The Cleikum Club Blog Review
Sex, Drugs and Rock ‘n’ Roll.
October 2012-February 2013
Welcome back to the Cleikum Club Blog. After a short
sabbatical, the review had returned with a special edition encompassing all
three of our meetings concerning Sex, Drugs and Rock ‘n’ Roll taking place in
October and December 2012 and February 2013 respectively. As we found the three
distinct topics offered a myriad of confessions as well as conflict from a
range of presenters over the six months, there is no doubt of their inexorable
link to one another not least through the mantra of our maharishi for the
season - Ian Drury. As has become the way of things – each meeting was a
sell-out (sometimes over-sold!) success as The Cleikum Club saw over 150
members attending between October and February – it seemed to keep plenty of
Glaswegians warm over the cold West of Scotland winter.
SEX 4.10.12
Let’s go way back to October of last year which saw the
inaugural meeting of the winter season commence after a summer break with the
auspicious subject of sex. Needless to quote the age-old adage about it
selling, this meeting saw the largest audience to date with the basement
restaurant of Stravaigin heaving at over 55 members in attendance. Another
first was the commencement of the meeting taking place in the busy bar area as,
at 7.15pm sharp, out of nowhere appeared a flamenco dancer moving her way
through the crowd as passionate Spanish music thrummed around the pub. As
quickly as she appeared she was gone again as the performance signified a
subtle nod to the presence of the Cleikum Club downstairs.
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| Angie Dight |
After the opening of the meeting and the first sexily
delicious course of oysters is consumed, Dr Kevin O’Dell takes the floorto explore
the world of drosophila melanogaster. One gets a strong sense of the
interactive as the good Doctor begins to pass round vials of what turns out to
be dozens of fruit flies. The fascinating specimens make their way round all of
the tables and, after the initial buzz (pun fully intended) everyone calms down
and Kevin begins. We are told that fruit flies share around 70% of their genes
with humans and so make fantastic organisms to work with and research.He
carefully explains their mating habits which have been studied in depth for a
long time and, as a result, we know a huge amount about. Kevin explains the
male fruit fly’s leaning to promiscuity, that’s if the female lets him. It’s
quite simple – the males have a target, they sing a song and a chase ensues. If
the female stops moving, the male will mate with her only if she decides its
ok. The ritual will last for around twenty minutes which, considering as fruit
fly’s life cycle shows an impressive amount of stamina on the side of the male
fly! Kevin goes on to explain that observation has found that male flies are
really quite stupid. As they rely mostly on smell, experiments have been
conducted which involve applying the pheromone scent from female flies to small
discs of paper and when these are placed in proximity to a male fly, they
assume it is a female. Further fascinating fly facts are delivered including
their rather extraordinary sperm. They gave an average length of 50 micro metres
where a human sperm has one of 2mm – to put this in perspective – it would be
the same as a human having sperm 12 feet long. And on that bombshell, it’s time
to move on to the next seductive course.
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| Kevin O'Dell |
Resuming the speeches after a short interlude, we have
Lindsay Thomson, lecturer in medieval history at the University of Glasgow. To
bring yet another aspect of the sex debate to the table, Lindsay is going to
address the concept of controlling sex and ideas of sex from ancient
Greece and Rome. To kick off proceedings, the audience is introduced to some
interesting ideas about the differences between men and women according to
Greek and Roman society. Aristotle
preached that a woman’s body was basically a mans that hadn’t heated up to the
right temperature. According to the Greeks, the perfect bodily form is male and
that the only difference between the two genders was the temperature of the
body.
Moving on to the medieval era, medicine at this time stated
that menstruation was seen as a cure for many ailments. As it was understood
that the male equivalent of this monthly bleeding was their sperm, it was
deemed necessary for men to endure vigorous sex in order to relieve their
complaints.
As ridiculous as these concepts seem now, it is fair to say
the audience understand where they were coming from to reach these conclusions.
What follows is the more outlandish conviction of the superstitions surrounding
the (mostly) dreaded menstruating woman in society. There is a long list that
has been compiled over the years as Lindsay illustrates, these include
Ø
Having sex with a menstruating women while there
is an eclipse has noxious effects and can prove fatal
Ø
Bees forsake their hives
Ø
Linen boiling in a cauldron will turn black if
touched by a menstruating woman
Ø
Dogs will go rabid
Ø
Mares will
miscarry
Ø
Pregnant women will abort
And after all that the cons definitely outweigh the pros of
having a menstruating woman around with one of the few benefits being that if
she strips naked and walks around a field ‘all bugs and vermin will fall from
the corn.’Even up to the 1920s, physicians believed that women emitted a toxin
whilst menstruating that actually turned milk sour and stopped bread from
rising. All these misgivings surrounding ‘bleeding women’ are not only cross
cultural taboos but, demonstrate the sheer longevity of these superstitions
that come down to the idea that it is something that men can’t understand and,
therefore, is dangerous. The Greco-Romans knew it had to do with fertility and
securing succession and so in this sense, they tried to control sex through the
eating the right things and medicating the four humors.
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| Lindsay Thomson |
Our resident bawdy singer Alistair Ogilvy next takes the
floor with a rousing rendition of Robert Burns’ classic song ‘9 Inches Pleases
a Lady’. I doubt a more appropriate song could be suggested for the proceedings
and the audience have worked up an appetite for their salmon breast as the
spectacular main courses are served.
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| Alistair Ogilvy |
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| A Breast of Salmon |
As the sexual tension around the tables intensifies, our
last speaker of the evening takes the floor. Graham Tydeman, also known as the
quintessential polymath (Neil Butler’s words) is back for another go at
enthralling the crowd with his own brand of obstetrician humour. Dr Tydeman’s first announcement to the
expectant audience is the promise that ‘everyone in the room will have sex by the
end of the night – in the metaphorical sense’ (like they needed anymore
encouragement!). In fact Graham’s presentation seems to represent sex in it’s
most traditional sense as he wants to discuss sexual reproductions as opposed
to gender definition and that of fruit flies. He explains first of all,that the
urge to reproduce is something which is a defining characteristic of a living
thing. It is embedded in our DNA to protect our young and preserve the youth
and this is the proof that we are a higher order species. He goes further to
describe the force of nature and evolution by recounting the ‘Red Queen Hypothesis’
acting as a great biological analogy. In Alice in Wonderland, Alice and the
Queen are having a running race and Alice states the winner is the one to reach
somewhere first whereas the Queen states that in fact, inthis world, you must
run to keep still! In relation to evolutionary practise, when creatures first
emerged from the swamps, humankind had to constantly keep evolving in order to
maintain their position at the top of the food chain. As a species you had to
be constantly changing and evolving. It is this basic instinct that creates the
urge to reproduce.
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| Graham Tydeman |
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| Table Sex |
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| More Genes |
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| Strong Genes |
We finish the evening of debauchery with a positively slutty
dessert and one final rambunctious performance from Alistair Ogilvy complete
with full support of the audience. Everyone is spent – now it’s time for the
drugs….
DRUGS 06.12.12
The Cleikum Club returned in early December with the second instalment
in Ian Drury’s trilogy. In a departure from the norm, we have a guest presenter
this evening. Former speaker Ian Smith is our right honourable compere tonight
and he kicks off by drawing the packed room’s attention to the auspicious
artefacts in front of everyone. Each person has a chilled bottle of hemp beer
in front of them as well as some curious looking chocolates containing a type
of acid. Both are designed to heighten the experience of the evening so all are
encouraged to consume them to start the evening with a bang. Add to this the
first course of ‘Magic’ mushroom veloute and the audience seems suitably addled
to welcome the first speaker.
Lindsay Hogg works for a charity called Sense about Science
which has started the ‘Ask for Evidence’ campaign that aims to help people make
sense of the policy of drugs and pushes for an evidence based approach to drugs
procedure. Lindsay states that over half of the people consulted in a survey
thought that current drug policies were ineffective as they focus on drug abuse
purely as a crime issue without analysing other factors.
Ms Hogg makes reference to the case of Professor Nutt who
was sacked as the chair of the ACMB in 2009 after comments he made about the effects
of illegal drugs being less than those of tobacco and alcohol. Although he
stated all drugs are harmful, he asked the public to put it into context of
other harmful activities that people partake in. The well known statistic that
lives on from this scandal was that 100
people die each year from horse riding compared to 30 deaths a year linked to ecstasy.
Lindsay goes on to cite a drug policy case study. She
explains that in the 1980s when ecstasy was emerging, a lot of young men died
from dehydration after taking the drug.
Clubs decided to tackle this by providing plenty of free water so
dehydration was avoided. Unfortunately this was misconceived by the public as
they thought that consuming plenty of water counteracted the effects of the
drug. This belief was a fatal mistake for Leah Betts who died after consuming
about 7 pints of water in a 90minute period after taking ecstasy and starting
to feel ill. The extensive media coverage of Leah’s death in the 90’s led to
another policy change which encouraged ravers to drink 1 pint of water every
hour thus trying to reducing the harms of the drug. Legislation changed yet
again and clubs began to be prosecuted for knowingly having drugs on the
premises. This led to them not providing water so easily and taking away chill-out
zones so drug takers could recover. This led to increased deaths once again so
one can see how policy can have a real affect on the harm of drugs and,
therefore, statistics. Another prime example of this more recently has been the
criminalisation of drugs like methadrone which has led to extremely impure
versions of it for sale on the streets increasing the harms.
Lindsay’s point overall is that more money needs to be spent
in the evaluation of policies so they work best for all involved. If this is done
effectively, it has been proven to reduce drug harms. In the mean time, Sense
about Science gives people the tools to be able to weigh up the evidence for themselves
and their latest campaign ‘Ask For Evidence’ goes a long way to support that.
Our resident singer and all round entertainer Alistair
Ogilvy is up next with an extremely apt rendition of Jefferson Aeroplane’s
classic ‘White Rabbit’. Clearly
suffering from the munchies, the audience devours the next course of potted
poppy crab and welcomes the next speaker to the stage.
David Graham Scott is a documentary film maker, ex-heroin
addict and proponent of the use of ibogaine in the treatment of drug addicts.
He tells us how in 2003 he turned his life around and chose a strange but
effective method of detoxing after being a heroin then methadone addict for a
number of years. Scott’s story was the subject of a BBC documentary called
Detox or Die (which is still available to view online at http://vimeo.com/25291673 ) which received
critical acclaim and showed a sometimes distressing yet highly personal journey with
an ultimately positive outcome. David now presents to the audience a
single capsule of ibogaine from his coat pocket and goes into details of its
history, properties and effects. Originating in Central West Africa from a
shrub called tabernanthe iboga which has been used for centuries by the Bwiti
religion in coming of age ceremonies for young men of the tribe. They take vast
quantities of it to go into dissociative, psychedelic states to speak to spirit
ancestors. David describes his own
experience of the controversial treatment which included intense and prolonged hallucinations
but 36 hours later he was all but cured of the symptoms usually associated with
methodone withdrawal as he states that ibogaine truly ended his addiction.
Scott receives a lot of praise from various people about the documentary and
how it has helped them through their own battle with addiction and the many
testimonials received have led him to produce a follow up film - ‘Iboga Nights’
eight years after ‘Detox or Die’. Scott
counts himself amongst the growing number of advocates of the use of
psychedelic substances in the treatment of addiction and, with monitoring,
states they can be exceptionally healing substances. For further information
please consult David Graham Scott’s website www.davidgrahamscott.com
Moving on to yet more stimulating food, the coffee rubbed
brisket with hash browns goes further to addling the audience in preparation
for the final speaker of the evening. Professor Judith Pratt of the University
of Strathclyde takes the stage to address the audience on how drugs affected
the music and lyrics of the Beatles. Judy begins by giving the audience a crash
course in how drugs affect the brain. The brain contains reward pathways that
are arranged in regions in the brain and work together. One of the important
chemical messengers which acts on receptors in the brain is called dopamine.
Many drugs that are taken hijack these natural reward pathways and heighten the
experience of taking the drug. After this, people tend to repeat the experience
and become addicts.
Back to the Beatles, Professor Pratt mentions the rumour
that it was the one and only Bob Dylan that got the Beatles into marijuana in
the first place (‘He’s got a lot to answer for!’ is heard muttered from the
direction of the audience!) but what is undoubtable is the influence that weed
had on the music of the Revolver and Rubber Soul albums of the mid 60’s. Judy
practices her evidence based approach and plays a snippet of ‘Girl’ which has
the obvious sound of a joint being inhaled obviously invoking the influence of
marijuana. ‘Got to get you into my life’ is also played and we are told the
original story that it was written for a girlfriend of Paul McCartney’s but it
was later disclosed that in fact it was his ode to cannabis. Marijuana, we are
told, promotes dopamine levels and it has been recently discovered that there
is a protein in the human brain which
actually recognises the presence of cannabis. There is also a naturally
occurring substance in our brains called ‘eternal bliss’ which acts on this
cannabis receptor. What is deduced is that there is a natural marijuana system
already in place in our brains and what happens when we take the external drug
is that it hooks into this already existing system.
Moving into the psychedelic era, the mention of ‘Lucy in the
Sky with Diamonds’ is unavoidable but other songs with a less well known
drug-related analogy include ‘She said, she said’ and ‘Tomorrow never knows’.
Of the first song, the story goes that Lennon was once on a very intense acid
trip with the actor Peter Fonda who spent the whole time screaming ‘I know what
it’s like to be dead!’. And of the second, Lennon proclaimed to his manager
that he wanted to ‘sound like the Dalai Lama screaming from the mountains.’
Judy explains that LSD is a very interesting drug. It completely alters that
way we see the world and because of this it is known to be used in religious
and rites of passage ceremonies around the world. Unlike other drugs, it
doesn’t work on the dopamine system but on the serotonin levels.
What Judy points out is the audience’s reaction to the music
being played. It is abundantly clear how much music can rehash people’s
memories and remind them of being in a certain place at a certain time. It is unarguable how much it can stimulate
memories and create a lot of happiness.
Judy’s closing statements reconfirm just how influential
drugs were over the music produced by the Beatles among other factors. It is
fair to say that these creative masterpieces wouldn’t have happened without
them so, in this case, you can’t deny that the drugs worked!
The evening closes with another drug-fuelled masterpiece
from Alistair and his accompanist Jeana. Even with the somewhat dour subject of
alcohol and domestic abuse, the troops are successfully rallied in to joining
in the rapturous chorus of ‘Mickey’s Warning’. ‘So I'll go and I'll get blue bleezin blind drunk, just to give Mickey
a warning. And then just for spite, I'll stay out all night, and come rolling
home drunk in the morning’
Rock ‘n’ Roll 7.2.13
The third and final installment of the epic trilogy endeavoring to answer all of life’s questions posed to us by Ian Drury sees
it’s culmination in rock ‘n’ roll in the first meeting of 2013. Neil Butler has
returned as host for the night and gets off to a great start by brandishing the
axe of Cleikum in a way Jimi Hendrix
could only attempt to replicate. He takes us on his own personal rock ‘n’ roll
journey through the genres. His influence from the punk era saw him start his
own band in college called the ‘New Rotics’. As the new romantics took off they
changed their name to ‘Extremists in an Igloo’ and moving into the more
sophisticated art rock era he re branded yet again to ‘Screaming Sirens in
Search of Utopia’. So on that bombshell – the first course of an Elvis Burger
is served….
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| Elvis' Burger |
The first speaker of the night is introduced as Ewan Macleod
– managing director of Scotland’s Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame, a really really
bad drummer and all round music aficionado. His passion for music seems only to
be topped by his outrage at the British schooling system who still insists on
giving children the recorder to play as a so-called stimulus for musical
creativity. An even more ludicrous option for the less gifted children, we are
told, is the ruler – and not in a corporal punishment sense, the ‘air-recorder’
as it’s known has successfully made one of the dullest instruments even duller.
Moving on from the education system – Mr Macleod would like to prove to the
audience the influence that the Islamic call to prayer had on the blues. First
– an education in the definition of rock ‘n’ roll. A very quick snippet of
Elvis’s ‘Blue Suede Shoes’ is played and this, ladies and gentlemen, is rock
‘n’roll or, white, electric blues. The opposite of this being black, acoustic
blues with the example of ‘Dust my Broom’ by Robert Johnson is exactly what
Elvis’s inspiration came from. And so the first link is made as the King got
his ideas from black, acoustic rock. A question is posed – who were the first
people to sing the blues? Answer – slaves on the chain gangs. There were two kinds of slaves – ones with
religion and ones without and if you were a slave without religion, you were going
to sing blues music instead of gospel music. What Ewan goes on to explain is
the fact that most slaves came from North Africa which is the country of origin
of the traditional pentatonic scale which was developed in the Middle East. So
if you take the standard blues four, inflect the vocal at the end (which
devotional singing does) and put it back to the traditional pentatonic scale,
you get the adhan – it is just a question of scales. And so the link is made –
white rock ‘n’roll music came from the devotional singing of the muezzin in
Northern Africa. And on that bombshell
that no-one can argue with, the next course is served as there is much to be
discussed at each table!
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| Ewan MacLeod |
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| Really bad drummer |
An exceptionally fervent introduction for our next speaker
is given by Mr Butler as we are told about a lady who was in charge of the
Queen’s jubilee celebrations, performance director of Disneyland Paris and
responsible for various street theatre events by Conflux. Hilary Westlake has
had many rock ‘n’ roll moments in her life and here are just a few of them….
v
Being approached by the double bass player of a
band while her and her friend were collecting glasses in a pub in exchange for
scrumpy. He promised to ‘show them a good time in London’ so off they went.
Innocently, they agreed to be photographed in a pair of baby doll pyjamas for
the grand sum of £5 each. Only when they emerged from the swimming pool and saw
that the garments in question had gone completely see through did they realise
why they were getting paid so handsomely.
v
The concept of ‘ligging’ is explained in it’s entirety.
It is essential to any rock ‘n’roll lifestyle. It gets you into parties,
backstage at rock concert and lifts in limos. To succeed you must possess an
unshakeable sense of entitlement – never ever entertain the possibility of
failure and be instantly adaptable to any situation. Hilary’s greatest lig was
getting into a pool party hosted by a very famous rock star (and no she won’t
name and shame!). Not only that but Ms Westlake had a night of first – one of
cocaine and congress in a pool – how very rock ‘n’ roll!
Hilary is first to point out that
not all rock ‘n’ roll moments involve knobs – ‘there is always hitchhiking,
jumping out of moving cars, sleeping in the streets, driving to a certain death
in Mexico but surviving, the all nighters, the uppers and the downers….and
where is it now?’ she exclaims!
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| Hilary Westlake |
The last course is served and the
audience is suitably impressed with yet more rocking out from Neil Butler. Last
to take the stage is Al McCusker Thompson who is a lecturer at the UWS models
himself on Marcel Duchamp who also described himself as a ‘breather’. We are given a disclaimer before he begins about
his foul language but hey – it’s rock ‘n’ roll after all. McCusker-Thompson also
inform us has he hasn't had any sleep; he has decided to read his speech word
for word. This reviewer will try to keep up but also has deduced will not be
able to do it justice, so in the spirit of Al’s talk, what will be attempted
here is a rough recreation of the statements made – in no particular order, with
no huge degree of accuracy and with an air or internal monologue – here we go…
“Rock ‘n’ roll is a metaphor for fucking. ’60 Minute Man’ by the Dominoes was one of the first rock ‘n’ roll songs and extols the virtues of delayed ejaculation. Rock ‘n’ roll is fucking with people’s heads, fucking with authority, being too drunk to fuck and fucking up. Rock ‘n’ roll is about sensation. It is as mystical as a reverb that often drenches it’s musical form. It is timeless, super smart and full of life – not young, dumb and full of come. The idea concept of rock ‘n’ roll is meaningful and life affirming. It is righteous without being self righteous and you can dance to it making it highly evolved. Intelligence alone will not make you cool. Intellectual intelligence is the chit chat of the soul. Albert Einstein who is kooky as fuck is cool, Stephen Fry who is smug as fuck isn't. Intelligence without attitude is like a simile without…well, you do the maths. Iggy Pop is brimming over with the spirit of Sanctus. He is a brilliant example of intelligence with attitude after his appearance on Tom Snyder’s show in 1980 – his performance was so possessed he unknowingly knocked out one of his front tooth caps. Unbeknownst to him when he sat down with the smarmy interviewer who asked ‘why are you bleeding?’ Iggy replied without dropping a beat (and rock ‘n’ roll is all about the beat) ‘Because I’m on your show.’ The Spirit of Sanctus of rock ‘n’ roll is a lifeforce beyond reason. Passion drives rock ‘n’ roll and it is moral and possesses moral integrity based on the desire for truth whether desirable or not. Rock ‘n’ roll’s transgressive nature means it bows to nothing and no-one in the face of what is true . David Bowie said ‘How can life become a point of view?’. Rock ‘n’ roll does not attempt to reduce life to a point of view. Many years ago I was at a dinner party in the once fashionable West End and Stuart Cosgrove stated ‘Glaswegians are the Cockney’s of the North – they think everybody loves them but everybody hates them.’ It bugged me for years and I was telling some guy in a pub about and he just said ‘Yeah but we don’t give a fuck.’ ROCK ‘N’ ROLL I’ll finish with the words of Glasgow band The Amazing Snake heads and say ‘I kneel to no-one, I kneel to no-one but my sweet baby. So tell the man I’m coming up to take my glory.’”
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| Al McCusker-Thompson |
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| Al McCusker-Thompson 2 |
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| Rock 'n' Roller 1 |
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| Rock 'n' Roller 3 |
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| Rock 'n' Roller 2 |
The audience and Al all exhale.
Rock ‘n’ roll and the Ian Drury trilogy is over and what a time it has been. The Cleikum Club will reoccur on April 4th 2013 with THE MEANING OF LIFE at Stravaigin on Gibson Street.
More photos are available to view online on Facebook fro the Cleikum Club
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