Antique Beat

15/10/2024

The Man Who Wrote the Joy of S*x

Eric Laursen, author of Polymath: The Life and Professions of Dr. Alex Comfort, came to The Bureau to tell of the poet, novelist, doctor, biologist, gerontologist, anarchist, scientific humanist, public intellectual, pacifist and activist - who also happened to write the world’s most famous guide to lo******ng

Link in comments for our conversation

The publication of The Joy of S*x in 1972 represents the moment when the s*xual revolution of the countercultural years of the '50s and ‘60s, threw off its remaining clothes and burst naked into the bourgeous middle class mainstream.

It sold over 12 million copues and for years was rarely out of the bestseller lists, generating sequels, revised editions and a lot of imitators.

And it changed a lot of peoples’ live - well their s*x lives at any rate.

Enjoy :)

11/10/2024

Music freaks, Vinyl Junkies, Record Shop Hounds: Check out the next Salon: 'Lost Record Shops of London'

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It's a deep dive into the legendary and lost market stalls, specialist vendors, grand emporiums and megastores - East and West - that have sold Londoners the music they loved, from shellac to vinyl.

SIDE A: Oral historian Alan Dein explores the rich musical landscape of the East End

SIDE B:archivist Leon Parker the incredible legacy of Soho.

03/09/2024

To follow on from the Dope Girls post below https://www.facebook.com/100002199911751/videos/1641453919973135/
The history of the British fear of 'the Yellow Peril' in the early 20th C. is grimly fascinating (and of course redolent of the fear and loathing for migrants we witness in some quarters today).

The original Chinatown was not in the West End as it is now but in Limehouse in the Eastern docklands - a dubious and run down area which allowed the myths and fictions around o***m dens and Chinese villains to flourish.

All covered by Tom Bolton in his terrific book Vanished City

03/09/2024

Fabulous footage of early morning Soho in the opening to The Small World of Sammy Lee

The compère of a seedy strip club struggles to keep one step ahead of the bookies to whom he owes money.Directed by Ken Hughes.Written by Ken Hughes (from hi...

02/09/2024

💀Friends and Fellow Mortals
The Countdown has started!
Less than a month to go
👻What are you YOU looking forward to most?

Nearly all events are sold / selling out
Just a note: it’s not that the ones that haven’t aren’t as good, just that they are in the bigger venues :)

08/08/2024

The Strange and Beautiful World of Arthur Russell

It's a great pleasure to discover the work of an artist you knew nothing about isn't it? I have had this eperience a few times over the last years with Moondog, with Pascal Comelad and most recently with Arthur Russell.

Link in comments for more

When Arthur died in 1992, at age 40, of complications related to HIV-AIDS, he was an obscure figure — though a legend in the 70s and 80s underground music scenes at downtown New York clubs such as The Loft and Paradise Garage.

RICHARD KING, author of 'Travels Over Feeling' a poignant and evocative visual chronology of Arthur's life and times, came to the the Bureau to tell me about him and why he matters.

Despite his prodigious output, his inability to finish songs, and the genre-busting uniqueness of much of Arthur's music, meant that he released only two albums under his own name in his lifetime. But posthumous releases in the decades since his death, have enerated a deep love and admiration in many who have been lucky to come across his music.

We also get into indie record shop culture, music sobbery, the underground New York club scene of the mid seventies and ask the question: 'How do you know when, a song, a book or a piece of art is finished?'

Have you any hidden treasures you can share with us?

05/08/2024

💀 📖 Books of the Dead - a travel guide
Very pleased that Gary Lachman our foremost writer on the esoteric returns to tell tales of the guide books on how we should prepare for death - and what happens after - from ancient Egypt and medieval Tibet, up to now, including ones best left unread..

I can't remember how many times Gary has spoken at Month of the Dead. He is always an absolute treat, always runs over and always turns up about three minutes before his talk is due to start :) ☠

14/07/2024

Greetings from Epidavros across the Saronic Gulf from Athens.
I had planned to take this time off from Bureau of Lost Culture but as this place in Ancient Greece was the classical psycho-geographic birthplace of Western Culture (and therefore of counterculture), it seemed crazy not to make a show in between swimming and walking the mythic landscape.

Link in comments for that

My guest (and the reason we are here) is my friend Sarah Janes, - one of Britain's foremost lucid dreamers, sleep explorer and teacher of ancient mysteries.

We got deep into how the Temple of Asclepius's treatment of the sick involved theater, poetry and comedy (basically the arts) in addition to diet, excercise, surgery, medicine - and divine intervention through dreams.

We revisited the subject of nightmares and countercultural consciousness and we ask whatever happened to the Greek Gods? And if you are a teenager living half way up a 1970s tower block listening to Drill, should you even care?

And, the Scottish band The Proclaimers made a surprise apearance...

Thanks so much to Sarah Janes for telling us about this beautiful place and guiding us to the deep landscape.

10/06/2024

Angels of Haight Ashbury.

I spent an inspirational (if rather poigant) couple of hours with Dr. David Smith for the Bureau of Lost Culture show. His life story is incredible and he has helped a lot of people

Link in comments to listen

Back in 1967, whilst many of his fellow physicians were busy becoming business entrepeneurs rather than healers, Dr. Dave, prompted by a psychdelic vision, opened the Haight Ashbury Free Clinic, ministering to the thousands of young people flocking to San Francisco during the Summer of Love.

Over the years, the patients shifted from hippies with STDs, malnutrition and bad trip experiences to folk with serious addictions, Vietnam veterans with he**in habits and early AIDS patients - the dispossessed and the marginalised cast adrift by the mainstream culture.

Dave's small office on Clayton St. helped launch the free clinic movement, which has expanded to over 1,200 clinics around the US all built upon his principle of 'health care as a right, not a privilege'

We also talked about Charles Manson, the CIA, the history of Haight Ashbury and the darkening of the hippie dream.

10/04/2024

Never gonna stop believing

performs You Can Never Hold Back Spring" from the album 'Orphans', live on The Orphans Tour, 2006TOM WAITS▶ Store: https://tomwaits.ffm.to/store▶ W...

28/03/2024

Very interesting film about being gay in London in the Thirties

Being Gay in London UK in the Thirties - A Very Special Documentary After talking about the movie "The Naked Civil Servant" Starring John Hurt in the last vi...

12/03/2024

This Thursday, I will be at The Horse Hospital with a massively stellar line up including Tim Arnold Peter Hale Allen Ginsberg Jesse Goodman William Blake Archive The William Blake Society Camila Oliveira celebrating Ginsberg's deep connection with our very own William Blake

And Friday nack again with the deeply countercultural Martin 'Youth' Glover Peter Hale Allen Ginsberg Jesse Goodman celebrating Ginsberg's music - and massive influence on musicans with a special performance by Youth from his upcoming astounding Iron Horse album.

Links in comments xx

24/02/2024