Music, acid, and the collapse of communism

Eastern European communism did collapse and acid did have quite a bit to do with it. Charter 77, the Czech human rights organization was founded by Václav Havel (left) in defense of the Plastic People of the Universe, a psychedelic band inspired by the Velvet Underground. Havel himself was in New York in 1968, listening to the Velvets and dreaming, no doubt, of a way out of Cold War ideology - From Andrei Codrescu's introduction to Acid Dreams - the Complete Social History of LSD: the CIA, the Sixties, and Beyond by Marin A. Lee and Bruce Shlain. (Grove Weidenfeld 0802130623).

Music is the most powerful of all the idealist drugs except religion - Stephen Spender

Truth and love will prevail over lies and hatred - Vaclav Havel

For the extraordinary history of the Plastic People of the Universe follow this link.

Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk
If you enjoyed this post take An Overgrown Path to Marvellous Má Vlast - Czech it out

Comments

Recent popular posts

Who needs streaming?

Those are my principles....

David Munrow - more than early music

He thinks completely with his body

Classical music can learn a lot from our feline friends

Know your audience

Swamped by a tsunami of classical populism.

Elgar and the occult

Classical music's biggest problem is that no one cares

The Acid Queen hears Stravinsky in Jajouka