Ideas for a Lysergacide Scenario Reboot

This thread is for ideas and suggestions for a Lysergacide scenario, were the timeline to be rebooted. For those who don't know, Lysergacide: A Savage Journey into the Heart of the American Dream is a timeline by Whanztastic, wherein LSD is discovered in time for the 1920s, and assorted psychedelia is transported to a 1920s setting, along with other interesting things. If you have not read it, I highly recommend it. (Link here)

So what are some suggestions or ideas you'd have for Lysergacide were it to be rebooted?
 
I asked Whanztastic and he gave his permission. Not to say that such a reboot will come. That's purely his prerogative. It's just one of my favorite timelines, and I'd like to open a discussion on that basic idea of a psychedelic 1920s which takes on some Psychedelia era tropes, and a 1920s that is infused with LSD as part of it's existence. It always has so much potential, and can be both lighthearted and deadly serious.

The genesis of this thread came from a previous thread I made not long ago about "WI: LSD were Invented in the 20s", or something like that; itself inspired by Lysergacide. And going along in that discussion, we started talking about Lysergacide, and I realized the discussion I really wanted to have was one about said timeline.
 
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Curiousone

Banned
I asked Whanztastic and he gave his permission. Not to say that such a reboot will come. That's purely his prerogative. It's just one of my favorite timelines, and I'd like to open a discussion on that basic idea of a psychedelic 1920s which takes on some Psychedelia era tropes, and a 1920s that is infused with LSD as part of it's existence. It always has so much potential, and can be both lighthearted and deadly serious.

The genesis of this thread came from a previous thread I made not long ago about "WI: LSD were Invented in the 20s", or something like that; itself inspired by Lysergacide. And going along in that discussion, we started talking about Lysergacide, and I realized the discussion I really wanted to have was one about said timeline.

One of the things that's curious to me is why it was only with synthetic LSD that psychedelics broke out into counter-culture. There were other (Mescaline, Psilocybin - Cacti used by Native Americans, Magic Mushrooms respectively) botanically occurring compounds in use that have effects indistinguishable to the user from LSD.
Could it have only have been the financing behind the experimentation that made for LSD's popularity? Or was it the post-war zeitgeist? Could the right drug dealer in the right circles at the right time in the 20's underworld have started a craze with what was already to hand?
 
I posted some suggestions in the thread and I think they're still good ideas. Some (like Crowley and Parsons) were adopted, while others (like Mary Ickes or FDR's mistress as TTL's Mary Pinchot Meyer (who turned on JFK in more ways than one) never had time to get worked in. One idea near the end which didn't get acted on- but could give a recurring voice in the TL- would involve William Seabrook, writer on Witchcraft, Voodoo, UV light and Cannibalism as being a major voice.
I'd love to see mystic, agriculturalist and future politician Henry A. Wallace take a ride. (Or his dad, Harding and Coolidge's OTL Agriculture Secretary.)
 
I, speaking for myself, am incredibly excited at the possibility of this thread getting a reboot. Partially because "acid jazz" in the 1920s is a mindblowing concept.

One thing that I'd asked about in the original thread (that was initially vetoed because of the focus on the US) was the effects of this new drug wave across the pond in Europe and, although this could easily be oriented to the US as well, the effects of a changed society on radical politics of the time.

But in any case, really excited at a chance to see this again.
 
(I'm posting this during red eye hours, and will bump later due to that fact)

A note for music: the sound of the song "Eight Miles High" came from David Crosby going on a trip with a few cassettes of Ravi Shankar music and John Coltrane music. The fusion of that is essentially what lead to perhaps the first real psychedelic rock song.

That information can be used as you will to explore the potential sound evolution of an era.


Related to that somewhat, I think one of the interesting things potentially is a premake of the Eastern interests and influences of the 60s in the 1920s. The 20s had it's own interest in the foreign world, and thought magical and adventurous and spiritual things of it (people have a tendency to think that anything that is not their group is magic). Unlike the 60s, this would not be an era of decolonialization, and such as a major topic of the day at that. Colonialism is in full swing, as are racial bigotries. I can't remember where, but someone recently posted about white people from the Victorian era who adopted Eastern religions, but went on to declare that they themselves had figured out how it really should be, and the millions upon millions of Buddhists and Muslims beside them were wrong. So it may get sticky, and it also all depends on how much a potential reboot would include Asiatic interests as something in vogue. My personal opinion would be to base anything off of whether or not it was in vogue in the day and not shoe horn it in if it's not. I don't know that part of the 1920s all too well. So you it may be worth a second look before having Paul Whiteman and his Orchestra go Sergeant Pepper mode.

EDIT: Another pro-20s psychedelic point. "Rhapsody in Blue" was basically the song that inspired Brian Wilson to do what he did.
 
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If I remember correctly, Lysergacide had LSD as something ubiquitous. However, and while that may be true despite this, I think a 1920s LSD would open the door perfectly to a "Reefer Madness" type reaction from conservatives and moral crusaders wishing to ban it. Legitimately, LSD can give the same reactions the paranoid propaganda said marijuana would give you. And there's no reason to think the same BS would get pulled about LSD as it did in the OTL (hippies putting their babies in the oven instead of the roast, etc). Unless you take into account that propaganda line was born out of the instilled cultural subconscious from the anti-marijuana crusades of the 30s...it gets complicated.

They were banning drugs left and right during your great grandfather's day, and not for any reason. It was all paranoia. Largely it was also racism. Cocaine was banned because of the Southern trope of the "Cocaine Crazed Negro" that filled the headlines. Marijuana was banned because Mexicans smoked it, or were considered to smoke it, and especially come the Depression when men needed work, people wanted an excuse to throw the Mexicans out of the country. It's not just bigotry, but bigotry had a big role in all those bans.

There's a documentary on the history of various drugs the History Channel did. I recommend finding it.

This brings me to another topic I have written about previous, which is that while the 1920s were libertine, the 1930s were decidedly more conservative. It's an odd thing to consider at first, because the 1920s politics were Conservative, and the 1930s were Liberal. But the 30s had a cultural Conservatism that the 1920s did not. It was the period during which the moral crusaders had won and put the Hays Code in place, which retarded American artistic progress for decades and reinforced accepted racial stereotypes and other negatives. Before the Hays Code, movies could and did have swearing, maybe nudity, and while there were racist films, there were also very progressive films concerning race and gender. Those films also could have moral complexities and ambiguities you would not see when the Hays Code came, and the bad guys always had to be bad, the good guys good, and the bad guys had to lose at the end (put and asterisk there because they did manage to get away with it. See the Noire genre). The 1930s were also the period of keeping your head down and trying to survive, and that's probably where the conservatism comes from.

Bearing that in mind, for whatever libertine treatment LSD would get, or any ubiquitous of it, I'd say the 1930s, following the Depression, would be the period during which there would be a serious clamping down. If not sooner. Think 1970s compared to 1960s, perhaps.

EDIT:

Concerning music, I recommend looking at this if interested in the dynamic of the era, and to see why I keep bringing up Paul Whiteman.

http://www.elijahwald.com/beatlespop.html
 
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katchen

Banned
Which is why it might be even more interesting if for this TL, LSD was discovered, say, in 1900 and in Europe. That way, LSD makes it into German culture in time for the Wandervogel (wandering youth) and the Italian youth movement at the end of WWI (which apparently at least looked just like hippies down to the long hair and guitars and were Mussolini's biggest supporters. As well as in time for French decadence, and in time for Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung to try it and to attempt to use LSD therapeutically.
And musicians such as Igor Stravinsky and Schoenburg in addition to American jazz and blues musicians. And also in time for Adolf Hitler to try LSD, as he tried mescaline, according to Walter Johannes Stein.
It could make for a lot more of an interesting TL, because there was a real clamp down in psychiatry during the 1920s.
Check out the Wandervogel, and you;'ll see what I mean.
 
Which is why it might be even more interesting if for this TL, LSD was discovered, say, in 1900 and in Europe. That way, LSD makes it into German culture in time for the Wandervogel (wandering youth) and the Italian youth movement at the end of WWI (which apparently at least looked just like hippies down to the long hair and guitars and were Mussolini's biggest supporters. As well as in time for French decadence, and in time for Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung to try it and to attempt to use LSD therapeutically.
And musicians such as Igor Stravinsky and Schoenburg in addition to American jazz and blues musicians. And also in time for Adolf Hitler to try LSD, as he tried mescaline, according to Walter Johannes Stein.
It could make for a lot more of an interesting TL, because there was a real clamp down in psychiatry during the 1920s.
Check out the Wandervogel, and you;'ll see what I mean.


...You just turned Freud into Timothy Leary.

It could make since. LSD was invented decades before it became popular. It was just very much a low key thing in the background that was rediscovered by a certain culture of an era and exploded at a certain period of time to the point where everyone knew about it.
 

katchen

Banned
...You just turned Freud into Timothy Leary.

It could make since. LSD was invented decades before it became popular. It was just very much a low key thing in the background that was rediscovered by a certain culture of an era and exploded at a certain period of time to the point where everyone knew about it.
No. Actually I had in mind turning Freud into Stanislav Grof. Look him up and you'll see what I mean.
 
No. Actually I had in mind turning Freud into Stanislav Grof. Look him up and you'll see what I mean.

I see. Although it did bring the idea of Freud's writing being one of the triggers for the LSD popularity explosion down the road.

It also brought to mind Rasputin as the Maharishi, but some ideas are best left in the wastebasket.


****

Off topic, I'd like to say that Rhapsody in Blue is the Sgt Pepper's/A Day in the Life of the 20s:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NIr_WPcVDt8

(It works as both analogies, because in the 1920s the single was still bigger than the album. For decades it would remain like that, until around the era of the Beatles, partially aided by the Beatles. As that period went on, the album became very important. Previously, the album was often just a few hits culled from singles, padded out with a lot of filler material. It's also worth bearing in mind that albums, single or otherwise, were expensive as hell back in the 20s. That's also why Country music initially had trouble, because no one thought what was considered "hick" music would get consumers because their listeners wouldn't spend the money, or couldn't. A Country single was released, and they did buy it, and hence Country music as a national genre began. They didn't originally even know what to call what they ended up naming "Country music" back then.)

And I'd like to add this, concerning 20s music somewhat (even if you don't agree with the opinions):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azJsV-ifqOA

On 20s/30s music, I also seriously recommend listening to anything Robert Crumb says:
http://wfmu.org/playlists/shows/39836

EDIT:

One of the my problems with Elijah Wald is that I think he commits a serious sin in his thinking, and one he himself may put down himself if he were told of it, which is a lack of consideration that music naturally evolves and changes overtime. It's all passive changes you cannot do away with. People are inspired by things and want to try things, and in turn inspire others. People get interested in new sounds, get tired of old sounds, rediscover old sounds, etc. The way the dynamic of all that works is easy to understand, but you can't really ever tell which directions things are headed until after the fact. So the *hrmph* about betraying genre or not being of a genre: genres don't really exist. They're an artificial construct of whatever sounds from songs are most easily grouped together to be defined. But music is extremely fluid and dynamic. So you can say "Yesterday" is Rock and say it's not, and both opinions would be correct. Artists should always just make a sound that is interesting and good. Genre is an afterthought because it will be applied after the fact and rehashed 20 years down the road anyway.

Coming back to the point of Rock and Roll, the way music evolves is via all sorts of different genres and songs inspiring groups and artists in what they write and preform, so a Rapper can and does inspire a Rocker and a Soul artists, etc. Music is a mongrel and a clusterfuck that is innately without true definition. That seems very Rock n Roll to me.
 
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This quote got something rolling in my head.

Rock 'n' roll is really swing with a modern name. It began on the levees and plantations, took in folk songs, and features blues and rhythm. It's the rhythm that gets to the kids — they're starved of music they can dance to, after all those years of crooners.
NME - February 1956[15]
Now, how does that relate to the music scene of the OTL LSD era? It does because the popular artists of the day began to go away from music you can dance to instead to music you sat down and thought about. You could dance to "Long Tall Sally" or the sort of music Jefferson Airplane was putting out, but you can't dance to "A Day in the Life", nor the content of Dark Side of the Moon. The point of those is not to dance to them, and to really think and ponder them and for them to be art and an expression of the artist. But people need music to dance to. That's where Funk, Disco, and even Punk come from. They were reactions to other factors. Disco especially. (Punk was also largely a reaction to Prog Rock by getting back to basics).

Do with that information as you will. The key point it would relate to is music you can dance to and music you can't. You can dance to Jazz, and (in the 30s) Swing, Boogie Woogie, etc. Crooners you can't dance to, and certainly novelty records you can't dance to, and you can't dance to "Rhapsody in Blue".

EDIT:

I think I've said this before, but if you're looking for a guitar virtuoso, ala Hendrix, the closest would probably be Django Reinhardt.
 
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There's a group formerly called the Redding Warlocks, and their youtube videos are what I suspect LSD-minded cinema of the 20s would appear as.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OHjRAr1XoFM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZIs954sajw

The wonderful thing about the 20s as well, which one of those videos reminded me, is that that time and the time before the 30s was a period where cinema did really experiment and could get surreal. That seems to have mostly gone away by the 30s, maybe due to the major studios monopolizing the industry (I don't believe there was any independent cinema in America either). That only seems to have reemerged, with some things in between, around the 60s. Although you could argue for Noir being a somewhat experimental and even surrealistic genre, given it evolved out of German Expressionism, which could be very surreal and stylistic.

***

On a different topic, I do wonder if LSD in the 20s could influence a greater color pallet to the design style of the era, from paint to clothing.
 
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