Lysergacide: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream
- Thread starter Whanztastic
- Start date
“His capacity to wonder had been greatly expanded. That is how everyone was in West Egg those days. Despite their lower stature, they saw far more than the peoples on the other side of the peninsula could ever dream of seeing. Tom would whisper with the others from East Egg, ‘It seems that they are stricken with a case of the dizzies again.’ All Gatsby could say at this moment in response was, ‘Dear God, old boy. Dear God.’
“I had been drunk for about a week straight now, and I thought a little euphoria would sober me up. Instead I found my self falling down the rabbit hole as well. Finally, Gatsby was able to convert thought into action. He walked over to his Victrola and out poured Whiteman’s latest achievement at 78 revolutions per minute. The notes fell to the ground in a pure blue current and slowly filled up the room in a cool, azure beauty.
“‘That’s the ticket,’ I managed to murmur.”
The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Chapter Three: The Jazz Man
It is a simplistic and amateur historical perspective to say that the booming culture of the 1920s was divided between those who stuck to alcohol, flappers (which originally referred to females but experienced a semantic shift and came to mean all youthful members of the jazz counterculture), and those who indulged in kaleidoscopic drugs (especially LAD), dizzies. There was no major divide between flappers and dizzies or great animosity. There was not even a great deal of difference between the two. The real distinction between flappers and dizzies was made by outside sources, who often made these distinctions based on biases and confusions supported by shoddy information. This can be seen in later mainstream media such as the Romeo and Juliet reimagining West Side Story, the famous musical which features two youths caught in the middle of the culture war between dizzies and flappers. This culture war never really existed.
In reality the biggest difference dizzies and flappers were their musical preferences. But there was no true animosity between fans of “red” and “blue jazz.” For a greater musical history of jazz, I would suggest to the reader that they investigate the book Red vs. Blue by Michael “Burnie” Burns, in which he thoroughly follows the interweaving histories of hot and cool jazz. For the purposes of this book, we shall look at blue or cool jazz, being the one that most related with the LAD influenced aspects of the jazz counterculture. Furthermore, blue jazz is not to be confused with the separate category of the blues.
Please note that acid jazz is not considered a proper label for blue jazz genre, in fact it is considered derogatory by some. Acid jazz suggests that the music is defined solely by the drug, which sells short all the talent and dedication of its musicians. LAD does not make blue jazz, it merely compliments it. But I digress...
Most every jazz player since the birth of blue jazz has at least mingled with the genre, including the hottest of the hots such Coleman Hawkins and Charlie Parker. It is still hard, though, to pinpoint when exactly blue jazz first started. The first true blue jazz is hard to distinguish from its predecessors. So, with the beginnings unassertainable, the natural place to start is with blue jazz’s first star, Bix Beiderbecke.
Bix Beiderbecke was born in Davenport, Iowa in 1903. At a young age he showed an interest in piano, which was encouraged by his mother Agatha, who played organ. At the age of 13, Bix started to play coronet. In 1918, his elder brother Bernie brought home a Victrola and several records, including the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, the first popular jazz band, after serving stateside during WWI.
Eventually, Bix’s parents enrolled him in the Lake Forest Academy just north of Chicago, in an attempt to shore up his academics and discipline. What actually happened is that his parents put him within an hours train ride of the epicenter of the 1920’s jazz scene. In time, Bix was caught sneaking out, something he did every chance he got, and possessing alcohol and was expelled from the school in 1922. Bix spent about a year playing odd gigs and occasional returning to Davenport when he needed money.
Bix’s big break came when he joined the Wolverine Orchestra in late 1923, named for Jelly Roll Morton’s “Wolverine Blues.” It was also during his time with the Wolverine Orchestra that Bix had his first experience with LAD. On the subject of acid, Bix said, “Made me never want to touch another bottle again.” It is true that Bix was a notorious drinker prior to his usage of LAD. It is not that he outright quit drinking, it was simply with less frequency and ferocity.
The Wolverine Orchestra recorded just over a year prior to Louis Armstrong’s outfit the Hot Five. Armstrong and Beiderbecke were arguably to two greatest horn players of the 20s. The differences between red and blue jazz is best personified by the differences in play between Louis Armstrong and Bix Beiderbecke. Armstrong, who was arguably the stronger horn player, would go in directly with strong emotion and punch while Bix would play around the music, taking a cool approach which could take more subtle angles than Armstrong’s more crowd pleasing power. This is the main difference between red and blue jazz. While both musicians dabbled in LAD and other drugs, (Armstrong’s “Muggles” being a testament to his favorite drug of choice, marijuana) Bix used the sensations he felt with it and tried to express it and enhance it in his music. Bix was considered a hot musician in his time (the opposite then being categorized as ‘sweet’, it is only in historical reflection that he becomes labeled blue.
Bix would eventually quit the Wolverines and try his hand at a band in Detroit and attempted to go back to school, both of which failed. Bix could not sight ride terribly well at all and school attempted to put far too much structure on the man. In 1925, Bix headed his own band called The Dead Ringers (as the story goes, Bix and his band was once introduced as “Bix Beiderbecke and The Dead Ringers, to which Bix cursed out the master of ceremonies and reintroduced his band as “The Dead Ringers”). This would be a name he would return to in between playing for much larger bands. In 1926, Bix found himself playing head to head with Louis (Louis and Bix had been friends for quite sometime). Bix was playing in Goldkette’s Famous Fourteen and Louis for Fletcher Henderson. In October of that year, a battle of the bands was arranged between the two bands. Goldkette’s ensemble were declared the winners, perhaps due to racial bias (Henderson’s band was all-black). Bix reorganized The Dead Ringers and recorded some of his best examples, such as “Trumbology” with his friend Frank Trumbauer. True Bix fans called themselves “deadheads” in reference to his continual side project.
In 1927, Goldkette folded and Bix signed with the most commercially successful band of the day, The Paul Whiteman and His Orchestra. Although not strictly a jazz outfit, Whiteman was extremely influential on the jazz world. In 1924 his Orchestra premiered George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue. Whether or not Rhapsody in Blue was LAD inspired is highly debated, but it became a quintessential piece in the LAD culture. It was under Whiteman’s supervision that Bix received a great deal of formalization of his musical knowledge, something he never learned in school.
The King of Jazz, a 1930 movie featuring Paul Whiteman and His Orchestra, including several moving solos from Bix, is considered another pinnacle of acid culture. Its combination of impressive colors and soaring soundtrack would set any person taking a ride in the right set of mind. Although the movie is supposed to be about Whiteman, any person with the slightest amount of musical training could see that the ideas expressed in Bix’s solos were head-and-shoulders above the work of any other person in the band.
However, economic difficulties of the onset of the Great Depression would cause strains on the band and Bix departed soon after the filming of the movie. Whiteman soon found his band slowly pushed away to the side by the rising tide of swing music. Bix, despondent, returned to the bottle and died in his sleep Christmas Eve that year. He would remain forever 27.
Bix’s ballad style would lay dormant during the swing era, a swing away from small bands that depended on either the pure improvisation of Bix or the power of Louis. However, his influence could be seen throughout the swing era, especially in the work of Duke Ellington and Count Basie (both of whom adopted the kaleidoscopic styling which were popularized by Bix), and afterwards on musicians like Lester Young, Bing Crosby and Miles Davis (Davis even referred to himself as a deadhead, showing the influence that Bix had). Bix’s hot jazz would become known as blue or cool jazz as time passed. Bix is also considered a hepcat forefather of the hipsters of the 1940s. As Armstrong put it, “He was the hippest white guy I knew.”
Although briefly mentioned, what is brushed over above is Bix’s use of LAD and what impact it may have had on his music and all music subsequently influenced. There are the direct connections. Bix worked on more than one occasion with Bing Crosby. It is believed that Bix was the person to first introduce LAD to Crosby. One night in particular in October 1926 stands out when Louis Armstrong, Bix, Crosby and Eddie Lang (the famous guitarist) all dropped together, which was complemented by marijuana and alcohol (alcohol being the only illegal substance at the time), in a New York hotel room. The night is said to be the cause behind Bix’s song “Pink Elephants”, which features Lang on guitar. That song is considered by many to be an anthem of the blue jazz of the 20s.
Although the 20s have been deemed the “Jazz Age,” the popular music of the time extended well beyond it. Jazz was merely in an explosion of popularity and saw its nationwide founding at this time. As mentioned in the previous chapter, the most popular person in music at the time, Paul Whiteman, was not strictly a jazz man but played whatever would sell, whatever music was “in the groove” or “groovey.”
maverick
Banned
Well, I like where this is going.
I'd advise against those colorful psychodelic pictures, though. They just look plain silly.
Anyhow, could the widespread use of LAD and other such drugs lead to an earlier War on Drugs and perhaps Mafia involvement if drugs such as LAD and Marihuana are banned in the 1920s?
I'd advise against those colorful psychodelic pictures, though. They just look plain silly.
Anyhow, could the widespread use of LAD and other such drugs lead to an earlier War on Drugs and perhaps Mafia involvement if drugs such as LAD and Marihuana are banned in the 1920s?
Thanks!
I agree.
I hinted at Harry Aslinger's career in the opening post, the original drug czar (although the label is anachronistic). That is all I am going to about that right now.
I am kind of surprised that Helen Keller taking acid did not elicit more of a response. Oh well.
Do I sense a Grateful Dead analogue in the Dead Ringers?
What would the effect of a deaf and blind person taking psychoactive drugs? Sight and sound are two of the biggest parts of a "ride" as your universe would call it. Are those two removed from the experience, or are they experienced for the first time in the mind's eye?
Very yes. I am crossing my analogies though, since Bix is also supposed to be a white Jimi Hendrix on the Cornet as well. There will be another band that is a Grateful Dead analogue as well as an analogue for its phonetic namesake. That will make more sense when I post it.
No. People who were blind/deaf before the age of about 2 or 3 do not hallucinate with the respective organs that do not work. That being said, a person who has been deafblind from birth or a very early age (like Helen Keller) would still feel the inner psychological effects such as the sense of ego death, cognitive shift, dissociation and change in time awareness. These are the things that would still happen to Helen Keller. And, given her preference for interesting religious beliefs IOTL (Swedenborgianism), this will have a religious impact on her.
She will inevitable flock to a new religious belief (as mentioned in her post), one that is lead by someone that has been suggested by several users.*
I just have to write it first!
Up next is another music post, which is a little tongue-in-cheek, which I hope does not jump the shark.
* Foreshadowing
Hendryk
Banned
Very interesting TL, this is one LAD we wish the best of luck.
The "acid jazz" concept was indeed a cool one.
I'm rather interested in how this will affect the development of vaudeville. Just imagine the sort of phantasmagoric costumes and choreography and all that.
Also, I look forward to Freud on acid.
Also, I look forward to Freud on acid.
I just watched the film "Chaplin" and feel the urge to namedrop random people you could use maybe...perhaps...probably not: Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, Mack Sennett.
"Just float, Mac. Watch the Jazz flow like the waters of heaven and dig the kalidoscopic licks..."
Consider me subscribed, and consider this passed along to the Dieselpunks.
Also: I notice you descided not to go with MDMA as well...
Consider me subscribed, and consider this passed along to the Dieselpunks.
Also: I notice you descided not to go with MDMA as well...
Orville_third
Banned
Would the use of LSD affect the Golden age of Magic? Houdini dies in 1926, but plenty of other magicians are still around and performing.
It's about a decade late, but this song seems to really fit the timeline if you just change the lyrics ever so slightly
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D44pyeEvhcQ&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D44pyeEvhcQ&feature=related
I kind of wonder what the impact on literature as a whole would be. The twenties was kind of a highpoint in the history of modernist literature. Ulysses and Finnegan's Wake are nearly incomprehensible as it is, imagine if James Joyce was actually on acid when he wrote them. Granted, Joyce was not an American so he probably doesn't count for the purposes of this timeline. But imagine someone like T. S. Eliot on acid.
Generally, the sort of lyrical playfulness that acid at least partially inspired, is probably going to come more from what we would consider modernist writers and poets than musicians, simply because, as I understand it, music was far less lyrically focused in the the Jazz age generally than it was in the Rock and Roll and immediate preacid era. (Fifties -1966 or so give or take a year.) Though I don't know much about music in the time period.
Generally, the sort of lyrical playfulness that acid at least partially inspired, is probably going to come more from what we would consider modernist writers and poets than musicians, simply because, as I understand it, music was far less lyrically focused in the the Jazz age generally than it was in the Rock and Roll and immediate preacid era. (Fifties -1966 or so give or take a year.) Though I don't know much about music in the time period.