>>779346
WHO IS BRIAN?

Narrator
When he dropped out of college, a southern Californian, named Brian, found himself in a constant state of rebellion. He grew a stubbornly blond "goattie" on his chin. Brian, who's photograph can be seen on the jacket of this album, is a dedicated LSD user.

Brian
I would say, lately it's just been about... once every three weeks... I've been doing ehm, I'm on a constant high all the time. I groove on life and that's all I need to groove on. I love life.

Narrator
He was asked whether he had any fears about such a habitual usage of the chemical.

Brian
No, I'm not worried about it, the only... in my opinion the ones you hear the most about are all the bad cases, the bumm trips are the ones you really read about. And inwardly I believe I am beautiful and as long as I carry the thought that I am beautiful and everything around me is beautiful, I have no worry about a bumm trip whatsoever.

Interviewer
You never had a bumm trip.

Brian
Never had a bumm trip.

Narrator
Brian's boast was premature. With a consent of his girlfriend, six microphones were concealed in a Los Angeles studio apartment to record the actual sounds of his 34th trip. Eight people participated in the LSD party which began at 8:30 on a Saturday night and ended 12 hours later.
This remarkable, sometimes incoherent transcript illustrates a phantasmagoria of fear, terror, grief, exaltation and finally breakdown. Its highlights have been compressed on this recording to make their own disquieting points.
The time is 9:30 pm, one hour after the participants have eaten sugar cubes saturated with LSD. We hear Brian and his fellow travelers observing their gradual transformation.

People talking and laughing.

Narrator
Brian's been amusing his friends by chewing on some plastic flashbulbs.

People talking nonsense and laughing.

Narrator
Brian's mood is gradually changing. He orders all of his friends into another room and closes the door. He sits alone on the wooden floor, visible only by the dim light shining from the bathroom. He talks to himself.

Brian talking nonsense and laughing.

Narrator
The time is now 1 am. Brian is unable to snap his fingers and terminate the trip, which continues.

Brian talking nonsense and laughing.

Narrator
He sobs, as his joy turns to fear.

Brian going berserk.

Narrator
Brian's rocky journey ended twelve hours after it so innocently had begun. He was shattered by it.
Doctor Sidney Cohen evaluates its meaning.

Doctor Sidney Cohen
This young man never had a bummer in some thirty-three LSD trips. Every one of them was a delight. Everything under control. He needed only to snap his fingers and down he came, any time. But on Voyage 34 he finally met himself coming down an up-staircase and the encounter was crushing. Without the help to bail him out, he was caught up in a disorganized per moil. In a hell of madness gone mad. This than is the bumm trip. The final face-to-face meeting with ones self, with the whole choking mess of personal conflicts, bursting forth. Brian had successfully slipped around them on thirty-three journeys and this one started out no different than the rest. But then he was hurled into a chaos that never seemed to end and with no-one to help him deal with it. Perhaps this was more than a bumm trip, from which one eventually recovers little the worse for a ghastly day, which was an eternity. For there has been a change. He remains shaken, unproductive, verging on something a little more ominous. Brian learned nothing from it. His friends, they went their merry way. His family, they don't count anyway. If he should breakdown completely, he becomes just another LSD casualty to be cared for. Was this the last of his explorations? I wonder. The strange, childlike thinking of the acid-set goes something like this: If LSD got me into this buzzing confusion, than LSD might get me out.