Wavy Gravy?

The Cod does not go in for much 60's nostalgia, having missed all but the tail end of that particular decade. (Though I do kick myself for having been born a scant two weeks after Kick Out The Jams was recorded.) As such, I'm in no spot to wax nostalgic about the Good Old Days of the acid tests, or hanging out in the studio when Maggot Brain was recorded. However, something peculiar is going on. Instead of putting LSD in the food of unwitting squares, folks are simply asserting that food is LSD:

It’s as if decades of proliferating sushi and shrinking plates, of clean California cuisine and exhortations to graze, have fostered a robust (or is that rotund?) counterculture of chefs and diners eager to cut against the nutritional grain and straight into the bellies of beasts. In fact, bellies (most often pork, more recently lamb) are this counterculture’s LSD.

Ironically, folks at ground zero of this very same Calicuisine were making the same claim thirty years ago:

"'Remember LSD?' said Tom Weller. 'Garlic is the LSD of the 70s.'"*

I have no idea why this should be such a durable trope, but it sure ain't because it makes sense. At least not until we find Roky Erikson's twin, feed him pork and garlic, and see if he writes "If you have Ghosts." That said, does the possibility that food is now LSD, rather than cocaine, mean we are winning the war on drugs?

*Quoted in McNamee, Alice Waters and Chez Panisse, p. 154.

Comments

[Marco]

Is the pink pork belly safe? Who do I call if I have to be talked down from my trip? Someone on SNL?