Andy Letcher

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.

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?

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."

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)?

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.

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).