#gerald heard

[oldshowbiz]

The Vedanta Temple and its surrounding real estate was one of the original settlements in the Hollywood Hills. This meditation center with its Hindu-influenced philosophy and architecture was considered one of the most tranquil spots in town. It was discovered and embraced by novelists-turned-psychedelic pioneers Christopher Isherwood, Gerald Heard, and Aldous Huxley. 

In the early 1950s, the Hollywood freeway bisected the Vedanta Society and put a giant concrete wall right through it. Today the temple looks the same as it always did, but now freeway traffic speeds twenty feet from its front door. From the parking lot you can still get a sense of the stunning view the spot had before the freeway was created.

Some of the oldest and weirdest architectural marvels Los Angeles has to offer survive in the shadows of the Hollywood freeway. They are generally old neighborhoods that have long since turned sketchy and depraved because nobody wants to live directly beside the world’s busiest freeway. There are bad vibes on the dead end streets at the edges of the 101 - but they’re still worth exploring.

[infiniterichesinalittleroom]

Aldous Huxley, Gerald Heard and Christopher Isherwood called me one day and they wanted me to try some drugs. Huxley was experimenting with drugs for his book The Doors of Perception. They said it was all perfectly safe and they had a nurse with them. I said "Look, I don't want to try any of these drugs you're willing to offer me. I have a trapdoor up here in my head. Every day I open it and I reach in and grab one lizard and pull it out and I nail it to the typewriter! The next day I reach up and open the trapdoor and bring the lizard down and hammer it to the typewriter. I have a good relationship with my trapdoor and my lizards. I don't want you to set all the lizards free at the same moment with your drugs.

Ray Bradbury • Listen To The Echoes: The Ray Bradbury Interviews

[oldshowbiz]

In the 1950s, beatniks and jazz musicians were the first to get deeply interested in LSD. 

LSD later became well-associated with rock music and the hippies of the late sixties. 

But there’s an important fissure that linked these two eras, which is usually overlooked: 

Early 1960s surfing culture. 

For this reason, jazz music - specifically the Bop sound associated with the Beats - accompanied most surfing films before instrumental surf music became a craze.

The record industry’s first reference to LSD was a surf instrumental called LSD-25. The single was released by Pacific Jazz Records. 

Pacific Jazz was an important record label run by a cerebral acid head named Richard Bock. 

The label released dozens of important West Coast Jazz albums and did much to perpetuate the genre of Bop. They also released several spoken word LPs by early acid heads like the comedian Lord Buckley and the philosopher Gerald Heard. 

Gerald Heard turned many notable people onto LSD including Time magazine publisher Henry Luce. He and his best friend Aldous Huxley held guided LSD sessions on a tranquil Trabuca Canyon property.

Trabuca Canyon was a stone’s throw from Laguna Beach where the psychedelic surfing cult, the Brotherhood of Eternal Love, later synthesized a famous strain of acid known as Orange Sunshine.

This great bop record by Bud Shank is indicative of the West Coast Jazz sound. Released by Pacific Jazz Records, it was the soundtrack to a Bruce Brown surfing film called Barefoot Adventure.

Most people think the late 1960s hippie movement was the natural outgrowth of the 1950s Beat Generation - but the surfers of the early 1960s were the bridge between the two.

[oldshowbiz]

before the advent of hippies, the greatest adherents of recreational psychedelics were jazz musicians and surfers. It was only natural that Pacific Jazz Records would release this soundtrack LP of jazz music done for a Bruce Brown surfing film. Pacifc Jazz Records was a great record label run by an early acid head, Richard Bock, who often did psychedelics with Aldous Huxley and Gerald Heard in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Bock even released a three-LP spoken word set of Gerald Heard’s philosophy. 

[oldshowbiz]

Steve Allen did LSD with John Huston, provided by Gerald Heard and Dr. Sidney Cohen

[oldshowbiz]

quite remarkable articulations about the psychedelic experience as described by prolific and respected philosopher Gerald Heard, the man who turned Aldous Huxley onto Mescaline. In the 1950s he would also turn Huxley and the founder of AA, Bill Wilson, onto LSD. 

[monkeyssalad-blog]

1937 illustration by Zec by totallymystified Via Flickr: For the story An End To Pain by Gerald Heard. From Nash’s Pall Mall magazine.

[amormusicamuerte]

It's difficult to decide whether Chet Baker was a trumpet player who sang or a singer who played trumpet

Happy birthday to the iconic Chet Baker, born on this day in 1929

Gerald Heard