Bureau of Lost Culture – The Last of the Merry Pransksters (23/10/2022)
In the summer of 1964, a very strange vehicle was seen making its way across America. It was a school bus covered in psychedelic colours, driven by Neal Cassady, a beat generation character made famous in Kerouac’s beat generation classic On the Road and piloted by Ken Kesey, the best selling author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
The bus contained a raggle-taggle crew of crazy psychonauts calling themselves The Merry pranksters allegedly dispensing LSD in orange kool aid to all and sundry in attempt to turn on America.
In this episode, we leave Soho to travel to the far west of the USA, to a farm in Oregon to meet KEN BABBS the last of The Merry Pranksters.
We talk of all sorts of things – Ken Kesey, the Magic Trip and the Acid Tests of course, plus Kerouac, Ginsberg, Viet Nam, Timothy Leary, spontaneity, the good life and dreams.
And at the end we hear some very positive news about a question that I suspect is troubling many of us.