version

Well-known member
Perhaps it's a pendulum, much like politics. Once things get too moody, it starts to swing back the other way, hence people being very into ambient music, 'healing' and pivoting back to psychedelics at the moment.
 

version

Well-known member
I think as soon as you think you've hit on something, you realise a bunch of other things which invalidate it. None of it really fits into whatever structure you can come up with. It's that Pynchon thing of cause and effect being insufficient.
 

droid

Well-known member
That's a very different argument to the one corpse was making. The extent to which any of this can be controlled/influenced/gamed (eg the late 90s counter revolution and return to booze booze tits lager booze gak) is not at all clear to me.
The desires of people en masse clearly are coordinated, clearly synced to a significant degree but why?

Yeah, its backwards. Cultural movements aren't based on mass drug preference. There's no zeitgeist. Its downstream eddies of the vagaries of global finance, law, crime & cartels manufacturing desire.
 

luka

Well-known member
That explanation is compelling in its neatness but feels too top-down determinist to truly fit the evidence. It's the same as saying popular music is only popular because it's rammed down our throats by corporations. That's only ever half true.
 
places like Switzerland have big drug problems as we type too. uber rich middle to upper class kids on all kinds of shit every week. Zurich has it's 'needle park' right outside of the main train station. albeit they're on much higher quality shit than most of us are used to. acid and psychs are definitely around too, i think the deep web/modern techies/silicon valley types/burning man play a big role in this, but it tends to be the reserve of the higher educated... maybe it always was? too many moving parts to really grasp it. there's definitely a naivete to psych inspired stuff, and as was discussed in a few other threads over the last year or so, a lot of it hasn't dated well at all. but there's something to it, man. some of it still stands as the highest art we dumb humans ever reached imho. all i know is that i fkn felt those tracks the other day

re: the 90s

yeah that's the thing i think is important to remember, there was bad shit going on then too, but somehow people were in a different headspace, they had fight in em. since sometime around the millenium that's ended. i mean, thatcher was only just out of office. poll tax. gulf war. 80s residue. gazza's tears & loads more... but somehow the stars aligned, and for a good half decade or more which started before the 90s obv, there was an unprescedented creative boom with an attitude i don't know if we're likely to see again, any time soon at least. not from the well trained blobs of screen addicted flesh n bone younger than us anyway. it requires that fight, a zest for life, a rebeliousness which has been thoroughly kicked out of even the angriest of people and all that's left is us being turned against each other in an endless & hollow tribal feud. i think it's all very well orchestrated myself, but i don't wanna derail the thread with any of that. reality right now is an actual headfuck if you're paying the slightest bit of attention. it pushes and pulls us against our will in all kinds of weird and awkward directions that deep down in our guts we know we should be fighting against, but what exactly is it? in the 90s it was pretty straight forward. the narrative was laid out nice and clear. that poll tax riot video posted the other day in the gilets jaunes thread shows you how people were looking out for each other back then. now people who show up to marches are there to get their witty signs posted and liked on instagram. fear is winning. confusion is the name of the game.

Great post
 

droid

Well-known member
Even the 60's counterculture... only happened because of a few utopian or enterprising chemists. Hoffman, Owsley, Shulgin...
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
That explanation is compelling in its neatness but feels too top-down determinist to truly fit the evidence. It's the same as saying popular music is only popular because it's rammed down our throats by corporations. That's only ever half true.


yeah, but half true is still true where is poptimist denialism is worse.
 

thirdform

pass the sick bucket
Even the 60's counterculture... only happened because of a few utopian or enterprising chemists. Hoffman, Owsley, Shulgin...

and it was mostly middle class drop outs. it actually fell down quicker than rave culture. it was never a black ting albeit with some crossovers.

For instance psychedelic rock was natural to the anatolian music soundworld 90% of turkish psych fans in the 60s-70s didn't do acid. im 100% sure of it. drugs were around but it was an old jazz man thing, ironically. the lumpen weed and opium caners were listening to arabesque and tavern music, not the more sophisticated anatolian rock sound.
 
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thirdform

pass the sick bucket
the beatles are only popular because they were shoved down our throats. in terms of sonic influence they hardly had any influence on anyone who was notable in music. they are a massive influence by sheer virtue of their british imperialism. nothing else. they are insignificant relatively speaking. without the beatles most of modern music would look the same, there would just be another gignol in history instead.

That's what the beatles are, the last gasp of the cult of the great man. their music is average and pedestrian at best. not bad, but not great either. not contemptable, but neither inducing heart palpitations. the archetypical definition of middlebrow.
 
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luka

Well-known member
I think musically the beatles are unremarkable at best but even so I don't find your/droids explanation entirely satisfactory. 'They' try to shove all sorts of things down our throats. A lot of it we spit out.
 

droid

Well-known member
But we generally dont spit it out... the legal high thing is illustrative. The worst crap imaginable and it was hoovered up simply because it was readily available. A generation volunteering as guinea pigs for Chinese research chemical labs out of convenience.
 

version

Well-known member
I like The Beatles. They're not my favourite band, but I rate them and George seemed like a nice guy.
 

droid

Well-known member
You've spent too long in the desert. Your effete psycho-gnosis is out of sync with the common man and their booze, pills and powder.
 

droid

Well-known member
Psychedelic elites with their high falutin theories. Most people just want to shove shit up their nose, shift someone and puke on their shoes.
 
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