My friend started crying when he listened to "Monkey Gone to Heaven" while tripping on acid. Should I laugh in his f#@$ing face?

This thread is hilarious, I must say. I was once partial to acid when I was around 20-21. Now, speaking of Joy Division ...

My girlfriend at the time (this would be around 1987) worshipped JD. I always found them to be dreary and rather boring. Well, to cut a long story short, we were tripping one night and she insisted on putting on her all-time favorite record, Closer. The minute the needle hit side one and the voice came on, we both could not stop laughing. In fact, we laughed maniacally through both sides, particularly the last track ("Decades"?). That pompous voice gravely intoning "Here are the young men ..." was just too much! What struck me as unbearably funny was when I realized at that very moment that Ian Curtis sounded not at all like Jim Morrison (I guess that's what he was aiming for in this song) but rather ended up sounding - and I was literally rolling on the floor laughing, exhorting ... WHY HE SOUNDS LIKE A DRUNK OLD VICTORIAN STAGE ACTOR IMITATING BUCK OWENS! And I'll be damned if my girlfriend - she who hitherto unquestionably worshipped at the altar of all things JD didn't hear it exactly as I did. To this day, whenever I hear Ian Curtis I can't help but giggle.

Even more side-splitting was when she burst out saying, "Man! To think that he killed himself over THIS!" Hahaha. Call us insesntivie, if you wish, but, upon reflection, the point is a serious and valid one: the notion of Curtis (not to mention many of the fans who bought into the "myth"), really just a troubled young man with the set of usual angst-ridden problems ever 20 year old goes through (and which will assuredly seem trivially naive/stupid when you look back at it when you're 30) bought it - meaning his own myth-weaving - hook, line and sinker. And, yeah, it's tragic, but at that moment, whilst tripping, it just seemed ... impossible to take at all seriously. Stupid. Pompous. And the fact that that guy was nowehere near the mark of what he was aiming at.

(When I went and saw 24 Hour Party People, I just couldn't stop laughing, watching the Ian Curtis character doing his spastic dance on stage. And that "doomy" vocal - still sounds like a shit Victorian actor imitating Buck Owens! Just where did that faux-Southern US drawl come from anyway?!)

After this particular epiphany, well, she never could listen to them again, unless she wanted to hear a comedy record, that is. But there was an even more beneficial and pressing result. Upon realizing how angst-riddenly teenage DUMB it all was, that marked the end of her received notions and learned behavior (some call it "attitude") re: Joy Division popular depression cult.

Or let's put it this way: better to laugh at this shit than kill yourself over it.

So, er, I suppose this is a bit of a defense for acid, as in certain circumstances it may allow you to hear/something as it TRULY is - laid threadbare, the media and peer definitions stripped completely away.

That last post was the best drugs message ever.

he sounds like kermit thee frog: that is why i like him

Ooh. What a pleasant memory this is.

That Joy Division story belongs in the fucking Smithsonian!

One night about five years ago I heard 'Hey!' at the height of an acid trip and that just it. The rest of the night/morning I was singing it.

I don't know why anyone should be considered a 'pussy' for crying on acid. In fact, the last time I did acid ten years ago, me and my friends got to the point that we were crying very hard/loudly just from sheer happiness, or intensity or something. It was the only way to express the immensity of what was going on inside us. I've still got a picture of my friend crying from that night and you would think by the look on his face he must have been in utter sorrow or agony. Nothing could be further from the truth.

hahaha this thread

lol i know this thread is crazy.

bimble totally, i'm not ashamed of my many tears of high school craziness.

mad rofflz at "acid"+"deeply spiritual experience"

hey maybe i should just take those two liquigels i got lying around.

Hah, this thread is what got me hooked to ILX! Good times.

I, too, actually cried when I saw the video for Monkey Gone to Heaven on TV late one night - it was really inexplicable.

Same here.

I was shaking that boom box up and down like an Etch-a-Sketch, too, by the way.

La Monte, its all about set and setting. IMHO, there's little that separates the sober and psychedelically mediated "deeply spiritual experience".

My friends and I had a spiritual experience watching the Led Zepplin DVD and mistakenly listening to Spanish Radio. We didn't notice through the first song. Fortunately, someone learned how to press the switch on the receiver just in time for Stairway maaaaaaaan.

Then we laughed and my friend curled into a ball as reality seaped away for the next 8 hours.

Ooooooh drugs!

the lord of the rings one is hilarious, but yeah not for the first-timers obv.

the in-front-of-a-train story... oh man.