One of the best albums for getting high is The Twelve Dreams of Doctor Sardonicus by the west coast band Spirit, which came out in 1970. It was their fourth album, the last by the classic lineup of the band, and perhaps its most ambitious. It’s psychedelic, touches on forward thinking ecological themes, at times hard rock, often acoustic, sometimes jazzy and exquisitely funky. It comes off as intended, as a trippy dream sequence.
It must have been around Christmas of 1980. I was living in an apartment in Blairsville, Indiana, just across the border from Illinois. Officially I was attending college. But by then I wasn’t making it to class much.
Some friends who were going to school at the University in Illinois were visiting. They had a good connection for exotic drugs and had brought along MDMA. It was like snorting a bolt of lightning. The apartment was too small to contain us. We had to leave.
It’s not enough to say that things were different then, though they were. Most people wouldn’t think it was okay to drive with a head full of chemicals, even then. It’s pretty unthinkable now. But for a lot of us at the time, it was second nature. It was stupid, and we all know people who died stupid, often carrying along innocents.
But what can I say? It’s what we did.
In this case we drove about an hour to our hometown, to turn on the town’s Christmas lights. It was just something that for whatever reason, we decided we had to do.
It says a lot about the old main drag that a trio of freaks, tripping their balls off could illuminate all the Christmas decorations in town, and stand under the main intersection at one in the morning, looking up at the display above them and not attract attention.
The sound was electric, sizzling is the word that came to mind. It was the perfect combination for a drug which felt like you’d inhaled a lightning bolt.
On the way home, once safe in country darkness, the driver popped in a CD I’d never heard before. I was in the backseat, and he had one of those car stereos which could blow the back window out, and still be clear. The CD was Spirit’s The Twelve Dreams of Doctor Sardonicus.
Now trippy is my thing. Music has the ability to warp the mind, take you out of reality and drop you into the world the musician’s created. But I’d never been in a world like this.
The energy fit with the speed rush from the MDMA. The psychedelic elements accentuated the trippy part of the buzz. The songs moved as though in a dream state, from one song to another. The sound was electric, sizzling is the word that came to mind. It was the perfect combination for a drug which felt like you’d inhaled a lightning bolt.
Psychedelics were gateways to strange places, which once upon a time, a lot of us thought we needed to go through. It’s where you graduated from partying to another level, where you looking for something more, but not sure what. Albums like this were signposts from those who came before. Rooms built and decorated by our psychedelic ancestors.
I still go back and visit those rooms from time to time, just without the chemical additives. Nature’s way, as the song is a better choice at this age.
It took me far too many trips to realize a chemical lifestyle wasn’t for me. The west coast music scene of the late sixties and early seventies, with bands like Spirit were heavily reliant on their audience’s use of chemical cocktails. Most, like Spirit fell by the wayside rather quickly. Even among the big ones, most turned to more commercial music.
And then there was The Dead, but that’s a different story.
Weed recommendation for The Twelve Dreams of Doctor Sardonicus by Spirit: To get the full psychedelic effects, go for concentrates. A good choice could be Bruce Banner Hash from PTS in Illinois.
Weed shirts hoodies, mugs and gifts inspired by dope songs of the seventies
