Monday, March 1, 2010

Beaker Street “Head” Bed

This is the famous trippy music bed used by Clyde Clifford (and his successors) underneath their raps on Beaker Street.  It's from the 1970 album "Head" on Buddah Records.  The artist was electronic musician Nik Pascal Raicevic, and there is more information on this blog site by Leonard Holyoke:


As has been described elsewhere, the purpose for the bed was to mask the noise from the air circulation fans in the mighty 50,000 watt transmitter, located just a few feet from where Clyde was on mic.  The bed was from the track ‘Cannabis Sativa’, which is 17:52 in length.  It sounds like Clyde took a few minutes from the middle of the track and perhaps looped it to create the music bed for Beaker Street. 

The LP is long out of print; I had made a high-quality dub on reel to reel tape in the 70’s.  I digitized the track and ran it thru a pop/click filter so it sounds pretty clean.  It’s in Stereo, so put on your headphones and enjoy all synth droning, channel to channel spatial effects and just plain weirdness!  


Cannabis Sativa:  stream  |  download


Greg Barman
Denver CO.

6 comments:

  1. I was looking for this the other day & couldn't find it, thanks Greg - that's a clean dub

    ReplyDelete
  2. The whole record had drugs for he names of the tracks, "methedrine" was one of them, plenty of others.

    ReplyDelete
  3. I've been looking for this for many years. Thanks:)

    Jeff

    ReplyDelete
  4. I listened to KAAY's "Beaker Street" all the time and clearly remember hearing this sound effect while Clyde Clifford talked. I understand the KAAY studio in downtown Little Rock would close down at 11:00pm. Clyde Clifford's late night programs would originate from the station's transmitter out of town. Can you imagine unfriendly anti-hippie types roaming the Arkansas countryside late at night looking for Clyde Clifford all-alone by himself at the KAAY transmitter building with the intention of doing him harm? I wonder if Clyde had security measures in place to protect his hide! Any rate, I enjoyed his program. It compared favorably to the FM progressive rock radio stations in our area that played the same kind of music.

    Daddy-o

    ReplyDelete
  5. Do you really think that's what we were in Arkansas at the time? Unfriendly anti-hippie types?

    Geez.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Man, I've been havin' flashbacks listenin' to that background sound that was played when I listened to Beaker Street on K dubl A Y, Little Rock after eleven. We'd get blown out of our minds and go park out in the woods and listen till 'round two in the morning. What great times those were. What great music there was back then!

    ReplyDelete