Come On A Little Musical Trip With Me

I was a drug taker when I was a kid. College is one big drug-haze. I smoked weed every day and did most everything else whenever I could get my hands on it. Acid was special though. I didn't just drop acid willy nilly. Acid was always a very special experience for me, every single trip, something between 30 and 50 in all. And music was always a very important component of every acid trip I ever took-- and beyond just the Airplane, Dead and The Byrds. I certainly nearly wore out my copy of The Classical Music of Pakistan by the Ali Brothers, the most accomplished of the qawwali, singers, Salamat and Nazakat Ali Khan. Many wonderful, insightful trips listening to this, my friends:



I got so into it that I bought a VW van in Germany and drove to the Punjab to look for the Ali Brothers in the Lahore area, where there was a whole village of musical Ali Khans. They were away when I got there and I didn't get to see them on their home turf. However, a few years later I was working at de Kosmos, Amsterdam's meditation center. I was tired and eager to go home when one of my co-workers insisted I come with her to see some band from India playing upstairs. I was too tired but she talked me into it. And, as it turned out, it wasn't "some band from India." It was Salamat and Nazakat Ali Khan... what luck!

But that isn't the only music I listened to when I was stoned. My favorite band in the mid-'60s before I left the country, was the Rolling Stones. A new album release was always an occasion for an acid trip. And when Between the Buttons came out just before my birthday in 1967, I couldn't resist. I remember it well for many reasons. Recently a friend asked me if I felt weird with a shaved head. "No," I laughed. "I started shaving my head in 1967. I came off a fantastic acid trip in a tree next to an open window listening to Between the Buttons over and over for hours. I climbed down from the tree and went directly to the campus barber shop and had my head shaved." For me The Stones ended when Brian Jones was kicked out of the band and mysteriously died a month later. But he was in top form on Between the Buttons and "Ruby Tuesday," probably the best song on the album, was one of the only songs he ever wrote-- although he didn't get the credit.



The next year I ran into the Stones at Brad Pierce's new club at One Sheridan Square; Salvation was the name if I remember correctly. There was a very narrow, steep dark staircase going down into the club and I recall Jones was leaving as I was arriving. He gave me a long, wet kiss on the staircase and handed me a long-stemmed rose. I had never kissed a guy before. I kept the rose in a shoebox under my bed until I left for Europe in 1969.

One album-- or at least one side of one album-- I listened to on quite a few trips was The Missa Luba, a Congolese mass performed by Les Troubadours du Roi Baudouin. It was originally recorded in 1958 and came out in the U.S. in 1965. The side of the album was six short songs. Whether you're tripping or not this Christmas evening, I hope you enjoy them:

Kyrie



Gloria



Credo



Sanctus



Benedictus



Agnus Dei



And speaking of the beauty of the Catholic Church and some of the good stuff it has offered-- and is offering right now-- to mankind...