'God has given us music so that above all it can lead us upwards. Music unites all qualities: it can exalt us, divert us, cheer us up, or break the hardest of hearts with the softest of its melancholy tones. But its principal task is to lead our thoughts to higher things, to elevate, even to make us tremble… The musical art often speaks in sounds more penetrating than the words of poetry, and takes hold of the most hidden crevices of the heart… Song elevates our being and leads us to the good and the true. If, however, music serves only as a diversion or as a kind of vain ostentation it is sinful and harmful.'
- Friedrich Nietzsche
'When you're sick, music is a great help. Once, in Texas, I kicked a [opioid] habit on weed, a pint of paregoric and a few Louis Armstrong records.' - William S Burroughs
'Music has always been a matter of Energy to me, a question of Fuel. Sentimental people call it Inspiration, but what they really mean is Fuel.
I have always needed Fuel. I am a serious consumer.'
- Hunter S Thompson
“Cannabis is not an evil drug. It’s medicine … a magical plant really. It’s a super highway of the senses for me that raises consciousness, which is exactly why it is so needed these days with the world upside down and inside out.”'
- Mickey Hart
"Mary… wouna. Honey, you sure was good and I enjoyed you very much. Marijuana is more of a medicine than dope. It does something to your hearing. And if you’re a musician, it does something to your playing. I have to go through the whole world with this horn, making millions happy. And at the same time ducking and dodging cops, dicks, so forth. Why? ‘Cause they say it’s against the law. I am not so particular about having a permit to carry a gun. All I want is a permit to carry that good shit."
- Louis Armstrong
A mind that does not hear, listen to, and enjoy music is defective, according to me. It has not learnt to master one of the primary sensory inputs that help to understand the world we live in. Music is not only produced by humans, it is produced by the whole of nature. The sound of the wind, the various symphonies of the living beings communicating within their groups and with the external world, the sound of thunder, the sounds of human activity, the silence of the void, all create music at all times. It is for the mind to use this energy for its sustenance, balance and well-being, and to contribute with its own music that heals. What we choose to perceive, and what we choose to reject, play a large part in our perception of reality, and our relationship with it, as much as the things we see, or consume as food and drink, medicine and intoxicant. The perfect state of paradise - or nirvana - can be reached by the sound state (pun intended) of our minds. The beat of the dumru of Siva pervades all things and the void. One who does not know music, knows not the world - many wise beings have said things along these lines. To not know music is to not know ecstasy and truth, unfiltered by delusion. Anybody who listens to music is a person worthy of at least something to be appreciated for, just like a person who likes reading books. Friedrich Nietzsche is supposed to have said 'Without music life would be a mistake.' Virginia Woolf reportedly said 'That is the quality which dance music has — no other: it stirs some barbaric instinct — lulled asleep in our sober lives — you forget centuries of civilization in a second, & yield to that strange passion which sends you madly whirling round the room — oblivious of everything save that you must keep swaying with the music — in & out, round & round — in the eddies & swirls of the violins. It is as though some swift current of water swept you along with it. It is magic music.' Victor Hugo reportedly said 'Music expresses that which cannot be put into words and that which cannot remain silent.' Aldous Huxley apparently had this to say about music - 'After silence that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music,' and 'When the inexpressible had to be expressed, Shakespeare laid down his pen and called for music.' Walt Whitman said 'Music, the combiner, nothing more spiritual, nothing more sensuous, a god, yet completely human, advances, prevails, holds highest place; supplying in certain wants and quarters what nothing else could supply.' Emerson said 'Men are conservatives when they are least vigorous, or when they are most luxurious. They are conservatives after taking dinner, or before taking rest; when they are sick, or aged: in the morning, or when their intellect or their conscience has been aroused; when they hear music, or when they read poetry, they are radicals.'
In this regard, the creators of music assume the role of gods or demons - capable of transporting a listener to the heights of heaven or to the depths of hell. Again, where the musician takes you is where his or her state of mind is - and whether you like it or not - is where your state of mind is if you go with the musical flow. In this regard, the role of cannabis - as a determining factor of where the mind of the musician is, and where the mind of the listener is - is quite noteworthy. It provides the 'setting' for the psychedelic experience that music creates. A person who consumes cannabis and listens to music is likely to have a more profound experience. If you are on cannabis, almost all music sounds interesting. When one cannot hear human-made music, one's mind tunes in to the sounds of nature, or of human activity, and perceives the harmony in all these things. One's sense of sound intensifies to the level of complete clarity across a whole range of frequencies. In general, it is found that the use of cannabis puts a person in good spirits, becoming either talkative or silent in social company, one of the key reasons why it was an integral part of social gatherings, much like the role that beer plays. As the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission of 1894-95 Report states regarding the immediate effects of cannabis consumption that - 'Dr. Russell (Bengal witness No. 105), in his note furnished to Dr. Prain, gives the following effects of "doses pushed to produce a decided effect": "Mental effects appear in from three to five minutes; exhilaration and excitement of a pleasing nature: the subject talkative and merry; laughs and gesticulates; plays on imaginary musical instruments and sings; converses with imaginary persons; illusions and delusions, usually of a pleasing nature; objective of these very responsive to external impressions and suggestions; rarely quarrelsome or combative. Then ensues a condition of repose and quiet contemplation with fixed stare and immobile pupil.'
Musicians and cannabis have had a life long romance. A person who consumes cannabis and creates music is also likely to have a more profound experience, I believe. One needs look no further than the great gods of music to see the influence that cannabis has had on the creation of music. These masters have created whole new genres of music, or have stamped their names so clearly on a particular form of music that they are universally recognized as the fountainheads, or peaks of these forms of music. Take Bob Marley, for example, and what the rasta-god of ganja did to the reggae genre. National Geographic says '"Young people respond to rebellion,
and Bob is the ultimate rebel, spliff-smoking in the face of power,"
Steffens said. "He was a man who tapped the deepest emotional roots in
human beings."' Or consider Muddy Waters - the champagne and reefer king of the blues. He sang "Give me champagne when am thirsty, reefer when I wanna get high.' Or how about Louis Armstrong who brought a whole new way of jazz. Louis Armstrong is said to have told his manager that the one thing he wanted ensured was his supply of cannabis. What about Black Sabbath and the rock-defining music that they brought to the world. 'I love you sweet leaf', they sang. Neil Young, Willie Nelson, Snoop Dog, Tom Petty, Jimmy Hendrix, JJ Cale, Jerry Garcia, Carlos Santana - the names of those who showed their open love for cannabis, and what it meant to them, all feature in musical halls of fame. JJ Cale sang 'Yeah, I don't care what mama don't allow, am gonna smoke that reefer anyhow' in his song Mama Don't. Mickey Hart, the drummer of the Grateful Dead had this to say about cannabis, reports Forbes News '“I knew it was illegal, but once I smoked it, I immediately just felt really aware and this sense of being in the now. It was a beautiful feeling and my music just flowed,” Hart exclusively shared with ForbesLife over the phone. “Cannabis is not an evil drug. It’s medicine … a magical plant really. It’s a super highway of the senses for me that raises consciousness, which is exactly why it is so needed these days with the world upside down and inside out.”' Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones was reported recently to have said
that, these days a single joint, smoked at the start of the day, keeps him in the right
mood for the rest of the day.
The original vagabond - who defies categorization, who performs in multiple genres of music, who writes poetry for the ages - Bob Dylan, is a colossus in both the literary and music worlds. He sang 'I would not feel so all alone..Everybody must get stoned' in Rainy Day Women #12 and 35 (a song whose proper title probably is Everybody Must Get Stoned since that is what most people assume it to be). Recounting the early cannabis experiences of the Beatles, and their session with Bob Dylan, Celeb Stoner reports through Steve Bloom that 'They [the Beatles] wanted to know how the marijuana would make them feel and we told them it would make them feel good. I still hadn't learned how to roll a joint in those days, so when the Beatles agreed to try some, I asked Dylan to roll the first joint. Bob wasn't much of a roller either, and a lot of the grass fell into the big bowl of fruit on the room service table. Bob hovered unsteadily over the bowl as he stood at the table while he tried to lift the grass from the baggie with the fingertips of one hand so he could crush it into the leaf of rolling paper which he held in his other hand. In addition to the fact that Bob was a sloppy roller to begin with, what Bob had started drinking had already gotten to him.' Writing about Bob Dylan on his 80th birthday, the Guardian reported that 'Which brings me to what I think we’re celebrating most of all: Dylan’s generosity. Because Dylan, like Shakespeare and Homer, is an artist who disappears as only the greatest can. An artist who somehow creates work far beyond himself. We have no idea what Shakespeare feels. You look for him in the plays – all the way from Juliet to King Lear via Bottom and Cleopatra – and you can’t find him: he has mysteriously vanished from the work altogether. Same with Dylan. Sure, the songs come through him and by him but they’re not for him. They are there for the benefit of anyone and everyone who wishes to fathom human nature in their company. They exist for all the world today and they will exist for all the world tomorrow. They will always be there for me. They will always be there for you.'
The turmoil that created Bob Marley and the Wailers continues to envelop the legacy. The world today is as regressive when it comes to cannabis as it was when the band was at its peak. The next generation of musicians continue to be repressed for their cannabis affiliations. Forbes Magazine reports that 'Jawara McIntosh, Peter Tosh’s youngest son, followed his father’s footsteps not only in music, but also in Rastafarianism and cannabis advocacy. And these decisions have brought him both joy and grief. A few years ago, Jawara was incarcerated for a cannabis-related charge. It was during his confinement at Bergen County Jail in New Jersey that the 39 year-old’s life would take a tragic turn. In February of 2017, Jawara was brutally attacked by inmate Kyrie Charon Baum, who caused severe brain injuries that have confined him to bed care ever since.' As for the Bob Marley cannabis legacy, the Bob Marley Museum in Kingston, Jamaica now offers the Marley Natural brand. Business Wire reports '“Along with music, herb was such an important part of my father’s life. He was always a strong advocate for marijuana and all of its healing qualities. We are thrilled to honor him and his contribution to the world of music and now cannabis at the Bob Marley Museum,” said Stephen Marley. “We are thrilled to work with the Marley family to bring the Marley Natural portfolio to Jamaica through this flagship retail location. This unique cannabis experience will bring to life the ethos of Bob Marley,” said Damian Marano, CEO, Docklight Brands. “It is incredibly meaningful to have the first Marley Natural dispensary in the world at the Bob Marley Museum in Kingston, Jamaica.” The impact of Bob Marley on the world was aptly captured by U2's Bono, as the Hindu reports 'While inducting Marley posthumously into the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame, U2 singer Bono’s description of the man was the closest anyone could get to defining the indefinable — “Bob Marley was everything at the same time: prophet, soul rebel, Rasta-man, herbs-man, wild man, a natural mystic man, lady’s man, island man, family man, Rita’s man, soccer man, shaman, human, Jamaican.” Robert Nesta Marley was all of that... and so much more.' The terror that Bob Marley creates in the ruling and upper classes of most nations is clearly evident in the way that the Bob Marley One Love movie was treated by different nations. Most countries, I suspect, did not even screen the movie or release it on their OTT platforms. In India, even though the preview of the movie was released in theaters around the country, the full movie never got finally released in the theaters. The public had to wait for months later to be able to watch the movie on OTT. It is quite clear that the ganja smoking by the band would have made the censor board squirm in their chairs, as the ruling dispensation would have clearly directed them to not screen the movie in the theaters.
Willie Nelson has been one of the most prominent faces of cannabis legalization, and its leading US cannabis advocacy group National Organization for Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), for decades now. NORML reports that 'Willie [Nelson] is an icon who is loved by tens
of millions of Americans for his country music and his charming country
style, despite the fact that for more than 40 years, he has been open
and honest about the enjoyment he derives from smoking marijuana. Willie
is totally comfortable with himself, and that includes his marijuana
smoking. He is a proud smoker and he seldom does an interview with
anyone without making the point that he is a marijuana smoker and that
smoking should be legalized for adults.' Willie Nelson backs hemp cultivation and organic farming, along with
having his own brand of hemp products called Willie's Remedy, as WSFA
reports 'The first product to be released: hemp-infused whole-bean
coffee. Nelson has long been a U.S. farming activist, leading a charge
for utilizing American-grown in Willie’s Remedy, which features
non-intoxicating hemp-based products designed for health-conscious
consumers of all ages, according to a press release. “Hemp production in
America was stifled for so long, but it could now make all the
difference for small independent farmers,” Nelson said. “Hemp isn’t just
good for our farmers and our economy, it’s good for our soil, our
environment — and our health.”
Snoop Dogg has become one of the most iconic faces of legal cannabis in the US and worldwide today. The rapper has emerged as one of the leading advocates of cannabis, as well as embraced the legal world of cannabis businesses. Forbes Magazine reports that 'For decades now, Snoop Dogg (born Calvin Cordozar Broadus Jr.) has been vocal about his love of plants, with good old Mary Jane always playing center forward. However, in recent months, the world-famous rapper has been experimenting with other additions to his daily herb-consumption regimen. The D O Double G is now hyped about plant-based foods, as evidenced by his collaborations with Beyond Meat, his attempts to get his family on the diet, and his investment in plant-based snack company, Outstanding Foods.' Dogg advocated for cannabis legalization in New Zealand's failed initiative. ODT News reports that 'The upward trend in support caught the eye of rapper and actor Snoop Dogg, who threw his support behind the legalisation of cannabis in New Zealand. Taking to Facebook, Snoop Dogg referenced Lord of the Rings character Gandalf in his pro-cannabis post. "Gandalf smoking that good good," he wrote while linking to a Merry Jane article which discusses the growing support for cannabis in New Zealand.' Snoop Dogg practices what he preaches, as this report in Page Six shows 'After the screening, we hear that a message was sent from the theater to premiere organizers regarding a few “issues” with the movie’s “talent” — which sources said were in reference to the weed-loving LA rapper. “The main issue is that the talent smoked weed in the green room,” said a message from a multiplex staffer. “The site has spent all day airing it out and I checked it about two hours ago and it smells a bit better, just a faint smell remains.”'
Carlos Santana has brought attention to the medicinal and spiritual aspects of cannabis in Native American culture by starting his own cannabis brand called Mirayo. Talking to Leafly, he says 'Yes, the medicine has been used since time immemorial by American Indians from Canada to Brazil. They always knew that there was ‘medicine’ and ‘drugs.’ Medicine—Mother Nature makes with the help of photosynthesis, which is the sun. Drugs are made in a laboratory by a man. So there’s drugs and then there’s medicine. And my mom always knew about herbs for tea and ointment and all kinds of stuff.'
Paul McCartney of the Beatles was known to generally have some of the best cannabis with him. He now grows his own hemp as Mirror reports 'Sir Paul McCartney is growing hemp at his farm - but he has to hide his crops to stop teenagers from stealing the plants. The Beatles icon has started producing crops of hemp - a type of cannabis plant - at his family farm in Peasmarsh near Rye, but he is having an issue with the local youths trying to steal his plants so they can use it to try and get high. Paul, 79, insists he is following government regulations to grow hemp along with crops of rye, peas and wheat. He said: “We grow crops, I like doing things like spelt wheat, rye, we grow peas. We’re actually just getting into growing hemp, the funny thing with government regulations is you’ve got to keep it where people can’t see it, because you get all the kids coming in and robbing it!”'
Cannabis enabled Dave Mustaine of Megadeth to battle cancer, as Louder Sound reports 'I think the world is just now finding out the beauty of cannabis and everything it can do for you. I hear people talk how it’s good for cancer patients. C’mon, it’s good for any fucking patient! The radiation zapped my salivary glands so I couldn’t make spit, which made it really hard to swallow and get food down. They gave me this crazy mouthwash to use that had Benadryl and lidocaine in it, but I still couldn’t eat. So cannabis helped with that, except I got a terrible craving for kiddie cereal. I went to the store and got, like, 20 boxes.”' Melissa Etheridge also speaks about the role of cannabis in fighting her breast cancer, as Marijuana Moment reports - 'Etheridge, who’s become an outspoken advocate for legalization in the years since she started using the plant medicinally after being diagnosed with breast cancer in her 40s, told Marijuana Moment in a new interview that the experience of being busted did not deter her. Rather, it has motivated her to continue advocating for patients and spreading the word about marijuana’s therapeutic potential. Later this month, the singer plans to continue that mission, giving a keynote talk on how art and culture can help bring cannabis into the mainstream at the California Cannabis Business Conference in Anaheim. In the interview below, which has been lightly edited for length and clarity, she speaks about what the audience can expect and the role of celebrities in the legalization movement.' The Hindu reports how cannabis enabled Leonard Cohen to go through his final days of life. It reports that '“This old man, who was truly in pain and discomfort, would at some intervals get out of his medical chair and dance in front of his speakers. And sometimes, we would put on a song and listen to it on repeat just like teenagers, with the help of medical marijuana. I think in states of pain and discomfort, what do you seek with more energy and more clarity than joy and jubilance?”' Music is played when a patient is undergoing complex brain surgery, or as treatment for depression and different forms of brain damage. This enables the physician to see the workings of the patient's brain, and also aids the patient in a faster recovery. Similarly cannabis is also used to treat damage to the brain in cases of chronic addiction to heroin, alcohol, methamphetamine,cocaine, synthetic cannabinoids, benzodiazepines and numerous prescription drugs. It is also used to treat depression, PTSD, brain cancer, traumatic brain injury (TBI) and autism. Both cannabis and music are good for the brain. I believe, it is more so in combination, taking one to states of deep bliss. EDM News reports Elton john as saying ' "I love [Autobahn] because it was the first record I ever heard that really sounded German as far as pop music went. It just is a seminal record in electronic music," he said. "I think their album Trans-Europe Express it's one of my all-time favorite records. I remember smoking a joint and listening to it on really loud speakers and I thought I saw God during that album.”'
Recent artists like Beyonce Knowles have lent their voices to the cannabis movement, especially addressing the needs of working mothers and middle-aged women professionals. Leafly reports 'If Beyoncé is going to do something, you and your mom are also more likely to do it. Those are just the rules. By openly discussing her use of CBD, she gives more people the courage to see if CBD can help them get into whatever formation they have been trying to achieve. Whether you are a stay-at-home parent or a performance-focused professional wondering if CBD could help you out – there is nothing like a vote of confidence from Queen B herself.' It is a fact that until the prohibition of cannabis in the 19th century in India, women used cannabis typically starting from middle age, unlike men who usually started using cannabis around the age of eighteen. Older women usually drank cannabis as bhang, or consumed it as sweetmeats and food ingredients. Most women who took up cannabis usage at middle age continued to do so till the end of their lives, indicating the benefits that the herb has for older women. We are seeing a revival of this trend in recent times in places with legalized cannabis, where the elderly form the fastest growing demographic among cannabis users, and among the elderly as well as across middle age demographics, women are as significant users as men. There are wide ranges of women-centric cannabis products available in these markets today.
Some of the old ganja warriors are lucky enough to be still alive today to see the waves of legalization sweeping across the US and the world. David Crosby - of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young fame - now lives a happy retired life, growing and smoking his own ganja in the legalized state of California. Celebstoner reported that 'At 79, the Croz concluded: “We’ve been watching the effects of smoking marijuana on me for almost 60 years now. So far it hasn’t done anything we can tell. My memory has never been really great, and when I’m really stoned I have trouble remembering your name, but it hasn’t had any physical harm as far as we can tell.”' Leafly reports that, 'At home, Crosby keeps it simple by growing five distinct varietals he’s nicknamed for their most pronounced attributes, like Purple. He enjoys puffing on a Pax vaporizer starting usually in mid to late afternoon and concludes each day by rolling up a fat joint and watching a movie with his wife. In between he often finds cannabis to be a creative catalyst for his songwriting. He also enjoys growing cannabis as a creativity-stimulating pursuit, one that engenders a profound connection to the plant. “What I’ve learned from growing my own pot is that it’s an awful lot of fun. The plants are beautiful and lovely. They grow like crazy and truly respond to you. What I end up doing in the morning is making some coffee and wandering around in my underwear in the garden. I’ll pluck off a leaf here and there while I water them and tell them how lovely they are…. It’s wonderful.”' David Crosby was on the Advisory Board of NORML, the cannabis advocacy group, as reported by NORML. It reports Crosby as saying 'Let’s face it. I, like all of you, believe that people should not be arrested or go to jail for the responsible use of a substance that is objectively safer than alcohol, tobacco, or most prescription drugs. And I’ve looked at the success of states like Colorado and Oregon that have elected to move in a different direction. That is why I’m proud to become a part of America’s oldest and most well-recognized marijuana law reform organization, and that’s why I’ve joined NORML’s Advisory Board to help bring these sensible policies to the entire country.'
Paul McCartney of the Beatles was known to generally have some of the best cannabis with him. He now grows his own hemp as Mirror reports 'Sir Paul McCartney is growing hemp at his farm - but he has to hide his crops to stop teenagers from stealing the plants. The Beatles icon has started producing crops of hemp - a type of cannabis plant - at his family farm in Peasmarsh near Rye, but he is having an issue with the local youths trying to steal his plants so they can use it to try and get high. Paul, 79, insists he is following government regulations to grow hemp along with crops of rye, peas and wheat. He said: “We grow crops, I like doing things like spelt wheat, rye, we grow peas. We’re actually just getting into growing hemp, the funny thing with government regulations is you’ve got to keep it where people can’t see it, because you get all the kids coming in and robbing it!”'
Cannabis enabled Dave Mustaine of Megadeth to battle cancer, as Louder Sound reports 'I think the world is just now finding out the beauty of cannabis and everything it can do for you. I hear people talk how it’s good for cancer patients. C’mon, it’s good for any fucking patient! The radiation zapped my salivary glands so I couldn’t make spit, which made it really hard to swallow and get food down. They gave me this crazy mouthwash to use that had Benadryl and lidocaine in it, but I still couldn’t eat. So cannabis helped with that, except I got a terrible craving for kiddie cereal. I went to the store and got, like, 20 boxes.”' Melissa Etheridge also speaks about the role of cannabis in fighting her breast cancer, as Marijuana Moment reports - 'Etheridge, who’s become an outspoken advocate for legalization in the years since she started using the plant medicinally after being diagnosed with breast cancer in her 40s, told Marijuana Moment in a new interview that the experience of being busted did not deter her. Rather, it has motivated her to continue advocating for patients and spreading the word about marijuana’s therapeutic potential. Later this month, the singer plans to continue that mission, giving a keynote talk on how art and culture can help bring cannabis into the mainstream at the California Cannabis Business Conference in Anaheim. In the interview below, which has been lightly edited for length and clarity, she speaks about what the audience can expect and the role of celebrities in the legalization movement.' The Hindu reports how cannabis enabled Leonard Cohen to go through his final days of life. It reports that '“This old man, who was truly in pain and discomfort, would at some intervals get out of his medical chair and dance in front of his speakers. And sometimes, we would put on a song and listen to it on repeat just like teenagers, with the help of medical marijuana. I think in states of pain and discomfort, what do you seek with more energy and more clarity than joy and jubilance?”' Music is played when a patient is undergoing complex brain surgery, or as treatment for depression and different forms of brain damage. This enables the physician to see the workings of the patient's brain, and also aids the patient in a faster recovery. Similarly cannabis is also used to treat damage to the brain in cases of chronic addiction to heroin, alcohol, methamphetamine,cocaine, synthetic cannabinoids, benzodiazepines and numerous prescription drugs. It is also used to treat depression, PTSD, brain cancer, traumatic brain injury (TBI) and autism. Both cannabis and music are good for the brain. I believe, it is more so in combination, taking one to states of deep bliss. EDM News reports Elton john as saying ' "I love [Autobahn] because it was the first record I ever heard that really sounded German as far as pop music went. It just is a seminal record in electronic music," he said. "I think their album Trans-Europe Express it's one of my all-time favorite records. I remember smoking a joint and listening to it on really loud speakers and I thought I saw God during that album.”'
Recent artists like Beyonce Knowles have lent their voices to the cannabis movement, especially addressing the needs of working mothers and middle-aged women professionals. Leafly reports 'If Beyoncé is going to do something, you and your mom are also more likely to do it. Those are just the rules. By openly discussing her use of CBD, she gives more people the courage to see if CBD can help them get into whatever formation they have been trying to achieve. Whether you are a stay-at-home parent or a performance-focused professional wondering if CBD could help you out – there is nothing like a vote of confidence from Queen B herself.' It is a fact that until the prohibition of cannabis in the 19th century in India, women used cannabis typically starting from middle age, unlike men who usually started using cannabis around the age of eighteen. Older women usually drank cannabis as bhang, or consumed it as sweetmeats and food ingredients. Most women who took up cannabis usage at middle age continued to do so till the end of their lives, indicating the benefits that the herb has for older women. We are seeing a revival of this trend in recent times in places with legalized cannabis, where the elderly form the fastest growing demographic among cannabis users, and among the elderly as well as across middle age demographics, women are as significant users as men. There are wide ranges of women-centric cannabis products available in these markets today.
Some of the old ganja warriors are lucky enough to be still alive today to see the waves of legalization sweeping across the US and the world. David Crosby - of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young fame - now lives a happy retired life, growing and smoking his own ganja in the legalized state of California. Celebstoner reported that 'At 79, the Croz concluded: “We’ve been watching the effects of smoking marijuana on me for almost 60 years now. So far it hasn’t done anything we can tell. My memory has never been really great, and when I’m really stoned I have trouble remembering your name, but it hasn’t had any physical harm as far as we can tell.”' Leafly reports that, 'At home, Crosby keeps it simple by growing five distinct varietals he’s nicknamed for their most pronounced attributes, like Purple. He enjoys puffing on a Pax vaporizer starting usually in mid to late afternoon and concludes each day by rolling up a fat joint and watching a movie with his wife. In between he often finds cannabis to be a creative catalyst for his songwriting. He also enjoys growing cannabis as a creativity-stimulating pursuit, one that engenders a profound connection to the plant. “What I’ve learned from growing my own pot is that it’s an awful lot of fun. The plants are beautiful and lovely. They grow like crazy and truly respond to you. What I end up doing in the morning is making some coffee and wandering around in my underwear in the garden. I’ll pluck off a leaf here and there while I water them and tell them how lovely they are…. It’s wonderful.”' David Crosby was on the Advisory Board of NORML, the cannabis advocacy group, as reported by NORML. It reports Crosby as saying 'Let’s face it. I, like all of you, believe that people should not be arrested or go to jail for the responsible use of a substance that is objectively safer than alcohol, tobacco, or most prescription drugs. And I’ve looked at the success of states like Colorado and Oregon that have elected to move in a different direction. That is why I’m proud to become a part of America’s oldest and most well-recognized marijuana law reform organization, and that’s why I’ve joined NORML’s Advisory Board to help bring these sensible policies to the entire country.'
Almost everybody, who has smoked good ganja and listened to music, has had an unforgettable experience. Quite often, it is the first time we smoke ganja and suddenly listen to a music track, that we are blown away by the music. There are certain music tracks that guarantee a mind-blowing experience for the first time listener to music on ganja. Pink Floyd's Comfortably Numb, Dire Straits Sultans of Swing, The Doors Riders on the Storm...the list is endless. The one thing that is common to all this is the first profound connection that the music has with the listener on ganja. The listener hears, sees, feels and experiences things that seem beyond the music but which are being channelized through the music. I remember the first time I heard Comfortably Numb, as a youth, lying stoned on the floor of my bedroom. It felt like the room was a swimming pool of music, and I was immersed in it, hearing every note and silence like as if it was a part of me. There is something about listening to Pink Floyd on ganja. It is as if the two are made for each other. The Ringer reports about Pink Floyd's masterpiece album, The Dark Side of the Moon, 'Maybe the legacy of The Dark Side of the Moon is that there is no legacy; it’s just a moment in time. And ultimately, you might create something that’s remembered and loved by the whole world. But your life isn’t one moment; it’s an accumulation of all the discrete parts of your life, most of all how you treated the people who really mattered to you. And if one moment defines your whole life, then perhaps you didn’t go through real emotional growth, which is simply making a low-level, constant effort to not be a jerk. And maybe all these conflicts can coexist peacefully. You’re not significant in the grand scheme of things, but you can be important to a few people, and that’s more than enough. The things you loved when you were young might not sound great anymore, but they can still be a part of you. You might go insane. You will definitely die. It’s too much to think about sometimes. A good way to avoid it: Turn off your brain, light up a joint, and listen to The Dark Side of the Moon.' From the instant that I heard music on ganja I liked the experience. I had been listening to music from a very young age, but the infusion of rock and ganja at around the age of eighteen sent me into a new orbit, I think. For many people, it can have a profound influence on who they finally become in life, similar to a psychedelic healing experience on psilocybin or peyote. Forbes Magazine reports about Lenny Kravitz's first ganja and rock experience, where it writes 'For Santa Monica teens in the mid-seventies, smoking weed was like breathing air. I took a puff and exhaled. Still no effect. Shannon told me to hold it in longer. I did, and this time something shifted. At precisely the same time the head rush hit, Derek slipped a cassette in his boombox. “Black Dog.” This was a moment. Maybe the moment. My head exploded. My mind blew up with the sound of the screaming guitar, the crazed vocal, the blasting beat. I was knocked on my ass. I hadn’t even heard of Led Zeppelin. I didn’t yet know the names Robert Plant, Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones, and John Bonham. All I knew was that this music was electrifying every cell in my body. The mixture of marijuana and “Black Dog” sent me soaring. The sky opened up. The world got bigger and more beautiful. I was fucked up.'
Forbes Magazine reports about the first ganja experience of Grateful Dead's Jerry Garcia, saying 'Jerry himself first got high as a teenager. As he recalled to Rolling Stone in 1972: "I was 15 when I got turned on to marijuana. Finally there was marijuana: Wow! Marijuana! Me and a friend of mine went up into the hills with two joints, the San Francisco foothills, and smoked these joints and just got so high and laughed and roared and went skipping down the streets doing funny things and just having a helluva time.”' His family have launched a brand of cannabis in Garcia's name.
Forbes Magazine reports about the first ganja experience of Grateful Dead's Jerry Garcia, saying 'Jerry himself first got high as a teenager. As he recalled to Rolling Stone in 1972: "I was 15 when I got turned on to marijuana. Finally there was marijuana: Wow! Marijuana! Me and a friend of mine went up into the hills with two joints, the San Francisco foothills, and smoked these joints and just got so high and laughed and roared and went skipping down the streets doing funny things and just having a helluva time.”' His family have launched a brand of cannabis in Garcia's name.
Woodstock, in 1969, sent seismic waves through the music and cannabis world (besides the LSD and psychedelic mushrooms worlds, of course) when the counter culture movement descended on a farm in an English village and created a musical event that has been immortalized. The impact was felt across the world amongst those who believed in the counterculture ideals of peace, love, music and ganja. The Hindu reports that 'For those who grew up in the 1970s with a passion for rock music, it became a requirement to see the Woodstock documentary. But, like Nigel, the Woodstock concert movie is the closest any of us got to embrace this gigantic countercultural movement. To somehow be a part of that, even vicariously, in the India of the 1970s was to feel like a rebel. We were in thrall to the new hippie culture and the rebellion it had stirred up among young people!' Writing about the music scene in Madras (now Chennai) in the 1960s and 70s, the Hindu reports that 'The 60s and 70s witnessed a shake up in the music world, with the emergence of a new unruly, rebellious brand of music — Rock n Roll. Tremors were felt in Madras too, with long-haired college kids wearing bell bottoms, smoking marijuana, strumming guitars and giving their parents sleepless nights.'
The power of music to change the world is unquestionable. It has created, and fueled energy for, various revolutionary movements across diverse fields of human activity. Hunter S Thompson writes in his book Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson, about the use of music on the political campaign trail. He says 'The radio spots we ran in Aspen would have terrified political eunuchs like Tunney and Ottinger. Our theme song was Herbie Mann's "Battle Hymn of the Republic," which we ran over and over again - as a doleful background to very heavy raps and evil mockery of the retrogade opposition. They bitched and groaned, accusing us in their ignorance of "using Madison Avenue techniques," while in truth it was purely Lenny Bruce. But they didn't know Lenny; their humor was still Bob Hope, with a tangent taste for Don Rickles here and there among the handful of swingers who didn't mind admitting that they dug the stag movies on weekends at Leon Uris' home on Red Mountain. We enjoyed skewering those bastards. Our radio wizard, an ex-nightclub comic, Phil Clark, made several spots that caused people to foam in the mouth and chase their tails in an impotent rage. There was a thread of high, wild humor in the Edwards campaign, and that was what kept us all sane. There was a definite satisfaction in knowing that, even if we lost, whoever beat us would never get rid of the scars. It was necessary, we felt, to thoroughly terrify our opponents, so that even in hollow victory, they would learn to fear every sunrise until the next election.'
The latest technology and means of communication are helping the message of cannabis liberation reach wider audiences. The increasing cannabis content in music is both a reflection of the increasing awareness of musicians of the evils of cannabis prohibition, as well as the increasing levels of legalization that can be seen in many places, and the increasing re-acceptance of cannabis as an integral part of society. In recent times, many of the current generation of musical artists, across genres, have openly sung about and created audio and video content showing their open love for the prohibited magical herb. Marijuana Moment reports 'The number of hit songs that feature lyrics referencing marijuana has increased dramatically over the last 30 years, according to a new study. And researchers believe that growing public acceptance of cannabis is fueling a trend that has resulted in more than three out of four top 40 songs in the U.S. now containing shout-outs to weed.' Rolling Stone magazine writes about a new song and video by Maroon 5. It says 'In the David Dobkin-directed accompanying video for the song, which was shot in Los Angeles on an iPhone, singer Adam Levine sits outside contemplating his feelings for someone. “You can make a grown man cry/If you ever said goodbye,” he sings, adding in the chorus that he will “Never gonna need nobody’s love, but yours.” As he confirms his faithfulness, he rolls and smokes blunts. The video ends with a quote attributed to the ACLU. “It’s time to end the War on Marijuana. The aggressive enforcement of marijuana possession laws needlessly ensnares hundreds of thousands of people into the criminal justice system and wastes billions of taxpayers’ dollars,” the quote reads. “What’s more, it is carried out with staggering racial bias. Despite being a priority for police departments, the War on Marijuana has failed to reduce marijuana use and availability and diverted resources that could be better invested in our communities.” In a statement, the band and Interscope Records said they would be making a donation to the ACLU of Southern California.' Independent music stations that openly profess their love for cannabis, and cannabis infused music, are seeing a blossoming in many parts of the world. Reporting on one such cannabis infused music space, and the energy that drives it, Forbes Magazine reports that '“One often tries to achieve in life what one would have wanted to have as a kid… If back in the day, we [the hosts] had had a space like DAMN!, we would have grown much faster. That’s what we want to achieve now, for up and coming artists. We want to pass the torch,” Veeyam continues. “DAMN!, like cannabis, requires care and love. It’s our medication, and we grow it ourselves,” he concludes.'
Heads of state have been proud of their association with cannabis-smoking musicians, and this to me is a mark of a good quality politician. Jimmy Carter is proud of his son smoking cannabis with Willie Nelson in the White House. That is enough for me to take a liking to Jimmy Carter. Marijuana Moment reports 'In a trailer released last week, Carter is shown talking about his relationship with the music industry—including his friendship with artists like Nelson and Bob Dylan. At one point, he mentions how Nelson, a cannabis culture icon, disclosed in a biography that he smoked marijuana during a trip to the White House. “When Willie Nelson wrote his autobiography, he confessed that he smoked pot in the White House and he says that his companion was one of the servants of the White House,” Carter said, as CelebStoner first reported. “It actually was one of my sons.”'
Through the prohibition of cannabis, the authorities targeted musicians who they viewed as troublesome and too liberal. It is most often the black musicians who have faced the harshest treatment from law enforcement. This was the case in the sixties, and it still is the case today, I believe. Leafly reports that 'Harry J. Anslinger retired from the now-defunct Federal Bureau of Narcotics 60 years ago, but he remains the ultimate boogey man of every pot smoker in the world—a kind of atavistic “human paraquat” whose overt racism and institutional cruelty remains at the heart of the ongoing global War on Drugs. Anslinger returned to public consciousness last week with the release (on Hulu) of The United States vs. Billie Holiday, a new film from Lee Daniels (Push, Empire) telling the true story of how America’s first “drug czar” used the full power of federal law enforcement to target the legendary jazz singer for multiple arrests, ultimately hounding her into an early grave.' Leafly reports how the constant harassment from the authorities forced even the jazz great Louis Armstrong to give up his beloved Mary Warner, when it says '“As we always used to say, gage is more of a medicine than a dope. But with all the riggamaroo going on, no one can do anything about it. After all, the vipers during my heydays are way up there in age – too old to suffer those drastic penalties. So we had to put it down. But if we all get as old as Methuselah our memories will always be lots of beauty and warmth from gage.” In the end, the penalties for illegal cannabis were too much even for the legendary Louis Armstrong: “Well, that was my life and I don’t feel ashamed at all. Mary Warner, honey, you sure was good and I enjoyed you heap much. But the price got a little too high to pay. At first you was a ‘misdemeanor.’ But as the years rolled on, you lost your misdo and got meanor and meanor (jailhousely speaking). So bye bye, I’ll have to put you down, dearest.”' Hunter S Thompson writes in his book Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas about the complete ignorance of law enforcement when it comes to cannabis, and their absurd stereotyping of rock musicians, colored musicians, etc., as symbols of the 'drug culture' that must be stamped out. He writes 'Here were more than a thousand top-level cops telling each other "we must come to terms with the drug culture," but they had no idea where to start. They couldn't even find the goddamn thing. There were rumours in the hallways that maybe the Mafia was behind it. Or perhaps the Beatles. At one point somebody in the audience asked Bloomquist if he thought Margaret Mead's "strange behavior," of late, might possibly be explained by a private marijuana addiction.' Bob Marley is loved by his fans, and feared by the authorities because of his association with ganja. Even today, decades after his death, t-shirts with images of the ganja-smoking Bob Marley are likely to attract police action, as this report from the Hindu from Thiruvananthapuram in Kerala says, 'Caribbean reggae icon Bob Marley’s tunes might have resonated with audiences worldwide, but certainly not with the city police. Here, pictures of Marley with his flying dreadlocks on T-shirts or for that matter any Marley memorabilia that a youngster might flaunt are looked upon with suspicion, and the fan could be inviting trouble.' In Bengaluru, Kannada rapper Chandan Shetty was booked by law enforcement for making a song featuring ganja that went viral on social media. The Hindu reports that '“We asked Shetty to appear before the CCB for questioning on Monday, but he did not turn up. We will wait for a day or two,” the police said. His new song, launched this July, has gone viral on social media. “As marijuana is a banned drug and Shetty has a huge fan base, it amounts to violations of NDPS Act,” an officer said.' Almost every musical great of note, and millions of unknown ones, have had a brush with the authorities for cannabis usage or possession.
Quite often we judge a person on the basis of the music he or she listens to. People who listen to some kinds of music are worlds apart from people who listen to other kinds of music, in terms of their psychology and ideals. People form affiliations based on the kinds of music that they listen to. For example, being a Grateful Dead fan can connect one to a diverse set of people. It might even be a desirable quality in a president. Hunter S Thompson speaks, in his book Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, about his misjudgement of Richard Nixon when he says 'He had made a lot of allusions to football on the stump, but it never occurred to me that he actually knew anything more about football than he knew about the Grateful Dead.' He further writes 'George [McGovern] never mentioned it, and when I suggested to Gary Hart that the senator might like to take the machine out for a quick test-ride and some photos for the national press, I got almost exactly the same reaction that Mankiewicz laid on me in Florida when I suggested that McGovern could pick up a million or so votes by inviting the wire-service photographers to come out and snap him lounging around on the beach with a can of beer in his hand and wearing my Grateful Dead T-shirt.' Hunter Thompson also writes in the book that one of the reasons why he chose to support Jimmy Carter was Carter's admiration for Bob Dylan. Describing his conversion into a supporter of Carter, Thompson writes 'It was the anger in his voice that first caught my attention, I think, but what sent me out to the trunk to get my tape recorder instead of another drink was the spectacle of a southern politician telling a crowd of southern judges and lawyers that "I'm not qualified to talk to you about law, because in addition to being a peanut farmer, I'm an engineer and nuclear physicist, not a lawyer...But I read a lot and I listen a lot. One of the sources of my understanding about the proper application of criminal justice and the system of equities is from Reinhold Niebuhr. The other source of my understanding about what's right and wrong in this society is from a friend of mine, a poet named Bob Dylan. Listening to his records about 'The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll' and 'Like a Rolling Stone' and 'The Times They Are A-Changin',' I've learned to appreciate the dynamism of change in a modern society.'
There are those, among musicians, who always have, and still carry on, the posturing of the elites that cannabis is a drug of the lowest classes, castes and dregs of society. They create anti-cannabis songs for the anti-cannabis advocacy groups, or to promote the businesses opposed to cannabis. They lend their time and voices to the propaganda that cannabis is evil and must remain prohibited, without having the slightest connection with the divine herb, a connection quite impossible given the synthetic nature of the celebrity lives that they lead. Vanity Fair reports about Barbra Streisand's cannabis experience and what she thought of it, 'She claimed she’s only smoked pot one time her entire life, but “didn’t like the way it made me feel.” It’s a little ambiguous when and where it happened, but she said she “really did it” onstage as “part of my schtick” at the Los Angeles Forum in the 1970s. This is likely a reference to the shows in 1972 that were fundraisers for Senator George McGovern’s presidential campaign, later released as an album. For other substances, Streisand said she does enjoy beer now and then, as complement to Chinese or Italian food. (She also enjoys non-alcoholic beer.)'
Music provides the necessary ambience for multiple activities, or for just lounging around doing nothing. I like music playing when I am doing some physical work, driving, cooking, etc. I also love music playing when I have a beer in my hand, and some ganja in my head. There are many people who have similar associations with music, and it is a necessity to have music at hand at least at some time during the day or night. Hunter Thompson describes his association with music, in multiple places in his book Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone. He says, regarding sports writing, that 'There is some kind of back-door connection in my head between Super Bowls and the Allman Brothers - a strange kind of theme-sound that haunts these goddamn stories no matter where I'm finally forced into a corner to write them. The Allman sound, and rain. There was heavy rain, last year, on the balcony of my dim-lit hotel room just down from the Sunset Strip in Hollywood...and more rain through the San Francisco office building where I finally typed out "the story." And now, almost exactly a year later, my main memory of Super Bowl VIII in Houston is rain and gray mist outside another hotel window, with the same strung-out sound of the Allman Brothers booming out of the same portable speakers that I had, last year, in Los Angeles.' In another place in the book he writes 'Today, I felt, was definitely one of those days. You bet. Do it now. Just then my phone rang and I jerked it off the hook, but there was nobody on the line. I sagged against the fireplace and moaned, and then it rang again. I grabbed it, but again there was no voice. Oh God! I thought. Somebody is fucking with me...I needed music, I needed rhythm. I was determined to be calm, so I cranked up the speakers and played "Spirit in the Sky," by Norman Greenbaum. I played it over and over for the next three o four hours while I hammered out my letter. My heart was racing and the music was making the peacocks scream. It was Sunday, and I was worshipping in my own way. Nobody needs to be crazy on the Lord's Day.' Driving, while listening to music (especially if one has some cannabis too), is a wonderful experience, as Hunter writes 'Dawn was coming up when I drove back down the road. On my way past the graveyard, I slowed down and tossed a quarter over the fence like I always do. There were no comets colliding, no tracks in the snow except mine, and no sounds for ten miles in any direction except Lyle Lovett on my radio and the howl of a few coyotes. I drove with my knees while I lit up a glass pipe full of hashish.' Speaking about his younger days, Thompson writes 'We stole cars and drank gin and did a lot of fast driving at night in places like Nashville and Atlanta and Chicago. We needed music on those nights, and it usually came on the radio - on the fifty-thousand-watt clear-channel stations like WWL in New Orleans and WLAC in Nashville. That is where I went wrong, I guess - listening to WLAC and driving all night across Tennessee in a stolen car that wouldn't be reported for three days. That is how I got introduced to the Howlin' Wolf. We didn't know him, but we liked him and we knew what he was talking about. "I Smell a Rat: is a pure rock & roll monument to the axiom that says, "There is no such thing as paranoia." The Wolf would kick out the jams, but he had a melancholy side to him. He could tear your heart out like the worst kind of honky-tonk. If history judges a man by his heroes, like they say, then let the record show that Howlin' Wolf was one of mine. He was a monster.' Thompson says 'On some nights I still believe that a car with the gas needle on empty can run about fifty more miles if you have the right music very loud on the radio. A V-8 Cadillac will go ten or fifteen miles faster if you give it a full dose of "Carmelita." This has been proven many times. That is why you see so many Cadillacs parked in front of truck stops on Highway 66 around midnight. These are Speed Pimps, and they are loading up on more than gasoline. You watch one of these places for a while, and you see a pattern: a big fast car pulls up in front of the doors and a wild-looking girl gets out, stark-naked except for a fur coat or a ski parka, and she runs into the place with a handful of money, half crazy to buy some flat-out guaranteed driving music. It happens over and over, and sooner or later you get hooked on it, you get addicted. Every time I hear "White Rabbit," I am back on the greasy midnight streets of San Francisco, looking for music, riding a fast red motorcycle downhill into the Presidio, leaning desperately into the curves through the eucalyptus trees, trying to get to the Matrix in time to hear Grace Slick play the flute. There was no piped-in music on those nights, no headphones or Walkman or even a plastic windscreen to keep off the rain. But I could hear the music anyway, even when it was five miles away. Once you heard the music done right, you could pack it into your brain and take it anywhere, forever.'
Music has always been a part of human culture. I suspect that it was already there when fire entered the homes of humans. The forms of music have morphed, like the nature of the river as it flows through different landscapes, but the essential rhythms that weave together the fabric of society remain irrespective of the culture that one finds oneself in, emanating from that one spiritual source of which nature is the multitudinous form. The Hindu reports that 'As we worked on the storyboard and the first draft at the Sangam House residency near Bengaluru, Anand and I were trying to divide my story into certain broad phases. About this time Anand was reading Whitman’s Songs, besides Pessoa and Borges, and together we were getting drunk on a lot of Kabir and our Karma songs. This sat well with the fact that the Pardhan Gonds were originally song-makers. Their art has been called painted songs. My ancestors played the bana, sipped mahua , smoked marijuana and sang songs — the community supported all this. Doing art was their labour. This art was never sold. These artists did not apply for residencies or haunt lit-fests. These artists were organically integrated with the community. We should remember that art is labour and labour is indeed art. How else can the same Venkat ply the rickshaw in Delhi, be invited to do a show at Khoj 20 years later, and be interviewed by you now?'
The power of music to change the world is unquestionable. It has created, and fueled energy for, various revolutionary movements across diverse fields of human activity. Hunter S Thompson writes in his book Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson, about the use of music on the political campaign trail. He says 'The radio spots we ran in Aspen would have terrified political eunuchs like Tunney and Ottinger. Our theme song was Herbie Mann's "Battle Hymn of the Republic," which we ran over and over again - as a doleful background to very heavy raps and evil mockery of the retrogade opposition. They bitched and groaned, accusing us in their ignorance of "using Madison Avenue techniques," while in truth it was purely Lenny Bruce. But they didn't know Lenny; their humor was still Bob Hope, with a tangent taste for Don Rickles here and there among the handful of swingers who didn't mind admitting that they dug the stag movies on weekends at Leon Uris' home on Red Mountain. We enjoyed skewering those bastards. Our radio wizard, an ex-nightclub comic, Phil Clark, made several spots that caused people to foam in the mouth and chase their tails in an impotent rage. There was a thread of high, wild humor in the Edwards campaign, and that was what kept us all sane. There was a definite satisfaction in knowing that, even if we lost, whoever beat us would never get rid of the scars. It was necessary, we felt, to thoroughly terrify our opponents, so that even in hollow victory, they would learn to fear every sunrise until the next election.'
The latest technology and means of communication are helping the message of cannabis liberation reach wider audiences. The increasing cannabis content in music is both a reflection of the increasing awareness of musicians of the evils of cannabis prohibition, as well as the increasing levels of legalization that can be seen in many places, and the increasing re-acceptance of cannabis as an integral part of society. In recent times, many of the current generation of musical artists, across genres, have openly sung about and created audio and video content showing their open love for the prohibited magical herb. Marijuana Moment reports 'The number of hit songs that feature lyrics referencing marijuana has increased dramatically over the last 30 years, according to a new study. And researchers believe that growing public acceptance of cannabis is fueling a trend that has resulted in more than three out of four top 40 songs in the U.S. now containing shout-outs to weed.' Rolling Stone magazine writes about a new song and video by Maroon 5. It says 'In the David Dobkin-directed accompanying video for the song, which was shot in Los Angeles on an iPhone, singer Adam Levine sits outside contemplating his feelings for someone. “You can make a grown man cry/If you ever said goodbye,” he sings, adding in the chorus that he will “Never gonna need nobody’s love, but yours.” As he confirms his faithfulness, he rolls and smokes blunts. The video ends with a quote attributed to the ACLU. “It’s time to end the War on Marijuana. The aggressive enforcement of marijuana possession laws needlessly ensnares hundreds of thousands of people into the criminal justice system and wastes billions of taxpayers’ dollars,” the quote reads. “What’s more, it is carried out with staggering racial bias. Despite being a priority for police departments, the War on Marijuana has failed to reduce marijuana use and availability and diverted resources that could be better invested in our communities.” In a statement, the band and Interscope Records said they would be making a donation to the ACLU of Southern California.' Independent music stations that openly profess their love for cannabis, and cannabis infused music, are seeing a blossoming in many parts of the world. Reporting on one such cannabis infused music space, and the energy that drives it, Forbes Magazine reports that '“One often tries to achieve in life what one would have wanted to have as a kid… If back in the day, we [the hosts] had had a space like DAMN!, we would have grown much faster. That’s what we want to achieve now, for up and coming artists. We want to pass the torch,” Veeyam continues. “DAMN!, like cannabis, requires care and love. It’s our medication, and we grow it ourselves,” he concludes.'
Heads of state have been proud of their association with cannabis-smoking musicians, and this to me is a mark of a good quality politician. Jimmy Carter is proud of his son smoking cannabis with Willie Nelson in the White House. That is enough for me to take a liking to Jimmy Carter. Marijuana Moment reports 'In a trailer released last week, Carter is shown talking about his relationship with the music industry—including his friendship with artists like Nelson and Bob Dylan. At one point, he mentions how Nelson, a cannabis culture icon, disclosed in a biography that he smoked marijuana during a trip to the White House. “When Willie Nelson wrote his autobiography, he confessed that he smoked pot in the White House and he says that his companion was one of the servants of the White House,” Carter said, as CelebStoner first reported. “It actually was one of my sons.”'
Through the prohibition of cannabis, the authorities targeted musicians who they viewed as troublesome and too liberal. It is most often the black musicians who have faced the harshest treatment from law enforcement. This was the case in the sixties, and it still is the case today, I believe. Leafly reports that 'Harry J. Anslinger retired from the now-defunct Federal Bureau of Narcotics 60 years ago, but he remains the ultimate boogey man of every pot smoker in the world—a kind of atavistic “human paraquat” whose overt racism and institutional cruelty remains at the heart of the ongoing global War on Drugs. Anslinger returned to public consciousness last week with the release (on Hulu) of The United States vs. Billie Holiday, a new film from Lee Daniels (Push, Empire) telling the true story of how America’s first “drug czar” used the full power of federal law enforcement to target the legendary jazz singer for multiple arrests, ultimately hounding her into an early grave.' Leafly reports how the constant harassment from the authorities forced even the jazz great Louis Armstrong to give up his beloved Mary Warner, when it says '“As we always used to say, gage is more of a medicine than a dope. But with all the riggamaroo going on, no one can do anything about it. After all, the vipers during my heydays are way up there in age – too old to suffer those drastic penalties. So we had to put it down. But if we all get as old as Methuselah our memories will always be lots of beauty and warmth from gage.” In the end, the penalties for illegal cannabis were too much even for the legendary Louis Armstrong: “Well, that was my life and I don’t feel ashamed at all. Mary Warner, honey, you sure was good and I enjoyed you heap much. But the price got a little too high to pay. At first you was a ‘misdemeanor.’ But as the years rolled on, you lost your misdo and got meanor and meanor (jailhousely speaking). So bye bye, I’ll have to put you down, dearest.”' Hunter S Thompson writes in his book Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas about the complete ignorance of law enforcement when it comes to cannabis, and their absurd stereotyping of rock musicians, colored musicians, etc., as symbols of the 'drug culture' that must be stamped out. He writes 'Here were more than a thousand top-level cops telling each other "we must come to terms with the drug culture," but they had no idea where to start. They couldn't even find the goddamn thing. There were rumours in the hallways that maybe the Mafia was behind it. Or perhaps the Beatles. At one point somebody in the audience asked Bloomquist if he thought Margaret Mead's "strange behavior," of late, might possibly be explained by a private marijuana addiction.' Bob Marley is loved by his fans, and feared by the authorities because of his association with ganja. Even today, decades after his death, t-shirts with images of the ganja-smoking Bob Marley are likely to attract police action, as this report from the Hindu from Thiruvananthapuram in Kerala says, 'Caribbean reggae icon Bob Marley’s tunes might have resonated with audiences worldwide, but certainly not with the city police. Here, pictures of Marley with his flying dreadlocks on T-shirts or for that matter any Marley memorabilia that a youngster might flaunt are looked upon with suspicion, and the fan could be inviting trouble.' In Bengaluru, Kannada rapper Chandan Shetty was booked by law enforcement for making a song featuring ganja that went viral on social media. The Hindu reports that '“We asked Shetty to appear before the CCB for questioning on Monday, but he did not turn up. We will wait for a day or two,” the police said. His new song, launched this July, has gone viral on social media. “As marijuana is a banned drug and Shetty has a huge fan base, it amounts to violations of NDPS Act,” an officer said.' Almost every musical great of note, and millions of unknown ones, have had a brush with the authorities for cannabis usage or possession.
Quite often we judge a person on the basis of the music he or she listens to. People who listen to some kinds of music are worlds apart from people who listen to other kinds of music, in terms of their psychology and ideals. People form affiliations based on the kinds of music that they listen to. For example, being a Grateful Dead fan can connect one to a diverse set of people. It might even be a desirable quality in a president. Hunter S Thompson speaks, in his book Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, about his misjudgement of Richard Nixon when he says 'He had made a lot of allusions to football on the stump, but it never occurred to me that he actually knew anything more about football than he knew about the Grateful Dead.' He further writes 'George [McGovern] never mentioned it, and when I suggested to Gary Hart that the senator might like to take the machine out for a quick test-ride and some photos for the national press, I got almost exactly the same reaction that Mankiewicz laid on me in Florida when I suggested that McGovern could pick up a million or so votes by inviting the wire-service photographers to come out and snap him lounging around on the beach with a can of beer in his hand and wearing my Grateful Dead T-shirt.' Hunter Thompson also writes in the book that one of the reasons why he chose to support Jimmy Carter was Carter's admiration for Bob Dylan. Describing his conversion into a supporter of Carter, Thompson writes 'It was the anger in his voice that first caught my attention, I think, but what sent me out to the trunk to get my tape recorder instead of another drink was the spectacle of a southern politician telling a crowd of southern judges and lawyers that "I'm not qualified to talk to you about law, because in addition to being a peanut farmer, I'm an engineer and nuclear physicist, not a lawyer...But I read a lot and I listen a lot. One of the sources of my understanding about the proper application of criminal justice and the system of equities is from Reinhold Niebuhr. The other source of my understanding about what's right and wrong in this society is from a friend of mine, a poet named Bob Dylan. Listening to his records about 'The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll' and 'Like a Rolling Stone' and 'The Times They Are A-Changin',' I've learned to appreciate the dynamism of change in a modern society.'
There are those, among musicians, who always have, and still carry on, the posturing of the elites that cannabis is a drug of the lowest classes, castes and dregs of society. They create anti-cannabis songs for the anti-cannabis advocacy groups, or to promote the businesses opposed to cannabis. They lend their time and voices to the propaganda that cannabis is evil and must remain prohibited, without having the slightest connection with the divine herb, a connection quite impossible given the synthetic nature of the celebrity lives that they lead. Vanity Fair reports about Barbra Streisand's cannabis experience and what she thought of it, 'She claimed she’s only smoked pot one time her entire life, but “didn’t like the way it made me feel.” It’s a little ambiguous when and where it happened, but she said she “really did it” onstage as “part of my schtick” at the Los Angeles Forum in the 1970s. This is likely a reference to the shows in 1972 that were fundraisers for Senator George McGovern’s presidential campaign, later released as an album. For other substances, Streisand said she does enjoy beer now and then, as complement to Chinese or Italian food. (She also enjoys non-alcoholic beer.)'
Music provides the necessary ambience for multiple activities, or for just lounging around doing nothing. I like music playing when I am doing some physical work, driving, cooking, etc. I also love music playing when I have a beer in my hand, and some ganja in my head. There are many people who have similar associations with music, and it is a necessity to have music at hand at least at some time during the day or night. Hunter Thompson describes his association with music, in multiple places in his book Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone. He says, regarding sports writing, that 'There is some kind of back-door connection in my head between Super Bowls and the Allman Brothers - a strange kind of theme-sound that haunts these goddamn stories no matter where I'm finally forced into a corner to write them. The Allman sound, and rain. There was heavy rain, last year, on the balcony of my dim-lit hotel room just down from the Sunset Strip in Hollywood...and more rain through the San Francisco office building where I finally typed out "the story." And now, almost exactly a year later, my main memory of Super Bowl VIII in Houston is rain and gray mist outside another hotel window, with the same strung-out sound of the Allman Brothers booming out of the same portable speakers that I had, last year, in Los Angeles.' In another place in the book he writes 'Today, I felt, was definitely one of those days. You bet. Do it now. Just then my phone rang and I jerked it off the hook, but there was nobody on the line. I sagged against the fireplace and moaned, and then it rang again. I grabbed it, but again there was no voice. Oh God! I thought. Somebody is fucking with me...I needed music, I needed rhythm. I was determined to be calm, so I cranked up the speakers and played "Spirit in the Sky," by Norman Greenbaum. I played it over and over for the next three o four hours while I hammered out my letter. My heart was racing and the music was making the peacocks scream. It was Sunday, and I was worshipping in my own way. Nobody needs to be crazy on the Lord's Day.' Driving, while listening to music (especially if one has some cannabis too), is a wonderful experience, as Hunter writes 'Dawn was coming up when I drove back down the road. On my way past the graveyard, I slowed down and tossed a quarter over the fence like I always do. There were no comets colliding, no tracks in the snow except mine, and no sounds for ten miles in any direction except Lyle Lovett on my radio and the howl of a few coyotes. I drove with my knees while I lit up a glass pipe full of hashish.' Speaking about his younger days, Thompson writes 'We stole cars and drank gin and did a lot of fast driving at night in places like Nashville and Atlanta and Chicago. We needed music on those nights, and it usually came on the radio - on the fifty-thousand-watt clear-channel stations like WWL in New Orleans and WLAC in Nashville. That is where I went wrong, I guess - listening to WLAC and driving all night across Tennessee in a stolen car that wouldn't be reported for three days. That is how I got introduced to the Howlin' Wolf. We didn't know him, but we liked him and we knew what he was talking about. "I Smell a Rat: is a pure rock & roll monument to the axiom that says, "There is no such thing as paranoia." The Wolf would kick out the jams, but he had a melancholy side to him. He could tear your heart out like the worst kind of honky-tonk. If history judges a man by his heroes, like they say, then let the record show that Howlin' Wolf was one of mine. He was a monster.' Thompson says 'On some nights I still believe that a car with the gas needle on empty can run about fifty more miles if you have the right music very loud on the radio. A V-8 Cadillac will go ten or fifteen miles faster if you give it a full dose of "Carmelita." This has been proven many times. That is why you see so many Cadillacs parked in front of truck stops on Highway 66 around midnight. These are Speed Pimps, and they are loading up on more than gasoline. You watch one of these places for a while, and you see a pattern: a big fast car pulls up in front of the doors and a wild-looking girl gets out, stark-naked except for a fur coat or a ski parka, and she runs into the place with a handful of money, half crazy to buy some flat-out guaranteed driving music. It happens over and over, and sooner or later you get hooked on it, you get addicted. Every time I hear "White Rabbit," I am back on the greasy midnight streets of San Francisco, looking for music, riding a fast red motorcycle downhill into the Presidio, leaning desperately into the curves through the eucalyptus trees, trying to get to the Matrix in time to hear Grace Slick play the flute. There was no piped-in music on those nights, no headphones or Walkman or even a plastic windscreen to keep off the rain. But I could hear the music anyway, even when it was five miles away. Once you heard the music done right, you could pack it into your brain and take it anywhere, forever.'
Music has always been a part of human culture. I suspect that it was already there when fire entered the homes of humans. The forms of music have morphed, like the nature of the river as it flows through different landscapes, but the essential rhythms that weave together the fabric of society remain irrespective of the culture that one finds oneself in, emanating from that one spiritual source of which nature is the multitudinous form. The Hindu reports that 'As we worked on the storyboard and the first draft at the Sangam House residency near Bengaluru, Anand and I were trying to divide my story into certain broad phases. About this time Anand was reading Whitman’s Songs, besides Pessoa and Borges, and together we were getting drunk on a lot of Kabir and our Karma songs. This sat well with the fact that the Pardhan Gonds were originally song-makers. Their art has been called painted songs. My ancestors played the bana, sipped mahua , smoked marijuana and sang songs — the community supported all this. Doing art was their labour. This art was never sold. These artists did not apply for residencies or haunt lit-fests. These artists were organically integrated with the community. We should remember that art is labour and labour is indeed art. How else can the same Venkat ply the rickshaw in Delhi, be invited to do a show at Khoj 20 years later, and be interviewed by you now?'
Cannabis helps many musicians to focus on their music, improve their creativity, relax, and stay out of the dangers of alcohol, cocaine and heroin. The stress of the music business with intense work schedules, unreasonable demands from managers and recording studios, as well as the unrelenting adulation and presence of fans, ensures that most musicians who are successful, sooner or later, need the aid of stimulants and relaxants to survive their lifestyles and stay creative. To call this need drug addiction is actually inaccurate, since it is more like medication needed to ensure that the musician is healthy, functioning and in peak performing condition, similar to professional sports persons.
The wise musicians manage to stay with Mary Jane - the medicinal, recreational plant with its thousands of years of usage history and low harm profile. Unfortunately, a significant number of brilliant and successful musicians chose the wrong medications to try and sustain themselves. They chose heroin, alcohol, methamphetamine, cocaine, synthetic cannabinoids, benzodiazepines and numerous prescription drugs - often in mind boggling cocktails, all at the same time - just to function, cope with society and try and live normal lives. In fact, the destructive lives of these musicians created the stereotype of sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll that the musician is very often associated with. Despite being strong advocates for cannabis legalization, a number of
music greats have fallen prey to the drugs that have replaced cannabis. The names that have gone down to alcohol and synthetic drug abuse are like a musician's hall of fame - Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Tom Petty, Bill Ward, Keith Moon, Curt Cobain, Chris Cornell, Bon Scott, John Bonham, Phil Lynott...the list goes on and on. Rolling Stone reports '
[Tom] Petty’s family said they hope the musician’s death leads to a
broader understanding of the opioid crisis. “As a family, we recognize
this report may spark a further discussion on the opioid crisis and we
feel that it is a healthy and necessary discussion and we hope in some
way this report can save lives,” they wrote. “Many people who overdose
begin with a legitimate injury or simply do not understand the potency
and deadly nature of these medications.”'
Many brilliant musicians may have survived if cannabis had not been prohibited and had been freely available for recreational use as before. Many of these musicians would not have had to rely on the dangerous and lethal drugs that they were forced to depend on, by a society that had taken away one of the safest and most beneficial plants for conditions such as anxiety, stress, pain, insomnia and various mental illnesses like depression. In many cases, because of their celebrity status and influence over audiences, they were especially targeted by law enforcement, forcing them to try and evade detection through using more difficult to detect and hence more lethal drugs, instead of cannabis. Wealth brought easy access to the black market with sellers trying to push the latest, most expensive, most potent chemical drugs, often playing on the ego of the musician. Wealth also brought the musician into contact with the medical industry and the synthetic pharmaceutical industry, so that musicians ending up dying from prescription medicine abuse, if alcohol and heroin had not done them in.
Yet, in the overall scheme of things, many musicians have been the greatest advocates of cannabis, keeping the plant alive in the minds of society and spreading awareness about it. John Lennon's song, John Sinclair, about the poet and activist who got ten years in prison for possession of two joints is a classic case of how musicians have used songs to highlight the evils of cannabis prohibition. Among the musicians who were advocates for cannabis, there is none greater than the reggae ganja god, Bob Marley. These advocates of ganja, through their music and songs, helped to sow the seeds of rebellion against the unjust systems that prohibited the plant world wide, bringing to focus the discrimination, injustice and the imprisoned millions, especially the minorities and the poor. Musicians played a major role in the anti-war peace movement of the sixties in the US, earning the wrath of Richard Nixon and an intensified war on cannabis. Through the music, and the sacrifices of the musician who also plays the ganja advocate, the plant emerges once again from prohibition. Billions of people around the planet and the numerous musicians of today need to remember the battles and sacrifices of these musicians, and the music that they created, that has enabled the cannabis revival of today.
Many brilliant musicians may have survived if cannabis had not been prohibited and had been freely available for recreational use as before. Many of these musicians would not have had to rely on the dangerous and lethal drugs that they were forced to depend on, by a society that had taken away one of the safest and most beneficial plants for conditions such as anxiety, stress, pain, insomnia and various mental illnesses like depression. In many cases, because of their celebrity status and influence over audiences, they were especially targeted by law enforcement, forcing them to try and evade detection through using more difficult to detect and hence more lethal drugs, instead of cannabis. Wealth brought easy access to the black market with sellers trying to push the latest, most expensive, most potent chemical drugs, often playing on the ego of the musician. Wealth also brought the musician into contact with the medical industry and the synthetic pharmaceutical industry, so that musicians ending up dying from prescription medicine abuse, if alcohol and heroin had not done them in.
Yet, in the overall scheme of things, many musicians have been the greatest advocates of cannabis, keeping the plant alive in the minds of society and spreading awareness about it. John Lennon's song, John Sinclair, about the poet and activist who got ten years in prison for possession of two joints is a classic case of how musicians have used songs to highlight the evils of cannabis prohibition. Among the musicians who were advocates for cannabis, there is none greater than the reggae ganja god, Bob Marley. These advocates of ganja, through their music and songs, helped to sow the seeds of rebellion against the unjust systems that prohibited the plant world wide, bringing to focus the discrimination, injustice and the imprisoned millions, especially the minorities and the poor. Musicians played a major role in the anti-war peace movement of the sixties in the US, earning the wrath of Richard Nixon and an intensified war on cannabis. Through the music, and the sacrifices of the musician who also plays the ganja advocate, the plant emerges once again from prohibition. Billions of people around the planet and the numerous musicians of today need to remember the battles and sacrifices of these musicians, and the music that they created, that has enabled the cannabis revival of today.
Related articles
Listed below are articles taken from various media related to the above
subject. Words in italics are the thoughts of your truly at the time of
reading the article.
Started watching the Bob Marley: One Love movie on Amazon Prime, and it looks quite excellent...Unfortunate that the movie cannot be watched in theaters in India on the big screen, with cinema sound...Thinking of connecting some external speakers to the TV to watch the rest of it...
https://www.primevideo.com/detail/Bob-Marley-One-Love/0JU2QINH6028IS63SSFB6O4BBX
https://www.caribbean-beat.com/issue-180/kingsley-ben-adir-relishing-the-challenge-snapshot#axzz8NuXoIeBf
Watching the process as you turn the pages is like seeing a photograph slowly materialize in the developing bath, or maybe a statue freeing itself from the marble block. The two notebooks serve up Bob Dylan live and in color in various hectic portions of 1964 and 1965. You see him in cars, in bars, in airports and gas stations and people’s porches and living rooms, maybe with his shades on, smoking cigarettes, meeting interesting people, hearing the radio in the car or the kitchen, turning words and phrases loose from the accumulation in his subconscious and letting them fly around until they find a thermal and float home. The experience is as good as a movie.
https://lithub.com/how-bob-dylan-blurred-the-boundaries-between-literature-and-popular-music/
https://www.primevideo.com/detail/Bob-Marley-One-Love/0JU2QINH6028IS63SSFB6O4BBX
https://www.caribbean-beat.com/issue-180/kingsley-ben-adir-relishing-the-challenge-snapshot#axzz8NuXoIeBf
Watching the process as you turn the pages is like seeing a photograph slowly materialize in the developing bath, or maybe a statue freeing itself from the marble block. The two notebooks serve up Bob Dylan live and in color in various hectic portions of 1964 and 1965. You see him in cars, in bars, in airports and gas stations and people’s porches and living rooms, maybe with his shades on, smoking cigarettes, meeting interesting people, hearing the radio in the car or the kitchen, turning words and phrases loose from the accumulation in his subconscious and letting them fly around until they find a thermal and float home. The experience is as good as a movie.
https://lithub.com/how-bob-dylan-blurred-the-boundaries-between-literature-and-popular-music/
“You can make a grown man cry/If you ever said goodbye,” he sings, adding in the chorus that he will “Never gonna need nobody’s love, but yours.” As he confirms his faithfulness, he rolls and smokes blunts.
The video ends with a quote attributed to the ACLU. “It’s time to end the War on Marijuana. The aggressive enforcement of marijuana possession laws needlessly ensnares hundreds of thousands of people into the criminal justice system and wastes billions of taxpayers’ dollars,” the quote reads. “What’s more, it is carried out with staggering racial bias. Despite being a priority for police departments, the War on Marijuana has failed to reduce marijuana use and availability and diverted resources that could be better invested in our communities.” In a statement, the band and Interscope Records said they would be making a donation to the ACLU of Southern California.'
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/maroon-5-nobodys-love-song-video-1033448/
'In a trailer released last week, Carter is shown talking about his relationship with the music industry—including his friendship with artists like Nelson and Bob Dylan. At one point, he mentions how Nelson, a cannabis culture icon, disclosed in a biography that he smoked marijuana during a trip to the White House.
“When Willie Nelson wrote his autobiography, he confessed that he smoked pot in the White House and he says that his companion was one of the servants of the White House,” Carter said, as CelebStoner first reported. “It actually was one of my sons.”'
https://www.marijuanamoment.net/president-carter-talks-about-his-son-smoking-marijuana-at-the-white-house-with-willie-nelson/
'For decades now, Snoop Dogg (born Calvin Cordozar Broadus Jr.) has been vocal about his love of plants, with good old Mary Jane always playing center forward.
However, in recent months, the world-famous rapper has been experimenting with other additions to his daily herb-consumption regimen. The D O Double G is now hyped about plant-based foods, as evidenced by his collaborations with Beyond Meat, his attempts to get his family on the diet, and his investment in plant-based snack company, Outstanding Foods.'
https://www.forbes.com/sites/javierhasse/2020/09/15/snoop-dogg-plant-based/
'Jawara McIntosh, Peter Tosh’s youngest son, followed his father’s footsteps not only in music, but also in Rastafarianism and cannabis advocacy. And these decisions have brought him both joy and grief.
A few years ago, Jawara was incarcerated for a cannabis-related charge. It was during his confinement at Bergen County Jail in New Jersey that the 39 year-old’s life would take a tragic turn. In February of 2017, Jawara was brutally attacked by inmate Kyrie Charon Baum, who caused severe brain injuries that have confined him to bed care ever since.'
https://www.forbes.com/sites/javierhasse/2020/05/20/the-tosh-family/#1133d60c579d
'“One often tries to achieve in life what one would have wanted to have as a kid… If back in the day, we [the hosts] had had a space like DAMN!, we would have grown much faster. That’s what we want to achieve now, for up and coming artists. We want to pass the torch,” Veeyam continues.
“DAMN!, like cannabis, requires care and love. It’s our medication, and we grow it ourselves,” he concludes.'
https://www.forbes.com/sites/javierhasse/2020/08/08/damn/#7c8cefc54c09
'For Santa Monica teens in the mid-seventies, smoking weed was like breathing air. I took a puff and exhaled. Still no effect. Shannon told me to hold it in longer. I did, and this time something shifted. At precisely the same time the head rush hit, Derek slipped a cassette in his boombox.
“Black Dog.”
This was a moment. Maybe the moment. My head exploded. My mind blew up with the sound of the screaming guitar, the crazed vocal, the blasting beat. I was knocked on my ass. I hadn’t even heard of Led Zeppelin. I didn’t yet know the names Robert Plant, Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones, and John Bonham. All I knew was that this music was electrifying every cell in my body. The mixture of marijuana and “Black Dog” sent me soaring. The sky opened up. The world got bigger and more beautiful. I was fucked up.'
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/lenny-kravitz-book-excerpt-let-love-rule-1051298/
'Yes, the medicine has been used since time immemorial by American Indians from Canada to Brazil. They always knew that there was ‘medicine’ and ‘drugs.’ Medicine—Mother Nature makes with the help of photosynthesis, which is the sun. Drugs are made in a laboratory by a man. So there’s drugs and then there’s medicine. And my mom always knew about herbs for tea and ointment and all kinds of stuff.'
https://www.leafly.com/news/lifestyle/carlos-santana-mirayo-interview
'Jerry himself first got high as a teenager. As he recalled to Rolling Stone in 1972: "I was 15 when I got turned on to marijuana. Finally there was marijuana: Wow! Marijuana! Me and a friend of mine went up into the hills with two joints, the San Francisco foothills, and smoked these joints and just got so high and laughed and roared and went skipping down the streets doing funny things and just having a helluva time.”'
https://www.forbes.com/sites/katieshapiro/2020/10/26/the-music-never-stops-with-jerry-garcias-just-launched-cannabis-collection/
'At 79, the Croz concluded: “We’ve been watching the effects of smoking marijuana on me for almost 60 years now. So far it hasn’t done anything we can tell. My memory has never been really great, and when I’m really stoned I have trouble remembering your name, but it hasn’t had any physical harm as far as we can tell.”'
https://www.celebstoner.com/news/celebstoner-news/2020/11/12/david-crosby-smoked-out-the-beatles/
'They wanted to know how the marijuana would make them feel and we told them it would make them feel good. I still hadn't learned how to roll a joint in those days, so when the Beatles agreed to try some, I asked Dylan to roll the first joint. Bob wasn't much of a roller either, and a lot of the grass fell into the big bowl of fruit on the room service table. Bob hovered unsteadily over the bowl as he stood at the table while he tried to lift the grass from the baggie with the fingertips of one hand so he could crush it into the leaf of rolling paper which he held in his other hand. In addition to the fact that Bob was a sloppy roller to begin with, what Bob had started drinking had already gotten to him.'
https://www.celebstoner.com/blogs/steve-bloom/2014/08/29/lets-ave-a-larf-the-beatles,-bob-dylan-and-marijuana/
'Harry J. Anslinger retired from the now-defunct Federal Bureau of Narcotics 60 years ago, but he remains the ultimate boogey man of every pot smoker in the world—a kind of atavistic “human paraquat” whose overt racism and institutional cruelty remains at the heart of the ongoing global War on Drugs.
Anslinger returned to public consciousness last week with the release (on Hulu) of The United States vs. Billie Holiday, a new film from Lee Daniels (Push, Empire) telling the true story of how America’s first “drug czar” used the full power of federal law enforcement to target the legendary jazz singer for multiple arrests, ultimately hounding her into an early grave.'
https://www.leafly.com/news/lifestyle/why-marijuana-greatest-villain-hounded-billie-holiday-to-death
'“As we always used to say, gage is more of a medicine than a dope. But with all the riggamaroo going on, no one can do anything about it. After all, the vipers during my heydays are way up there in age – too old to suffer those drastic penalties. So we had to put it down. But if we all get as old as Methuselah our memories will always be lots of beauty and warmth from gage.”
In the end, the penalties for illegal cannabis were too much even for the legendary Louis Armstrong:
“Well, that was my life and I don’t feel ashamed at all. Mary Warner, honey, you sure was good and I enjoyed you heap much. But the price got a little too high to pay. At first you was a ‘misdemeanor.’ But as the years rolled on, you lost your misdo and got meanor and meanor (jailhousely speaking). So bye bye, I’ll have to put you down, dearest.”'
https://www.leafly.com/news/lifestyle/louis-armstrong-and-cannabis
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fm-po_FUmvM
'Which brings me to what I think we’re celebrating most of all: Dylan’s generosity. Because Dylan, like Shakespeare and Homer, is an artist who disappears as only the greatest can. An artist who somehow creates work far beyond himself. We have no idea what Shakespeare feels. You look for him in the plays – all the way from Juliet to King Lear via Bottom and Cleopatra – and you can’t find him: he has mysteriously vanished from the work altogether. Same with Dylan. Sure, the songs come through him and by him but they’re not for him. They are there for the benefit of anyone and everyone who wishes to fathom human nature in their company. They exist for all the world today and they will exist for all the world tomorrow. They will always be there for me. They will always be there for you. '
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2021/may/22/bob-dylan-at-80-in-praise-of-a-mighty-and-unbowed-singer-songwriter
'A natural leader, a poet,
a Shaman, w/the
soul of a clown.'
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/jim-morrison-unreleased-autobiographic-poem-as-i-look-back-1179246/
' “Along with music, herb was such an important part of my father’s life. He was always a strong advocate for marijuana and all of its healing qualities. We are thrilled to honor him and his contribution to the world of music and now cannabis at the Bob Marley Museum,” said Stephen Marley.
“We are thrilled to work with the Marley family to bring the Marley Natural portfolio to Jamaica through this flagship retail location. This unique cannabis experience will bring to life the ethos of Bob Marley,” said Damian Marano, CEO, Docklight Brands. “It is incredibly meaningful to have the first Marley Natural dispensary in the world at the Bob Marley Museum in Kingston, Jamaica.” '
https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210607005453/en/Marley-Natural®-Flagship-Cannabis-Retail-Store-to-Open-at-the-Bob-Marley-Museum-in-Jamaica/
https://inews.co.uk/culture/music/janis-joplin-days-and-summers-book-younger-siblings-private-scrapbook-archive-1051598
'She claimed she’s only smoked pot one time her entire life, but “didn’t like the way it made me feel.” It’s a little ambiguous when and where it happened, but she said she “really did it” onstage as “part of my schtick” at the Los Angeles Forum in the 1970s. This is likely a reference to the shows in 1972 that were fundraisers for Senator George McGovern’s presidential campaign, later released as an album. For other substances, Streisand said she does enjoy beer now and then, as complement to Chinese or Italian food. (She also enjoys non-alcoholic beer.)'
https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2021/08/barbra-streisand-on-marijuana-her-and-cd-players-in-the-car
'If Beyoncé is going to do something, you and your mom are also more likely to do it. Those are just the rules. By openly discussing her use of CBD, she gives more people the courage to see if CBD can help them get into whatever formation they have been trying to achieve.
Whether you are a stay-at-home parent or a performance-focused professional wondering if CBD could help you out – there is nothing like a vote of confidence from Queen B herself.'
https://www.leafly.com/news/lifestyle/the-power-of-beyonces-cbd-reveal
'At home, Crosby keeps it simple by growing five distinct varietals he’s nicknamed for their most pronounced attributes, like Purple.
He enjoys puffing on a Pax vaporizer starting usually in mid to late afternoon and concludes each day by rolling up a fat joint and watching a movie with his wife. In between he often finds cannabis to be a creative catalyst for his songwriting.
He also enjoys growing cannabis as a creativity-stimulating pursuit, one that engenders a profound connection to the plant.
“What I’ve learned from growing my own pot is that it’s an awful lot of fun. The plants are beautiful and lovely. They grow like crazy and truly respond to you. What I end up doing in the morning is making some coffee and wandering around in my underwear in the garden. I’ll pluck off a leaf here and there while I water them and tell them how lovely they are…. It’s wonderful.”'
https://www.leafly.com/news/lifestyle/david-crosby-recalls-greatest-marijuana-moments
'The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy notes that Disaster Area, a plutonium rock band from the Gagrakacka Mind Zones, are generally held to be not only the loudest rock band in the Galaxy, but in fact the loudest noise of any kind at all. Regular concert-goers judge that the best sound is usually to be heard from within large concrete bunkers some thirty-seven miles from the stage, whilst the musicians themselves play their instruments by remote control from within a heavily insulated spaceship which stays in orbit around the planet - or more frequently around a completely different planet.
Their songs are on the whole very simple and mostly follows the familiar theme of boy-being meets girl-being beneath a silvery moon, which then explodes for no adequately explored reason.
Many worlds have now banned their act altogether, sometimes for artistic reasons, but most commonly because the band's public address system contravenes local strategic arms limitations treaties.
This has not, however, stopped their earnings from pushing back the boundaries of pure hypermathematics, and their chief research accountant has recently been appointed Professor of Neomathematics at the University of Maximegalon, in recognition of both his General and Special Theories of Disaster Area Tax Returns, in which he proves that the whole fabric of the space-time continuum is not merely curved, it is in fact totally bent.'
- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, The Complete Trilogy of Five, Douglas Adams
'And in all this ancient and mysterious history, the most mysterious of all were without doubt those of the Great Circling Poets of Arium. These Circling Poets used to live in remote mountain passes where they would lie in wait for small bands of unwary travelers, circle around them, and throw rocks at them.
And when the travelers cried out, saying why they didn't go away and get on with writing some poems instead of pestering people with all this rock-throwing business, they would suddenly stop, and then break into one of the seven hundred and ninety-four great Song Cycles of Vassillian. These songs were all of extraordinary beauty, and even more extraordinary length, and all fell into exactly the same pattern.
The first part of each song would tell how there once went forth from the city of Vassilian a party of five sage princes and four horses. The princes, who are of course brave, noble and wise, travel widely in distant lands, fight giant ogres, pursue exotic philosophies, take tea with weird gods and rescue beautiful monsters from ravening princesses before finally announcing that they have achieved enlightenment and that their wanderings are therefore accomplished.
The second, and much longer, part of each song would then tell of all their bickerings about which one of them is going to have to walk back.
All this lay in the planet's remote past. It was, however, a descendant of one of these eccentric poets who invented the spurious tales of impending doom which enabled the people of Golgafrincham to rid themselves of an entirely useless third of their population. The other two-thirds stayed firmly at home and lived full, rich and happy lives until they were all suddenly wiped out by a virulent disease contracted from a dirty telephone.'
- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, The Complete Trilogy of Five, Douglas Adams
'Arthur put Dire Straits on the stereo. Fenchurch pulled ajar the upstairs front door to let in a little more of the sweet fragrant night air. They both sat on some of the furniture made out of cushions, very close to the open bottle of champagne.
'No,' said Fenchurch, 'not till you've found out what's wrong with me, which bit. But I suppose,' she added, very, very, very quietly, 'that we may as well start with where your hand is now.'
Arthur said, 'So which way do I go?'
'Down,' said Fenchurch, 'on this occasion.'
He moved his hand.
'Down,' she said, 'is in fact the other way.'
'Oh yes.'
Mark Knopfler has an extraordinary ability to make a Schecter Custom Stratocaster hoot and sing like angels on a Saturday night, exhausted from being good all week and needing a stiff beer - which is not strictly relevant at this point since the record hadn't yet got to that bit, but there will be too much else going on when it does, and further the chronicler does not intend to sit here with a track list and stop watch, so it seems best to mention it now while things are moving slowly.'
- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, The Complete Trilogy of Five, Douglas Adams
'Sir Paul McCartney is growing hemp at his farm - but he has to hide his crops to stop teenagers from stealing the plants.
The Beatles icon has started producing crops of hemp - a type of cannabis plant - at his family farm in Peasmarsh near Rye, but he is having an issue with the local youths trying to steal his plants so they can use it to try and get high.
Paul, 79, insists he is following government regulations to grow hemp along with crops of rye, peas and wheat.
He said: “We grow crops, I like doing things like spelt wheat, rye, we grow peas.
“We’re actually just getting into growing hemp, the funny thing with government regulations is you’ve got to keep it where people can’t see it, because you get all the kids coming in and robbing it!”'
https://www.mirror.co.uk/3am/celebrity-news/sir-paul-mccartney-hides-cannabis-25145525
'Singapore, along with Saudi Arabia and Iran, have the world’s strictest Marijuana policies that run antithetical to Ziggy’s culture and spirituality.
Several activists in the country who prefer to operate under anonymity got a breath of fresh air when the United Nations last year voted to remove cannabis from a global list of dangerous narcotic drugs. The government of Singapore took offense to the UN’s 27 member countries that voted in favor, including the US, UK and Canada.
According to Vice, Singapore’s Ministry Of Home Affairs stated, “This could send a wrong signal that the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND) has softened its stance against cannabis and fuel public misperception, especially among youths, that cannabis is no longer considered to be as harmful as before, despite strong evidence showing otherwise”.'
https://www.dancehallmag.com/2021/10/19/news/ziggy-marley-blasts-singapore-govt-over-marijuana-related-death-penalty.html
Don't damn me by Guns n Roses
Don't damn me When I speak a piece of mind 'Cause silence isn't golden When I'm holding it inside 'Cause I've been where I have been And I've seen what I have seen I put the pen to the paper 'Cause it's all a part of me Be it a song or a casual conversation To hold my tongue speaks of quiet reservations Your words once heard They can place you in a faction My words may disturb But at least there's a reaction Sometimes I want to kill Sometimes I want to die Sometimes I want to destroy Sometimes I want to cry Sometimes I could get even Sometimes I could give up Sometimes I could give Sometimes I never give a f**k It's only for a while I hope you understand I never wanted this to happen Didn't want to be a man So I hid inside my world I took what I could find I cried when I was lonely I fell down when I was blind But don't damn me When I speak a piece of mind 'Cause silence isn't golden When I'm holding it inside 'Cause I've been where I have been And I've seen what I have seen I put the pen to the paper 'Cause it's all a part of me How can I ever satisfy you And how can I ever make you see That deep inside we're all somebody And it don't matter who you want to be But now I got to smile I hope you comprehend For this man can say it happened 'Cause this child has been condemned So I stepped into your world I kicked you in the mind And I'm the only witness To the nature of my crime But look at what we've done To the innocent and young Whoa listen to who's talking 'Cause we're not the only ones The trash collected by the eyes And dumped into the brain Said it tears into our conscious thoughts You tell me who's to blame I know you don't want to hear me crying And I know you don't want to hear me deny That your satisfaction lies in your illusions But your delusions are yours and not mine We take for granted we know the whole story We judge a book by its cover And read what we want Between selected lines Don't hail me And don't idolize the ink Or I've failed in my intentions Can you find the missing link Your only validation is living your own life Vicarious existence is a f**king waste of time So I send this song to the offended I said what I meant and I've never pretended As so many others do intending just to please If I damned your point of view Could you turn the other cheek Don't damn me When I speak a piece of mind 'Cause silence isn't golden When I'm holding it inside 'Cause I've been where I have been And I've seen what I have seen Put the pen to the paper 'Cause it's all a part of me Don't damn me I said don't damn me I said don't hail me I said don't damn me Smoke them if you got them Alright, that sucked
'The radio spots we ran in Aspen would have terrified political eunuchs like Tunney and Ottinger. Our theme song was Herbie Mann's "Battle Hymn of the Republic," which we ran over and over again - as a doleful background to very heavy raps and evil mockery of the retrogade opposition. They bitched and groaned, accusing us in their ignorance of "using Madison Avenue techniques," while in truth it was purely Lenny Bruce. But they didn't know Lenny; their humor was still Bob Hope, with a tangent taste for Don Rickles here and there among the handful of swingers who didn't mind admitting that they dug the stag movies on weekends at Leon Uris' home on Red Mountain.
We enjoyed skewering those bastards. Our radio wizard, an ex-nightclub comic, Phil Clark, made several spots that caused people to foam in the mouth and chase their tails in an impotent rage. There was a thread of high, wild humor in the Edwards campaign, and that was what kept us all sane. There was a definite satisfaction in knowing that, even if we lost, whoever beat us would never get rid of the scars. It was necessary, we felt, to thoroughly terrify our opponents, so that even in hollow victory, they would learn to fear every sunrise until the next election.'
- The Battle of Aspen: Freak Power in the Rockies, October 1, 1970, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson
'Maybe the legacy of The Dark Side of the Moon is that there is no legacy; it’s just a moment in time. And ultimately, you might create something that’s remembered and loved by the whole world. But your life isn’t one moment; it’s an accumulation of all the discrete parts of your life, most of all how you treated the people who really mattered to you. And if one moment defines your whole life, then perhaps you didn’t go through real emotional growth, which is simply making a low-level, constant effort to not be a jerk.
And maybe all these conflicts can coexist peacefully. You’re not significant in the grand scheme of things, but you can be important to a few people, and that’s more than enough. The things you loved when you were young might not sound great anymore, but they can still be a part of you. You might go insane. You will definitely die. It’s too much to think about sometimes. A good way to avoid it: Turn off your brain, light up a joint, and listen to The Dark Side of the Moon.'
https://www.theringer.com/music/2023/3/1/23617038/pink-floyd-dark-side-of-the-moon-legacy-anniversary-50th
'Acid is a relatively complex drug, in its effects, while mescaline is pretty simple and straightforward - but in a scene like this, the difference was academic. There was simply no call, at this conference, for anything but a massive consumption of Downers: reds, grass, and booze, because the whole program had apparently been set up by people who had been in a Seconal stupor since 1964.
Here were more than a thousand top-level cops telling each other "we must come to terms with the drug culture," but they had no idea where to start. They couldn't even find the goddamn thing. There were rumours in the hallways that maybe the Mafia was behind it. Or perhaps the Beatles. At one point somebody in the audience asked Bloomquist if he thought Margaret Mead's "strange behavior," of late, might possibly be explained by a private marijuana addiction.
"I really don't know," Bloomquist replied. "But at her age, if she did smoke grass, she'd have one hell of a trip."
The audience roared with laughter at this remark.'
- Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream, Part II...by Raoul Duke, November 25, 1971, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson
'We had a fine time. I enjoyed it - which put me a bit off balance because I'd figured Nixon didn't know anymore about football than he did about ending the war in Vietnam. He had made a lot of allusions to football on the stump, but it never occurred to me that he actually knew anything more about football than he knew about the Grateful Dead.
But I was wrong. Whatever else might be said about Nixon - and there is still no doubt in my mind that he could [never] pass for Human - he is a goddamn stone fanatic on every facet of pro football. At one point in our conversation, when I was feeling a bit pressed for leverage, I mentioned a down & out pass - in the waning moments of a Super Bowl mismatch between Green Bay and Oakland - to an obscure, second-string Oakland receiver named Bill Miller that had stuck in my mind because of its pinpoint style & precision.
He hesitated for a moment, lost in thought, then he whacked me on the thigh and laughed: "That's right, by God! The Miami boy!"
- The Campaign Trail: Fear and Loathing in New Hampshire, March 2, 1972, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson
'Later in the week I tried the bastard again, but it stalled on a ramp leading up to the Hollywood Freeway and I almost broke my hand when I exploded in a stupid, screaming rage and punched the gas tank. After that, I locked it up and left it in the hotel parking lot - where it sat for many days with a "McGovern for President" tag on the handlebars.
George never mentioned it, and when I suggested to Gary Hart that the senator might like to take the machine out for a quick test-ride and some photos for the national press, I got almost exactly the same reaction that Mankiewicz laid on me in Florida when I suggested that McGovern could pick up a million or so votes by inviting the wire-service photographers to come out and snap him lounging around on the beach with a can of beer in his hand and wearing my Grateful Dead T-shirt.
Looking back on it, I think that was the moment when my relationship with Mankiewicz turned sour. Twenty-four hours earlier I had showed up at his house in Washington with what John Prine calls "an illegal smile" on my face - and the morning after that visit he found himself sitting next to me on the plane to Florida and listening to some lunatic spiel about how his man should commit political suicide by irreparably identifying himself as the candidate of the Beachbums, Weirdos, and Boozers.'
- The Campaign Trail: Fear and Loathing in California: Traditional Politics with a Vengeance, July 6, 1972, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson
'Ah, Jesus...another bad tangent. Somewhere in the back of my mind I recall signing a contract that said I would never do this kind of thing again; one of the conditions of turning pro was a clause about swearing off gibberish...
But, like Gregg Allman says: "I've wasted so much time...feelin' guilty..."
There is some kind of back-door connection in my head between Super Bowls and the Allman Brothers - a strange kind of theme-sound that haunts these goddamn stories no matter where I'm finally forced into a corner to write them. The Allman sound, and rain. There was heavy rain, last year, on the balcony of my dim-lit hotel room just down from the Sunset Strip in Hollywood...and more rain through the San Francisco office building where I finally typed out "the story."
And now, almost exactly a year later, my main memory of Super Bowl VIII in Houston is rain and gray mist outside another hotel window, with the same strung-out sound of the Allman Brothers booming out of the same portable speakers that I had, last year, in Los Angeles.'
- Fear and Loathing at the Super Bowl, February 28, 1974, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson
'The electorate feels a need to be cleansed, reassured, and revitalized. The underdogs of yesteryear have had their day, and they blew it. The radicals and reformers of the Sixties promised peace, but they turned out to be nothing but incompetent troublemakers. Their plans that had looked so fine on paper led to chaos and disaster when hack politicians tried to implement them. The promise of civil rights turned into the nightmare of busing. The call for law and order led straight to Watergate. And the long struggle between the Hawks and Doves caused violence in the streets and a military disaster in Vietnam. Nobody won, in the end, and when the dust finally settled, "extremists" at both ends of the political spectrum were thoroughly discredited. And by the time the 1976 presidential campaign got underway, the high ground was all in the middle of the road.
Jimmy Carter understands this, and he has tailored his campaign image to fit the new mood almost perfectly...But back in May of '74 when he flew up to Athens to make his "remarks" at the Law Day ceremonies, he was not as concerned with preserving his moderate image as he is now. He was thinking more about all the trouble he'd had with judges, lawyers, lobbyists, and other minions of the Georgia establishment while he was governor - and now, with only six more months in the office, he wanted to have a few words with these people.
There was not much anger in his voice when he started talking, but halfway through the speech it was too obvious for anybody in the room to ignore. But there was no way to cut him short, and he knew it. It was the anger in his voice that first caught my attention, I think, but what sent me out to the trunk to get my tape recorder instead of another drink was the spectacle of a southern politician telling a crowd of southern judges and lawyers that "I'm not qualified to talk to you about law, because in addition to being a peanut farmer, I'm an engineer and nuclear physicist, not a lawyer...But I read a lot and I listen a lot. One of the sources of my understanding about the proper application of criminal justice and the system of equities is from Reinhold Niebuhr. The other source of my understanding about what's right and wrong in this society is from a friend of mine, a poet named Bob Dylan. Listening to his records about 'The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll' and 'Like a Rolling Stone' and 'The Times They Are A-Changin',' I've learned to appreciate the dynamism of change in a modern society.'
- Fear & Loathing on the Campaign Trail '76: Third-Rate Romance, Low Rent Rendezvous, June 3, 1976, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson
'At first I wasn't sure I was hearing him right, and I looked over at Jimmy King. "What the hell did I just hear?" I asked.
King smiled and looked at Paul Kirk, who leaned across the table and whispered, "He said his top two advisers are Bob Dylan and Reinhold Niebuhr."
I nodded and got up to go outside for my tape recorder. I could tell by the rising anger in Carter's voice that we were in for an interesting ride...And by the time I got back, he was whipping on the crowd about judges who took bribes in return for reduced prison sentences, lawyers who deliberately cheated illiterate blacks, and cops who abused people's rights with something they called a "consent warrant."
"I had lunch this week with members of the Judicial Selection Committee, and they were talking about a 'consent search warrant,'" he said. "I didn't know what a consent search warrant was. They said, "Well, that's when two policemen go to a house. One of them goes to the front door and knocks on it, and the other one runs around to the back door and yells 'come in'""
The crowd got a laugh out of that one, but Carter was just warming up, and for the next twenty or thirty minutes, his voice was the only sound in the room. Kennedy was sitting just a few feet to Carter's left, listening carefully but never changing the thoughtful expression on his face as Carter railed and bitched about a system of criminal justice that allows the rich and the privileged to escape punishment for their crimes and sends poor people to prison because they can't afford to bribe the judge...'
- Fear & Loathing on the Campaign Trail '76: Third-Rate Romance, Low Rent Rendezvous, June 3, 1976, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson
'Then the governor dropped the Reed on the table like it was just another half-eaten Potato scrap, brushing it blankly aside and suddenly smiling warmly at all of us, as if he had just emerged from a Pod and was happy to be among friends. "No more music," he said firmly. "Let's eat some food, I'm hungry." Then he grasped the wicker basket of French Fries with both hands and buried his face in it, making soft snorting sounds as he rooted around in the basket trying vainly to finish it off.
I was afraid, but Jann was quick to recover. "Easy, Governor, easy," he said in a suave voice. "Let me help you with that, Bill. Hell, we're all hungry." He smiled and reached out for the half-empty basket of fries, as if to share the burden - but Clinton snatched it away, clutching it to his chest and turning his back on us - a horrible thing to see.
Somewhere behind me I heard a hissing, moaning sound as Eric, our hapless editor, stood up and bolted out of the room, slamming between two startled SS agents, and then locked himself in the bathroom. I heard a croaking noise, then a rush of water.
Well, I thought. This is probably about as weird as it can get, without all of us going to jail, so why not relax and act normal - or at least try? These things happen. Buy the ticket, take the ride. Welcome to Mr. Bill's Neighborhood.'
- Mr. Bill's Neighborhood, September 17, 1992, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson
'Dawn was coming up when I drove back down the road. On my way past the graveyard, I slowed down and tossed a quarter over the fence like I always do. There were no comets colliding, no tracks in the snow except mine, and no sounds for ten miles in any direction except Lyle Lovett on my radio and the howl of a few coyotes. I drove with my knees while I lit up a glass pipe full of hashish.
When I got home I loaded my S&W .45 auto and fired a few bursts at a beer keg in the yard, then I went back inside and started scrawling feverishly in a notebook...What the hell? I thought. Everybody writes love letters on Sunday morning. It is a natural form of worship, a very high art. And on some days I am very good at it.
Today, I felt, was definitely one of those days. You bet. Do it now. Just then my phone rang and I jerked it off the hook, but there was nobody on the line. I sagged against the fireplace and moaned, and then it rang again. I grabbed it, but again there was no voice. Oh God! I thought. Somebody is fucking with me...I needed music, I needed rhythm. I was determined to be calm, so I cranked up the speakers and played "Spirit in the Sky," by Norman Greenbaum.
I played it over and over for the next three o four hours while I hammered out my letter. My heart was racing and the music was making the peacocks scream. It was Sunday, and I was worshipping in my own way. Nobody needs to be crazy on the Lord's Day.'
- Hey Rube! I Love You: Eerie Reflections on Fuel, Madness & Music, May 13, 1999, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson
'I was having my own troubles with police in those years. In the fifth grade I was officially apprehended by the FBI for turning over a U.S. mailbox in front of a bus. Soon after that, I became a frequent detainee in various jails around the South on booze, theft, and violence charges. People called me a criminal, and about half the time they were right. I was a full-bore Juvenile Delinquent, and I had a lot of friends.
We stole cars and drank gin and did a lot of fast driving at night in places like Nashville and Atlanta and Chicago. We needed music on those nights, and it usually came on the radio - on the fifty-thousand-watt clear-channel stations like WWL in New Orleans and WLAC in Nashville.
That is where I went wrong, I guess - listening to WLAC and driving all night across Tennessee in a stolen car that wouldn't be reported for three days. That is how I got introduced to the Howlin' Wolf. We didn't know him, but we liked him and we knew what he was talking about. "I Smell a Rat: is a pure rock & roll monument to the axiom that says, "There is no such thing as paranoia." The Wolf would kick out the jams, but he had a melancholy side to him. He could tear your heart out like the worst kind of honky-tonk. If history judges a man by his heroes, like they say, then let the record show that Howlin' Wolf was one of mine. He was a monster.'
- Hey Rube! I Love You: Eerie Reflections on Fuel, Madness & Music, May 13, 1999, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson
'Music has always been a matter of Energy to me, a question of Fuel. Sentimental people call it Inspiration, but what they really mean is Fuel.
I have always needed Fuel. I am a serious consumer. On some nights I still believe that a car with the gas needle on empty can run about fifty more miles if you have the right music very loud on the radio. A V-8 Cadillac will go ten or fifteen miles faster if you give it a full dose of "Carmelita." This has been proven many times. That is why you see so many Cadillacs parked in front of truck stops on Highway 66 around midnight. These are Speed Pimps, and they are loading up on more than gasoline. You watch one of these places for a while, and you see a pattern: a big fast car pulls up in front of the doors and a wild-looking girl gets out, stark-naked except for a fur coat or a ski parka, and she runs into the place with a handful of money, half crazy to buy some flat-out guaranteed driving music.
It happens over and over, and sooner or later you get hooked on it, you get addicted. Every time I hear "White Rabbit," I am back on the greasy midnight streets of San Francisco, looking for music, riding a fast red motorcycle downhill into the Presidio, leaning desperately into the curves through the eucalyptus trees, trying to get to the Matrix in time to hear Grace Slick play the flute.
There was no piped-in music on those nights, no headphones or Walkman or even a plastic windscreen to keep off the rain. But I could hear the music anyway, even when it was five miles away. Once you heard the music done right, you could pack it into your brain and take it anywhere, forever.'
- Hey Rube! I Love You: Eerie Reflections on Fuel, Madness & Music, May 13, 1999, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson
The video ends with a quote attributed to the ACLU. “It’s time to end the War on Marijuana. The aggressive enforcement of marijuana possession laws needlessly ensnares hundreds of thousands of people into the criminal justice system and wastes billions of taxpayers’ dollars,” the quote reads. “What’s more, it is carried out with staggering racial bias. Despite being a priority for police departments, the War on Marijuana has failed to reduce marijuana use and availability and diverted resources that could be better invested in our communities.” In a statement, the band and Interscope Records said they would be making a donation to the ACLU of Southern California.'
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/maroon-5-nobodys-love-song-video-1033448/
'In a trailer released last week, Carter is shown talking about his relationship with the music industry—including his friendship with artists like Nelson and Bob Dylan. At one point, he mentions how Nelson, a cannabis culture icon, disclosed in a biography that he smoked marijuana during a trip to the White House.
“When Willie Nelson wrote his autobiography, he confessed that he smoked pot in the White House and he says that his companion was one of the servants of the White House,” Carter said, as CelebStoner first reported. “It actually was one of my sons.”'
https://www.marijuanamoment.net/president-carter-talks-about-his-son-smoking-marijuana-at-the-white-house-with-willie-nelson/
'For decades now, Snoop Dogg (born Calvin Cordozar Broadus Jr.) has been vocal about his love of plants, with good old Mary Jane always playing center forward.
However, in recent months, the world-famous rapper has been experimenting with other additions to his daily herb-consumption regimen. The D O Double G is now hyped about plant-based foods, as evidenced by his collaborations with Beyond Meat, his attempts to get his family on the diet, and his investment in plant-based snack company, Outstanding Foods.'
https://www.forbes.com/sites/javierhasse/2020/09/15/snoop-dogg-plant-based/
'Jawara McIntosh, Peter Tosh’s youngest son, followed his father’s footsteps not only in music, but also in Rastafarianism and cannabis advocacy. And these decisions have brought him both joy and grief.
A few years ago, Jawara was incarcerated for a cannabis-related charge. It was during his confinement at Bergen County Jail in New Jersey that the 39 year-old’s life would take a tragic turn. In February of 2017, Jawara was brutally attacked by inmate Kyrie Charon Baum, who caused severe brain injuries that have confined him to bed care ever since.'
https://www.forbes.com/sites/javierhasse/2020/05/20/the-tosh-family/#1133d60c579d
'“One often tries to achieve in life what one would have wanted to have as a kid… If back in the day, we [the hosts] had had a space like DAMN!, we would have grown much faster. That’s what we want to achieve now, for up and coming artists. We want to pass the torch,” Veeyam continues.
“DAMN!, like cannabis, requires care and love. It’s our medication, and we grow it ourselves,” he concludes.'
https://www.forbes.com/sites/javierhasse/2020/08/08/damn/#7c8cefc54c09
'For Santa Monica teens in the mid-seventies, smoking weed was like breathing air. I took a puff and exhaled. Still no effect. Shannon told me to hold it in longer. I did, and this time something shifted. At precisely the same time the head rush hit, Derek slipped a cassette in his boombox.
“Black Dog.”
This was a moment. Maybe the moment. My head exploded. My mind blew up with the sound of the screaming guitar, the crazed vocal, the blasting beat. I was knocked on my ass. I hadn’t even heard of Led Zeppelin. I didn’t yet know the names Robert Plant, Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones, and John Bonham. All I knew was that this music was electrifying every cell in my body. The mixture of marijuana and “Black Dog” sent me soaring. The sky opened up. The world got bigger and more beautiful. I was fucked up.'
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/lenny-kravitz-book-excerpt-let-love-rule-1051298/
'Yes, the medicine has been used since time immemorial by American Indians from Canada to Brazil. They always knew that there was ‘medicine’ and ‘drugs.’ Medicine—Mother Nature makes with the help of photosynthesis, which is the sun. Drugs are made in a laboratory by a man. So there’s drugs and then there’s medicine. And my mom always knew about herbs for tea and ointment and all kinds of stuff.'
https://www.leafly.com/news/lifestyle/carlos-santana-mirayo-interview
'Jerry himself first got high as a teenager. As he recalled to Rolling Stone in 1972: "I was 15 when I got turned on to marijuana. Finally there was marijuana: Wow! Marijuana! Me and a friend of mine went up into the hills with two joints, the San Francisco foothills, and smoked these joints and just got so high and laughed and roared and went skipping down the streets doing funny things and just having a helluva time.”'
https://www.forbes.com/sites/katieshapiro/2020/10/26/the-music-never-stops-with-jerry-garcias-just-launched-cannabis-collection/
'At 79, the Croz concluded: “We’ve been watching the effects of smoking marijuana on me for almost 60 years now. So far it hasn’t done anything we can tell. My memory has never been really great, and when I’m really stoned I have trouble remembering your name, but it hasn’t had any physical harm as far as we can tell.”'
https://www.celebstoner.com/news/celebstoner-news/2020/11/12/david-crosby-smoked-out-the-beatles/
'They wanted to know how the marijuana would make them feel and we told them it would make them feel good. I still hadn't learned how to roll a joint in those days, so when the Beatles agreed to try some, I asked Dylan to roll the first joint. Bob wasn't much of a roller either, and a lot of the grass fell into the big bowl of fruit on the room service table. Bob hovered unsteadily over the bowl as he stood at the table while he tried to lift the grass from the baggie with the fingertips of one hand so he could crush it into the leaf of rolling paper which he held in his other hand. In addition to the fact that Bob was a sloppy roller to begin with, what Bob had started drinking had already gotten to him.'
https://www.celebstoner.com/blogs/steve-bloom/2014/08/29/lets-ave-a-larf-the-beatles,-bob-dylan-and-marijuana/
'Harry J. Anslinger retired from the now-defunct Federal Bureau of Narcotics 60 years ago, but he remains the ultimate boogey man of every pot smoker in the world—a kind of atavistic “human paraquat” whose overt racism and institutional cruelty remains at the heart of the ongoing global War on Drugs.
Anslinger returned to public consciousness last week with the release (on Hulu) of The United States vs. Billie Holiday, a new film from Lee Daniels (Push, Empire) telling the true story of how America’s first “drug czar” used the full power of federal law enforcement to target the legendary jazz singer for multiple arrests, ultimately hounding her into an early grave.'
https://www.leafly.com/news/lifestyle/why-marijuana-greatest-villain-hounded-billie-holiday-to-death
'“As we always used to say, gage is more of a medicine than a dope. But with all the riggamaroo going on, no one can do anything about it. After all, the vipers during my heydays are way up there in age – too old to suffer those drastic penalties. So we had to put it down. But if we all get as old as Methuselah our memories will always be lots of beauty and warmth from gage.”
In the end, the penalties for illegal cannabis were too much even for the legendary Louis Armstrong:
“Well, that was my life and I don’t feel ashamed at all. Mary Warner, honey, you sure was good and I enjoyed you heap much. But the price got a little too high to pay. At first you was a ‘misdemeanor.’ But as the years rolled on, you lost your misdo and got meanor and meanor (jailhousely speaking). So bye bye, I’ll have to put you down, dearest.”'
https://www.leafly.com/news/lifestyle/louis-armstrong-and-cannabis
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fm-po_FUmvM
'Which brings me to what I think we’re celebrating most of all: Dylan’s generosity. Because Dylan, like Shakespeare and Homer, is an artist who disappears as only the greatest can. An artist who somehow creates work far beyond himself. We have no idea what Shakespeare feels. You look for him in the plays – all the way from Juliet to King Lear via Bottom and Cleopatra – and you can’t find him: he has mysteriously vanished from the work altogether. Same with Dylan. Sure, the songs come through him and by him but they’re not for him. They are there for the benefit of anyone and everyone who wishes to fathom human nature in their company. They exist for all the world today and they will exist for all the world tomorrow. They will always be there for me. They will always be there for you. '
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2021/may/22/bob-dylan-at-80-in-praise-of-a-mighty-and-unbowed-singer-songwriter
'A natural leader, a poet,
a Shaman, w/the
soul of a clown.'
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/jim-morrison-unreleased-autobiographic-poem-as-i-look-back-1179246/
' “Along with music, herb was such an important part of my father’s life. He was always a strong advocate for marijuana and all of its healing qualities. We are thrilled to honor him and his contribution to the world of music and now cannabis at the Bob Marley Museum,” said Stephen Marley.
“We are thrilled to work with the Marley family to bring the Marley Natural portfolio to Jamaica through this flagship retail location. This unique cannabis experience will bring to life the ethos of Bob Marley,” said Damian Marano, CEO, Docklight Brands. “It is incredibly meaningful to have the first Marley Natural dispensary in the world at the Bob Marley Museum in Kingston, Jamaica.” '
https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20210607005453/en/Marley-Natural®-Flagship-Cannabis-Retail-Store-to-Open-at-the-Bob-Marley-Museum-in-Jamaica/
https://inews.co.uk/culture/music/janis-joplin-days-and-summers-book-younger-siblings-private-scrapbook-archive-1051598
'She claimed she’s only smoked pot one time her entire life, but “didn’t like the way it made me feel.” It’s a little ambiguous when and where it happened, but she said she “really did it” onstage as “part of my schtick” at the Los Angeles Forum in the 1970s. This is likely a reference to the shows in 1972 that were fundraisers for Senator George McGovern’s presidential campaign, later released as an album. For other substances, Streisand said she does enjoy beer now and then, as complement to Chinese or Italian food. (She also enjoys non-alcoholic beer.)'
https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2021/08/barbra-streisand-on-marijuana-her-and-cd-players-in-the-car
'If Beyoncé is going to do something, you and your mom are also more likely to do it. Those are just the rules. By openly discussing her use of CBD, she gives more people the courage to see if CBD can help them get into whatever formation they have been trying to achieve.
Whether you are a stay-at-home parent or a performance-focused professional wondering if CBD could help you out – there is nothing like a vote of confidence from Queen B herself.'
https://www.leafly.com/news/lifestyle/the-power-of-beyonces-cbd-reveal
'At home, Crosby keeps it simple by growing five distinct varietals he’s nicknamed for their most pronounced attributes, like Purple.
He enjoys puffing on a Pax vaporizer starting usually in mid to late afternoon and concludes each day by rolling up a fat joint and watching a movie with his wife. In between he often finds cannabis to be a creative catalyst for his songwriting.
He also enjoys growing cannabis as a creativity-stimulating pursuit, one that engenders a profound connection to the plant.
“What I’ve learned from growing my own pot is that it’s an awful lot of fun. The plants are beautiful and lovely. They grow like crazy and truly respond to you. What I end up doing in the morning is making some coffee and wandering around in my underwear in the garden. I’ll pluck off a leaf here and there while I water them and tell them how lovely they are…. It’s wonderful.”'
https://www.leafly.com/news/lifestyle/david-crosby-recalls-greatest-marijuana-moments
'The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy notes that Disaster Area, a plutonium rock band from the Gagrakacka Mind Zones, are generally held to be not only the loudest rock band in the Galaxy, but in fact the loudest noise of any kind at all. Regular concert-goers judge that the best sound is usually to be heard from within large concrete bunkers some thirty-seven miles from the stage, whilst the musicians themselves play their instruments by remote control from within a heavily insulated spaceship which stays in orbit around the planet - or more frequently around a completely different planet.
Their songs are on the whole very simple and mostly follows the familiar theme of boy-being meets girl-being beneath a silvery moon, which then explodes for no adequately explored reason.
Many worlds have now banned their act altogether, sometimes for artistic reasons, but most commonly because the band's public address system contravenes local strategic arms limitations treaties.
This has not, however, stopped their earnings from pushing back the boundaries of pure hypermathematics, and their chief research accountant has recently been appointed Professor of Neomathematics at the University of Maximegalon, in recognition of both his General and Special Theories of Disaster Area Tax Returns, in which he proves that the whole fabric of the space-time continuum is not merely curved, it is in fact totally bent.'
- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, The Complete Trilogy of Five, Douglas Adams
'And in all this ancient and mysterious history, the most mysterious of all were without doubt those of the Great Circling Poets of Arium. These Circling Poets used to live in remote mountain passes where they would lie in wait for small bands of unwary travelers, circle around them, and throw rocks at them.
And when the travelers cried out, saying why they didn't go away and get on with writing some poems instead of pestering people with all this rock-throwing business, they would suddenly stop, and then break into one of the seven hundred and ninety-four great Song Cycles of Vassillian. These songs were all of extraordinary beauty, and even more extraordinary length, and all fell into exactly the same pattern.
The first part of each song would tell how there once went forth from the city of Vassilian a party of five sage princes and four horses. The princes, who are of course brave, noble and wise, travel widely in distant lands, fight giant ogres, pursue exotic philosophies, take tea with weird gods and rescue beautiful monsters from ravening princesses before finally announcing that they have achieved enlightenment and that their wanderings are therefore accomplished.
The second, and much longer, part of each song would then tell of all their bickerings about which one of them is going to have to walk back.
All this lay in the planet's remote past. It was, however, a descendant of one of these eccentric poets who invented the spurious tales of impending doom which enabled the people of Golgafrincham to rid themselves of an entirely useless third of their population. The other two-thirds stayed firmly at home and lived full, rich and happy lives until they were all suddenly wiped out by a virulent disease contracted from a dirty telephone.'
- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, The Complete Trilogy of Five, Douglas Adams
'Arthur put Dire Straits on the stereo. Fenchurch pulled ajar the upstairs front door to let in a little more of the sweet fragrant night air. They both sat on some of the furniture made out of cushions, very close to the open bottle of champagne.
'No,' said Fenchurch, 'not till you've found out what's wrong with me, which bit. But I suppose,' she added, very, very, very quietly, 'that we may as well start with where your hand is now.'
Arthur said, 'So which way do I go?'
'Down,' said Fenchurch, 'on this occasion.'
He moved his hand.
'Down,' she said, 'is in fact the other way.'
'Oh yes.'
Mark Knopfler has an extraordinary ability to make a Schecter Custom Stratocaster hoot and sing like angels on a Saturday night, exhausted from being good all week and needing a stiff beer - which is not strictly relevant at this point since the record hadn't yet got to that bit, but there will be too much else going on when it does, and further the chronicler does not intend to sit here with a track list and stop watch, so it seems best to mention it now while things are moving slowly.'
- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, The Complete Trilogy of Five, Douglas Adams
'Sir Paul McCartney is growing hemp at his farm - but he has to hide his crops to stop teenagers from stealing the plants.
The Beatles icon has started producing crops of hemp - a type of cannabis plant - at his family farm in Peasmarsh near Rye, but he is having an issue with the local youths trying to steal his plants so they can use it to try and get high.
Paul, 79, insists he is following government regulations to grow hemp along with crops of rye, peas and wheat.
He said: “We grow crops, I like doing things like spelt wheat, rye, we grow peas.
“We’re actually just getting into growing hemp, the funny thing with government regulations is you’ve got to keep it where people can’t see it, because you get all the kids coming in and robbing it!”'
https://www.mirror.co.uk/3am/celebrity-news/sir-paul-mccartney-hides-cannabis-25145525
'Singapore, along with Saudi Arabia and Iran, have the world’s strictest Marijuana policies that run antithetical to Ziggy’s culture and spirituality.
Several activists in the country who prefer to operate under anonymity got a breath of fresh air when the United Nations last year voted to remove cannabis from a global list of dangerous narcotic drugs. The government of Singapore took offense to the UN’s 27 member countries that voted in favor, including the US, UK and Canada.
According to Vice, Singapore’s Ministry Of Home Affairs stated, “This could send a wrong signal that the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND) has softened its stance against cannabis and fuel public misperception, especially among youths, that cannabis is no longer considered to be as harmful as before, despite strong evidence showing otherwise”.'
https://www.dancehallmag.com/2021/10/19/news/ziggy-marley-blasts-singapore-govt-over-marijuana-related-death-penalty.html
Don't damn me by Guns n Roses
Don't damn me When I speak a piece of mind 'Cause silence isn't golden When I'm holding it inside 'Cause I've been where I have been And I've seen what I have seen I put the pen to the paper 'Cause it's all a part of me Be it a song or a casual conversation To hold my tongue speaks of quiet reservations Your words once heard They can place you in a faction My words may disturb But at least there's a reaction Sometimes I want to kill Sometimes I want to die Sometimes I want to destroy Sometimes I want to cry Sometimes I could get even Sometimes I could give up Sometimes I could give Sometimes I never give a f**k It's only for a while I hope you understand I never wanted this to happen Didn't want to be a man So I hid inside my world I took what I could find I cried when I was lonely I fell down when I was blind But don't damn me When I speak a piece of mind 'Cause silence isn't golden When I'm holding it inside 'Cause I've been where I have been And I've seen what I have seen I put the pen to the paper 'Cause it's all a part of me How can I ever satisfy you And how can I ever make you see That deep inside we're all somebody And it don't matter who you want to be But now I got to smile I hope you comprehend For this man can say it happened 'Cause this child has been condemned So I stepped into your world I kicked you in the mind And I'm the only witness To the nature of my crime But look at what we've done To the innocent and young Whoa listen to who's talking 'Cause we're not the only ones The trash collected by the eyes And dumped into the brain Said it tears into our conscious thoughts You tell me who's to blame I know you don't want to hear me crying And I know you don't want to hear me deny That your satisfaction lies in your illusions But your delusions are yours and not mine We take for granted we know the whole story We judge a book by its cover And read what we want Between selected lines Don't hail me And don't idolize the ink Or I've failed in my intentions Can you find the missing link Your only validation is living your own life Vicarious existence is a f**king waste of time So I send this song to the offended I said what I meant and I've never pretended As so many others do intending just to please If I damned your point of view Could you turn the other cheek Don't damn me When I speak a piece of mind 'Cause silence isn't golden When I'm holding it inside 'Cause I've been where I have been And I've seen what I have seen Put the pen to the paper 'Cause it's all a part of me Don't damn me I said don't damn me I said don't hail me I said don't damn me Smoke them if you got them Alright, that sucked
'The radio spots we ran in Aspen would have terrified political eunuchs like Tunney and Ottinger. Our theme song was Herbie Mann's "Battle Hymn of the Republic," which we ran over and over again - as a doleful background to very heavy raps and evil mockery of the retrogade opposition. They bitched and groaned, accusing us in their ignorance of "using Madison Avenue techniques," while in truth it was purely Lenny Bruce. But they didn't know Lenny; their humor was still Bob Hope, with a tangent taste for Don Rickles here and there among the handful of swingers who didn't mind admitting that they dug the stag movies on weekends at Leon Uris' home on Red Mountain.
We enjoyed skewering those bastards. Our radio wizard, an ex-nightclub comic, Phil Clark, made several spots that caused people to foam in the mouth and chase their tails in an impotent rage. There was a thread of high, wild humor in the Edwards campaign, and that was what kept us all sane. There was a definite satisfaction in knowing that, even if we lost, whoever beat us would never get rid of the scars. It was necessary, we felt, to thoroughly terrify our opponents, so that even in hollow victory, they would learn to fear every sunrise until the next election.'
- The Battle of Aspen: Freak Power in the Rockies, October 1, 1970, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson
'Maybe the legacy of The Dark Side of the Moon is that there is no legacy; it’s just a moment in time. And ultimately, you might create something that’s remembered and loved by the whole world. But your life isn’t one moment; it’s an accumulation of all the discrete parts of your life, most of all how you treated the people who really mattered to you. And if one moment defines your whole life, then perhaps you didn’t go through real emotional growth, which is simply making a low-level, constant effort to not be a jerk.
And maybe all these conflicts can coexist peacefully. You’re not significant in the grand scheme of things, but you can be important to a few people, and that’s more than enough. The things you loved when you were young might not sound great anymore, but they can still be a part of you. You might go insane. You will definitely die. It’s too much to think about sometimes. A good way to avoid it: Turn off your brain, light up a joint, and listen to The Dark Side of the Moon.'
https://www.theringer.com/music/2023/3/1/23617038/pink-floyd-dark-side-of-the-moon-legacy-anniversary-50th
'Acid is a relatively complex drug, in its effects, while mescaline is pretty simple and straightforward - but in a scene like this, the difference was academic. There was simply no call, at this conference, for anything but a massive consumption of Downers: reds, grass, and booze, because the whole program had apparently been set up by people who had been in a Seconal stupor since 1964.
Here were more than a thousand top-level cops telling each other "we must come to terms with the drug culture," but they had no idea where to start. They couldn't even find the goddamn thing. There were rumours in the hallways that maybe the Mafia was behind it. Or perhaps the Beatles. At one point somebody in the audience asked Bloomquist if he thought Margaret Mead's "strange behavior," of late, might possibly be explained by a private marijuana addiction.
"I really don't know," Bloomquist replied. "But at her age, if she did smoke grass, she'd have one hell of a trip."
The audience roared with laughter at this remark.'
- Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream, Part II...by Raoul Duke, November 25, 1971, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson
'We had a fine time. I enjoyed it - which put me a bit off balance because I'd figured Nixon didn't know anymore about football than he did about ending the war in Vietnam. He had made a lot of allusions to football on the stump, but it never occurred to me that he actually knew anything more about football than he knew about the Grateful Dead.
But I was wrong. Whatever else might be said about Nixon - and there is still no doubt in my mind that he could [never] pass for Human - he is a goddamn stone fanatic on every facet of pro football. At one point in our conversation, when I was feeling a bit pressed for leverage, I mentioned a down & out pass - in the waning moments of a Super Bowl mismatch between Green Bay and Oakland - to an obscure, second-string Oakland receiver named Bill Miller that had stuck in my mind because of its pinpoint style & precision.
He hesitated for a moment, lost in thought, then he whacked me on the thigh and laughed: "That's right, by God! The Miami boy!"
- The Campaign Trail: Fear and Loathing in New Hampshire, March 2, 1972, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson
'Later in the week I tried the bastard again, but it stalled on a ramp leading up to the Hollywood Freeway and I almost broke my hand when I exploded in a stupid, screaming rage and punched the gas tank. After that, I locked it up and left it in the hotel parking lot - where it sat for many days with a "McGovern for President" tag on the handlebars.
George never mentioned it, and when I suggested to Gary Hart that the senator might like to take the machine out for a quick test-ride and some photos for the national press, I got almost exactly the same reaction that Mankiewicz laid on me in Florida when I suggested that McGovern could pick up a million or so votes by inviting the wire-service photographers to come out and snap him lounging around on the beach with a can of beer in his hand and wearing my Grateful Dead T-shirt.
Looking back on it, I think that was the moment when my relationship with Mankiewicz turned sour. Twenty-four hours earlier I had showed up at his house in Washington with what John Prine calls "an illegal smile" on my face - and the morning after that visit he found himself sitting next to me on the plane to Florida and listening to some lunatic spiel about how his man should commit political suicide by irreparably identifying himself as the candidate of the Beachbums, Weirdos, and Boozers.'
- The Campaign Trail: Fear and Loathing in California: Traditional Politics with a Vengeance, July 6, 1972, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson
'Ah, Jesus...another bad tangent. Somewhere in the back of my mind I recall signing a contract that said I would never do this kind of thing again; one of the conditions of turning pro was a clause about swearing off gibberish...
But, like Gregg Allman says: "I've wasted so much time...feelin' guilty..."
There is some kind of back-door connection in my head between Super Bowls and the Allman Brothers - a strange kind of theme-sound that haunts these goddamn stories no matter where I'm finally forced into a corner to write them. The Allman sound, and rain. There was heavy rain, last year, on the balcony of my dim-lit hotel room just down from the Sunset Strip in Hollywood...and more rain through the San Francisco office building where I finally typed out "the story."
And now, almost exactly a year later, my main memory of Super Bowl VIII in Houston is rain and gray mist outside another hotel window, with the same strung-out sound of the Allman Brothers booming out of the same portable speakers that I had, last year, in Los Angeles.'
- Fear and Loathing at the Super Bowl, February 28, 1974, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson
'The electorate feels a need to be cleansed, reassured, and revitalized. The underdogs of yesteryear have had their day, and they blew it. The radicals and reformers of the Sixties promised peace, but they turned out to be nothing but incompetent troublemakers. Their plans that had looked so fine on paper led to chaos and disaster when hack politicians tried to implement them. The promise of civil rights turned into the nightmare of busing. The call for law and order led straight to Watergate. And the long struggle between the Hawks and Doves caused violence in the streets and a military disaster in Vietnam. Nobody won, in the end, and when the dust finally settled, "extremists" at both ends of the political spectrum were thoroughly discredited. And by the time the 1976 presidential campaign got underway, the high ground was all in the middle of the road.
Jimmy Carter understands this, and he has tailored his campaign image to fit the new mood almost perfectly...But back in May of '74 when he flew up to Athens to make his "remarks" at the Law Day ceremonies, he was not as concerned with preserving his moderate image as he is now. He was thinking more about all the trouble he'd had with judges, lawyers, lobbyists, and other minions of the Georgia establishment while he was governor - and now, with only six more months in the office, he wanted to have a few words with these people.
There was not much anger in his voice when he started talking, but halfway through the speech it was too obvious for anybody in the room to ignore. But there was no way to cut him short, and he knew it. It was the anger in his voice that first caught my attention, I think, but what sent me out to the trunk to get my tape recorder instead of another drink was the spectacle of a southern politician telling a crowd of southern judges and lawyers that "I'm not qualified to talk to you about law, because in addition to being a peanut farmer, I'm an engineer and nuclear physicist, not a lawyer...But I read a lot and I listen a lot. One of the sources of my understanding about the proper application of criminal justice and the system of equities is from Reinhold Niebuhr. The other source of my understanding about what's right and wrong in this society is from a friend of mine, a poet named Bob Dylan. Listening to his records about 'The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll' and 'Like a Rolling Stone' and 'The Times They Are A-Changin',' I've learned to appreciate the dynamism of change in a modern society.'
- Fear & Loathing on the Campaign Trail '76: Third-Rate Romance, Low Rent Rendezvous, June 3, 1976, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson
'At first I wasn't sure I was hearing him right, and I looked over at Jimmy King. "What the hell did I just hear?" I asked.
King smiled and looked at Paul Kirk, who leaned across the table and whispered, "He said his top two advisers are Bob Dylan and Reinhold Niebuhr."
I nodded and got up to go outside for my tape recorder. I could tell by the rising anger in Carter's voice that we were in for an interesting ride...And by the time I got back, he was whipping on the crowd about judges who took bribes in return for reduced prison sentences, lawyers who deliberately cheated illiterate blacks, and cops who abused people's rights with something they called a "consent warrant."
"I had lunch this week with members of the Judicial Selection Committee, and they were talking about a 'consent search warrant,'" he said. "I didn't know what a consent search warrant was. They said, "Well, that's when two policemen go to a house. One of them goes to the front door and knocks on it, and the other one runs around to the back door and yells 'come in'""
The crowd got a laugh out of that one, but Carter was just warming up, and for the next twenty or thirty minutes, his voice was the only sound in the room. Kennedy was sitting just a few feet to Carter's left, listening carefully but never changing the thoughtful expression on his face as Carter railed and bitched about a system of criminal justice that allows the rich and the privileged to escape punishment for their crimes and sends poor people to prison because they can't afford to bribe the judge...'
- Fear & Loathing on the Campaign Trail '76: Third-Rate Romance, Low Rent Rendezvous, June 3, 1976, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson
'Then the governor dropped the Reed on the table like it was just another half-eaten Potato scrap, brushing it blankly aside and suddenly smiling warmly at all of us, as if he had just emerged from a Pod and was happy to be among friends. "No more music," he said firmly. "Let's eat some food, I'm hungry." Then he grasped the wicker basket of French Fries with both hands and buried his face in it, making soft snorting sounds as he rooted around in the basket trying vainly to finish it off.
I was afraid, but Jann was quick to recover. "Easy, Governor, easy," he said in a suave voice. "Let me help you with that, Bill. Hell, we're all hungry." He smiled and reached out for the half-empty basket of fries, as if to share the burden - but Clinton snatched it away, clutching it to his chest and turning his back on us - a horrible thing to see.
Somewhere behind me I heard a hissing, moaning sound as Eric, our hapless editor, stood up and bolted out of the room, slamming between two startled SS agents, and then locked himself in the bathroom. I heard a croaking noise, then a rush of water.
Well, I thought. This is probably about as weird as it can get, without all of us going to jail, so why not relax and act normal - or at least try? These things happen. Buy the ticket, take the ride. Welcome to Mr. Bill's Neighborhood.'
- Mr. Bill's Neighborhood, September 17, 1992, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson
'Dawn was coming up when I drove back down the road. On my way past the graveyard, I slowed down and tossed a quarter over the fence like I always do. There were no comets colliding, no tracks in the snow except mine, and no sounds for ten miles in any direction except Lyle Lovett on my radio and the howl of a few coyotes. I drove with my knees while I lit up a glass pipe full of hashish.
When I got home I loaded my S&W .45 auto and fired a few bursts at a beer keg in the yard, then I went back inside and started scrawling feverishly in a notebook...What the hell? I thought. Everybody writes love letters on Sunday morning. It is a natural form of worship, a very high art. And on some days I am very good at it.
Today, I felt, was definitely one of those days. You bet. Do it now. Just then my phone rang and I jerked it off the hook, but there was nobody on the line. I sagged against the fireplace and moaned, and then it rang again. I grabbed it, but again there was no voice. Oh God! I thought. Somebody is fucking with me...I needed music, I needed rhythm. I was determined to be calm, so I cranked up the speakers and played "Spirit in the Sky," by Norman Greenbaum.
I played it over and over for the next three o four hours while I hammered out my letter. My heart was racing and the music was making the peacocks scream. It was Sunday, and I was worshipping in my own way. Nobody needs to be crazy on the Lord's Day.'
- Hey Rube! I Love You: Eerie Reflections on Fuel, Madness & Music, May 13, 1999, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson
'I was having my own troubles with police in those years. In the fifth grade I was officially apprehended by the FBI for turning over a U.S. mailbox in front of a bus. Soon after that, I became a frequent detainee in various jails around the South on booze, theft, and violence charges. People called me a criminal, and about half the time they were right. I was a full-bore Juvenile Delinquent, and I had a lot of friends.
We stole cars and drank gin and did a lot of fast driving at night in places like Nashville and Atlanta and Chicago. We needed music on those nights, and it usually came on the radio - on the fifty-thousand-watt clear-channel stations like WWL in New Orleans and WLAC in Nashville.
That is where I went wrong, I guess - listening to WLAC and driving all night across Tennessee in a stolen car that wouldn't be reported for three days. That is how I got introduced to the Howlin' Wolf. We didn't know him, but we liked him and we knew what he was talking about. "I Smell a Rat: is a pure rock & roll monument to the axiom that says, "There is no such thing as paranoia." The Wolf would kick out the jams, but he had a melancholy side to him. He could tear your heart out like the worst kind of honky-tonk. If history judges a man by his heroes, like they say, then let the record show that Howlin' Wolf was one of mine. He was a monster.'
- Hey Rube! I Love You: Eerie Reflections on Fuel, Madness & Music, May 13, 1999, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson
'Music has always been a matter of Energy to me, a question of Fuel. Sentimental people call it Inspiration, but what they really mean is Fuel.
I have always needed Fuel. I am a serious consumer. On some nights I still believe that a car with the gas needle on empty can run about fifty more miles if you have the right music very loud on the radio. A V-8 Cadillac will go ten or fifteen miles faster if you give it a full dose of "Carmelita." This has been proven many times. That is why you see so many Cadillacs parked in front of truck stops on Highway 66 around midnight. These are Speed Pimps, and they are loading up on more than gasoline. You watch one of these places for a while, and you see a pattern: a big fast car pulls up in front of the doors and a wild-looking girl gets out, stark-naked except for a fur coat or a ski parka, and she runs into the place with a handful of money, half crazy to buy some flat-out guaranteed driving music.
It happens over and over, and sooner or later you get hooked on it, you get addicted. Every time I hear "White Rabbit," I am back on the greasy midnight streets of San Francisco, looking for music, riding a fast red motorcycle downhill into the Presidio, leaning desperately into the curves through the eucalyptus trees, trying to get to the Matrix in time to hear Grace Slick play the flute.
There was no piped-in music on those nights, no headphones or Walkman or even a plastic windscreen to keep off the rain. But I could hear the music anyway, even when it was five miles away. Once you heard the music done right, you could pack it into your brain and take it anywhere, forever.'
- Hey Rube! I Love You: Eerie Reflections on Fuel, Madness & Music, May 13, 1999, Fear and Loathing at the Rolling Stone, The Essential Writing of Hunter S. Thompson
'When you're sick, music is a great help. Once, in Texas, I kicked a habit on weed, a pint of paregoric and a few Louis Armstrong records.' - Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953 - Junky, William S Burroughs, 1977, originally published in 1953
The urban legend of 420..
https://thedcapage.blog/2020/04/21/california-dreamin-or-the-tale-of-420/
'I think the world is just now finding out the beauty of cannabis and everything it can do for you. I hear people talk how it’s good for cancer patients. C’mon, it’s good for any fucking patient! The radiation zapped my salivary glands so I couldn’t make spit, which made it really hard to swallow and get food down. They gave me this crazy mouthwash to use that had Benadryl and lidocaine in it, but I still couldn’t eat. So cannabis helped with that, except I got a terrible craving for kiddie cereal. I went to the store and got, like, 20 boxes.” '
https://www.loudersound.com/features/how-dave-mustaine-took-on-cancer-and-won
'After his death, a notebook of poetry written by Morrison was recovered, titled Paris Journal; amongst other personal details, it contains the allegorical foretelling of a man who will be left grieving and having to abandon his belongings, due to a police investigation into a death connected to the Chinese opium trade. "Weeping, he left his pad on orders from police and furnishings hauled away, all records and mementos, and reporters calculating tears & curses for the press: 'I hope the Chinese junkies get you' and they will for the [opium] poppy rules the world".' - https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Jim_Morrison#Poetry_and_film
'It lit up jazz and hip-hop -- and ignited a war on drugs steeped in racial injustice. Experts explore America's complicated relationship with weed. Hip-hop legend Fab 5 Freddy directs and narrates this documentary featuring Snoop Dogg, Darryl "DMC" McDaniels and more.'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IET4K5npNOg
'“America’s most beloved marijuana smoker.” That’s what I tell Willie he is, but then I remind him that he is also America’s only beloved marijuana smoker, and we laugh and pass the joint. Willie is an icon who is loved by tens of millions of Americans for his country music and his charming country style, despite the fact that for more than 40 years, he has been open and honest about the enjoyment he derives from smoking marijuana. Willie is totally comfortable with himself, and that includes his marijuana smoking. He is a proud smoker and he seldom does an interview with anyone without making the point that he is a marijuana smoker and that smoking should be legalized for adults.'
https://norml.org/blog/2020/06/19/a-founder-looks-at-50-willie-nelson-americas-favorite-marijuana-smoker/
'The upward trend in support caught the eye of rapper and actor Snoop Dogg, who threw his support behind the legalisation of cannabis in New Zealand.
Taking to Facebook, Snoop Dogg referenced Lord of the Rings character Gandalf in his pro-cannabis post.
"Gandalf smoking that good good," he wrote while linking to a Merry Jane article which discusses the growing support for cannabis in New Zealand.'
https://www.odt.co.nz/news/national/snoop-doggs-message-nz-over-cannabis-referendum
' "I love [Autobahn] because it was the first record I ever heard that really sounded German as far as pop music went. It just is a seminal record in electronic music," he said. "I think their album Trans-Europe Express it's one of my all-time favorite records. I remember smoking a joint and listening to it on really loud speakers and I thought I saw God during that album.”'
https://edm.com/news/elton-john-discusses-love-of-edm
'“My dad would be so happy to see people understanding the healing power of the herb,” said Cedella Marley, Bob’s daughter.'
https://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-features/tp-metroplus/globally-bob-marleys/article6623176.ece
'“I knew it was illegal, but once I smoked it, I immediately just felt really aware and this sense of being in the now. It was a beautiful feeling and my music just flowed,” Hart exclusively shared with ForbesLife over the phone. “Cannabis is not an evil drug. It’s medicine … a magical plant really. It’s a super highway of the senses for me that raises consciousness, which is exactly why it is so needed these days with the world upside down and inside out.”'
https://www.forbes.com/sites/katieshapiro/2018/09/07/exclusive-grateful-dead-drummer-mickey-hart-wants-you-to-vote-green-for-cannabis/#26bd78b6bf6b
All world leaders should use it..it should be made mandatory to stand for elections...like a fitness certificate..
'When a picture of Donald Trump immediately follows, Nelson says, “Oh yeah. He needs one bad. That could be good for him.”'
https://www.marijuanamoment.net/willie-nelson-wants-to-smoke-marijuana-with-trump-and-putin/
'The first product to be released: hemp-infused whole-bean coffee.
Nelson has long been a U.S. farming activist, leading a charge for utilizing American-grown in Willie’s Remedy, which features non-intoxicating hemp-based products designed for health-conscious consumers of all ages, according to a press release.
“Hemp production in America was stifled for so long, but it could now make all the difference for small independent farmers,” Nelson said. “Hemp isn’t just good for our farmers and our economy, it’s good for our soil, our environment — and our health.”'
http://www.wsfa.com/2019/02/05/willie-nelson-introduces-hemp-infused-product-line-including-cbd-infused-coffee/
'Popular singer/songwriter Jimmy Buffett is joining a growing list of celebrities who dabble in the marijuana industry, teaming with an heir from the Wrigley chewing gum family.'
https://mjbizdaily.com/jimmy-buffett-teams-with-wrigley-heir-to-license-brand-to-fl-cannabis-firm/
'Let’s face it. I, like all of you, believe that people should not be arrested or go to jail for the responsible use of a substance that is objectively safer than alcohol, tobacco, or most prescription drugs. And I’ve looked at the success of states like Colorado and Oregon that have elected to move in a different direction. That is why I’m proud to become a part of America’s oldest and most well-recognized marijuana law reform organization, and that’s why I’ve joined NORML’s Advisory Board to help bring these sensible policies to the entire country.'
http://blog.norml.org/2018/10/18/music-legend-david-crosby-join-me-and-norml-and-lets-legalize-marijuana-nationwide/
Marijuana was implicated while the prescription sedative got away...
'Police said Michael appeared “spaced out” when they found him sitting in the car, whose engine was still running. He acknowledged smoking marijuana and taking a prescription sedative, prosecutors said.'
https://www.thehindu.com/news/international/George-Michael-jailed-for-eight-weeks/article15925976.ece
'“We asked Shetty to appear before the CCB for questioning on Monday, but he did not turn up. We will wait for a day or two,” the police said. His new song, launched this July, has gone viral on social media. “As marijuana is a banned drug and Shetty has a huge fan base, it amounts to violations of NDPS Act,” an officer said.'
https://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/bangalore/ccb-notice-to-rapper-chandan-shetty/article24795156.ece
'Etheridge, who’s become an outspoken advocate for legalization in the years since she started using the plant medicinally after being diagnosed with breast cancer in her 40s, told Marijuana Moment in a new interview that the experience of being busted did not deter her. Rather, it has motivated her to continue advocating for patients and spreading the word about marijuana’s therapeutic potential. Later this month, the singer plans to continue that mission, giving a keynote talk on how art and culture can help bring cannabis into the mainstream at the California Cannabis Business Conference in Anaheim. In the interview below, which has been lightly edited for length and clarity, she speaks about what the audience can expect and the role of celebrities in the legalization movement.'
https://www.marijuanamoment.net/melissa-etheridge-talks-art-culture-and-marijuana-advocacy-in-the-legalization-era/
Maybe its a racial or a cultural thing...some people may relate better to Siva...
'Caribbean reggae icon Bob Marley’s tunes might have resonated with audiences worldwide, but certainly not with the city police. Here, pictures of Marley with his flying dreadlocks on T-shirts or for that matter any Marley memorabilia that a youngster might flaunt are looked upon with suspicion, and the fan could be inviting trouble.'
https://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/Thiruvananthapuram/bob-marley-a-difficult-tune-for-the-thiruvananthapuram-police/article5756355.ece
'For those who grew up in the 1970s with a passion for rock music, it became a requirement to see the Woodstock documentary. But, like Nigel, the Woodstock concert movie is the closest any of us got to embrace this gigantic countercultural movement. To somehow be a part of that, even vicariously, in the India of the 1970s was to feel like a rebel. We were in thrall to the new hippie culture and the rebellion it had stirred up among young people!'
https://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-features/tp-sundaymagazine/peace-love-and-rock-n-roll/article6324615.ece
'While inducting Marley posthumously into the Rock n Roll Hall of Fame, U2 singer Bono’s description of the man was the closest anyone could get to defining the indefinable — “Bob Marley was everything at the same time: prophet, soul rebel, Rasta-man, herbs-man, wild man, a natural mystic man, lady’s man, island man, family man, Rita’s man, soccer man, shaman, human, Jamaican.” Robert Nesta Marley was all of that... and so much more.'
https://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-features/tp-metroplus/the-many-faces-of-marley/article8207028.ece
'As we worked on the storyboard and the first draft at the Sangam House residency near Bengaluru, Anand and I were trying to divide my story into certain broad phases. About this time Anand was reading Whitman’s Songs, besides Pessoa and Borges, and together we were getting drunk on a lot of Kabir and our Karma songs. This sat well with the fact that the Pardhan Gonds were originally song-makers. Their art has been called painted songs. My ancestors played the bana , sipped mahua , smoked marijuana and sang songs — the community supported all this. Doing art was their labour. This art was never sold. These artists did not apply for residencies or haunt lit-fests. These artists were organically integrated with the community. We should remember that art is labour and labour is indeed art. How else can the same Venkat ply the rickshaw in Delhi, be invited to do a show at Khoj 20 years later, and be interviewed by you now?'
https://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-features/tp-sundaymagazine/painted-songs/article8661440.ece
'“This old man, who was truly in pain and discomfort, would at some intervals get out of his medical chair and dance in front of his speakers. And sometimes, we would put on a song and listen to it on repeat just like teenagers, with the help of medical marijuana. I think in states of pain and discomfort, what do you seek with more energy and more clarity than joy and jubilance?”'
https://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-international/Leonard-Cohen-the-troubadour-for-troubled-souls-dead/article16354021.ece
'The 60s and 70s witnessed a shake up in the music world, with the emergence of a new unruly, rebellious brand of music — Rock n Roll. Tremors were felt in Madras too, with long-haired college kids wearing bell bottoms, smoking marijuana, strumming guitars and giving their parents sleepless nights.
https://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-features/tp-metroplus/an-unsaid-goodbye/article19990285.ece
'Petty’s family said they hope the musician’s death leads to a broader understanding of the opioid crisis. “As a family, we recognize this report may spark a further discussion on the opioid crisis and we feel that it is a healthy and necessary discussion and we hope in some way this report can save lives,” they wrote. “Many people who overdose begin with a legitimate injury or simply do not understand the potency and deadly nature of these medications.”'
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/tom-pettys-cause-of-death-accidental-overdose-202789/
Some people like the smell of chemicals in a perfume or air freshener. A few of us love the smell of weed and we happily take in lungfuls of air filled with weed smoke. We are also probably the same ones who can recognize and take in a breath of natural air when we come across it.
'After the screening, we hear that a message was sent from the theater to premiere organizers regarding a few “issues” with the movie’s “talent” — which sources said were in reference to the weed-loving LA rapper.
“The main issue is that the talent smoked weed in the green room,” said a message from a multiplex staffer. “The site has spent all day airing it out and I checked it about two hours ago and it smells a bit better, just a faint smell remains.”'
https://pagesix.com/2019/04/01/snoop-dogg-stinks-up-green-room-with-weed-at-movie-premiere/
Better than romanticizing crime, opiates, war, hatred, guns and violence any day...it's like a health movement singing about spinach...
'The number of hit songs that feature lyrics referencing marijuana has increased dramatically over the last 30 years, according to a new study. And researchers believe that growing public acceptance of cannabis is fueling a trend that has resulted in more than three out of four top 40 songs in the U.S. now containing shout-outs to weed.'
https://www.marijuanamoment.net/marijuana-references-in-popular-music-are-on-the-rise-study-finds/
'As of late, he’s developing artists on an all-female record label called HEADS Music. He’s also working to get into the burgeoning legal cannabis industry, and “be a complete trader for the Caribbean with the cannabis.”'
https://www.vibe.com/2018/08/wyclef-jean-key-to-brooklyn/
'"Young people respond to rebellion, and Bob is the ultimate rebel, spliff-smoking in the face of power," Steffens said. "He was a man who tapped the deepest emotional roots in human beings."'
https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/02/0204_050204_bob_marley.html
'The Rastafarian ganja philosophy is explained by Major Mackerel, a Reggae music star.'
http://channel.nationalgeographic.com/u/kch6ktllWluFXUy5ox7nnGjNbDmLxhzd2AaZdh40aVc1U10FfQWRHFvbZmLFzPeHVgACNcv3X-09MPA/
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