Oct 272013
How about you? Have you ever had a bad trip while listening to Quicksilver Messenger Service — or has the intersection of Rock and drugs ever resulted in a total BUMMER?
I look forward to your responses.
HVB
How about you? Have you ever had a bad trip while listening to Quicksilver Messenger Service — or has the intersection of Rock and drugs ever resulted in a total BUMMER?
I look forward to your responses.
HVB
I’ve got some tales to dredge up, hopefully later today, HVB! How about you?
Well, drugs and music never really intersected in a meaningful way for me. I never took drugs to enjoy music more, or listened to music in order to enhance any drugs. I wasn’t one of the cool kidz who watched reruns of The Brady Bunch on afternoon TV, sound turned off, with the third Doors album playing in the background as the mystical skull bong was passed around. This is presumably why The Accuser finds the essential qualities of my life wanting.
I don’t even remember a time when music made a “natural bummer” more bummer-ish. I’ve used music to become more angry, but I don’t think that’s the same thing. Usually, to the degree that music ever changes my perception of the world, it does so in surprising ways — thankfully almost always good ones.
I’ve finally got a few minutes for this subject, but first of all, how do I not remember this SCTV skit? I thought I’d remembered them all.
The penultimate time I tripped I was in the company of a close, personal friend (among a few others in the same state) who went off onto a bad trip. It may not have been the music playing in the frat guy’s room where we were hanging when this one friend went off the rails but a giant painting of David Bowie from the Changesonebowie album cover, that shot of him gazing off into the distance, kind of biting on his finger. The guy whose room we were in painted it. It was huge. And bad! Bowie’s features were distorted, without the influence of the drugs (I suspect), and it was just wrong (to us) that a 20-year-old guy would have spent hours trying to paint the cover of Changesonebowie, especially since it was an album cover that my friends and I had been laughing about for years, only topped in terms of mock-worthy Bowie covers by the shot of him on Heroes. Anyhow, our stifled laughter turned real bad for this one friend. I avoided have a bad trip-bad music intersection that night. I was too busy playing Dan Ackroyd’s Jimmy Carter.
The next day was the wedding party for a friend. Our gang showed up to this giant house party to be greeted by a guy with an eyedropper standing next to a keg. He placed his special drops into our beers, and away we went. Our friend who had just slept off a very bad trip, most likely induced by a bad painting of a silly album cover, soon went back to his car and spent the rest of the day trying to sleep off his day-after mistake. I was quickly overwhelmed by all the hub-bub of the party. For most if not everyone else, this was their first trip of the week. The only other time I’d tried it, back-to-back tripping was not a good idea. The drug didn’t work as well when the refuse of the first dose was still churning through my body. I wasn’t feeling that high, and I was getting highly annoyed by all the happy, laughing people around me, as was another one of my close, personal friends.
About an hour into this party, the 2 of us had a brilliant idea: let’s ditch the party and walk a dozen blocks to one of our favorite dive bars. We practically ran the dozen city blocks to our destination. We could taste the cheap beer on tap! We swung open the doors, walked right in, and just as quickly became highly annoyed by all the happy, smiling people around us. BAD IDEA! Just as quickly we threw down our initial beers and left the bar. We headed back to the party with our tails between our legs.
“Maybe things will have calmed down,” we told each other as we walked back, a little less briskly than we’d been walking 3 minutes earlier. We got back and it was just as bad. My friend latched onto a ladyfriend, if memory serves. I saw no more of him that evening. I was now on my own: not really tripping in a good way, not really drunk (although I could have sucked down the entire keg and not felt anything thanks to the effects of the acid)… Here’s where the intersection of music set me onto a particularly bad trip…
I walked past a den and I heard a guitar playing and people singing. I spotted a friendly Janis Joplin-type woman near the guitar player who I knew a little bit from the bride and groom’s social scene. My goal was to get close to her. She would comfort me through this rough stretch. As I approached her the music grew louder and her voice was ringing loud and clear:
“Feelin’ all right, uh huh! Not feelin’ too good myself…”
As much as I grew up loving the Joe Cocker version of that song, even more than the cool Traffic original, the last thing I wanted to hear at that time was a roomful of tripping people badly bellowing along to a guitarist playing the floppiest of Grateful Dead inversions on the acoustic guitar. My slightly older Janis Joplin friend, my shelter from the storm, was not going to be there for me. I had imagined her sweet-talking me down from my case of the bad vibes, maybe even stroking my hair, the way Janis Joplin-type earth mommas do in biker movies. I sidled right up to her, right in the middle of that horrific chorus of “Feelin’ All Right,” but I couldn’t get her attention and sympathy. I was crushed and frightened. I left that room and somehow met up with a couple of other friends who’d been watching over the previous night’s bad tripper. Somehow we all made it home. THAT was the last time I ever did any sort of psychedelics. THAT brought me into the homestretch of my partying days.
Just started reading this piece by a critic on his days of seeing movies stoned. Let me post it now before I forget:
http://www.thenation.com/article/176924/cineastes-guide-watching-movies-while-stoned#
I’ll have to say, too bad everyone else is “holding” on this thread. In another day the thread will fall off The Main Stage. Perhaps you’ll feel safer sharing at that point.