Shows
My Picture House'Say who you are...' Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind with Stephen CoatesIn this episode I am joined by Mr. Stephen Coates to discuss Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004).Stephen is a musician, radio host, podcaster and curator of The Bureau of Lost Culture-BureauOfLostCulture | Instagram | Linktree'The Bureau of Lost Culture broadcasts curious, half-forgotten, half-remembered countercultural stories, oral histories and tales from the underground.Join host Stephen Coates and a wide range of guests including musicians, writers, artists and cultural commentators for in depth conversation and rare audio.'As well as being...
2025-08-2257 min
Bureau of Lost CultureThe Underworld“Imagination thrives in darkness”
We talk about The Undergound often at the Bureau - not London’s subterranean rail sytem, but the countercultural alternative society of the 50s, 60s, 70s and 80s.
But that is just one of the undergrounds - the underworlds - that are the subject of this episode
Dizzying ossuaries, freakish creatures of the deep sea, astounding colors of agates, lava and crystals, mind bending organic structures of mycorrhizal fungi, caverns, crevices, burrows, bunkers, burial chambers, ghistly shipwrecks, religous hellscapes and surrealist dreamscapes, natural and constructed su...
2024-09-1652 min
Cursed ObjectsBone music, Soviet outlaws and X-ray rock ‘n’ roll ft. Stephen CoatesA record etched onto an x-ray of a (probably, now) dead Soviet citizen’s head. That is the uniquely cursed object Stephen Coates came across in a Russian flea market in 2014.
Weird, eerie, and almost polyphonic in quality, these DIY records captivated him and sparked a mission to find the bootleggers who had risked up to *five years* in a gulag for their love of music. How did they turn x-rays into subversive ‘rib music’? And what can a flimsy bit of plastic show us about subcultural life in the USSR?
Stephen Coates hosts t...
2024-06-1356 min
Bureau of Lost CultureThe Secret History of Psychonauts
"You do it to yourself" sang Radiohead
Well that was certainly true of some of the subjects of this episode.
Historian of the mind MIKE JAY returns to the Bureau to tell of the intrepid scientists, artists, writers and thinkers who were experimenting with psychoactive substances and recording their experiences in the Victorian age and onwards.
But the notion that researchers might partake of drugs if they were going to have something valuable to say about them became unacceptable.
And we hear about the first British psychedelic experiences of Aleister Crowley, W B Yeats, Havelock Ellis and Maude Gone along...
2023-04-301h 00
I Remember Liking That MovieStephen King's Graveyard Shift (1990)Send us a textRemember 1990’s Stephen King Adaptation of Graveyard Shift? We remember liking it but don’t remember a whole lot about it. We know it has some familiar faces. A mutant creature. A field mouse or two and some shift work. We are so excited to watch it but truth be told, after hearing that this might be Stephen King’s least favorite story to movie, we’re a little concerned. Do You Remember Liking This Movie?
2023-04-301h 17
Bureau of Lost CultureThe Vision Collectors
*Do you believe it's possible to know the future?
*Deep in the heart of the countercultural 60s, when the boundaries of consciousness were being explored and pushed forward, when human achievements were coming thick and fast, a psychiatrist and a rather un-counterculural science journalist, prompted by a terrible disaster, carried out a peculiar experiment with time..
*Writer SAM KNIGHT comes to the Bureau to tell their strange story and that of The Premonition Bureau - an attempt to harness the intuitions of the British public in order to predict - and possibly avoid - disasters.
*Visions of the future, foresight, fore...
2023-04-1657 min
Bureau of Lost CultureMoss Side Story - with Barry AdamsonHe was a member of some of the most influential post punk bands: Magazine, The Birthday Party and The Bad Seeds. He's collaborated with a whole range of artists including Nick Cave, Iggy Pop, Diamanda Galas, David Lynch, Jarvis Cocker, Atticus Ross and Depeche Mode. He's written film scores, made films himself, made many solo records and recently published an extraordinary memoir of youth: 'Up Above the City and Down Beneath the Stars.’
The Jazz Devil Barry Adamson came to the Bureau to talk about his life and times - and about bones, about being an outsider, about Manchester in the...
2023-04-011h 01
Bureau of Lost CultureThe Life and Times of Peter Coyote 2: Buddhism in Babylon*From heroin to Hollywood,
Here is the second part of our conversation with the writer, countercultural activist, Zen priest and erstwhile movie star PETER COYOTE at his farm in Sebastopol California.
*Last time, we left him isolated and lost in the throes of drug addiction as the countercultural dream had started to turn sour. Now we pick up the story in the American communes of the early 70s, hear how he transitioned to become a successful actor appearing in over 160 films, and dig deep into counterculture, creativity, charisma, drugs, buddhism, how he navigated Hollywood Babylon.
*And Peter gives some amazing advic...
2023-03-1959 min
Bureau of Lost CultureThe Life and Times of Peter Coyote 1: Diggers to Dharma Bums*Angels in London
*You've probably seen him in a film - he’s performed in more than 130 as an actor for some of the world’s greatest directors including Roman Polanski, Pedro Almodovar, Steven Spielberg and Steven Soderberg, or maybe you have heard his voice - he's an Emmy Award-winning narrator of over 200 documentaries.
*He is a writer, a poet, an ordained Buddhist priest who has been practicing Zen for over 50 years.
*But that's not the half of it - as we find out in this, the first of two episodes charting the extraordinary life of PETER COYOTE...
2023-03-0659 min
Bureau of Lost CultureThe Divided Self of R.D. Laing*In 1965 the psychiatrist R.D.LAING formed a commune in an East London community centre called Kingsley Hall where the psychotic and the schizophrenic could live on equal terms with their carers. There were no locks and no anti-psychotic drugs but there were all-night therapy sessions, dinners with visiting mystics and high grade LSD available to any who chose to take it
*The Neuro-psychiatrist Anthony David came to the Bureau to talk about Laing and about how his groundbreaking book The Divided Self propelled him into the status of a countercultural guru. He grew his hair, he wore be...
2023-02-181h 03
Bureau of Lost CultureThe Lost World of Cambodian Rock ’n’ Roll*In the swinging 1960s, after nearly a century of colonisation, Cambodia was ready to rock. Young musicians from the countryside flocked to the vibrant cosmopolitan capital city of Phnom Penh. The city was a melting pot of sound: old fashioned rock’n’roll, early heavy metal, crooners and swooners and love duets.
*Then on 17th April 1975, the music stopped.
the Khmer Rouge captured Phnom Penh and began a genocide. Around 90% of the musicians died in the killing fields.
*DEE PEYOK joins us to talk about 'Away From Beloved Lover'(Granta), her extraordinary book detailing the lost world of amazing music t...
2023-02-071h 00
Bureau of Lost CultureFlashing on the Sixties Part 2Feeding the Woodstock thousands, acid, the Summer of Love, the Haight Ashbury, Timothy Leary, anti-Vietnam war protests, the problems of free love and living in communes, the Monterey pop festival, The Diggers, Wavy Gravy, Owsley, Bob and Sarah Dylan, Peter Coyote, helping Dennis Hopper though a bad trip..
In this episode we sat down again with 80 year old photographer LISA LAW in her home in Mexico to hear more extraordinary tales from the her life on the frontiers of counterculture.
We take up the tales as Lisa arrives in San Francisco in 1967, follow her behind the scenes at...
2023-01-221h 05
Bureau of Lost CultureFlashing On the Sixties: Part 1*Dylan, The Velvet Underground, Janis Joplin, The Beatles, Otis Redding, Nico, Peter Fonda, Denis Hopper, Timothy Leary, Ram Dass, Allen Ginsberg and many, many more - Lisa Law's images are extraordinary. But then her story is extraordinary.
*On Christmas eve, Lisa sat in her home in Yelapa, Mexico and recounted some of her countercultural life and times in this, the first of two episodes that provide an unparalleled glimpse into the music scenes of the 60s and 70s and California's blossoming counterculture.
*We hear about the American folk revival ,beatniks, bohemians, Mexican shamans and the weird and wonderful world of hippy com...
2023-01-0852 min
Bureau of Lost CultureLa Rocka! The Life and Looks of Lloyd Johnson*Starting in 1966, LLOYD JOHNSON not only sold clothes to a multitude of street smart, cool kids, but contributed to the very look of rock ’n' roll fashion. In the decades since, he has helped style Keith Richards, Bob Dylan, Jack Nicholson, David Bailey, The Clash, Iggy Pop, Tom Waits, Barry Adamson, Johnny Marr, Nick Cave,The Stray Cats and The Pretenders.
*On top of that, his designs have appeared on many record sleeves including albums by Rod Stewart and Madness, in videos like George Michael’s" Faith”, in the films Quadrophenia and Jim Jarmusch's Down by Law and Mystery Train, and as st...
2022-12-181h 05
Bureau of Lost CultureRoentgenizdat - The Hidden History of Bone Music*During the Cold War era, the songs that Soviet citizens could listen to were ruthlessly controlled by the state. But a secret underground subculture of music lovers and bootleggers defied the censors, building recording machines and making their own extraordinary discs of forbidden jazz, rock ‘n’ roll, and Russian music, cut onto used hospital x-ray film.
*Today’s special guest is, er… me, Stephen Coates
*My new book BONE MUSIC details how the x-ray bootleggers worked, and reveals for the first time, the hidden history of their archivist precursors in Budapest. Who were they? Why did they do it and how was this ...
2022-12-0457 min
Bureau of Lost CulturePunk, Porn and PerformanceShe worked as a go-go dancer, stripper and glamour model. She's been a performance artist of masochistic tangos and twisted mambos, a ballroom dance teacher, a street arts choreographer and a punk-rock drummer. She worked with Throbbing Gristle, Genesis P Orridge, Monte Cazzaza, and Derek Jarman.
*And she was there at the formation of Adam and the Ants and the Monochrome Set.
*Dorothy Max Prior joins us to talk about her wonderful book '69 Exhibition Road Twelve True-Life Tales from the Fag End of Punk, Porn & Performance’ published by Strange Attractor Press.
*We hear about gay London in the...
2022-11-2059 min
Bureau of Lost CultureTripping the Light Fantastic*You couldn’t turn up at at any self respecting psychedelic hangout, countercultural club, happening, be-in or even disco in the late sixties and seventies without being immersed in the cosmic cloud of swirling dreamy liquid images, shapes and colours of the light shows illuminating and enhancing the music.
*Our counterculural companion in arms, Kevin Foakes, DJ Food, turntablist, graphic designer-par-excellence - and now author - returns to the Bureau to talk about his wonderful new book 'Wheels of Light’, published by Four Corners Books - a visual voyage through the history of British light show from 1970 to 1990, and a gorgeou...
2022-11-061h 01
Bureau of Lost CultureThe Last of the Merry Pranksters*In the summer of 1964, a very strange vehicle was seen making its way across America. it was a school bus covered in psychedelic colours, driven by NEAL CASSADY, a beat generation character made famous in JACK KEROUAC'S beat generation classic On the Road and piloted by KEN KESEY, the best selling author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
*The bus contained a raggle-taggle crew of crazy psychonauts calling themselves The Merry pranksters allegedly dispensing LSD in orange kool aid to all and sundry in attempt to turn on America.
*In this episode, we leave Soho to travel to the far we...
2022-10-2456 min
Bureau of Lost CultureThe Lost Tarot Deck of Austin Osman SpareIt is a tale of lost treasure, it is a tale of a lost - or rather forgotten - artist, a mystic, a cockney visionary.
•Curator Jonathan Allen comes to the Bureau to tell of AUSTIN OSMAN SPARE and the strange and wonderful Tarot Deck that lay for decades in the archives of The Magic Circle, undisturbed and forgotten.
•Now a growing influence on artists, writer and chaos magick practitioners including Alan Moore and Jimmy Page, Spare became largely unnoticed in his lifetime.
•We hear of his curious, occult life in South London, his riches to rags story, cartomancy, divination and the di...
2022-10-1051 min
Bureau of Lost CultureThe Cabaret of the Nameless*Performance artist, actor and underground cabaret star Madame LePustra leads us on a journey back in time in search of the Berlin Cabaret and Kabarett of Weimar Republic era Berlin.
*We learn of the strange and progressive Golden Years of the 1920s when queer and trans identiities were accepted, even feted, within an underground culture that briefly flowered in the city between the wars.
*We meet some of the extraordinary women performers who pushed artistic, theatrical and social boundaries before the Nazis jackbooted the doors of the clubs and theatres and brought the era to a tragic close.
*And we hear...
2022-09-2552 min
Bureau of Lost CultureSmells Like Teen Spirit*"Teenage savages go wild in a jungle of lust and lawlessness!"
*Countercultural commentator and writer JOHN HIGGS comes to the Bureau. We head out into the feverish febrile pheromone filled phase of self consciousness, sex drugs and rock’n’roll known as adolescence as we investigate the birth of the teenage in the late 40s and 50s.
*Was it all really kicked off by Little Richard’s Tutti Frutti?
*We chart the rise of youth culture on both sides of the Iron Curtain and debate that while ‘all you need is love’, ‘you can’t always get what you want’ as we trace countercult...
2022-09-121h 00
Bureau of Lost CultureThe Low Down LA Life of Tom Waits*Musician and actor TOM WAITS is one of the great countercultural artists of our time, His '70s albums documented low life America in an LA that no longer exists
*Filmmaker Alex Harvey, author of 'Song Noir: Tom Waits and the Spirit of Los Angeles’ comes to the Bureau to tell how Waits mined a rich seam of the city’s low-life locations and characters, letting the place feed his dark imagination.
*We hear how Tom blended real life with the mythic, turning autobiographical details into songs that were both romantic and disturbing - and created a vision of LA as the wa...
2022-08-2951 min
Bureau of Lost CultureSowing the Seeds of Love*Timothy Leary may have wanted to cause a revolution your head with LSD, The Beatles in your heart with Love, but countercultural activist and entrepreneur CRAIG SAMS went for the Gut.
*After bringing himself back from death’s door by curing the amoebic dysentery and hepatitis he contracted on the Central Asia hippie trail, he embarked on a mission to change the world and raise consciousness through food.
*We sit down with him for a feast of of fabulous food fables from feeding the freaks at The UFO club and the first Glastonbury festival, to co-founding Seed, London's first macrobiotic resta...
2022-08-1553 min
Bureau of Lost CultureThe Birth of the Asian Underground*DJ and broadcaster BOBBY FRICTION drops by the Bureau to tell the tale of how, in the early 90s, a bunch of British kids from immigrant families ripped it up, mixing their traditional musical roots with drum and bass, electronic beats and urban sounds to form a new countercultural genre all their own - the Asian Underground.
*We hear how the scene was a kind of counterpart to the way Western counterculture adapted and was inspired by Eastern mysticism and culture.
*It's a rollicking personal tale by Bobby who was there at the beginning and who has been championing the sce...
2022-08-011h 05
Bureau of Lost CultureAlan Moore on Counterculture*He is widely recognised as one of the best comic book writers in the English language with works like From Hell, Watchmen, V for Vendetta, Killing Joke, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and Swamp Thing. He's the author of modern literary classics, including Jerusalem, a 1,266-page experimental epic novel, that have led to his legendary status and critical acclaim.
*He is also an occultist, a ceremonial magician and an anarchist.
*ALAN MOORE beamed into the Bureau for a conversation about counterculture - in his own life and work, in the past, the present and in the future.
*We also dig deep...
2022-07-1844 min
Bureau of Lost CultureBirth, Death - and FrestoniaThe People's Republic of Frestonia, a countercultural micronation, was formed in three streets in North Kensington in the heady years of late seventies London.
*Long before the Occupy movement, a group of squatters, radicals, artists and activists decided to fight back against a local authority bent on evicting them from their homes and declared the area independent of the UK. Drawing huge media interest, some derision and lot of goodwill, they had their own passports, stamps and theatre and even applied to join the United Nations.
One of them, the psychotherapist Josefine Speyer, Frestonia's minister of Culture, comes to visit th...
2022-07-0459 min
Bureau of Lost CultureWomen, Sex, CountercultureThe Sexual Revolution? Yes. Liberation? Maybe. Penis Envy? NO!
*Youth culture in the sixties was progressive in so many ways but when it came to the relations between the sexes, it was perhaps much more traditional than it liked to admit.
*Sleeping around, Syd Barret, Pink Floyd, Groupies, Frigidity, the Pill, abortion, Oz magazine and of course The Female Eunuch make their appearance as we dig deep into what it was like growing up as a young woman in the underground scene of swinging sixties London.
*Author Jill Drower, once a member of The Exploding Galaxy experimental dance commune returns to t...
2022-06-2059 min
Bureau of Lost CultureCity of the Beast: Aleister Crowley’s London*We take a creep through dimly lit London streets populated with prostitutes, bohemians, charlatans, junkies, spiritualists, drunkards and lost souls following magician, author, occultist and drug fiend ALEISTER CROWLEY,'The Great Beast’, as he prowls Piccadilly in pursuit of pleasure, power and yet more prostitutes.
*'Do What Though Wilt shall be the whole of the law’
*Our guide is Phil Baker, author of ‘City of The Beast’, part Crowley biography, part psychogeographic odyssey and part London gazetteer. We seek the man beneath the myth, the flaneur beneath the fiend and ask why do many still find the often deplorable Crowley so intrigui...
2022-06-0557 min
Bureau of Lost CultureOn the Farm with Allen Ginsberg*In 1969, the poet, Beat generation godfather, countercultural guru and political activist ALLEN GINSBERG bought a farm in upstate New York to provide a creative hub and rehab refuge for his friends - a collection of poets, artists, washed-up drunks, strung-out junkies, ne’er do wells and exhausted underground figures, all reeling after the intensity of the 60s.
*One, his lifelong friend and biographer Barry Miles, chronicler of the counterculture, returns to the Bureau to tell of a bucolic summer he spent with Ginsberg and an assortment of crazy characters on the farm, archiving the poet's vast collection of tape recordings.
*We a...
2022-05-231h 00
Bureau of Lost CultureAlbion Dreaming - A Brief Trip Through the History of British LSD*Experimental treatment of the insane, secret tests by MI5 with volunteers thinking they were helping find a cure for the common cold, Cold War weapon research by the Ministry of defence on unsuspecting troops - the early history of LSD in the UK was rather inauspicious.
*And then all hell - or heaven - broke loose..
*Britain's foremost psychedelic historian ANDY ROBERTS returns to the Bureau to take us on a trip through the revolutions in the head caused by Acid from the 1950s to now.
*Along the way we meet some of the characters who experimented, manufactured, dealt, swallowed and...
2022-05-091h 00
Bureau of Lost CultureOn the Road ... with Johnny Marr* From Colin Wilson to Tony Wilson, Patti Smith to Mark E Smith, what was it like coming of age in the counterculture of Manchester in the 60s, 70s and 80s?
* Johnny Marr has just released his latest record and his band's on tour with Blondie. He's worked with Billie Eilish on the Academy award winning theme for the Bond blockbuster No Time to Die and with all sorts of other artists including Hans Zimmer, Modest Mouse, The The and The Pretenders.
* He’s had chart hits with Electronic, and, oh yeah, he co-piloted one of the best loved and influential Briti...
2022-04-241h 05
Our Stars in Stripes and Maple SyrupShrewsbury - Stephen CoatesThis week we are joined by Taiwan (and part time San Francisco) resident Stephen Coates to talk about all things Sunderland and general banter about the lads. Apologies in advance for the key dilemma halfway through although it does lead to an interesting story from Stephen.
2022-04-181h 08
Bureau of Lost CultureThe Life and Times of Dubmeister Dennis Bovell* He stepped off a plane from Barbados onto a wet and windy runway at Heathrow airport in 1965 aged 12.
* Now he’s a DJ, multi-instrumentalist and producer of hundreds of records spanning reggae, lovers rock, soul, dub, punk and pop.
* Dennis Bovell's life in music is populated by a countercultural cornucopia of artists as wide ranging as Linton Kwesi Johnson, The Slits, Madness, Bananarama, the Pop Group, Fela Kuti, Orange Juice, Marvin Gaye, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Dexy’s Midnight Runners and most recently, Radiohead, The Animal Collective and Spoon.
* He's even got an MBE.
* We dig into all that...
2022-04-111h 01
Bureau of Lost CultureThe Exploding Galaxy
* In 1967 and and 1968, an ordinary north London house contained an Exploding Galaxy - a psychedelic commune and carnival of theatrical performers, artists and performance poets bent on transforming the city through spontaneous happenings, countercultural interventions and street activism..
* One of them was only 15 years old. Now all grown up, JILL DROWER comes to the Bureau to talk about her time at 99 Balls Pond Road as a Galaxy member - how the whole crazy endeavour came about - and how it exploded into and out of existence
Alson the way we visit The UFO club, The 14 Hour Technicolour Dream, hear about ‘scrudg...
2022-03-2800 min
Bureau of Lost CultureA Countercultural History of Camden Town* Withnail and I, Poets, Spiritualists, Irish, Spanish and Hugenot immigrants, Serial Killers, Artists, Railway workers, William Blake, Rimbaud and Verlaine, Walter Sickert, Sex, Drugs, Rock’n’Roll, Music Hall, Folk, Britpop, Levitation, The Roundhouse, Cecil Sharp House, The New Jerusalem, Markets, Markets, Markets..
* Writer, researcher and walker of Lost Rivers Tom Bolton leads us up and out of The Bureau to wander through the streets and stories of the London Borough of Camden - for decades, the down and dirty end of the countercultural city - in search of the strange spirits that still pervade its highways and byways.
* For more on...
2022-03-1359 min
Bureau of Lost CultureCountercultural Broadcasting: Urban Pirate Radio
* Ninja Tune head honcho and Coldcut co-pirate Jonathan More returns to the Bureau to talk about his adventures hi-jinxing and hi-jacking the airwaves in the Wild West of South London.
* For the second in our trilogy on illicit broadcasting, we hear tales of DJ derring-do during the birth Of Kiss Fm, once one of the coolest of the urban pirate radio stations and its transition to the commercial mainstream.
* And in the mix, we debate how the mainstream is dependent on the underground, the culture feeds on the counterculture, and along the way go...
2022-02-2700 min
Bureau of Lost CultureThe Man Who Drilled a Hole in his Head
Cannabis, psilocybin, mescaline and LSD were not enough to fulfil Joey Mellen’s quest to expand his consciousness to the furthest limits 'in search of the miraculous'. So in 1968 he used an electric drill to self-trepan himself by boring a hole into his skull.
Now a delightful and very lively 82, Joey visits the Bureau to tell how an upper middle class English public schoolboy tuned in, turned on and dropped out, became a psychonautic beatnik and carried out the act of self surgery that made him infamous in countercultural London. Along the way we dig deep into acid evangelism, how to avo...
2022-02-1358 min
Bureau of Lost CultureA Soundtrack for a City
The last violet seller in Piccadilly Circus, the Canvey Island Oil refinery, the bascule chamber of Tower Bridge, the song of The Muffin Man. In the twelve years before his early death in 2021, Ian Rawes engaged in a Quixotic endeavour to capture - and collect - the sound of London.
With over 2000 field recordings, historical audio pieces, sound maps, writings and images, The London Sound Survey he created is an idiosyncratic but wonderfully accessible, evocative and often arresting series of sonic snapshots that aim to track a changing city.
Tony Herrington of The Wire magazine comes to the Bureau to remember Ia...
2022-01-3054 min
The Women in Vinyl PodcastEpisode 22 - Stephen Coates, X-Ray RecordsIn our first interview episode of the year, we’re joined by the amazing Stephen Coates, who has been researching, documenting and sharing the history of our favorite oddities in the record world, X-Ray Records. He is a music arts producer and archeologist of forgotten stories. We were lucky to be able to carve out some time with Stephen, live from the wilds of Northern Scotland, to learn more about these special and historical pieces. We talk about our connection with music, how it is viewed from one country to another, felt between cultures and classes, and how th...
2022-01-2649 min
Bureau of Lost CultureThe Lives and Times of Michael Moorcock - Part 1
Multi-award winning writer, musician, editor, essayist and inventor of the multiverse, Michael Moorcock, beams into the Bureau for the first episode exploring his deeply countercultural life in literature and London
It’s an action-packed hour involving The Beats, William Burroughs, Soho, J G Ballard, Tarzan, Conan the Barbarian, anarchists, a Rolls Royce, myth, skiffle, fanzines, comics and books, books books.
We hear how a precocious teenage Michael sets out on a career that led to the writing of over a hundred books and the creation of the well-loved characters including Elric and Jerry Cornelius who inhabit them, and we hear a revelat...
2022-01-1859 minBureau of Lost CultureThe Lost World of The Self-Made RecordWe revisit the wonderfully odd, lost culture of the coin-operated machines that allowed ordinary people to make a record of their voice long before the advent of tape or digital recording.(Jack White has been using one, The Voice O Graph, more recently to produce terrific lo- fi caught-in-the-moment records, including an album with Neil Young).
We are joined by oral historian and broadcaster Alan Dein to hear a selection of recordings of strange, moving ghostly voices from his collection and learn how the records were used to send messages home from the war, record visits to tourist destinations or t...
2022-01-0200 minBureau of Lost CultureMs. Freedom: From Counterculture to Counter-coutureDIANA CRAWSHAW's countercultural journey took her from a small north Yorkshire town to the centre of swinging London and the glamour of St Tropez; from selling, designing and making clothes in 60s London's hippest boutiques Lord Kitchener's Valet, Mr Freedom and Paradise Garage,to reading palms at the Holland Park office of Richard Branson.
One of our most modest and delightful guests, Diana tells tales of her times with the designers that dressed the great the good and the glitterati, including David Hockney, Picasso, Rock Hudson, The Beatles, Elton John and Freddie Mercury. We hear how she set out to find...
2021-12-191h 00Bureau of Lost CultureThe Countercultural World of Iain SinclairWriter, film maker, poet, flaneur, metropolitan shaman, curator of lost cultures, beat aficionado, and underground poet Iain Sinclair takes us on a walk through his life in the counterculture.
We have brief encounters with Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, Alan Moore, Michael Moorcock, Peter Ackroyd, J.G.Ballard and Nicholas Hawksmoor as we hear tales of the poetry underground, life working as a Hackney council gardener, blacklegging in the London docks, cigars in Clerkenwell, an epic ancestral journey from Leadenhall Market to Peru, DIY-publishing, writing, writing, writing, and of course The City, as we circle towards hearing Iain reading selections from Lud Heat...
2021-12-0559 minBureau of Lost CultureBlondie, The Bowery and The Blank Generation
Gary Lachman, the original bass player of Blondie (as Gary Valentine), returns to the Bureau to tell of his time in the New York underground music scene of the 1970s.
Now the UK’s foremost writer on the esoteric, with 24 books under his belt including works on Aleister, Crowley, Jung, Gurdjieff, Magick and the occult, Gary was once deep in the heart of New York's 'Blank Generation'.
We hear about living with Debbie Harry and Chris Stein in a loft on The Bowery, playing CBGB and Gotham's underground clubs, hanging with The Ramones and Patti Smith, touring with Television and Iggy P...
2021-11-2159 min
Bureau of Lost CultureRaving Upon Thames
Soho and Chelsea have always been hailed as the epicentres of swinging London.
But there was a third, and now rather forgotten place which gave birth to The Cool - a place that was the home to one of the most influential jazz clubs of the 50s before providing a launchpad for The Rolling Stones and the bourgeoning British R+B and psychedelic scenes of the 60s. It was a place that went onto to host an extraordinary roster of artists including Cream, The Yardbirds, pre-Bowie David Jones, Pink Floyd, Black Sabbath, Jimmy Page, Genesis, Yes and many, many others be...
2021-11-0851 min
Bureau of Lost CultureThe Art and Craftiness of Sampling
Jon More, one half of cut-and-paste collage kings Coldcut and co-founder with Matt Black of Ninja Tune record label, joins turntablist, crate digger Strictly Kev of DJ Food as we dig deep into the wild and wonky world of sampling - the borrowing, plundering, adapting and re-imagining of existing audio, songs and sounds to create new audio, songs and sounds.
Sampling might have started off as a countercultural underground cut-and-paste technique used by experimental artists but it ended up powering a huge amount of hip-hop tunes and some very big hit records.
We hear some of Jon and Kev's favourite samp...
2021-10-2559 min
Bureau of Lost CultureThe Rise and Fall of the Bootleg RecordThe bootleg record was a phenomena that emerged in the heady days of the late 60s and survived to the early 80s - a kind of countercultural entrepreneurial activity that was rendered completely obsolete by the internet. Bootleggers, often a cross between music fans and black marketeers, were practitioners of ‘disorganised crime’ distributing music illicitly on vinyl, cassette and cd whilst being pursued by record labels around the world from Compton to Camden.
In this episode (a reboot of a Soho Radio show from 2018), we are joined by cultural commentator and lover of all things vinyl, Travis Elborough, to dig d...
2021-10-1259 min
Bureau of Lost CultureWomen Against The BombForty years ago, in the late summer of 1981, a group of women walked from Wales for over a hundred miles carrying a hand-made banner proclaiming their protest against American nuclear cruise missiles that were to be sationed in the UK. Their march to the US military base at Greenham Common led to the establishment of a camp that, for nearly two decades, drew women from all over the world to make their voices heard in the name of peace - and inspired fellow protestors internationally
Artist, activist and banner maker Thalia Cambpell one of the original marchers and fo...
2021-10-0451 min
Bureau of Lost CultureChild of the CountercultureA Zelig, a holy fool, a trickster, a black magician, a sociopath, a charlatan, a genius, a fabulist, a junkie, an alcoholic, a secret agent, a police informer, a disruptor, an often loveable preacher of Love who didn't actually seem to know what it meant?
LSD evangelist Michael Hollingshead might or might not have been all of these, but he was certainly a father.
What is it like to be the child of such a person?
Comedian Vanessa Hollingshead and writer Jeannie Hilton tell the dark and intense story of Vanessa’s tumultuous life...
2021-09-1300 min
Bureau of Lost CultureWilliam Burroughs and FriendsThe ghosts of William Burroughs, Jack Kerouac, Alan Ginsberg, John Giorno and Bob Cobbing make an appearance at the Bureau - as curator Steve Cleary plays us a selection of super rare recordings from the British Library Sound Archive.
The Archive is one of the biggest curated resources of audio in the world and includes over 1 million discs, 185,000 tapes, and many other sound and video recordings from around the globe Steve takes us on a wander through its unparalleled counterculture collection.
We also hear from the capital's foremost chronicler of the counterculture, Barry Miles, on Burroughs' life in London - along with...
2021-08-2959 min
Bureau of Lost CultureStories and Sounds of Central AsiaBird markets, sacred springs, border crossings, silk weavers, street drummers, games with headless goats, anti-aircraft rockets, courtyard songs and refugee choirs..
Documentary maker Monica Whitlock returns to the Bureau to paint an evocative sonic picture of the people and places she encountered whilst working in Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Afghanistan as the BBC’s foreign correspondent for Central Asia.
We hear some of the extraordinary archive of field recordings, conversations and music she collected whilst living and travelling in Tashkent, Samarkand and Andujan and while crossing the borders between a family of ancient states. And we learn something of these regions wi...
2021-08-1955 min
Bureau of Lost CultureThe Lost World of Pirate Radio - Part OnePIRATE RADIO first erupted in the UK in the early 1960s when stations such as Radio Caroline and Radio London started to broadcast from ships moored offshore or disused WW2 forts in the north sea. They were set up by wildcat entrepreneurs and music enthusiasts to meet the growing demand for the pop, rock and underground music not catered for by the BBC who had a monopoly on the airwaves.
Music writer ROB CHAPMAN returns to the Bureau to tell the story of this first golden age of illicit broadcasting. We hear of the extraordinary life of pirate-in-chie...
2021-08-021h 00
Bureau of Lost CultureThe Acid Techno Squat PartyIn these days of constantly CCTV-surveilled, property over-developed London patrolled by health and safety wonks and paranoid private security forces, the wild world of the inner city squat party seems an impossibility.
DJ, veteran of a thousand festivals and squat party promoter WILL WILES comes to the Bureau to tell tales of acid house daring do, breaking into a variety of buildings (including Newcastle's 19th century Tyne Bridge), rigging up electricity and lights and installing sound systems for DJs to thrill and delight a community of underground ravers dusk 'til dawn before vanishing again on Monday morning.
We hear of cook...
2021-07-1958 min
Bureau of Lost CultureCancelled! The Counterculture of IdeasForbidden! Taboo! Shouldn’t be allowed!
Do you ever find yourself censoring yourself? Not saying quite what you think, feel or believe in case it is disapproved of?
Human rights lawyer ERIC BERKOWITZ comes to the Bureau to talk about his epic new book 'Dangerous Ideas: A History of Censorship from Ancient Times to Fake News.
It's a thrilling read, full of sometimes comical, often alarming and always thought-provoking human stories - from that of the ancient Chinese emperor who destroyed any works implying there had ever been a better era than his own, to the current Chinese leader's attempts to hav...
2021-07-0659 minBureau of Lost CultureThe Life and Times of a Foreign CorrespondentThe Cold War is ending, the Soviet Empire is crumbling.
In Central Asia, new countries are being born - or built - in the ruins: Kazakstan, Krygystan, Tajakstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan.
Allegiances and borders are shifting, overshadowed by the ghosts of ancient kingdoms. Exciting times. New histories in the making. And it all needs reporting.
Documentary maker MONICA WHITLOCK visits the Bureau to tell tales of her times as the Central Asian foreign correspondent for the BBC.
And what tales they are: lost treasure; Polish cemeteries in the Uzbek desert; tiny paintings on matchboxes smuggled from gulags; state murder and a last...
2021-06-2259 minBureau of Lost CultureLondon’s Lost World of Yiddisher JazzLondon’s East End and Soho were the centres of a unique musical culture in the years between the 20s and the 50s.
Award wining oral historian and radio producer ALAN DEIN returns to the Bureau to tell stories of songs that soundtracked that world and feature on ‘Music is the Most Beautiful Language in the World', the album of super rare tunes by London jewish jazz artists he has unearthed.
We hear tales of poverty and glamour, Soho gangsters, ghettos, vaudeville swing, comedy, cuisine and cabaret - and of some of the musicians who escaped the squalid streets of Whitec...
2021-06-071h 00Bureau of Lost CultureThe UFO ClubJournalist and counterculture commentator Peter Watts joins us to talk about The UFO Club, the massively influential short-lived London club of the late 1960s established by Joe Boyd and John "Hoppy” Hopkins.
It featured light shows, poetry readings, avant-garde art by Yoko Ono and many rock acts (Pink Floyd, Jimi Hendrix, Procul Harem) who later became massive.
For a brief two year period, it acted as the epicentre of the whirligig of summer of love underground London with a 'who's who of the counterculture' guest list and set the standards for psychedelic fashion and design....
2021-05-271h 00Bureau of Lost CultureThe English Underground with Nick Laird Clowes - Part 2We return for Part 2 of a trip through the English Underground scene of the 1960s and 1970s led by musician and pied piper Nick Laird Clowes of The Dream Academy.
Nick tells of his extraordinary youth deeply immersed in the political, musical and alternative scenes of West London. We hear about meeting Iggy Pop in a toilet, Nick Drake's guitar, the demise of Syd Barrett and dinner with Andy Warhol amongst many other terrific tales of living the countercultural life.
For more on the Bureau of Lost Culture
www.bureauoflostculture.com
For...
2021-05-2756 minBureau of Lost CultureThe English Underground with Nick Laird Clowes - Part 1We take a romp through the underground alternative and music scene of the 1960s in the first half of a two part episode. Our guide is musician and Nick Laird Clowes who regales us with stories of running away to the Isle of Wight festival, dj-ing at The Roundhouse, meeting John Lennon amongst many countercultural characters of the day and much, much more.
All this before an age when most of us had even smoked a cigarette - and all before his days of pop stardom with The Dream Academy.
For more on the...
2021-05-271h 02Bureau of Lost CultureTales from The Flamingo Club
Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, Billie Holiday Dizzy Gillespie, Rod Stewart, Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett, Eric Clapton, the Moody Blues, Mick Fleetwood, Pink Floyd, Georgie Fame, Ginger Baker, Long John Baldry, the Small Faces … the roll call of those who played in the Soho basement called The Flamingo is a who's who of 50s and 60s cool.
Journalist and author Pete Watts takes us on a trip through time and down the stairs of 33 Wardour Street to hear stories of one of London's most important lost and legendary venues.
We hear how the Flamingo was hugely influential on up and coming musical stars of...
2021-05-2751 minBureau of Lost CultureComics, Drugs and Rock 'n' RollHe has published Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, Robert Crumb, J G Ballard, Hunt Emerson, Eddie Campbell, Brian Bolland, Dave McKean, Martin Rowson and Melinda Gebbie amongst others.
His publishing house Knockabout Comics has put out books on marijuana, magic mushrooms and many other aspects of alternative living from West Wales to Ladbroke Grove. And he's fought the law (though the law has frequently won).
With special guest DJ Food / Kev Foakes, we flick through the pages of the countercultural life of Tony Bennett hearing tales from the wild world of underground publishing, radical bookshops, obscenity trials, cens...
2021-05-2358 minBureau of Lost CultureBlinded by The Light - A Countercultural History of Spectacles
What do Morrissey, Dorothy Parker, Le Corbusier, Harold Lloyd, Janis Joplin, Andy Warhol, Alan Ginsberg, Michael Caine, Gloria Steinem, Buddy Holly, John Lennon, Jarvis Cocker have in common?
Like around 65% of the British population they needed some sort of vision correction - aka glasses.
Writer and cultural commentator Travis Elborough returns to the Bureau to talk about his forthcoming book: 'Through the Looking Glasses: The Spectacular Life of Spectacles’ (Little Brown).
We take a long look at the wonderful and wonky world of glasses from the Middle Ages to the present - along with a cast of spec. wearing monks, artisa...
2021-05-1100 min
London beyond time and placeTime, space and London myths with Stephen Coates - 14 - Talks beyond time and placeTALKS BEYOND TIME AND PLACE – EPISODE 14: STEPHEN COATESStephen Coates is a composer and music producer, a broadcaster and writer, a lover of London and rare stories that move people. He is also the founder of the London band THE REAL TUESDAY WELD and he composed scores for documentaries, TV shows, short films, animations, art installations and commercial spots. He is also the founder of the arts company Antique Beat and is known as "The Clerkenwell Kid".THE CLERKENWELL KIDIn episode 14 of "Talks beyond time and place", the legendary Stephen Coates and I talk about travelling through time and space in Lo...
2021-05-051h 09
Spoken LabelStephen Coates (The Real Tuesday Weld) (Spoken Label, May 2021)Latest Spoken Label session features Stephen Coates from the wonderful The Real Tuesday Weld talking about their new album 'Blood',
the first in a final trilogy of new albums that the band will be releasing throughout 2021 into 2022.
Stephen Coates formed The Real Tuesday Weld in 2001 (after a dream of the actress Tuesday Weld) pioneering a style he dubbed 'Antique Beat',
a combination of old jazz sounds and electronics that was to influence the emerging electro-swing scene. Reluctant scene-joiners themselves,
the band run their own label, working with writers, animators and filmmakers and...
2021-05-0329 min
The Counterforce with Aug StoneEPISODE 43 - STEPHEN COATESAug Stone goes over the long and interesting career of The Real Tuesday Weld with Stephen Coates as he brings things to a close with a trio of final albums
https://therealtuesdayweld.com/home
https://www.facebook.com/therealtuesdayweld
https://twitter.com/realtuesdayweld
https://www.instagram.com/realtuesdayweld/
2021-05-011h 01Bureau of Lost CultureHow the Beatles Rocked the Kremlin
Cold War Spy meets The Fab Four in the USSR
When Leslie Woodhead was asked by Granada TV to film a new young music group in a club in Liverpool in 1962, he had no idea what he was in for - and neither had the rest of the world. He was witnessing the birth of a phenomenon that was about to have a huge impact on both the culture and the counterculture. But by then he had already had another extraordinary experience - serving a stint as a cold war spy, learning Russian on a remote Scottish pig farm and s...
2021-04-2559 minBureau of Lost CultureNICO - You are Beautiful and You are Alone
She was a singer, songwriter, musician, muse, model, actress and artist. She had roles in several films, including Fellini's La Dolce Vita and Andy Warhol's Chelsea Girls, fronted The Velvet Underground, made many albums solo and toured for over two decades. She inspired many other artists including Bjork, Siousxie, Iggy Pop and Morrissey. Yet NICO’s life has often been reduced to a series of myths about junkiedom, decay, difficult behaviour and wasted talent.
Rock ’n’ Roll historian Jennifer Otter Bickerdike comes to the Bureau to set matters straight and talk about her upcoming book 'You Are Beautiful and You Are Alone: Th...
2021-04-1259 minBureau of Lost CultureSkinhead: The Counter-Counterculture
Beatniks, Bootboys, Black GIs; Suedehead, Ska, Subculture; Rude Boys, Reggae, Racism; Football Hooliganism and Fashion.
Artist, film maker, writer and activist STEWART HOME comes into the Bureau to talk about Skinhead, an enduring subculture that generally gets left out of the countercultural history.
We also dip into overlapping areas of mod, punk, politics, northern soul, two tone - and doctor marten boots - as we explore the complex contradictions, roots and evolution of Skin style.
For more on Stewart Home and his work
https://www.stewarthomesociety.org
For more on Bureau of Lost Culture
www.bureauoflostculture.com
2021-04-0159 minBureau of Lost CultureMemories of a Free Festival
"The Sun Machine is Coming Down and We’re Gonna Have a Party"
CHRIS TOFU artistic director of Continental Drifts, lies down on the Bureau’s couch for a session of psycho(delic)analysis. We take a rambling trip through the British free festival scene of the 70s, 80s and 90s - with deviations into the lost worlds of Europe’s squatting scene, the new age travellers and guerilla gigs. And we hear about Chris’s crazy countercultural life getting lost at Stonehenge as a wide-eyed 15 year old from Devon, being 'Bez’ in anarcho-punk-celtic-squattng band Tofu Love Frogs and gigging in a thousand...
2021-02-2859 minBureau of Lost CultureThe Legend, Legacy and Lyrics of Syd Barrett
The story of SYD BARRETT, the doomed original founder of Pink Floyd has fascinated, obsessed and mystified generations of fans for decades.
The tragic trajectory of the psychedelic poster boy who had it all and ’lost it’ has all the hallmarks of an icarus myth. Yet, as our guest writer ROB CHAPMAN tells us, the myth has totally eclipsed the man, the legend obscured the legacy. Rob's 2010 biography ‘A Very Irregular Head’ - the first to be authorised by Syd's family - set out to right the balance, to tell the human truths about a tragic but talented artist.
Rob joins us to...
2021-02-151h 00Bureau of Lost CultureThe Lost History of Skiffle - with Billy Bragg
BILLY BRAGG pays a visit to the Bureau to lead us on an extraordinary whirlwind tour through the music that the counterculture forgot.
Along the way we hear about the emergence of The Teenager in post-war Britain, the massive impact of Rock Around the Clock, the Soho espresso bar culture of the 50s and the birth of British youth culture.
We explore why Skiffle, which soundtracked that youth culture for a few intense years and was the inspiration for musicians in The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, The Who and The Rolling Stones, has been oddly forgotten. And Billy explains why, as the...
2021-02-0259 minBureau of Lost CultureSoviet HippiesForget California, swinging sixties London or the Paris riots for a moment, Estonian filmmaker Terje Toomistu joins us to talk about the hippie movement of the Soviet Union.
It had all the characteristics of Western hippiedom: long hair, groovy music, esoteric spirituality and drugs. The only thing missing perhaps was the radical public politics that would have pushed the repressive Soviet authorities into drastic, brutal action
Terji’s film, with its super groovy soundtrack of rare tunes, provides a fascinating glimpse into a moving, daring subculture that flourished east of the Iron Curtain.
More ab...
2021-02-011h 01Bureau of Lost CultureThe Roxy Club -100 Nights of Punk Madness45 years ago, two working class South Londoners took over a decrepit seedy gay bar in Neal Street, then a rather desolate and deserted part of central London. At a time when the Sex Pistols’ Anarchy in the UK antics had resulted in a virtual blanket ban on venues hosting anything associated with the word ’Punk’, they provided a home for an astonishing array of bands including The Clash, The Police, The Jam, Wire, XTC, The Damned, Generation X, The Stranglers, Siouxie and the Banshees and many, many more. Their tenure lasted for just 100 intense, crazed nights before they were kicked out, b...
2021-01-1759 minBureau of Lost CultureDays of the Underground: The Life and Times of Hawkwind
Hawkwind: Never in fashion but never out of it, piratical pagan proto-punks, avatars of the underground, figureheads of the free festival scene, innovative heralds of the rave generation, cosmic space rockers with street fighter spirit - there is no one like them.
We meet with Joe Banks author of “Hawkwind: Days Of The Underground – Radical Escapism In The Age Of Paranoia” (Strange Attractor Press) to explore the story of a much loved band that have gradually come to win the respect of many of the most cynical of critics - perhaps partly just by virtue of still being around, but mainly by...
2021-01-0359 minBureau of Lost CultureThe British Folk Underground - with Stephen Duffy
Various musicians have started out in the underground and left it behind for commercial mainstream success. Few have deliberately taken the opposite route back into the counterculture - and rarely as repeatedly as our guest Stephen Duffy.
Stephen formed, and left, Duran Duran, had chart success in both the 80s and the 90s as a solo artist and then again in the 00s as songwriter / producer for Robbie Williams - with whom he toured the enormodromes of the world. But each time, he turned around and returned to the folk underground roots of his early inspirations with his band The Lil...
2020-12-2159 min
Bureau of Lost CultureWhich One’s Pink? Managing the Counterculture
One afternoon in the mid 1960s, Pete Jenner left off marking exam papers at the London School of Economics and popped into the Marquee club. There was a band playing, They changed his life - and he changed theirs.
Pete enters the Bureau of Lost Culture to tell us about discovering The Pink Floyd, the band he and Andrew King guided from darlings of the underground to early commercial success.
But that was just the beginning. We hear about Pete' early life as the son of a radical vicar and how politics and music blended in his involvement in the earl...
2020-12-0158 min
Bureau of Lost CultureRebel Threads: Dressing the Counterculture
ROGER BURTON started out working on a farm and ended up running a Horse Hospital. No, he’s not a vet but has spent most of his life clothing, collecting and curating the counterculture. Along the way, he has designed shops for Vivienne Westwood and Malcolm McLaren, provided the clothes for Quadrophenia, and Absolute Beginners, dressed the New Romantics, styled 100s of pop videos and given a leg up to many fringe artists (inc. me).
We dig deep into Rebel Threads, his amazing book and collection of youth culture clothing from the 1920s - 1980s, hear about the birth of Mod...
2020-11-1759 minBureau of Lost CultureDays in the Life: The Language of Counterculture
Chick.Trip.Dope, Pad. Heavy. Cool. Scene. Man. Beat. Freak. Weed. Bang. Square. Blast. Cat. Gas!
In an action packed episode, we spend a Soho afternoon with 'Mr Slang’ Jonathon Green discussing his amazing life in the counterculture, writing for Rolling Stone and the underground magazines including IT, OZ and Friends.
Then we dig deep into his ground breaking catalogue of the counterculture: ‘Days in the Life: Voices from the English Underground' with its interviews of over a hundred figures involved in the counterculture including Paul McCartney, Barry Miles and Jenny Fabian.
And, as Jonathon is our foremost lexicographer of slang, he tak...
2020-11-0159 minBureau of Lost CultureTonite Let's All Make Love in London: The Films of Peter Whitehead
Peter Whitehead was an innovative English writer and filmmaker who documented the counterculture in London and New York in the late 1960s.
His film Wholly Communion captured The International Poetry Incarnation, a groundbreaking event at The Royal Albert Hall in 1965 that was to prove pivotal in the evolution of the underground scene. The film featured poetry readings by Beat poets including Allen Ginsberg, Michael Horovitz, Adrian Mitchell and Lawrence Ferlinghetti and established Whitehead as the London counterculture’s 'Man With a Movie Camera’.
Film event producer Marek Pytel walks us through Whtehead's life and work including the iconic 'Tonite Let's All Make Love i...
2020-10-1952 minBureau of Lost CultureThe Mysteries of T. C. Lethbridge
One our foremost living writers on the esoteric, Gary Lachman, enters the Bureau purportedly to talk about one of our most important, if rather forgotten, dead writers on the esoteric, T C Lethbridge.
We do get around to exploring Lethbridges's various incarnations as a rogue psychic archaeologist, dowser and parapsychologist but only after some serious digressions into Gary’s various incarnations including his time playing bass for Blondie in mid 70s New York. We hear how he was escorted out of David Bowie’s loft apartment by two glamorous bodyguards after a disagreement over Lethbridge, delve into the meaning of ‘Countercu...
2020-10-1358 minBureau of Lost CultureHelter Skelter: Charles Manson and the CIA
Journalist Tom O Neill, author of 'Chaos: Charles Manson, the CIA and the Secret History of the Sixties’, joins us to reveal the truths, untruths, secrets and conspiracies behind the most famous crime of the 60s.
The Tate-Labianca murders and the subsequent trial of 'The Manson Family' were among the events that marked the turning of the countercultural tide and the darkening of the hippy dream.
Tom tells how a straightforward 1999 magazine commission to write an anniversary piece on the murders turned into a 20 year investigative odyssey that revealed a devastating story of corruption, deception, lying and abuse - and that w...
2020-10-0758 minBureau of Lost CultureThe Divine Rascal - Hollingshead Pt.2
We return for the second part of our trip through the terrific, tortuous and terrible times of Michael Hollings(acid)head with psychedelic historian Andy Roberts.
We reconnect with Hollingshead as he is returning to England to set up the London Psychedelic Centre in Chelsea. He has introduced Timothy Leary to LSD and thus played a momentous part in the history of the counterculture in the USA.
But that was just one event in a picaresque life involving 'turning on' various celebrities including Paul McCartney, Donovon and a cold war spy, living in Scottish communes, the back-stabbing of various friends, bei...
2020-10-0755 minBureau of Lost CultureThe Man Who Turned On the World - Hollingshead Pt.1
In the first of an occasional series of broadcasts around the subject of LSD, psychedelic historian Andy Roberts takes us on the first part of a trip through the extraordinary life and times of Michael Hollingshead.
Hollingshead's assertion that he ‘turned on the world’ may be wildly immodest, but he did introduce Timothy Leary (and many others) to acid and thus played an essential role in the evolution of the counterculture in the USA and the UK.
He remains relatively forgotten - and his home town of Darlington does not figure in the topography of Acid culture - despite his tremen...
2020-09-1659 minBureau of Lost CultureBarney Bubbles: Designing the Counterculture
Writer and cultural commentator Paul Gorman takes us on an exploration of the countercultural designer Barney Bubbles. It is an extraordinary story, magic and tragic by turn.
Bubbles, who, despite his effervescent alias, was so modest that he declined to have his name included on the many extraordinary album covers he designed, has rather faded from public awareness since his untimely suicide. But he remains much admired by lovers of album cover art and has influenced a growing coterie of graphic designers.
Paul, who has championed him with a biography and three exhibitions, traces his life and work from the har...
2020-09-1655 minBureau of Lost CultureArthur Machen and The London Labyrinth
Enter the labyrinth. Perambulator and psycho-geographer Robert Kingham leads us down the twisting, turning tunnels and lost highways of the London labyrinth to meet author, mystic and cockney visionary Arthur Machen.
We explore Machen’s odd life and books - and some strange parts of the city - as we uncover the ways he was to influence the folk horror movement and countercultural cult authors H P Lovecraft and Alan Moore.
We ask:
Was Machen the first London psycho-geographer?
Did he really take a packet of currant biscuits with him on his epic perambulations through the sleeping city?
Where is the lab...
2020-09-161h 00Bureau of Lost CultureHigh Weirdness: Psychedelic Visions in 70s America‘America’s leading scholar of High Strangeness’ Dr.Erik Davis, enters the Bureau.
We hear about Erik’s career charting the highs and lows of counterculture, esoterica and psychedelia in America and meet three of the most influential radical psychedelic characters of 1970s - the writers / thinkers / lunatics Philip K Dick, Terence McKenna and Robert Anton Wilson.
Each had extraordinary mystical experiences in the heady days of early 1970 countercultures which kickstarted an incredible outpouring of radical theories, fiction, speculations, conspiracy theories and consciousness exploration.
We hear about radical politics, drugs, strange new religions, environm...
2020-09-161h 01Bureau of Lost CultureThe Secret History of MescalineMike Jay, the UK’s foremost historian of psychoactive plants, joins us to talk about the deeply strange hallucinogen/drug/medicine/sacrament mescaline - a substance derived from the peyote cactus.
Whilst other psychedelic compounds are more popular - and much more in the news - Mike tells us why mescaline was actually the very first psychedelic.
We hear strange stories of drug use in 19th century London, Native American medicine ceremonies - and Bovril..
For more on the Bureau of Lost Culture
www.bureauoflostculture.com
More about Mike's wo...
2020-09-161h 00
Bureau of Lost CultureThe History of the Self - Made RecordWe are joined by oral historian and broadcaster Alan Dein.
We discuss the history, culture and technology of the coin-operated machines that allowed ordinary people to make a record of themselves in the West (and, in adapted bootlegged form, to create records of forbidden music in the Soviet Union) long before the advent of tape or digital recording.
We hear a selection of extraordinary recordings of strange, moving voices from Alan’s collection and learn how the records were used to send messages home from the war, record visits to tourist destinations or to capture th...
2020-09-1453 min
Bureau of Lost CultureThe Strange Story of Soviet Bone MusicWe tell the story of the music fans and bootleggers who ran the risks of imprisonment to defy the Soviet censor for the sake of the songs they loved.
We learn how they made records of forbidden tunes by building home-made recording machines and re-purposing x-rays illegally obtained from Soviet hospitals.
We hear how they did it with selections of music drawn from various x-ray records and hear the words of a surviving bootlegger - and we explore what it actually takes to cut music onto x-ray film.
For More on X-Ray Audio
2020-09-1400 minBureau of Lost CultureThe Soviet 'Punk Frank Zappa'We meet with film director Olivia Litchenstein and BBC Russian Arts presenter Alexander Kan to hear about the extraordinary musician Sergey Kuryokhin, ‘the Soviet Punk Frank Zappa’ who with his underground cohorts in Leningrad tried to soundtrack perestroika as the cold war crumbled around them.
Olivia tells of the strange circumstances of the making of the BBC TV series Comrades during the twilight of the Soviet Empire, with tales of tapes smuggled in diplomatic bags and a bizarre intervention by Ronald Reagan.
Alex tells of his friendship with Kuryokhin, an incredibly talented, charming musical provocateur whos...
2020-09-141h 09Bureau of Lost CultureThe Invisible Battle of the Cold War AirwavesThis Episode explore three stories of cold war era radio in the USSR: Soviet Radio Jammers, the Russian ‘Woodpecker’ and the Soviet Radio Hooligans
We meet with Russian broadcaster Vladimir Raevsky to talk about radio jamming in cold war era Soviet Union.
As East and West super powers square up to each with nuclear weapons, a parallel invisible war is being fought in the airwaves.
Hundreds of millions of dollars are spent on broadcasting propaganda and music into the Soviet Union - and on attempting to block them from being heard.
Step...
2020-09-1459 minBureau of Lost CultureThe Smallest Country in the World
For the first, and probably the last, time the bureau are joined by a member of royalty - Prince Michael of Sealand
The Principality of Sealand claims a population of 27, is around 4500 m2 and lies 7.5 miles off the coast of the UK - it is situated on a World War Two Maunsell fort and claims to be an independent sovereign state.
It is one of several micro-nations dotted around the globe and its history is an extraordinary David and Goliath narrative worthy of a Bond movie.
Sealand's ruler, Prince Michael, regales us with tales of his extraordinary father, nautical derring do a...
2020-09-1439 min
Bureau of Lost CultureA Short History of Soviet CountercultureWas counterculture possible in the oppressive, repressive circumstances of the Soviet Union?
Join us as we meet with broadcaster, author and cultural commentator Artemyi Troistsky - the 'Russian John Peel’ - to find out.
We hear some entertaining, comical, tragic, moving and frankly strange stories including tales of the ‘Stilyagi' Soviet Hipsters, the first disco in Moscow, Che Guevara and Lenin as a mushroom.
And we hear how rock music evolved in secret before breaking into the light as perestroika transformed Soviet society.
For more on Art:
https://en.wikipedia.org...
2020-09-131h 10Bureau of Lost Culture1977 - Year of PunkWe meet with writer Barry Cain, punk correspondent for Record Mirror during the incendiary years 1977 - 1979.
Barry tells of his London journey from a Kings Cross council estate to touring with the Sex Pistols, The Clash and the greatest bands of the punk generation.
We hear of early meetings with The Stranglers, Sid Vicious and John Lydon, a fantatsical financial fraud perpetrated on a transatlantic flight with The Damend’s Rat Scabies and evenings recording Malcolm McLaren’s secret memoirs
Barry Cain is journalist and author of ’77 Sulphate Strip: An Eyewitness Account of the Ye...
2020-09-131h 00Bureau of Lost CultureDrugs, Doctors and Rock 'n RollIn this episode, we meet with radical doctor Sam Hutt who ministered to countercultural London in the 1960s and with Hank Wangford, English Country and Western singer par excellence.
Sam tells us about growing up in a 1950s communist household in a posh part of London. We hear stories of sixties Soho and psychedelic marmite, about buying heroin from Boots and about prescribing cannabis for some very famous musicians.
We learn how Sam frequented underground clubs like The Flamingo, dropped acid, made one of the greatest psychedelic singles of all time, hung out with rock s...
2020-09-131h 04Bureau of Lost CultureSweat, Drums and Rock 'n Roll - with TwinkWe meet with legendary drummer and songwriter John Alder / Mohammed Abdullah, best known as Twink, who played for the In Crowd, Tomorrow, The Pink Fairies, The Pretty Things, Hawkwind, The Aquarian Age, Pink Wind and Stars - amongst others legendary acts.
One of the foremost figures of the late sixties London music scene, he tells us what it was like - from the inside.
We hear what Jimi Hendrix said to him when they jammed at The UFO club, about Syd Barrett’s tragic last gig and about a life beating out the rhythm of th...
2020-09-131h 12
Project ArchivistEp 324 X-Ray Audio With Stephen CoatesThis Week, Stephen Coates Joins us To Talk About Bone Music. In the USSR during the cold war era, the music people could listen to was ruthlessly controlled by the State. But a secret underground subculture of music lovers and bootleggers defied the censor. Incredibly, they built their own recording machines and used an extraordinary means of copying forbidden jazz, rock 'n' roll, and banned Russian music to risk making their own records. They Built Their Own Recording Machines And Used Repurposed X-Ray Plates As The Base For Strange Beautiful Discs They Sold Secretly. Closing Music For The Show...
2020-06-141h 36
The Early American Brass Band Podcast5 - Interview with Dr. Michael O’Connor: Coates Brass Band, Newberry’s Victorian Cornet BandEpisode 5 is a wide ranging conversation with Dr. Michael O’Connor, Associate Professor of Music at Palm Beach Atlantic University. Dr. O’Connor is the director of The Coates Brass Band, and a founding member of Newberry’s Victorian Cornet Band and the Washington Cornett and Sackbut Ensemble. We discuss his musical background, research of Civil War-era music, the performing groups he helped found, and the life and music of Thomas Coates.If you like the show, the best way you can support us is by becoming a patron at https://www.patreon.com/eabbpodcast. We appreciate any su...
2020-04-291h 17
The Vinyl Guide - Podcast for Record CollectorsEp020: Bootleg Records Special Part 2: Mike the Mic, Stephen Coates & X-Ray AudioIn part 2 of our 2 part series on bootleg recordings, we tell the story of Mike Millard "Mike the Mic" who recorded hundreds of bands in the 70s in Los Angeles, including Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, The Who and many more, and then interview Mr Stephen Coates of the band "The Real Tuesday Weld" who just wrote a book titled "X-Ray Audio: The Strange Story of Soviet Music On The Bone". Fascinating book, you must hear what it was like for music fans behind the iron curtain during the cold war.
If you like records, just starting a c...
2016-02-1844 minThe Vinyl Guide - Artist Interviews for Record Collectors and Music NerdsEp020: Bootleg Records Special Part 2: Mike the Mic, Stephen Coates & X-Ray AudioIn part 2 of our 2 part series on bootleg recordings, we tell the story of Mike Millard "Mike the Mic" who recorded hundreds of bands in the 70s in Los Angeles, including Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, The Who and many more, and then interview Mr Stephen Coates of the band "The Real Tuesday Weld" who just wrote a book titled "X-Ray Audio: The Strange Story of Soviet Music On The Bone". Fascinating book, you must hear what it was like for music fans behind the iron curtain during the cold war.
If you like records, just starting a c...
2016-02-1844 min