DEPARTMENT OF IF YOU CAN REMEMBER, you probably weren't there ...

I was watching the Japanese nucleur reactor drama unfold on the box  when the following text message scrolled by. Sixties psychedelic icon dies in Qld road accident. I immediately thought of Sam Cutler, former tour manager for the Grateful Dead, since he lives a couple of suburbs away. But no, it was Owsley "Bear" Stanley, confidant of Jerry Garcia, sound technologist and the chemist responsible for the LSD revolution of da mind.

Strawberry Fields, Purple Haze, Blue Cheer and similar chemical catalysts, which friends assured me really improved their surfing skills when they ducked off from school to catch a wave. This obit  is reasonably comprehensive, except that it fails to mention the fact that Owsley Stanley was also a member of Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/culture-obituaries/music-obituaries/8381945/Owsley-Stanley.html

The Big Daddy of them all, Dr Albert Hofmann, exemplary Swiss citizen, staunch Catholic, head of the Sandoz Laboratory and accidental inventor of LSD, passed away in 2008 at the serious age of 102.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/30/world/europe/30hofmann.html?_r=1

End result. Meltdowns like Syd Barrett and Roky Erickson (the tres fabulous Thirteenth Floor Elevators) and a really rotten song by Eric Burdon (A Girl called Sandoz).

I would throw in a couple of Furry Freak Brothers cartoons, but have yet to surf that particular learning curve.

So you will have to settle for this. News clipping from The Brisbane Telegraph March 1973. Found in my first passport, the one containing the rubber stamp warning Not Valid For North Vietnam.