About this Playlist
Our humble narrator blissfully remembers his first time…ON WEED!
1988. I am a wet behind the ears freshman at college in New England. I’ve fallen in with a crowd of likeable misfits from the campus radio station who have taken a shine to me, mainly because I’m from outside of the United States (I was born in Bermuda.)
I have little in the way of experience when it comes to mind altering chemicals, so my new friends ask if I’ve ever been stoned, but more importantly, would I like to get stoned.
I say no to the first question, and an emphatic yes to the second.
Colleen, a chatty sweet natured sophomore who could be a dead ringer for Velma Dinkley, gets the idea to plop a set of headphones on my ears as well. The album of choice: Dark Side Of The Moon, by Pink Floyd.
I guess this would serve as my superhero origin story…
This would be the beginning of my lifelong relationship of me, cannabis and music.
It is a union which is still going strong after 30+ years.
Listening to music is one thing. Listening to music under the influence of cannabis?
Well…
Where do I start?
What do I say?
How do I describe something so sacred, intimate and beautiful?
There are times where it almost seems impossible to verbally quantify something I feel is one of the most incredible experiences in my life that I still pursue to this day.
It’s like asking me to describe a first-hand account of a galaxy in its infancy stages. Words seem useless.
As previously stated, listening to music is always an enjoyable experience for me. Pretty much everything in life for me is viewed through a musical lens. I am constantly soundtracking my moments, whether it’s a curated playlist or with original composition. Music helps me to make sense of what can often be a seemingly senseless and meaningless life.
Now, when you introduce cannabis into the equation…
It’s as if cannabis is the cosmic key unlocking a vault to a new undiscovered universe. It’s a cheat code to a new level of listening enjoyment. It’s listening in 3-D.
Sober, music seems flat, two dimensional. It’s good, but something always seems like it’s missing.
Cannabis gives music additional textures, tones and hues. Throw a pair of cans on your lugs, and you can slip away into a world so deep and beautiful, that it’s like being able to breathe underwater. You don’t want to leave, and you feel slightly irritated when someone taps you on the shoulder to get your attention.
Science only tells one side of the story…
This could easily become a dry, sober explanation of scientific studies and medical effects and definition, but you know and I know that not where it’s at.
Science is important, but that’s another discussion for another time…
For those of us who indulge in cannabis and music do so regardless of genre, taste, era or tempo. It’s more than that.
A track heard stone cold sober becomes a different beast when stoned.
We are listening with virgin ears. That track we heard a dozen times sounds like a completely different piece of music now. It’s like falling into the world of a painting you’re looking at in a museum.
Every note, every chord, every beat seems throbbing and alive. The vocals have deeper hidden meanings and higher truths that seem so obvious that you curse yourself for not spotting it earlier.
Songs unravel and unfold like sonic lotus flowers, revealing layer after layer of beauty.
You don’t want to leave this place, wherever you are. You want to dive deeper, get higher, root around in songs that spring to memory, like uncovering dusty long forgotten books on shelves above your head.
You want to become the music. You want to melt away into an abstract concept of feelings, vibes and sensations, a swirling miasma of synaesthetic colour and pulsing beats, an ocean of aural action and reaction.
In this sacred mindscape, there is no life or death. Time falls away. The world falls away. You one with the Universe as your music transmogrifies into the God Sound, the Source Sound, the Allsound.
For a tiny moment, a snapshot in time, It’s all good.
At least, that’s what it felt like for me after the headphones came off, and the last notes of Eclipse were still humming in my ears, my cannabis-soaked brain digesting all that I had heard.
I had no words to explain to my companions what I’d just experienced.
At that point, I had no idea how a joint and four British musicians would alter my life trajectory in such a radical fashion, but it did, and they had.
I’m still chasing that feeling…
Once all my household chores have been taken care of, I spark up a bowl, put my headphones on and take a mental vacation to my personal utopia.
I can feel whatever emotion I want to feel, without shame or judgement. I can be wherever, whenever, however.
It feels revolutionary. And liberating.
Being an adult isn’t always fun. It’s angering, disappointing, often frustrating and depressing. I feel this often.
But when I rededicate myself to my triad of me, cannabis and music, the ship rights itself. I feel restored and whole again.
The playlist associated with this article (and shares the same title) is a collection of songs I enjoy listening to under the influence of cannabis, because of the mind-bending properties they take when I’m in the zone. Hearing them after a puff, they sound completely different to me. In fact, they sound like sounds written by a completely different artist.
Am I tapping into a higher dimension, an alternate universe of listening?
Maybe I am. And maybe I’m not.
But I encourage you to pursue it all the same.
This is the first step in a long journey. I invite you to stick around and we can take the journey together.
Let it get weird. It’s way more fun that way…
Track Listing
- Too Shy – Kajagoogoo
- They Reminisce Over You (T.R.O.Y.) – Pete Rock & C.L. Smooth
- ’90 aka A Man Like Me – Lemon Jelly
- Seabird – Alessi Brothers
- Brain Damage – Easy Star All-Stars
- Don’t Forget – Dayne Jordan
- Circles – Post Malone
- Hunnybee – Unknown Mortal Orchestra
- Know You – Bonobo
- Jumbo – Underworld
- Swollen – Bent
- Blackboard Jungle – Subatomic Soundsystem Remix – Dubblestandart
- Polygon – [Album Ver.] – DJ KRUSH
- Little Miss Cypher – Pepe Deluxe
- Book Me In – Bullitnuts
- November Has Come – Gorillaz
- I Might Be Wrong – Radiohead
- If I Had a Tail – Queens of the Stone Age
- The Strain – Blockhead
- Cissy Strut – The Meters
- Take Five – Dave Brubeck
- Stereo Tonic – Thunderball
- Suntoucher – Groove Armada
- Bonita Applebum – A Tribe Called Quest
- The New Pollution – Beck
- Sinnerman – Felix Da Housecat’s Heavenly House Mix – Nina Simone
- Witness (1 Hope) – Roots Manuva
- Sour Times – Portishead
- Jazz – Mick Jenkins
- Walking On The Moon – The Police
- Clocks – Coldplay
- Fear Not Of Man – Mos Def
- Flip Ya Lid – Nightmares On Wax
- Golden Brown – The Stranglers
- Loaded – Andy Weatherall Mix – Primal Scream
- Hold On – SBTRKT
- Building Steam With A Grain Of Salt – DJ Shadow
- Know Yourself – Drake
- Willing & Able – Disclosure
- Good Disease – Aim
- Transcendance – Thievery Corporation
- Feather (feat. Cise Starr & Akin from CYNE) – Nujabes
- Lightworks – J Dilla
- Que Sera – Wax Tailor
- The Force – Aim
- Where Do I Begin – The Chemical Brothers
- Do It Again – Steely Dan
- Song for Dot – Space Raiders
- Situation (12″ Remix) – Yazoo
- Over And Over – Hot Chip
- California Soul – Marlena Shaw
- Hey Dude – Kula Shaker
- Dry the Rain – The Beta Band
- 1976 – RJD2
- Beautiful Day – U2
- Once in a Lifetime – 2005 Remaster – Talking Heads
- Music for the Royal Fireworks: Suite HWV 351: III. La Paix – George Frideric Handel
- Good Vibrations – Remastered 2001 – The Beach Boys
Playlist image GPT4
