Bureau of Lost Culture
Stephen Coates
*The Bureau of Lost Culture broadcast curious, half-forgotten, countercultural stories, oral testimonies and rare tales from the underground. *Join host Stephen Coates and a wide range of guests including musicians, artists, writers, activists and commentators in conversation. *Listen live on Saturdays at 9.00am on London’s premier independent station Soho Radio or via all major podcast providers: *The Bureau is now collected at The British Library Sound Archive
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Top 10 Bureau of Lost Culture Episodes
Goodpods has curated a list of the 10 best Bureau of Lost Culture episodes, ranked by the number of listens and likes each episode have garnered from our listeners. If you are listening to Bureau of Lost Culture for the first time, there's no better place to start than with one of these standout episodes. If you are a fan of the show, vote for your favorite Bureau of Lost Culture episode by adding your comments to the episode page.
City of the Beast: Aleister Crowley’s London
Bureau of Lost Culture
06/05/22 • 57 min
*We take a creep through dimly lit London streets populated with prostitutes, bohemians, charlatans, junkies, spiritualists, drunkards and lost souls following magician, author, occultist and drug fiend ALEISTER CROWLEY,'The Great Beast’, as he prowls Piccadilly in pursuit of pleasure, power and yet more prostitutes. *'Do What Though Wilt shall be the whole of the law’ *Our guide is Phil Baker, author of ‘City of The Beast’, part Crowley biography, part psychogeographic odyssey and part London gazetteer. We seek the man beneath the myth, the flaneur beneath the fiend and ask why do many still find the often deplorable Crowley so intriguing, even inspiring? *Along the was we get fascinating glimpses into a lost era, a shadowy underworld of Victorian and Edwardian counterculture, Sex Magick, ether, drugs and .. snails.. *For The City of the Beast book : http://strangeattractor.co.uk/news/city-of-the-beast/ *For the O.T.O https://oto-usa.org/
*Sign up for The Bureau Newsletter: https://lp.constantcontactpages.com/su/N0ZYoFu/BOLC
The Bureau Instagram https://www.instagram.com/bureauoflostculture/
#crowley #aleistercrowley #counterculture #magick #thegoldendawn #london #prostitution #occult #ether #666 #O.T.O.
Women, Sex, Counterculture
Bureau of Lost Culture
06/20/22 • 59 min
The Sexual Revolution? Yes. Liberation? Maybe. Penis Envy? NO! *Youth culture in the sixties was progressive in so many ways but when it came to the relations between the sexes, it was perhaps much more traditional than it liked to admit. *Sleeping around, Syd Barret, Pink Floyd, Groupies, Frigidity, the Pill, abortion, Oz magazine and of course The Female Eunuch make their appearance as we dig deep into what it was like growing up as a young woman in the underground scene of swinging sixties London. *Author Jill Drower, once a member of The Exploding Galaxy experimental dance commune returns to the Bureau along with beat traveller, model and singer Jenny Spires as we ask if the story of counterculture has largely been one told by men about men. *For Jill's book: The Exploding Galaxy: Performance Art, LSD and Bent Coppers in the Sixties Counterculture’
*Sign up for The Bureau Newsletter: https://lp.constantcontactpages.com/su/N0ZYoFu/BOLC
#SydBarrett #Pink Floyd #Groupies #Frigidity #abortion #Ozmagazine #TheFemaleEunuch #germainegreer #jennyspires #theexplodinggalaxy
The Cabaret of the Nameless
Bureau of Lost Culture
09/25/22 • 52 min
*Performance artist, actor and underground cabaret star Madame LePustra leads us on a journey back in time in search of the Berlin Cabaret and Kabarett of Weimar Republic era Berlin. *We learn of the strange and progressive Golden Years of the 1920s when queer and trans identiities were accepted, even feted, within an underground culture that briefly flowered in the city between the wars. *We meet some of the extraordinary women performers who pushed artistic, theatrical and social boundaries before the Nazis jackbooted the doors of the clubs and theatres and brought the era to a tragic close. *And we hear of Madame Le Pustra’s work to remember and reinterpret the times through their re-imagined ‘Cabaret of the Nameless’. For more on Madame Le Pustra https://madamelepustra.com The Bureau of Lost Culture https://www.bureauoflostculture.com Image courtesy Madame Le Pustra / Michel Dierickx #berlincabaret #weimarcabaret #madamelepustra #cabaretofthenameless #counterculture
Sowing the Seeds of Love
Bureau of Lost Culture
08/15/22 • 53 min
*Timothy Leary may have wanted to cause a revolution your head with LSD, The Beatles in your heart with Love, but countercultural activist and entrepreneur CRAIG SAMS went for the Gut. *After bringing himself back from death’s door by curing the amoebic dysentery and hepatitis he contracted on the Central Asia hippie trail, he embarked on a mission to change the world and raise consciousness through food. *We sit down with him for a feast of of fabulous food fables from feeding the freaks at The UFO club and the first Glastonbury festival, to co-founding Seed, London's first macrobiotic restaurant and the go-to healthy eatery for John and Yoko, The Stones and many other denizens of the London underground. *Also on the menu: how he went on to co-found Whole Earth foods and then Green and Black's Chocolate, how macrobiotics will improve an LSD trip, how changing the way we eat can save us - and the planet - and how, at nearly eighty, he is still living the countercultural life. For More on Craig: https://www.craigsams.com Join us at The Bureau of Lost Culture https://linktr.ee/bureauoflostculture #counterculture #macrobiotic #johnandyoko #thebeatles #greenandblacks #wholeearth #craigsams
On the Farm with Allen Ginsberg
Bureau of Lost Culture
05/23/22 • 60 min
*In 1969, the poet, Beat generation godfather, countercultural guru and political activist ALLEN GINSBERG bought a farm in upstate New York to provide a creative hub and rehab refuge for his friends - a collection of poets, artists, washed-up drunks, strung-out junkies, ne’er do wells and exhausted underground figures, all reeling after the intensity of the 60s. *One, his lifelong friend and biographer Barry Miles, chronicler of the counterculture, returns to the Bureau to tell of a bucolic summer he spent with Ginsberg and an assortment of crazy characters on the farm, archiving the poet's vast collection of tape recordings. *We also visit The Chelsea Hotel and meet some the equally crazy characters who lived and loved there in 1970s Manhattan including Janis Joplin, Arthur Miller and Leonard Cohen - and along the way we discuss The Beats, Buddhism, Burroughs - and beards. *Thanks to Stephen Cleary and The British Library Sound Archive for providing the recordings of Allen and to Peter Hale of The Ginsberg Estate for permission to use them. *For More on Miles: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barry_Miles *The Allen Ginsberg Project: https://allenginsberg.org
*Sign up for The Bureau Newsletter: https://lp.constantcontactpages.com/su/N0ZYoFu/BOLC
The Bureau Instagram https://www.instagram.com/bureauoflostculture/
*The British Library Sound Archive:https://sounds.bl.uk #ginsberg #kerouac #williamburroughs #beatpoets #beatgeneration #counterculture
Albion Dreaming - A Brief Trip Through the History of British LSD
Bureau of Lost Culture
05/09/22 • 60 min
*Experimental treatment of the insane, secret tests by MI5 with volunteers thinking they were helping find a cure for the common cold, Cold War weapon research by the Ministry of defence on unsuspecting troops - the early history of LSD in the UK was rather inauspicious. *And then all hell - or heaven - broke loose.. *Britain's foremost psychedelic historian ANDY ROBERTS returns to the Bureau to take us on a trip through the revolutions in the head caused by Acid from the 1950s to now. *Along the way we meet some of the characters who experimented, manufactured, dealt, swallowed and were transformed by it - as well as those who tried to stop them - including an unlikely Breaking Bad style pharmacist in Islington, The Microdot Gang and even the Kray Twins.. *So sit back, relax, blow out the candles and kick off your sandals ... (thanks The Lilac Time), tune in, turn and ... *Andy and Albion Dreaming: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Albion-Dreaming-popular-history-Britain/dp/1905736274
Sign up for The Bureau Newsletter to get countercultural treats https://lp.constantcontactpages.com/su/N0ZYoFu/BOLC
The Bureau Instagram https://www.instagram.com/bureauoflostculture/
*The Real Tuesday Weld https://www.tuesdayweld.com
On the Road ... with Johnny Marr
Bureau of Lost Culture
04/24/22 • 65 min
* From Colin Wilson to Tony Wilson, Patti Smith to Mark E Smith, what was it like coming of age in the counterculture of Manchester in the 60s, 70s and 80s? * Johnny Marr has just released his latest record and his band's on tour with Blondie. He's worked with Billie Eilish on the Academy award winning theme for the Bond blockbuster No Time to Die and with all sorts of other artists including Hans Zimmer, Modest Mouse, The The and The Pretenders. * He’s had chart hits with Electronic, and, oh yeah, he co-piloted one of the best loved and influential British bands of all time - The Smiths. * We don’t really talk about that - but we do dig deep into archetypal psychology, northern peak experience, clothes, records, books, youth culture and reading the road signs along the way to your destiny.. * Image credit: Andy Cotterill * For More on Johnny: https://johnnymarr.com
The Bureau Home https://www.bureauoflostculture.com
The Bureau Instagram https://www.instagram.com/bureauoflostculture/
The Bureau Newsletter https://lp.constantcontactpages.com/su/N0ZYoFu/BOLC
Birth, Death - and Frestonia
Bureau of Lost Culture
07/04/22 • 59 min
The People's Republic of Frestonia, a countercultural micronation, was formed in three streets in North Kensington in the heady years of late seventies London. *Long before the Occupy movement, a group of squatters, radicals, artists and activists decided to fight back against a local authority bent on evicting them from their homes and declared the area independent of the UK. Drawing huge media interest, some derision and lot of goodwill, they had their own passports, stamps and theatre and even applied to join the United Nations. One of them, the psychotherapist Josefine Speyer, Frestonia's minister of Culture, comes to visit the Bureau for an hour or so to tell us what it was all about - and all about the countercultural journey she made to live there from her youth in Germany. We hear of communes in Berlin and Scotland, travelling in a gypsy caravan in Wales, home births and hash cookies in a cow shed and of some of the many alternative projects initiated by her radical activist husband Nicholas Albery. *And we learn how they came to found the Natural Death Centre, blowing the lid on the secretive cabal that controlled the funeral industry and returning death and dying back to where it belongs - with the people.. For more about Frestonia: http://www.frestonia.org A list of Micronations: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_micronations For the Natural Death Centre: http://www.naturaldeath.org.uk More on Josefine: https://deathcafe.com/profile/25/
The Life and Times of Dubmeister Dennis Bovell
Bureau of Lost Culture
04/11/22 • 61 min
* He stepped off a plane from Barbados onto a wet and windy runway at Heathrow airport in 1965 aged 12.
* Now he’s a DJ, multi-instrumentalist and producer of hundreds of records spanning reggae, lovers rock, soul, dub, punk and pop. * Dennis Bovell's life in music is populated by a countercultural cornucopia of artists as wide ranging as Linton Kwesi Johnson, The Slits, Madness, Bananarama, the Pop Group, Fela Kuti, Orange Juice, Marvin Gaye, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Dexy’s Midnight Runners and most recently, Radiohead, The Animal Collective and Spoon.
* He's even got an MBE.
* We dig into all that - or as much as we can - plus Hendrix, sound systems, cutting dub plates, sound clashes with Lee Scratch Perry, police harrasment, wrongful imprisonment and the youthful joys of eating breadfruit on the beach. * For More on Dennis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_Bovell
* Now he’s a DJ, multi-instrumentalist and producer of hundreds of records spanning reggae, lovers rock, soul, dub, punk and pop. * Dennis Bovell's life in music is populated by a countercultural cornucopia of artists as wide ranging as Linton Kwesi Johnson, The Slits, Madness, Bananarama, the Pop Group, Fela Kuti, Orange Juice, Marvin Gaye, Ryuichi Sakamoto, Dexy’s Midnight Runners and most recently, Radiohead, The Animal Collective and Spoon.
* He's even got an MBE.
* We dig into all that - or as much as we can - plus Hendrix, sound systems, cutting dub plates, sound clashes with Lee Scratch Perry, police harrasment, wrongful imprisonment and the youthful joys of eating breadfruit on the beach. * For More on Dennis https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dennis_Bovell
The Bureau Home https://www.bureauoflostculture.com
The Bureau Instagram https://www.instagram.com/bureauoflostculture/
The Bureau Newsletter https://lp.constantcontactpages.com/su/N0ZYoFu/BOLC
Tripping the Light Fantastic
Bureau of Lost Culture
11/06/22 • 61 min
*You couldn’t turn up at at any self respecting psychedelic hangout, countercultural club, happening, be-in or even disco in the late sixties and seventies without being immersed in the cosmic cloud of swirling dreamy liquid images, shapes and colours of the light shows illuminating and enhancing the music. *Our counterculural companion in arms, Kevin Foakes, DJ Food, turntablist, graphic designer-par-excellence - and now author - returns to the Bureau to talk about his wonderful new book 'Wheels of Light’, published by Four Corners Books - a visual voyage through the history of British light show from 1970 to 1990, and a gorgeous multi-coloured sensory experience in itself, bursting with amazing images and art. *If we took a trip in a time machine we might find them a little primitive given the multi media hi-tech laser extravaganzas we've got used to, but back in the days of love, the psychedelic light shows were genuinely revolutionary, mind bending, consciousness enhancing and state altering - particularly if augmented by a large dose of LSD. *We hear about lighting up the UFO club, Pink Floyd and Soft Machine and we are joined by Neil Rice, co-founder of Optikinetics, one of the main suppliers of the projectors and gizmos that created the psychedelic light shows of the 60s and 70s - and by Jennie Caldwell, practicing light jockey for many bands in the subsequent summers of love of the 80s and 90s, including those cosmic warriors on the edge of time, Hawkwind. *For More on Kev / DJ Food: https://www.djfood.org *For Kev’s 'Wheels of Light’ book: https://www.fourcornersbooks.co.uk/books/wheels-of-light/ *The Bureau of Lost Culture: https://www.bureauoflostculture.com #lightshow #hawkwind #pinkfloyd #sydbarret #UFOclub #softmachine #psychedelic #lsd #ravescene #summeroflove #tripping
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FAQ
How many episodes does Bureau of Lost Culture have?
Bureau of Lost Culture currently has 122 episodes available.
What topics does Bureau of Lost Culture cover?
The podcast is about Society & Culture, History and Podcasts.
What is the most popular episode on Bureau of Lost Culture?
The episode title 'The Rise and Fall of the '80s Free Festival' is the most popular.
What is the average episode length on Bureau of Lost Culture?
The average episode length on Bureau of Lost Culture is 59 minutes.
How often are episodes of Bureau of Lost Culture released?
Episodes of Bureau of Lost Culture are typically released every 13 days, 21 hours.
When was the first episode of Bureau of Lost Culture?
The first episode of Bureau of Lost Culture was released on Sep 13, 2020.
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