentary evidence of Aztec cultures intentionally consuming them, hence, it is reasonable to think that the hundreds of pre-conquest mushroom stones might be representations of magic mushrooms (though what their significance and meaning were to the people who made them, we do not know). Where is the supporting evidence in Cambodia? Are they really mushrooms or might they be, say, parasols or some symbolic representation of the sky and hence enlightenment (I'm just guessing here, but you take the point)?

We have to learn to live with multiple hypotheses, multiple interpretations.

Remember, cultures are often (mostly?) wholly ignorant of magic mushrooms -- intentional use is the exception not the norm. When McKenna eventually got to sample the fabled DMT-containing oo-koo-he preparation in Colombia, he found it a huge anti-climax. The locals swore it was the 'real deal' but McKenna found that it never took him to the same highs as mushrooms or pure DMT, and that it exerted a great physical toll upon the body. And all the while the indigenes were totally unaware that, sprouting in their midst, were hundreds and hundreds of cubensis mushrooms…

You mention that as a young man you were stirred by Terence McKenna's rap, and that he "blew your mind" at the Secret Workshop. Many years and two doctorates later you seem somewhat less impressed by his actual legacy. Is "Shroom" in some way a direct response to residual feelings of being indoctrinated into a mushroom cult under false pretenses, or is it simply an academic exercise at attempting to set the historical record straight?

The latter. In many ways my inspiration comes from Ronald Hutton, Professor of History at the University of Bristol and self-professed Pagan, who has done a similar mythbusting job on the history of Modern Paganism. I first met him at talk he gave to a Pagan camp in the mid-90s. In the space of 40 minutes he demolished every single one of the foundational myths of my Pagan beliefs! But he did so in such an exciting and liberating manner that I did not want him to stop. I discovered then that the truth can be as intoxicating as any of the myths we concoct for ourselves.

It seems to me that the most fun in this book comes from digging through all the modern historical references to pre-Wassonian mushroom intoxication. You argue that until mescaline and LSD were properly understood in the mid-20th century, there was no cultural framework for understanding the mushroom experience as anything other than "poisoning", which is evidenced by many classic tales of apothecaries attempting to treat people with odd symptoms like "restless giddiness", "soporific phantasmagoria", or -- my personal favorite -- "sardonis rictus", now known by the technical term "perma-grin". While it is obvious from the reports that these poor people were tripping, you find it telling that not one of these accidental trippers ever reported a religious experience, but mainly spoke of panic and discomfort. What does this tell us about the force of cultural expectations in setting the tone of the trip?

I have a formal paper coming out in the journal Anthropology of Consciousness this fall which explains my thinking on this (and my thinking behind Shroom) in detail. Briefly, it seems to me that there are three ways of answering the question of what happens to consciousness under the influence of psychedelics. Firstly, there is what I call the 'broken iPod' model. Rather as if some viral software has been introduced into its operating system, psychedelics interfere with the normal operation of the 'iPod of consciousness' in a deleterious way, producing distortions of reality and impairing perception. The impairment might be temporary -- the offending software is removed and normality restored -- or, in the case of psychosis, more permanent. This is the model favoured by the medical establishment: psychedelics have absolutely no value other than, perhaps, giving us a subjective experience of what it is like to be permanently psychotic.

Secondly there is the 'iPod shuffle' model. In shuffle mode the iPod does not play songs randomly but in structured clusters; an apt metaphor for under this model psychedelics rearrange the contents of consciousness, not in the random manner presupposed by the first model, but in unexpected, novel, patterned and meaningful ways. So the subject might gain psychological insights, new ontological perspectives, new understandings, answers to problems etc etc. Here psychedelic experiences have ontological value even though they are constrained by culture.

Finally there is the 'download' model in which psychedelics hook the iPod of consciousness up to some transcendental iTunes in the sky, allowing one to download information or insights that were not previously available. This is the shamanistic model advocated by the psychedelic gurus: Huxley, Leary, McKenna (especially McKenna) and now Pinchbeck. Under this model we can talk about 'the psychedelic experience' in the abstract. It is a thing that exists outside of language and culture.

Now, once again I would dearly love the third model to be true but I can't help thinking that however much it feels as if one is encountering the transcendental other, our psychedelic experiences are actually always culturally bound. Wittgenstein was right when he said "that whereof we cannot speak we must remain silent." The cross-cultural evidence certainly seems to be pushing us in this direction. Why else was it that Sabina only had visions of saint-children and sacred books and never of space colonies and fractal timewaves and strange-attractors at the end of time? Could it be that the reason why my own myconautical experiences have so often been orientated around the question of evolution is because for several years I was an evolutionary biologist?

This is heresy, I know, and runs counter to the entire direction of twentieth century psychedelic thought. In my paper I argue that there is no way of empirically testing which of the three models is correct -- which one we plump for is a discursive move -- but somewhat reluctantly I think the 'shuffle' model affords us the 'safest' baseline position from which to begin our investigations (I am waiting, of course, for the hives of machine elves to set me right).

Let's just assume, for a moment, that this really is the case. What are the implications of the shuffle model being correct? Well as Thomas de Quincey spotted over a hundred years ago if you give drugs to a haywain he will have visions of oxen; but give drugs to an artist, a poet or a philosopher…Now I am not suggesting, as Huxley did, that psychedelic use should be restricted to the intelligensia. Rather I am suggesting that if all psychedelics do is rearrange the contents of consciousness in surprising ways then to get the most out of psychedelics we need to give them something interesting to work on! So it behoves us to read philosophy, to hone our skills as musicians and artists, to educate ourselves, to read great works of literature, to wrestle with the big questions. To that end I wonder whether we don't need a new term for psychedelics? I admit the marketplace is already somewhat crowded but I am toying with 'alethotropics' or 'alethotropes': substances, or tools, that help us move towards understanding or truth. Built into this term is the assumption that these substances are culturally bound and can only ever take us part of the way.

You mention Tim Leary, Terence McKenna, and Daniel Pinchbeck in the line of "pretenders to the throne" of modern psychedelic culture; posers who use the trappings of academia to create science fiction theories that enthrall the public. Your only defense of them is that people are quick to embrace visionaries as long as they are good storytellers, but should we excuse poor scholarship just because they can tell a good tall tale? Why do we so eagerly let these crazy people tell us what to believe?

Well, I wouldn't use the word 'poser' myself (except, perhaps in connection with Leary). Perhaps I am just unable to discard a teenage idol, but in spite of it all I still maintain a healthy respect for McKenna -- I take pleasure from his oratory, delight in his idiosyncratic turns of phrase, and enjoy his enquiring mind. When I call him a storyteller I mean that as a great compliment. I'm not trying to rid us of stories as I believe we are intrinsically storytelling beings. Rather, I think we need better ones in which neither the imagination nor the intellect are allowed to get the upper hand: we need to dream and we need to pare back our dreams with reason. And the story I'm peddling is that we really are the Mushroom People, that this really is the Mushroom Age. As stories go I think that's fairly amazing.

Although you make no flat statements one way or the other in the text, it seems that you have dismissed the "entheogenic" properties of mushrooms entirely as a culturally imposed stereotype, and have decided that there is nothing inherently spiritual about mushroom intoxication itself. Is this a fair assessment of your personal view, or do you still hold on to some fairy tale notions yourself?

Well, I've spent most of my adult life pinballing between the twin poles of belief and disbelief, but here I take great inspiration from the American psychologist of Religion, philosophical pragmatist and professional doubter, William James. A Protestant, James realised that it was not possible to reason the answer to the question of God's existence. In the end it came down to faith and personal inclination. Even though he felt sure that religious experiences mostly had their origins in the subconscious mind he left open the possibility that they might genuinely have transcendental origins. And, at the end of his enquiry he found that in spite of all, he did have faith.

I am cut from a similar cloth. If my myconautical travels have taught me anything it is a sense of humility: that we are just monkeys who got lucky; that, in spite of our technological achievements and scientific pronouncements we are very far from knowing all. So yes, in spite of my sceptical position I find that I do have faith, that I still hold out that there is something more to the psychedelic experience than just culture and psychology.

As it is I consider myself privileged -- supremely lucky, in fact -- to have seen the world through mushroom-widened eyes. They have provided me with some of the most pivotal (not to mention jaw-droppingly beautiful, inspiring and terrifying) experiences of my life. Mushrooms may not present us with all the answers, but they throw up so many interesting questions, riddles and conundrums that we will be gainfully employed for many generations to come in trying to sift out the gold from the fairy dust. Pursuits don't come much nobler than that.

Andy on Mancow

info@andyletcher.co.uk — 2007-03-21T09:00:59+00:00

I shall be appearing live on the Mancow Show this friday 23rd March at 07.10 Central Time, 13.10 GMT. Listen live on www.mancow.com

Wish me luck!

Great US review for Shroom

info@andyletcher.co.uk — 2007-03-21T08:58:21+00:00

Chuffed? Vindicated? Indulge me if I take a moment to punch the air...

This is from Dose Nation.

Shroom, by Andy Letcher, is that most wondrous of finds; a magic mushroom book that dares to confront modern orthodoxy, and does so in a way that actually advances our knowledge in the field. Billing his text as "A Cultural History of the Magic Mushroom", Letcher does not disappoint in dishing up the tastiest mushroom morsels modern research can unearth. And for those of you who think you "know it all" already, I assure you, this book has the best a fungophile could hope for: New stuff.

Instead of starting at the dawn of time with proto-hominids chomping down mushrooms and inventing religion -- like most trendy mushroom books would have you believe -- Letcher instead takes an about-face and scrutinizes this myth of the "ancient mushroom cult" as well as the visionaries who elevated it to the status of academic lore. After first picking through the research and finding no hard evidence of this supposed ancient mushroom cult, Letcher then goes on to point out that for the bulk of Western history (pre-20th century at least), mushrooms were simply considered to be "poisonous" or "edible", and there was no in-between. The poisonous ones (including the "psychedelic" ones) were assiduously avoided and eaten only by mistake. This he demonstrates by finding literature which dates back to the 13th century, citing botanist's notes and journal reports of people accidentally ingesting poisonous mushrooms and believing they were at death's door. Although the notes from the doctors at the time report the oddest of symptoms (the poor fools had no idea what to make of "giddiness" that caused unceasing laughter), in hindsight it is clear that these are the earliest "trip reports" on record. As a student of mushroom lore for over twenty years I can honestly say I had no idea these early reports actually existed, and I applaud Mr. Letcher for his scholarship in retrieving them from the depths of history.

Comparing these priceless journal articles with the historical accounts of the first Spaniards to witness Mayan consumption of mushrooms, Letcher makes the case that Westerners simply had no idea what to make of this ritual, and considered it pagan and demonic and best, deadly at worst. If "Shroom" had ended here Letcher's point would have been well made with interesting research to boot, but it does not end here. Letcher pushes forward into the roots of the cultural movement that elevated the humble mushroom into an archaic religious symbol for an increasingly cynical age, and the primary target of this academic hit job is the legendary banker-turned-amateur ethnomycologist R. Gordon Wasson, the originator of the sacred mushroom myth. To say that Letcher has a bone to pick with Wasson would be putting it mildly. Let's just say Letcher barely masks his glee in annihilating this man's historical legacy, not only peeling apart his legendary theories one after the other, but criticizing the man himself for being somewhat stubborn and single-minded; too blinded by his own theory to do the proper research; too quick to mold the facts to meet his preconceptions; too arrogant and forthright to allow dissenting voices to penetrate his mythos. It is a view of Wasson I have never seen before -- including new insights into his relationship with Maria Sabina -- and like much of this book, contains a wealth of new material.

The second half of the book moves into hippie territory, speeding through Leary and the Sixties, which is all well-chewed territory. However, the freshest bits in this section come from stories of pre-MDMA rave culture in the UK, where free mushroom festivals and Stonehenge concerts were the British Isles equivalent of Woodstock and the Grateful Dead shows in the US. You can almost feel the change in the air when -- in the early 80s -- DJs with electronic beats and designer drugs moved in and rapidly took over the scene. This is when Letcher changes gears and gets into analyzing Terence McKenna's "Elf Clowns of Hyperspace". While Letcher is a bit gentler with McKenna than he was with Wasson (he claims that as a young man Terence "blew his mind" with his live rap), he still spares no organ in the body of Terence's work as he happily disembowels theory after theory. Letcher's middling conclusion is that although Terence was a great storyteller who helped popularize the mushroom, his theories and research skills -- like those of Wasson's -- were ultimately lacking in academic rigor and not to be taken seriously.

There's much more in Shroom worth mentioning -- new takes on Siberian shamanism, an analysis of mushroom use in Mayan culture, Amanita myths derailed, the modern commodification of the psilocybe market -- but I don't want to spoil all the surprises. The fact that I found this book so full of new material should be recommendation enough for people out there who think they know all there is to know in this field. If Letcher's work doesn't turn the magic mushroom crowd on its head, it will at least give them a new perspective on our current misshapen paradigms. Some mushroom enthusiasts spend their entire careers on the other side of the looking glass, but Letcher's climb up out of the mycological rabbit hole has let in a much-needed breath of fresh air. Shroom is definitely the new must-have book for all students of modern mycology. It makes everything that has come before it look like a fairy tale.

Luminox

info@andyletcher.co.uk — 2007-03-17T11:29:01+00:00

To anyone living within a driveable distance from Oxford, I would urge you to go and see Luminox - tonight is your last chance (it's free but they ask for a £1 donation). This anarcho-French street theatre group transformed Broad Street into a walk-through fire installation. Hard to put into words, except to say that it was beautiful, magical, captivating, slightly trippy - everything a carnivalesque eruption should be. At one point I climbed up onto the Sheldonian railings and looked out over the scene - the street was packed with people wandering around open mouthed, gazing at these extraordinary fire sculptures - from a flaming chandelier, to curtain of flaming pots strung down from the Bodleian Steps. Huddling round braziers people TALKED to strangers.

To finish the night off Spiro (one of my favorite bands) playing a storming set (different bands tonight). I came away warmed to the cockles of my heart. Go go GO!!

Climate Change denial

info@andyletcher.co.uk — 2007-03-13T07:55:42+00:00

Anyone convinced by Channel 4's documentary last week, claiming that climate change is caused not by human activity but by sunspot cycles, should read this article by George Monbiot. Don't be hoodwinked by the denial lobby!!

Fractal MySpace

info@andyletcher.co.uk — 2007-03-11T12:42:37+00:00

Am pleased to see that just one week after setting up the myspace site it's already generating lots of traffic - thanks to anyone who is stopping by and befriending me and the book.

One question I have though - quite a few people are generating some amazing fractal artwork for their idents - but what software are they using? I've downloaded something called Quadrivium (for my mac) but can't get it to work - either cos I haven't registered or cos I'm on 10.3.9. Anyone got any ideas?

But now, it's a lovely spring day out there, the woods are calling, and my bleary head needs some fresh air...

Green Man cancelled

info@andyletcher.co.uk — 2007-03-08T13:46:26+00:00

The Green Man Rites of Spring festival has been cancelled - something to do with not getting an entertainment license as I understand. Bollocks - I was looking forward to that.

Jean Baudrillard dies

info@andyletcher.co.uk — 2007-03-08T13:45:04+00:00

Or so they say...read Steven Poole's excellent obit here.

MySpace

info@andyletcher.co.uk — 2007-03-05T14:58:54+00:00

And now Shroom has it's very own MySpace site - woo hoo.

Green Man Festival

info@andyletcher.co.uk — 2007-03-05T14:51:38+00:00

I've been booked to talk on the history of the magic mushroom at the Green Man Festival's 'Rites of Spring' event. Should be a hoot. Great poster too...

Tim Sebastion's funeral

info@andyletcher.co.uk — 2007-02-24T09:42:41+00:00

It was Tim Sebastion's funeral yesterday - I was there playing pipes. He got a good send off - never before has there been such a motley gathering of grizzled freaks, tweedy academics and pre-ironic mullets. Richard Dawkins might think the world would be a better place without religion, but what a colourless place the world would be without the Druids.

McKenna up in flames

info@andyletcher.co.uk — 2007-02-24T09:41:05+00:00

Sad news - the extraordinary library belonging to the late, great Terence McKenna has been destroyed by fire. Read the full story here.

Line Point

info@andyletcher.co.uk — 2007-02-19T11:04:43+00:00

OK, I'm biased but this show is beautiful, poetic, extraordinary. Go see if you can.

Road-Pricing

info@andyletcher.co.uk — 2007-02-13T15:41:58+00:00

Several friends (some rather surprising) have invited me to sign the online petition against road-pricing. Here's why I won't be signing. Though I agree that there are human-rights issues here (I certainly don't want HM Government to be tracking my every car journey) most people seem lathered up about the potential cost. The brutal fact is that in order to reduce our carbon emissions, and to prevent all out total gridlock, we have to wean ourselves off car-use. The Jeremy Clarkson mentality means that people won't do this voluntarily. What we need, therefore, is a fair tax system that gets people out of their cars (without penalising rural communities). Wise up guys, driving a car is a luxury NOT a right. We need to prepare now for the post-car world.

More Greek Myths

info@andyletcher.co.uk — 2007-02-09T17:47:29+00:00

Just wanna stress that in no way was my last blog entry a criticism of my students (who are fab). Rather, I was having a dig at the way the education system seems increasingly to be about ticking boxes, not teaching people to think. Vocation, vocation, vocation over education, education, education. We are all losing out by this IMHO.

Greek Myths

info@andyletcher.co.uk — 2007-02-06T17:10:16+00:00

I found out today that 95% of my students (undergrads at Oxford Brookes) had no knowledge of the Greek myths, whatsoever. At the risk of sounding increasingly like a reactionary retired Colonel, what do they actually teach people at school these days?

Circulus Review

info@andyletcher.co.uk — 2007-02-05T18:40:27+00:00

I found this amusing review of a Circulus gig online - power to the pixies.

Tim Sebastion

info@andyletcher.co.uk — 2007-02-05T09:18:00+00:00

Tim Sebastion, Blakean Romantic, Priest of Albion and Chosen Chief of the Secular Order of Druids, died last thursday. Whether organising inter-faith cricket matches at Stonehenge, performing lewd cucumber dances at Beltaine, or reestablishing competitions for Bardic Chairs he brought a delightful element of chaos to an otherwise stuffy British Druidry. He once told me that during his formative hippy years in London he saw a line from Blake graffitied on a wall: 'The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom'. It seems a fitting epitaph.

Podcast

Balance

info@andyletcher.co.uk — 2007-02-02T20:18:58+00:00

Shroom has started to get reviewed in America and while I generally think it that it's better not to comment on the critics I feel moved to post a reply. So far, one said that my writing style was bland and academic and that anyone hoping for a drug classic would be disappointed, while the other said that my writing was engaging and full of jokes, but that all the trip stories got boring. I'm inclined to think that I must have got the balance just right.

Update

info@andyletcher.co.uk — 2007-01-27T10:11:58+00:00

Having been very sniffy about myspace I now find myself a myspace addict, lost in this strange virtual world of comments and friends. Bizarre. Tearing myself away I thought I might say what I've been up to of late.

There's a widespread assumption that anyone who writes about psychedelics must be permanently surfing the astral. I hate to disappoint, but writers of all hues spend most of their time reading, writing, or faffing about intending to read or write (mostly the latter). Indeed, my iboga experience last year (see earlier blog post) has noticably diminished my craving for transcendence. Well, for the time being at least.

So I've spent the last year working on the 'difficult second book' (not getting very far); distracting myself by writing songs, composing tunes and playing lots of music in various bands; and reading loads. Currently finishing James' 'Varieties of Religious Experience' (yeah, yeah, I know I should have done this years ago) and thoroughly enjoying walking awhile with a truly great thinker. Sooner or later all this introspection will pay off and the new book will take shape - I'll keep you posted.

Robert Anton Wilson

info@andyletcher.co.uk — 2007-01-18T23:15:37+00:00

I read an obituary for Robert Anton Wilson today in the Guardian (sorry, can't find a link). It made me remember what an influence Wilson was on me in my university days, particularly when I found (somewhat synchronicitously) copies of the Illuminatus Trilogy in a charity shop. It was good to be reminded of Wilson's scepticism and radical agnosticism - "by not believing anything he was free to examine everything" - a position not at all dissimilar to my own. He will be much missed.

Bicycle Film Festival

info@andyletcher.co.uk — 2007-01-16T10:44:25+00:00

Found this on myspace today - as a sworn cyclophile this seems something worth supporting.

www.myspace.com/bicyclefilmfestival

Hits

info@andyletcher.co.uk — 2007-01-10T17:59:56+00:00

Now it has been pointed out to me that on the wider scheme of things, 100 hits a month is nothing to write home about, but as it is about 100 times more than expected, I'm happy.

Happy New Year

info@andyletcher.co.uk — 2007-01-05T14:21:38+00:00

Have finally got Google Analytics up and working and much to my surprise it seems that people are actually visiting this site (so far about 100 hits a month), many from across the pond. So, a belated 'hello, thanks for visiting'. I'll try and keep the site updated more often. Meantime, happy new year to one and all.

Bad trips

info@andyletcher.co.uk — 2006-12-14T12:45:06+00:00

You can find an instructive MAPS video on how to deal with 'bad trips' here.

Letter to the Guardian

info@andyletcher.co.uk — 2006-12-05T08:58:37+00:00

And with the words "Woken at 6.45am by a Mistle Thrush singing" my first letter to a national newspaper was published today. Small but perfectly formed, as I'm sure you will agree.

Acid Folk Lovers

info@andyletcher.co.uk — 2006-12-03T21:10:52+00:00

Lovers of Acid Folk might want to check out these downloads - apparently I'm playing whistle on track one, but as it was over ten years ago I don't remember exactly.

Chris Wood

info@andyletcher.co.uk — 2006-11-30T09:46:10+00:00

Was thrilled last night both to be supporting Chris Wood and playing in Oxford's famous Holywell Music Room. Me and Josie (the current line-up of 'Telling the Bees') were joined for one song by the hardest working husband and wife folk duo in Oxford, Colin Fletcher and Jane Griffiths on double bass and fiddle respectively - sounded lush. Chris, meanwhile, played an absolutely blinder, reducing most of the audience to tears with 'One in a Million'. A top evening.

Desperately seeking...

info@andyletcher.co.uk — 2006-11-27T12:12:13+00:00

I had fun speaking at Synergy on friday - I haven't been to a psy-trance event for about ten years so nice and exciting to be back in that environment. After the talk I met a woman (sorry, didn't catch your name) who had been hassled by Police up on Hay Bluff - if it's you can you get in touch - The Guardian are interested in running a story on this.

Synergy

info@andyletcher.co.uk — 2006-11-23T15:04:08+00:00

Anyone coming to see me talk at Synergy tomorrow might like to know that I'm now on at the slightly later time of 10.40pm. See you there....

Mushroom Season

info@andyletcher.co.uk — 2006-11-07T22:30:10+00:00

As I understand it this year's mushroom season has been disappointing. An unusually mild autumn giving way to sudden sharp frosts seems to have severely reduced pickings. Unless anyone out there can put me right?

Hurdy-Gurdy Festival

info@andyletcher.co.uk — 2006-10-30T12:07:52+00:00

The much maligned and misunderstood hurdy-gurdy is one of my favourite instruments - in fact, if I had my life over again I would learn to play it. In France there is an almost unbroken tradition of playing going back to the middle ages, which means that current players have taken the instrument to the virtuosic heights of jazz and other avant-garde improvisations. England, sadly, lags behind in this respect but I pleased to see that there is going to be a Hurdy-Gurdy festival in April 2007 in Lancaster. All the best British players will be there giving concerts and workshops - looks like it'll be a corker.

Blowing my own trumpet

info@andyletcher.co.uk — 2006-10-23T14:20:25+01:00

At the risk of blowing my own trumpet, there is a short video of me playing the pipes here.

I am a mole

info@andyletcher.co.uk — 2006-10-22T17:50:11+01:00

Spent a fascinating afternoon down a slate mine in the Oxfordshire village of Stonesfield yesterday. Phil, one of my bagpipe students, is a retired geologist who still runs field trips - he generously invited me along. Highly recommended. You can see more photos of the trip here. It must have been grim work down there.

Climate Change Demo

info@andyletcher.co.uk — 2006-10-21T11:47:02+01:00

I went to see George Monbiot on thursday, speaking about his new book, 'Heat', and the whole matter of climate change. I must admit I was one of those who thought that it was all too late and that we were basically fucked. Turns out I'm wrong.

We CAN make a difference - in fact we are the last people who can. We have ten years to reduce CO2 emissions and to stabilise the temperature rise. It's a tough call but I am now convinced after hearing George's brilliant speech that it is possible. I would urge anyone reading this in the UK to go on the climate change march on November 4th in London, to show your protest outside the US embassy. Be there and make your voice count - I for one will be there.

B52 Two Update

info@andyletcher.co.uk — 2006-10-17T14:02:51+01:00

Phil and Toby's trial came to an unsatisfying end last week - a hung jury. Read George Monbiot's comments on the trial here.

Fame

info@andyletcher.co.uk — 2006-10-17T13:14:04+01:00

I saw that Thom Yorke in town today - cheering to see someone looking more grumpy than me...

Cheltenham Literature Festival

info@andyletcher.co.uk — 2006-10-07T17:40:26+01:00

Made my debut at a literature festival yesterday, booked at one of the fringe events at Cheltenham. Good turn out and one or two surprises in the audience including an old student (apologies for the low essay mark - it really wasn't personal) and Thom the World Poet, who I saw years ago at a Gong fest. Poor old Marcus, the guy interviewing me, couldn't get a word in edgeways once I'd started yacking - hopefully my rambling made sense.

And today? Feel like death with a cold. Fed up with watching crap TV but unable to do anything more constructive. Horrid.

Only in England

info@andyletcher.co.uk — 2006-10-03T20:18:56+01:00

Today I was buying Licorice tea from the supermarket when the woman on the till picked up the box, turned it over and tutted loudly. "Like this stuff do you?". "Well yes" I replied, "can't get enough of it. In fact I get through several boxes a week". I continued, "The longer you keep the tea bag in the better it gets because you're left with a lovely sweet after-taste". "Hmm" she scoffed. "And then you spend the rest of the day on the toilet!"

Only in England.

B52 Two

info@andyletcher.co.uk — 2006-10-01T11:58:00+01:00

Played at a beautiful benefit/support gig for Phil and Toby, the B52 Two, last friday. They got arrested at the start of the Iraq war attempting to disarm B52 bombers at RAF Fairford. Their trial starts tomorrow and this was a chance for the Oxford community of acousticians, poets, greens and peaceniks to come out and offer love and support. We wish you well guys.

Music for the Martian Bagpipes

info@andyletcher.co.uk — 2006-09-18T11:37:56+01:00

The chances of anyone coming from Mars are a million to one, or so sung Justin Hayward on Jeff Wayne’s musical version of The War of the Worlds. But what of the chances of Martians playing the bagpipes? Two million? More? Not so, for as this welcome release reveals, the bagpipe is indeed the instrument of choice for the Martian musical virtuoso.
Knowledge of the existence of Martian bagpipes has apparently been with us since Biblical times, though rumours of extant sets in the hands of US Intelligence remain flatly denied by the authorities. Occasionally UFO enthusiasts claim actually to have heard the unearthly warble of the Martian bagpipes, and, indeed a rare if shaky recording of just such an occurrence is included here. But it is in Russia, apparently, that the Martian bagpipes have exerted their most profound influence, the Soviets launching several missions to Mars during the seventies to make field recordings. President Brehznev, even, played these poorly known pipes, while Russian composer, Edvard Shlinke, went so far as to write a symphony in J# for Vincent Manlove, darling of the nascent Moscow Martian-bagpiping scene.
Hold on there just a minute! J#? Surely someone is having a joke here? Well yes they are. The Martian bagpipes are, in this reality at least, the brainchild of otherwise earthbound bagpipe maker, Dominic Allen. The bastard lovechild of an octopus and a kazoo, Allen’s ‘Martian’ pipes are made from lurid red plastic, come adorned with a sinister red eye, and have a bag wrapped in fake fur. I am told that the double-reeded drone and the single-reeded chanter connect via the same chamber, enabling the, ahem, ‘musician’ to explore a range of subtly tuned multiphonic possibilities. In other words the Martian bagpipes make an unearthly racket.
Music of the Martian Bagpipes, then, presents us with a variety of pieces played on this most extraordinary of instruments, accompanied, in the main, by samples, beats and detuned and heavily portamentoed synth parts. It is all done with an understated humour which, in small doses (I’ve yet to manage the whole album in one sitting), is very very funny and had me laughing out loud. ‘Three Easy Pieces’ are anything but, whilst the Martian lullaby (‘we shall stomp on the skulls of our enemies then slide about on their brains’ ) gives the impression of what it must be like to be trepanned without anaesthetic.
How on earth should we categorise this album? It would be too easy, I think, to dismiss this as a one joke curiosity. For one thing there is a fine tradition of writing music inspired by the Red Planet (from Holst to Jeff Wayne, via the theramin of 50s sci-fi) into which this album fairly belongs. For another there are ranks of musicians, from free-jazzers like Paul Dunmall and Valentin Clastrier, to sound artists like the Aphex Twin and Squarepusher, whose sonic noise confusion challenges us to reconsider the boundaries of music. But where the album truly belongs is surely alongside those by artists and bands such as Gong, Ivor Cutler, Vivian Stanshall and The Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band – surreal, irreverent and dadaesque.
Whatever else this album may or may not be, it is outrageous, inflammatory, provocative and at times strangely compelling. I can guarantee that it presents bagpipe music like no other you will ever have heard, so buy it now before it becomes a collector’s item.

Available from: www.screamingmavis.com

Abbots Bromley Horn Dance

info@andyletcher.co.uk — 2006-09-16T11:40:33+01:00

Photo Copyright © Andy Letcher 2006

As someone with a longstanding interest in all things unusual, folkloric, pagan and obscure, the Abbots Bromley Horn Dance has been on my radar for years. I’ve heard many a tale from friends of how, when summer teeters on the edge of autumn, antler-carrying dancers weave their way through this otherwise unremarkable Staffordshire village; about how, in their day-long bobbing and weaving, the men of Abbots Bromley trace out some ancient rite, a half-remembered salute to a god with horns, a resonant act of sympathetic magic to stir the hunt and quicken the catch. “You simply have to go” they said.
It was with a certain amount of excitement, then, that after stumbling across an article about the dance I discovered not only that Abbots Bromley is just a couple of hours drive away but also that this year’s dance was due to take place in a fortnight. My mind quickly made up I emailed another pagan-minded friend and we hatched a plan to go.
We arrived mid-afternoon on the day of the dance, parked the car on the edge of the village and excitedly strode to the village green. Awaiting us were a handful of stalls selling a very English selection of cakes, jam, hand-woven baskets, plus fifty or so people sipping tea or supping pints. There was an expectant, urgent feeling in the air but the action was still further on. Making our way down the street we saw a crowd blocking the road, heard the sound of music and above it the rhythmic twang of a metal triangle beating time. And there, just peeping over the top, antlers! Betraying our inexperience we elbowed our way through the crowd to get a better look.
At first glance, it must be said, the dance seems strangely anti-climactic, disappointing even. Used to seeing feather-hatted, ragged-coated Morris Men leaping high and clashing sticks on a sunny May-morning I was expecting something, well, a bit more red-blooded than the swaying, gambolling quadrille that greeted us: it seemed effete, almost a little camp. It was only later, when I tried on a set of antlers for the obligatory tourist photo, that I realised quite how heavy they are. To last one dance, let alone the day, requires extraordinary stamina. Small wonder that no one leaps – to wend and weave is more than enough. “It’s a funny old dance, really” a visiting Morris dancer confessed to me later (after having tried and failed to recruit me to his dwindling team of men). “But it’s part of our English tradition you know. I wouldn’t miss it for the world”. And after we’d followed the men through the streets for an hour or more, watched the dance several times, I began to understand how he felt.
For the Horn dancers – who all belong to one extended family – the day begins early. At half-past seven in the morning the ‘horns’ – which are otherwise padlocked in place and may not leave the village – are taken down from their hangings inside the church and blessed by the Vicar. Then the costumed dancers begin tracing their well-worn day-long itinerary around the parish during which they perform the same dance steps perhaps a hundred times.
Each dance is announced by ‘The Jester’ – who these days also has the unfortunate job of liaising with Police and Health & Safety – haranguing people to get out of the way, to mind their backs and let the dancers through. The trotting procession divides into two streams which weave around each other in a spiralling fashion before forming a circle that splits again into two facing lines. In and out, in and out, like rutting stags, six men shouldering two sets of antlers, the one set painted black with gold tips, the other white with black. With them a young boy playing the triangle and another, slightly older, with a mock bow and arrow that he clicks towards a snapping hobby-horse. Two musicians propel the dance with their favourite swaggering tunes squeezed out on accordions (for the elder of the two, this was his eightieth consecutive dance: as a boy he began on the triangle then worked his way up through the hierarchy of roles). Costumed children and a man dressed as a woman, ‘Maid Marion’ – also armed with a vulvic spoon and priapic rod – shake collection tins in time to the tunes.
Round and round the village they go, dancing in the High Street, in cul-de-sacs, on Lady Bagshots’ lawn at the grandly titled Blithfield Hall, and of course outside the village’s many hostelries. Finally, at about 9 o’clock in the evening, after one last triumphant dance in front of The Crown, the horns are marched back to the church, where, after a final blessing they are replaced on the hangings from which they will sit out the year. Justifiably knackered the dancers retire to the pub.
What does it all mean? Ask the dancers and they will give you the ‘vestigial fertility dance’ shtick, though with a wry smile and little conviction. Certainly the nature of the dance makes it open to a pagan interpretation. White horns with black tips sparring against black horns tipped with gold: surely this is a rite to mark the eternal battle of summer and winter? And surely every click of the bow and arrow is a magic act to ensure a full stomach in the lean months ahead, every thwack of the Jester’s inflated bladder to quicken another kind of swelling belly? Certainly this is what the smattering of ostentatiously-dressed neo-pagan followers would have us believe.
Historians might beg to differ. The earliest record of the dance comes from Tudor times, 1532 to be exact, but with no mention of the horns. It is most probable that the dance begun as one of many hobby-horse processions found in the Midlands. The horns, actually reindeer antlers (which are genuinely old and of unknown provenance), were presumably added at a later date. The dance was abandoned for a period of about one hundred years around the time of the Civil War only to be revived in the early eighteenth century, at which point it was moved from its usual date at Christmas time to ‘the Monday following the first Sunday after the fourth of September’. Given the evidence pagan origins seem most unlikely; more probable that it was just another way by which the ever-resourceful poor could extract money from the rich during the hard months of the winter.
So much for academe. In snatches of overheard conversation you can hear the gathered throng of tourists and visitors offering their sixpence worth, pagan this and folklore that, all water off a duck’s back to the inscrutable dancers. For, spend half a day in their company, watching the nods and gestures, the ribaldry and badinage amongst friends and family, and you begin to catch a glimpse of what is really going on here. This is a community event, a celebration of local, rural, working-class pride, a relic of peasantry not paganism. “You can come here and watch and follow and wonder and tell us what it all means”, their cagey looks say, “but this is ours and nothing you can do or say will take it away from us”. And you know they are absolutely right.
And sensing this I found the day all the more moving than if it really were some atavistic throwback to a heathen age. Sometimes the dancers flagged with tiredness and we willed them on; at others they quipped and sparred with heckling friends and we laughed along with them. Once, towards the end and amidst many guffaws, the women-folk of the village took the horns to see if they could do any better. It was like being a guest at someone’s annual treasured but slightly unruly family get-together: outside but let in just a little.
Right at the end, when the dancers made their way down the High Street to the welcoming throng of two hundred or more, the sheer spirit of the thing caught me. Tired but elated the men wove in and out, in and out for the very last time, the dance carrying them effortlessly, driving them on. It was one of those rare liminal moments where people and place and the past click together in such a way that we are lifted out of the everyday, if only for a moment. And by the end, even as my legs ached in sympathy with the dancers’, I felt transformed, renewed and revitalised, ready to face the dreaded onset of winter. The word is overused, has become tacky and tawdry, but the Abbots Bromley Horn Dance is, in its understated and English way, a magical thing. After watching the horns put safely to bed, and feeling the first chill of autumn in the air, we got back in the car and began the long journey home, vowing to come again. I am sure that we will.

Folk Britannia

info@andyletcher.co.uk — 2006-09-09T18:31:40+01:00

I see that, at last, 'Folk Britannia' is to get its terrestrial airing starting this Monday 11th at 11.20pm on BBC. By all accounts an excellent history of the British folk scene post 1960s this was the programme that tipped me into buying a digibox - it was only broadcast on BBC 4. After two days fiddling about with cables, menus and inadequate manuals I failed spectacularly to get the box to talk to my video and recorded an hour of fuzz, not folk. Conceding defeat the box was dutifully returned the next day and I've been in a luddite sulk ever since...which makes me a true folkie, I guess.

Migraines

info@andyletcher.co.uk — 2006-09-07T13:51:21+01:00

I've had a run of bad migraines - three in a week - all requiring bed in a darkened room, each lasting twelve hours, unmitigated misery. What saved me yesterday was Radio 4. Front Row followed by Madame Bovary, then a high-brow debate about the ethics (or not) of animal rights and finally a documentary about searching for planets. Even as my head emptied itself of meaningful content, Radio 4 did its level best to fill it again.

The Wicker Man

info@andyletcher.co.uk — 2006-09-05T18:31:23+01:00

It's been a week of the Wicker Man. I read Allan Brown's excellent nerdfest tribute to the original, 'Inside The Wicker Man: The Morbid Ingenuities'; I took part in a 'burning' organized for a Swindon-based IT company for their summer jolly; and I've just been to see the re-make.

Oh dear dear dear, what a dreadful film it is. What on earth possessed them? It lacks all the charm, wit, menace and subtlety of the original and has been turned into a horror-by-numbers, 'gee aren't the hicks strange?' melodrama. In fact it has been shoehorned into a bog standard Hollywood format with the requisite amount of (unconvincing) romance and pop-psychology. Do American audiences really need everything spelt out to them in so ham-fisted a manner?

What is so clever about the original (WM1) is that right until the very end it tricks you into sympathising with the islanders, not Howie the uptight and priggish policeman. Let's face it, those islanders are having a rather good time of it. Then, with its dreadful climax, the rug is pulled from out beneath your feet. In the remake (WM2) the islanders' paganism/lifestyle is repellent from the start - your sympathies lie with Cage, the put upon world-weary cop, just trying to do a decent job.

Secondly the paganism in WM2 - from which all the lovely folklore of WM1 is excised - is incoherent, vague and unbelievable and seems to play a minor part in the islanders' lives. Consequently the climax just seems silly - why on earth would they do that? The idea of a crop/honey failure on an island where the sun seems to shine 12 hours a day is likewise incredible. And aren't matriarchies supposed to be peaceful?

Happily the film contains one of the most unintentionally funny lines of any movie I've seen - when Cage pulls out his gun and screams "Lady, step away from the bike." At the screening I went too the audience just laughed when the hapless Cage meets his fate.

I can't help thinking that the money would have been better spent digging up the M3 to find the (supposedly) lost reels of the original so that Shaffer's brilliant script can, at last, be realised in full. We can but dream.

Oh, and though it is buried beneath the turgid score you can just here the sound of a rauschpfeife as the villagers process towards their ritual. It doesn't appear in the credits but this is actually a track, Carnival of Bones, by the medieval band Paescod from their album, Fible Fable. I played with Paescod as their extra hired hand on and off for years and was approached by one of WM2's producers about using the track. I put him in touch with the band (now reformed as Nonimus) and voila. Sadly I'm not playing bagpipes on it, otherwise I'd be watching the money come rolling in right now (hah - in my dreams!).

Circulus - Clocks are like People

info@andyletcher.co.uk — 2006-09-03T08:30:59+01:00

Got my hands on the new Circulus album at last, and what a treat it is, an altogether slicker, better produced affair than their first. Whereas 'The Lick on the Tip of an Envelope Yet to be Sent' sounded like a bunch of mates playing down the pub this is a much more professional offering. The costumes are (mostly) better, the design is excellent (top marks for the photo of the leering pie), the lyrics are still refreshingly dotty (how many bands do you know that slip in the telelphone number of their favourite skip-hire company into a song?), and the all important crumhornery sits much better in the mix. Not many albums demand an immediate second listen, but this one defintiely had me reaching for the repeat button.

There are some fine prog moments here: great rhythm changes in the opening 'Dragon Dance'; lovely expansive chord progressions in 'Willow Tree'; some daft Moog buffoonery in 'Bouree'; and a IIm7-V7 coda to the closing 'Reality's a Fantasy' that frankly does not go on long enough. They're a much tighter outfit all round (and not just in the cod-piece department), though full credit must go to Oliver Parfitt whose keyboard playing is really driving the band into some delightful Caravan-esque improvisations. Only beef: surely Sam Kelly should get to lead on more than one song? And, one wonders, where can they go from here? I hope they haven't painted themselves into a corner (however lovely, hobbit-, dragon-, and goblet-filled that corner is)...

A great album, though, one that brought many a smile to my face and that, God knows, might even herald the return of the long prophesied prog revival. Is that a sword I see before me, rising up out of a misty lake to the sound of a steadily swelling organ...?

www.circulus.org

Hippy Fest

info@andyletcher.co.uk — 2006-08-28T08:58:09+01:00

This is me piping at the hippy wedding of the year - Su and Bill. Photos by Kate Raworth.

Rumour Mill

info@andyletcher.co.uk — 2006-08-28T08:49:59+01:00

I love the way rumours develop. A number of people have come up to me and said "is it true that you've done a PhD about magic mushrooms?" and I fear that no amount of vigorous denials will do anything to dislodge this particular rumour - people just want it to be true. For the record my second PhD was in Religious Studies, studying bardic performance in modern Druidry and Eco-Paganism. But hey, it's such a good rumour why bother to try and quash it?

More Fuzzy Felt

info@andyletcher.co.uk — 2006-08-23T12:10:00+01:00

I've just had a lovely email from Orriel Smith, the singer of 'Winds of Space' on the recent Trunk Records "Fuzzy Felt Folk' album. Seems like she's had a pretty interesting career - including working with the Ray Conniff singers - class! Check out her website:

www.orrielsmith.com

Scanner Darkly

info@andyletcher.co.uk — 2006-08-23T11:51:26+01:00

I went to see A Scanner Darkly on Monday - panned by the critics, but I thought it was pretty good. Standard Philip K. Dick fare in many ways, but a great story of paranoia and, somewhere, a sharp-edged critique of current drugs policy. Set fair to become a stoner cult classic. Nicely done.

Rufus Harley

info@andyletcher.co.uk — 2006-08-20T10:52:57+01:00

Rufus Harley 1936-2006 R.I.P - jazz bagpiper extraordinaire.

Mushroom Questionnaire

info@andyletcher.co.uk — 2006-08-20T10:51:29+01:00

There's a new, online research questionnaire, trying to determine people's mushrooming habits. Check it out here:

http://ccgi.earthship.plus.com/survey/

Fuzzy Felt Folk

info@andyletcher.co.uk — 2006-08-16T17:36:52+01:00

Folk music is back in fashion apparently, but these days, it seems, the appellation is stuck to anything that employs an acoustic guitar or flute, or that references the 70s: usual suspects being Bagpuss and The Wicker Man. I wonder if this cultural turn has anything to do with the generation of kids born in the sixties turning forty? Is the sudden interest in twisted, strange or acid folk just a nostalgia trip palliative to a collective mid-life crisis? Certainly the old boys and girls who bash out the jigs and reels or who sing from the heart in the pubs and clubs across these islands are totally bemused by all the sudden interest.

Whatever, the recent Folk-explosion (if that's not too much of an exaggeration) has produced some damned fine compilations. I'm thinking here of Sanctuary Records' 'Gather in the Mushrooms' and 'Early Morning Hush', and Albion Records' 'Strange Folk'.

Now comes Trunk Records 'Fuzzy Felt Folk' (www.trunkrecords.com), stretching the definition of 'folk' yet further to include the child-like outer-limits of easy listening. No matter - there are some gems here. Favourites include the frankly eye-poppingly peculiar 'The Elf' by The Barbara Moore Singers, the mesmeric 'Folk Guitar' of Claude Vasori and the Hawkwind-meets-the-Clangers 'Winds of Space' by Orriel Smith. The Piggleswick Folk (I kid you not) cover of 'Teddy Bear's Picnic' just has to be heard to be believed. Was everyone on Acid during the 70s?

Obviously the product of an obsessive completist, trunk records deserve a big slap on the back for this one. Nostalgia trip or no it does what it says on the tin. Highly recommended.

Cuckoo.

Blackberries

info@andyletcher.co.uk — 2006-08-15T16:55:06+01:00

I went blackberrying today. Competition is intense: grandparents on childcare duty; some evil looking flies and, judging by the liberal dollops of purple poo, the birds have got the taste too. But as ever nature rewards those prepared to stray off the beaten path. I found a bush groaning with berries, plump as grapes. I paid my dues in scratches and nettle stings. Smoothies for breakfast.

Nick Clarke back at the World at One

info@andyletcher.co.uk — 2006-08-14T13:03:39+01:00

It doesn't matter how bad the news is - war, terrorism, earthquakes, flood, a new Labour policy initiative - if Nick Clarke is in the chair you KNOW that it's all going to be OK.

Welcome back Nick - greatly missed.

August

info@andyletcher.co.uk — 2006-08-09T13:33:53+01:00

It's about time we faced up to it and banned August. Don't get me wrong. I'm an August baby, can't think of a better time of the year to be born. It's just everything stops, everyone is away, there's nothing on telly - worse, there's nothing on the radio - it's impossible to get any work done, and there's that awful feeling of the summer dwindling away, the first tinge of autumn in the air. We should just hang a sign up in Dover - 'Everyone is out of the office right now but we'll be back in September'.

Iboga

info@andyletcher.co.uk — 2006-08-05T12:44:00+01:00

Earlier this year I was given the opportunity to sample some iboga, the psychoactive root-bark that forms the mainstay of the Bwiti religion in the African country of Gabon. A friend of mine has been living and working in Gabon for five years, and he returned home with a bottle of the dried and chopped root-bark together with the blessings of his teacher, or Ganga man, to distribute the contents as he saw fit.
Iboga, the root-bark of the small shrub, Tabernanthe iboga, contains ibogaine as its principle psychoactive ingredient, a complex molecule that belongs in the tryptamine family along with psilocybin, DMT and LSD. It is said that ibogaine has immense therapeutic potential: there is strong anecdotal evidence that it can help people wean themselves off opiate addiction, while a common experience is that it allows one to review one’s past actions, but from the point of view of how others were affected. The Bwiti religion has become famous as increasing numbers of Westerners travel to Gabon to take part in the ‘breaking open the head’ initiation ritual: over a four day period colossal doses of iboga are consumed which take the initiate close to death, at which point the mysteries of the Bwiti are revealed.
I took what, by any standards, was a very conservative dose – the dose that Gabonese routinely give to their children – about a heaped tablespoon full. There were four of us, holed up in a rural hideaway in Wiltshire – the setting was reverential. Our only instructions were that a flame should be lit at all times, that running water should be nearby, and that we should receive the iboga, literally or metaphorically, ‘on our knees’.
The root is extremely bitter but can easily be swallowed down with water. After about half an hour or so, the first effects became obvious – that loaded feeling in the stomach and body of having consumed an alkaloid. All was well until suddenly and unexpectedly I started feeling very unwell. Nauseous and dizzy my field of vision became disconnected from my eyes: whenever I moved my head the entire room kept moving, as if I were trying to watch a movie on a rolling ship. White sparkling lights glittered at the periphery of vision. So dizzy that I could barely walk I struggled outside and vomited, then lay on the kitchen floor like a corpse. Whenever I lifted my head I felt buffeted with giddiness, as if struck by a thousand hands: the only safe position was down.
Naturally I became quite alarmed at this point – my three fellow travellers were, at best, mildly affected. None were ill, all were tripping gently. I realised that I needed to get upstairs and into bed and with a monumental effort of will rose and staggered aloft. My internal sense of location – where my body was, its position and movement – was wholly disassociated from my vision, making walking virtually impossible. Somehow I made it to the bedroom, vomited again, and got into bed. There then followed a somewhat comedic moment as, needing a pee, I grappled with the mechanics of relieving myself into a bottle, like some incontinent man, bedridden and infirm. Only then did I settle back into the trip.
My friend decided at that point to play back field recordings of music collected in Gabon. Much of the music was iboga music – especially a song played on the mongongo mouth harp. Rhythmically complex the music is beautiful, haunting, ancient, baffling to Western ears, relentless. A Pygmy song, yodelling in the forest, left me in tears. The ‘rhythm’ of the iboga – a constant tschk tschk tschk tschk in my head – was mirrored perfectly by the music. I felt like I was witness to a great mystery, played out in the endless cycle of life and death in the forests of Africa (“Jim Morrison got it wrong, the Pygmies in the forest knew much more than they were letting on" ). Surely this is where we came from, where life in all its plenitude of forms springs from? I became aware of how in denial I/we are about Africa – it’s the fucking motherland! How long, I wondered, have the forests echoed with song? I saw how, for millennia, people lived there in circular time, a daily rhythm of hunting, eating, drinking then singing and dancing, shouting to the stars – “we are alive!!”. I saw how we have become imprisoned by linear time with no obvious way back. A fall from Eden (or just post-colonial Western fantasy, a small voice wondered)?
The trip was not visual in the mushroomic sense. Rather, it was as if my thoughts were augmented by the iboga so that they tumbled out in a delightfully logical succession. At one point (and preposterous as it sounds) I followed through a theory of consciousness, its tumbling axiomatic conclusion had me laughing out loud – imagine that! Close to death and given a theory of consciousness! It’ll take me ten years to work out if it has any merits! I had none of promised iboga psychotherapy, though some important insights into my family. And all the while I was lying prone, flat on my back, unable to move.
Three hours past, then four and five, and experience told me that I would be down soon. But the dawn came, the others got up and started cooking breakfast and still I was up, no sign of descent. In fact I was tripping for four days, stuck fast in bed, unable to move. The full effects of the iboga did not wear off for a month (every morning and evening I saw shimmering lights at the field of my vision). It need not be stated that this was pretty scary – I thought, “I’ve really done it this time, I’ll never walk again”.
Theories as to quite why I was so strongly affected abound. My friends all agreed I had been ‘chosen’ by the Bwiti. A phone call to our Ganga man in Gabon reassured me that I would be OK, but that my body was evidently full of toxins which the iboga was clearing out. “You can’t walk? So don’t walk!”. As for myself, when the moments of panic kicked in, I found all pretentions to a shamanic worldview fall away. I groped for science. I must lack an enzyme, I thought, it’s hard for me to break the ibogaine down. A dim notion that I too, might one day go through the breaking open the head ritual was quietly quashed – forty times the dose I took would almost certainly kill me.
I’m not sure whether this is a cautionary tale, or just another trip report filed away on the internet. All I can say is that it was powerful, revealing, terrifying, strangely reassuring, and very, very hard on the body. It will take a long long time before I will even entertain the idea of taking iboga again. And if you’re thinking about doing it my advice would be to make sure you leave a clear week...

MySpace

info@andyletcher.co.uk — 2006-08-03T12:37:36+01:00

9 million people on the make?

Summer

info@andyletcher.co.uk — 2006-08-03T12:30:40+01:00

It's been an idle, delightful summer for me so far. I whirled and twirled in the bagpipe frenzy that is the Saint Chartier festival, deep in the heart of France. Highlights include wandering through the baking midnight village streets, watching two hundred pogo to the shaved muscularity of a Portuguese pipe and drum band; the acoustic space-rock jam in the village church during the intolerable heat of the Sunday afternoon; playing glorious music with old friends till 4 in the morning, two nights running.

Then to a male-bonding-in-the-woods sort of a stag night and on to the English Acoustic Collective Summer School, which left me musically filled, inspired and brimming with ideas. And finally to a Druid camp, to reconnect with old friends (and enemies), drink endless cups of tea round the fire, and to sing under the stars.

Romantic fantasies have been played out and now it's back to earth with a bump, work to do and pennies to be earned. The carnival is over.

Tim Henman Crashes Out

info@andyletcher.co.uk — 2006-06-28T17:55:48+01:00

It's a little known fact that at primary school, Tim Henman was beaten in the obstacle race by my (now) girlfriend. Perhaps if he'd won he'd have stood more of a chance of winning Wimbledon.

On second thoughts, nah...

More Fly-Fishing

info@andyletcher.co.uk — 2006-06-26T12:49:19+01:00

Racing up the Amazon charts, I reached a high of 1600 on Saturday!

Blair

info@andyletcher.co.uk — 2006-06-26T12:38:49+01:00

One of the many things that I despise about this rotten, wretched, media-obsessed government of ours, is the way that when the chips are down, and their popularity is flat-lining, they launch a full-frontal attack on some wholly inappropriate target. They are masters of legerdemain, their mantra of spin is 'distract and rule'. When the reasons for taking us to war evaporated what did they do but turn on the BBC for the heinous crime of suggesting that the dodgy dossier was 'sexed up' (how can it be that the man who paid the price for war was Greg Dyke for God's sake)? And now, at a time when we feel as betrayed and ground down by the New Labour project as ever we did under the Tory reign of terror, they launch an attack on the judiciary and the legal system.

Tough on the causes of crime, my arse.

I cannot find the words to describe the contempt I feel for Blair and New Labour, the sheer sense of betrayal.

Summer Solstice

info@andyletcher.co.uk — 2006-06-21T18:31:13+01:00

Just returned from a glorious summer solstice at Avebury. Played spangly tribedelic twang-age with Dr Matt Watkins as the sun broke free of the clouds and bathed us in light, the larks filling the sky with song.

Seriously connected.

Paul Gill

info@andyletcher.co.uk — 2006-06-19T17:14:35+01:00

At long last I have got my hands on a recording ('On Every Street Corner') by folk artist, Paul Gill. Not easy to come by at all. The man is a brilliant politico singer-songwriter, guitarist, whistler and concertinarista - it's criminal that he's not up there playing with the likes of Billy Bragg. But like his fictional outlaw in 'The Ballad of Bill Posters', Paul is hard to track down - you won't find him on the web, on Myspace or Blogspot - perhaps in a Suffolk folk club, or lying down in front of the bulldozers at a road-protest near you.

But take it from me, he's superb. His 'Hard as Nails', a true story of the horrors and hardships of homelessness, deserves to become a classic; as does his skillfully crafted 'Guilty as Charged', listing the reasons why he holds the powers that be in such contempt. It's not just his playing or his lyrics - his singing his superb, a rich sonorous voice with a crafted folk-lilt that never once strays into pastiche finger-in-the-ear territory.

Don't ask me where you can buy a copy. Go out and demand one. Harangue shops and folk zines - we want Paul Gill!

Fly Fishing

info@andyletcher.co.uk — 2006-06-19T17:02:59+01:00

Went fly-fishing today (that's a cultural refernece to the old Yellow Pages ad - 'Fly Fishing' by J R Hartley - which will only make sense to those watching telly in the late 80s). In other words, I went looking for copies of 'Shroom' in my local bookshops. Sad? Yup, I know, but show me an author, especially a first time author, who hasn't done the same.

"Who's it by?" the nice assistant in Blackwells asked. "Ooh, erm, now then, let me think" I replied. "I think it was, or was it now, er, Andy Letcher?"

"Sorry, it's not a book we currently stock. I could order it for you?"

Eventually found a single copy in Waterstones at the back of the third floor. Evidently I have not quite made it to the first division yet. I did note, with some pride, however, that overnight I have jumped 1000 places in the amazon.co.uk sales ranking to two thousand and something. World domination surely awaits.

Nostalgia

info@andyletcher.co.uk — 2006-06-19T09:27:33+01:00

A lovely surprise in the post today - a vinyl pressing of Delerium Records' 'Fun With Mushrooms' (thanks Richard). Opening it I got one of those pangs of nostalgia - not just for vinyl, but for the days of free festivals, travellers, buses, hash for cash and white lightning. You just don't get bands calling themselves the 'Mooseheart Faith Stellar Groove Band' these days...

Favourite tracks: Boris and His Bolshie Balalaika - Toadstool Soup (of course); Omnia Opera - The Awakened; Praise Space Electric - Electric Sensation; Harrold Juana - Uncle Sam.

Check out www.freakemporium.com to buy the album.

Lift Off

info@andyletcher.co.uk — 2006-06-14T14:07:08+01:00

Had the launch party for Shroom last night - an intriguing bunch of friends, family, academics, journos, poets, activists, publishers, hippies and psychedelic survivors from the sixties to the noughties, gathered in a pub in London. And remarkably everyone got along fine.

I learnt the unspoken etiquette of how to sign a book (who would have thought there is an etiquette to scrawling one's name on the frontispiece?) - but it still feels very bizarre being an 'author'.

Felt very well supported and a good time was had by all...