Alan Watts This Is It Views

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A psychedelic holy grail re-issued. This is it! was originally cut in 1962 and is regarded by many as the first aural document of psychedelia. It is a plundering, blistering, free form freakout of totally unselfconscious group sonic exploration. Alan Watts led a cadre of musicians and non-musicians alike through communal chant, primitive choogle and raw american tribalism that features many of the same bay area heads that appeared earlier on Locust's electronic kabuki mambo - the inimitable satirist and collage whiz henry jacobs, genius percussionist william loughborough (early performer with chet baker/harry partch) among many others. this is where the so-called weird america begins and if you don't find yourself with that rare facial twitch of awe, befuddlement and unbridled glee, then surely you need your head checked. Mad.

thank you for alan watts, i never thought to expect that i'd see alan watts' work being shared on a blog but now that i think about it, im surprised i haven't come across a whole blog dedicated to alan watts yet...he is one of the most interesting philosophers of our time, and i think his ideas are ever the more relevant today than they were in his heyday back in the 60's...i hope you got more of mr. watts to share with us, thanks!!

Alan Wilson Watts (6 January 1915 – 16 November 1973) was a British philosopher, writer, and speaker, best known as an interpreter and popularizer of Eastern philosophy for a Western audience. Born in Chislehurst, he moved to the United States in 1938 and began Zen training in New York. Pursuing a career, he attended Seabury-Western Theological Seminary, where he received a master's degree in theology. Watts became an Episcopal priest but left the ministry in 1950 and moved to California where he joined the faculty of the American Academy of Asian Studies.

Watts was born to middle class parents in the village of Chislehurst, Kent, in 1915, living at 3 (now 5) Holbrook Lane. His father was a representative for the London office of the Michelin Tyre Company, his mother a housewife whose father had been a missionary. With modest financial means, they chose to live in pastoral surroundings and Alan, an only child, grew up playing at brookside, learning the names of wildflowers and butterflies.[2] Probably because of the influence of his mother’s religious family [3] the Buchans, an interest in ultimate things seeped in. But it mixed with Alan’s own interests in storybook fables and romantic tales of the mysterious Far East.[4]