RIP Owsley

[TickleMyBalls]

dude had a LSD lab in ORINDA! one of the richest yuppiest enclaves in the bay area...that shit is pretty hardcore. why is it that the sober elitest fuckwads get to run this country instead of the PEOPLE....

well it's fitting, he was Alice D. Millionaire

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2W0vcKttHs

Since you left your old scene behind you
Go ahead and let the green light find you
It's warm and friendly girl and it won't blind you
Come out in the street and the weeds won't grind you
See the love is in the air, you feel it all around you

You're standing there with tears in your eyes
There's too much going on now, there's no time to cry

Your yesterday's are all left behind
There's a brand new light in your mind
You don't need a key to define
What's written on the magic sign
There's no time to cry

 

[vta]

R.I.P. Owsley Stanley

R.I.P. Owsley Stanley

Grateful Dead Sound Man Supplied '60s With LSD


Source: Wall Street Journal (US)
Author: Stephen Miller

GRATEFUL DEAD SOUND MAN SUPPLIED '60S WITH LSD

Owsley Stanley, the grandson of a former Kentucky governor, made and supplied the LSD that fueled acid rock and California's hallucinogenic culture in the 1960s.

Mr. Stanley died Sunday at age 76 after an automobile accident in Queensland, Australia, where he had emigrated in the 1980s.

An early patron and sound engineer for the Grateful Dead, Mr. Stanley was memorialized in the band's song "Alice D. Millionaire," named after a newspaper headline about his arrest for dealing LSD.

Mr. Stanley was credited with distributing thousands-some say millions-of doses of high-purity LSD, often for free at concerts and "acid tests" run by Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters.

Notoriously press-shy, Mr. Stanley thought he was helping introduce a new form of consciousness. Renegade Harvard psychologist Timothy Leary agreed, calling him "God's Secret Agent A.O.S. 3" ( Augustus Owsley Stanley III was his given name ).

But authorities demurred, repeatedly busting him and finally convicting him for drug possession in 1969.

"I wound up doing time for something I should have been rewarded for," Mr. Stanley told the San Francisco Chronicle in 2007. "What I did was a community service."

Mr. Stanley was the rebellious scion of an eminent Kentucky family. His grandfather, Augustus Owsley Stanley, was a U.S. senator after serving as governor. The younger Mr. Stanley was described by a former schoolmaster "almost like a brain child," but was kicked out of the Charlotte Hall Military Academy in 9th grade for "getting the whole campus intoxicated" on smuggled booze, he told a biographer of Jerry Garcia, the late guitarist for the Grateful Dead.

After that, he bounced between schools and enrolled briefly at the University of Virginia's School of Engineering. He enlisted in the Air Force, which sent him to work at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. There, he acquired expertise in electronics, and later worked at radio and television stations.

By the mid-1960s, Mr. Stanley had been married and divorced twice with two kids, and was living with a Berkeley chemistry student who helped him synthesize LSD in makeshift laboratories.

He had also become an audio expert, helping to create the Grateful Dead's concert sound system that featured a multi-story wall of loudspeakers. He also initiated the band's live recordings, which become their hallmark.

He helped pay for the band's living expenses in the early years, and he also came up with the Dead's trademark skull and lightning-bolt logo-originally used to mark music equipment on tours. When the band released its 1973 "History of the Grateful Dead, Volume 1," it was subtitled "Bear's Choice"-Bear being his nickname.

He recorded many other artists, including Janis Joplin and the Allman Brothers.

But it was for LSD that he was best-known, and Owsley became the byword for the most potent and plentiful acid available. Tom Wolfe wrote that he provided the drugs used at "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test" in Watts in 1966. It became a popular legend that Jimi Hendrix's breakout hit "Purple Haze" was named after an Owsley concoction, though Mr. Hendrix denied it.

After his release from about two years in prison in the early 1970s, Mr. Stanley assumed a lower profile. He became convinced that a new ice age was upon the world, and decided to move to Australia, where he thought the effects would be least severe.

There, Mr. Stanley became a jewelry sculptor and sold his ceramic and metal creations online in recent years from a website packed with essays denying global warming and espousing his metaphysical and dietary theories.

Mr. Stanley wrote in a recent essay on his website that psychedelics could "renew our connection with the planet we live on and its life forms."

His relationship to Earth's life forms included following a purely carnivorous diet. Carbohydrates and vegetables were killers, he said. He blamed a recent heart attack on poisonous broccoli his mother had fed him as a child.

 

[vta]

oops....dup thread please delete

 

[azad]

Thanks for posting this info Vta!!.Mr Stanley must have helped expand meny minds in diffrent directions...RIP.

 

[TickleMyBalls]

Pioneers of LSD Blotter art

Pioneers of LSD Blotter art

just wanted to share a piece of art featuring owsley that I have had hanging on my wall for a couple of years now. it was made as a limited run by zane kesey. the back is signed and numbered. has all of the most important figures at different points in their lives, all on one page. nice little piece to have. I like some of zane's ideas for blotter art, some are pretty hoaky though.

 

[Weird]

The wheel is turning
and you can't slow down
You can't let go
and you can't hold on
You can't go back
and you can't stand still
If the thunder don't get you
then the lightning will

Won't you try just a little bit harder?
Couldn't you try just a little bit more?
Won't you try just a little bit harder?
Couldn't you try just a little bit more?

Round round robin run around
Gotta get back where you belong
Little bit harder, just a little bit more
Little bit farther than you than you've gone before

 

[Weird]

that too me always meant that if the thunder didn't get (the suffering in ones life that leads to enlightenment) you, that the that the lightning (good L drops egos like a lightning bolt is the interpretation i will leave here) most certainly would do the trick

and at the end of enlightenment lies gratitude so bear aint gone, for those of us who know there is a lil bit of bear in all of us, some more than others but the i like to think potential to keep that vibe alive lies in all of us

:: cues the music never stops

:: bear dances off, keeping on and on

 

[sourD]

LSD has made me a better grower.

 

[TickleMyBalls]

here's a great piece from the Saturday NY Times.
The electric kool-aid marketing trip-
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/19/opinion/19walker.html?_r=3&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha212

 

[THC4SIM]

Sad news, Clear Windowpanes were my first experience with LSD

RIP.

 

[ScrubNinja]

Wow what an amazing man and crazy backstory! The accident happened a few miles from where I had my last experience with liquid hoffman. I guess that answers the question of where that came from. Woah.

I feel very blessed. Thank you for all you did, Bear. Strangely enough, I just kicked an 8 month vegetarian habit the same time I learnt of all this. Felt heaps better with a few sausages in my tummy.

Lots of love to the family and friends.

 

[Guest3498]

I'm sure this summer there will be plenty of awesome love going around in his memory

RIP bear

 

[blizz]

live on owsley where ever ur next voyage takes u

 

[Squiggles]

RIP Bear
our conversations were few
but as per usual,
profond and thought provoking.

you will be missed mate