(composite video by Dr. Are We Really?)

In 2005, Zane Kesey planted the seed in my head for A.T. 40, a party to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Merry Pranksters’ Acid Tests. My objective in that case was to see how close to “Burning Man in a night club” (minus the dust storms, sunburns and open flamethrower tryouts) we could actually get on Halloween Night in Vegas. What my partners and I created was an eclectic monstrosity that to this day many people (including no less a person than Zane) tell me was the best party of their lives. We all threw everything we had at that event, but behind the scenes it was a drama-ridden, gut wrenching experience that ended with “Smilin’ Bob” Robertson, a scalliwag out of North Carolina who used to put together a festival called SmileFest, absconding with whatever profit there was and as much of the investment capital as he could squirrel away.

OK, so fast forward to 2009. The Dead is hosting two days at the Shoreline Ampitheater in Mountain View and Zane Kesey calls me and says he has been getting calls about people asking if there’ll be another Acid Test. I view this as a green light to step in and work on the party rather than see it go the “Grateful Dead cover band / hippie nostalgia party” route. Acid Tests, after all, should be about pushing the creative envelope. No, forget that. Acid Tests should be about shredding the creative envelope and leaving strips of creative ribbon strewn about the floor in so much afterglow confetti.

I’d had this idea after A.T. 40 that I’d been calling “A.T. Furthur: The Always Traveling Furthur Circus”, the illegitimate psychedelic godchild of P.T. Barnum and Black Rock City. So I start scheming with some friends. We make a wish-list. Live painting by Alex and Allyson Grey. Beats Antique. A San Francisco All-Star Band. Stilt Walkers. Cabaret. Off-kilter Vaudeville.

PuTzu, a gem and mineral merchant in Northern California whom I know from the Grateful Dead scene agrees to finance and collaborate on the party.

I hear about Steve Kimock’s new project, Crazy Engine, with Kimock and Jerry Garcia Band Hammond B3 master Melvin Seals. That seems like the perfect band!

While Crazy Engine was not, technically, available, Matt Butler of the Everyone Orchestra got involved and put together a band that was above and beyond the call of duty… an all star band with members of ALO, Hot Buttered Rum, Kimock, Seals, and a host of others.

Matt used to be in a band called Jambay that performed at Ken Kesey’s Twister! parties, so he gets the “throw things at the wall and see what sticks” Prankster aesthetic. Ken’s favorite part of the Acid Tests was that the Grateful Dead would “not just play the notes on the page, they would play to the moment.” Jambay had that and Matt Butler’s Everyone Orchestra has been able to master the Prankster aesthetic and take it to another level. EO is all about playing to the energy in the room.

Finding a venue for this party was no easy feat, though. I’d suggested Space550 at 550 Barneveld. I’d been to a Burning Man style party there… “The Mad Hatter’s Ball”… and thought it would make a great venue. But to fit EO the stage would have to be expanded, encroaching on already limited dance space and the logistics of an indoor-outdoor event were never fully agreed upon.

A venue in Richmond, over in the East Bay, was located. But it was big and would have taken a 2500 person show to begin to seem full, much less financially start looking like a break-even.

In the end, we were delivered a great venue on the water in SF, Kelly’s Mission Rock.

The party’s biggest drawback, in my mind, was that we didn’t have a good decor team properly lined up. We had a loose commitment that a decor team would come in and we budgeted for it, but I guess that decor team had gone all-out at the HowWeird Street Fair the previous weekend and didn’t want to do our party the following Tuesday. We then tried to throw something together last second on our own, but the venue was strict about only allowing “fire retardant fabric”… We couldn’t find that, last second and at an affordable price. So decor fell short.

We also didn’t have much of a production team put together. OK, let me rephrase that. We didn’t have a production team. Production was held together by spit and bubble gum and good intentions. And yet… the evening flowed. Pu’s stage manager, Steve, worked miracles. My buddy Billy Jack jumped through hoops for the event. Mike, my former housemate from my brief stint in Georgia, showed up to have a good time and was drafted into what must have seemed like an endless ordeal of “volunteerism”.

Live music upstairs. Electronic & Live music downstairs. Alex Grey did live painting to the sounds of Everyone Orchestra. Beats Antique mixed turntables with instrumentation and performance elements by belly dancer extraordinaire Zoe Jakes. The Jug Dealers and L’Fiasco. And DJs from our NY family, Haj and Rhythmystic.

By sunrise, the Lost Creek Gang, Ken Babbs’ son Eli and his “brother from another mother” Ocean were on stage making music. Ocean delivered perhaps the best line on this moment. Someone came up to him and said he did a good imitation of a guy too high to play who walks up to an instrument, stares at it, walks away, then comes back and plays. His reply? “I’m from Portland. We’re big on irony up there.”

Other memorable moments from this trip were delivered courtesy of Dr. Are We Really?, senior anthropologist of the Mind Shaft Society. (The Mind Shaft Society promises “Give us your mind and we give you the shaft.” And they deliver on this promise.) On the Monday leading up to the Test, Dr Really? gave a guided tour of San Francisco with the Merry Prankster bus Furthur (or “Furthur On” as some have dubbed it, the child of the original Furthur.) Dr. Really’s tour took us to the North Beach, the Haight and around SF. We landed at one point at K-FOG where The Dead were doing an in-studio performance. We flyered the studio. Zane flyered Phil Lesh. We let it be known that the Prankster spirit was alive and well.

After Shoreline, en route to the Gorge, we came upon a brokedown school bus on the side of the road. Furthur! Didn’t you just get a new engine? Billy Jack jumped out, ready to help. Alas, the problem was bigger than a quick roadside repair.

I hear it’s back in Pleasant Hill in the bus barn again. Bus Randy put it best, “Next time, lets sacrifice an engine to the Bus Gods before the road trip!”