This article directly precedes the events of "Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas", when Hunter Thompson aliased "Raul Duke" and Oscar Acosta aliased "Dr. Gonzo" fled from Los Angeles presumably following the events of political uprisings in the barrio as a result of indictments of corrupt cops in the LAPD which they were involved in exposing. They fled for Vegas to avoid the possibility of being assassinated, but also to write a series of articles covering events, such as a motocross derby, happening in Vegas for major magazines who provided Thompson the funding to take this trip.

He bought the ticket, so he took the ride. Their documentation of this trip did not involve covering these assigned stories, but rather to document their "pursuit of the American dream" in tapes and photographs. A project that may have been artistic reportage mixed with an insurance policy to carefully document what they feared may be the final moments of their lives leading up to their possible politicial assassination.

Part of the paranoia surrounding this trip was induced by drug abuse, but the rest is contextualized by the then recent acquittal of Salazar's killer Deputy Thomas Wilson who may have received orders under threat or direct involvement with corrupt officers to execute Salazar for his investigations into their corruption scandals in 1970.

Strange Rumblings comes after Thompson's legendary pieces such as "The Kentucky Derby is Decadent & Depraved" where he first met his long time collaborative illustrator Ralph Steadman; and his legendary debut "Hell's Angels" which propelled him to stardom and numerous attempts on his life. He rode with the MC's on his own Harley, was jumped by them and beaten nearly to death, and still published his incredibly written reportage on them through a series of transcribed tapes, hand written and typed sections, all faxed out of order to various publishers where they were only partially published as excerpts until fully edited and released as his first book in 1967, just in time to have experienced and documented his encounters with Allen Ginsberg, Neal Cassidy, Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters during their infamous road tours leading to the establishment of their communes in California and Oregon.

While Ken Kesey was credited for introducing Hell's Angels to LSD, and Bob Dylan introducing the Beatles to it, Thompson's first foray into psychedelics was when he was personally invited to trip back-stage with Jefferson Airplane in 1968, which would further evolve his distinctive style and odd characteristics into producing the subsequent works of "Strange Rumblings in Aztlan"; "Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas"/"...On the '72 Campaign Trail"; and "The Great Shark Hunt", which was a compilation of his best pieces from his entire corpus recontextualized into a singluar epic periodical essay of his life and modern history.


MINUTES:
0:00 - "Dr. Gonzo" Article Intro
2:14 - Oscar "Zeta" Acosta (last photo before his disappearance)
5:16 - Rudolfo "Corky" Gonzales (boxer, poet, activist)
7:33 - Thompson's First Encounter w/ the Buffalo
9:59 - The Assassination of Ruben Salazar
11:19 - INTERMISSION
13:34 - Nuestro Tierra de Aztlan
14:35 - The Chicano Movement
16:05 - The Vatos Locos
18:19 - Moratorium Rally Against Police Brutality 1970
21:16 - "Por La Raza" Outro
22:21 - "Yo Soy Joaquin" English Version
23:29 - Gonzo Journalism
25:16 - SIGN OFF

The sitar ragas of Ravi Shankar are not just for psychedelic effect but underlay the irony of the indigenous supposedly being mistaken for Indians when it was well established the exploring colonizers who arrived were allegedly attempting to trade with the known and established kingdom of India....

The word Indian for these indigenous came to be from the term Indio, which was considered a slur for those dark skinned, fully native Mexicanos with no Spanish blood in them.
Coincidentally the same term the Spanish conquistadors used to describe the native people of the East Indies and the Philippines.

#Gonzo / #huntersthompson \ #Journalism


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