Magical Mystery Trip 2 Magical Mystery Trip 3 Magical Mystery Trip 4 Psych Film Festival 1 Psych Film Festival 2 Psych Film Festival 3 Psych Film Festival 4   Psych Film Festival 5

Alice In Wonderland was born out of the ashes of The Groovy Cellar and The Clinic, both of which were clubs started during the UK Psychedelic revival of 1981 and was the brainchild of Christian Paris and Clive Jackson.
Christian was an ex mortician and Clive Jackson was better known as The Doctor from Doctor & The Medics (who were instrumental in the 1981 psych revival).
Alice’s started life in 1983 in the dark basement of a club called Gossips in London’s Soho district that in a former life had been known as The Batcave, which was THE place to go on the Goth scene.
Alice’s was held every Monday night from 10pm until 3.30am, cost £2 to get in and featured live bands and a psychedelic disco.
Alice In Wonderland, unlike The Clinic, had strong Goth ties, so it was no surprise to see The Sisterhood playing the first live set there (having just been formed from the ashes of the Sisters of Mercy).
Very quickly another psychedelic revival was underway with other clubs such as The Crypt and The Taste Experience, although this time it was much more underground that it had been back in ‘81 and the word soon spread so that getting into Alice’s soon became ‘members only’ due to the size of the venue (small) and very quickly an Inner Circle was formed which included some well known faces from the British music scene (The Damned, for example, were close friends of Alice’s).
The disco was often run by The Doctor and played a mixture of 60’s Freakbeat, Garage and British and US Psych. As well as The Sisterhood many many bands played live sets at Alice’s including: The Lyres, Ring Of Roses, A Certain General, The Prisoners, The Treatment, The Surfadelics, The Herbs, Underground Zero, Webcore, Voodoo Child, Inner City Unit, Perfect Disaster and of course Doctor and The Medics.
Alice In Wonderland then came up with with the unique idea of the Magical Mystery Trip which involved buying advance tickets to an unknown and totally secret event.
On receipt of the tickets the budding Mystery Tripper was given only a time and meeting place. On arriving at the rendezvous the gathered trippers sat and awaited further instructions, delivered by a member of the Alice In Wonderland entourage.

The first Magical Mystery Trip was on the 27th October 1984 and was billed as ‘A sensational place somewhere in England, a place you have never been to before, nor are likely to go again’. The final destination after a long wait at Speakers Corner in Hyde Park, London  was Chiselhurst Caves in Kent where many strange things took place culminating in a live performance by Doctor and The Medics.

The 2nd Magical Mystery Trip on the 22nd December 1984 was billed as a ‘Trip To Fairyland, a place where mere mortals have never been to before, a place where wizards have their wands recharged, where goblins sit on mushrooms and count the stars’. The destination for this event?........a disused Decca Records warehouse somewhere in South London.
 Click HERE for some words on this event.

The 6th July 1985 saw the 3rd Magical Mystery Trip at  ‘A cosmic ballroom very rarely visited....’ The mystery place?....A disused Butlins holiday resort in Clacton, Essex.
Click HERE for the review.
By now these events were selling out within days of the tickets going on sale as their status became legendary, nothing like these had happened since the Trips Festivals and Freakouts of the sixties and Christian had to ensure that each event had that ‘little bit extra’ over previous events.

The 4th event was held 11 months later on June 27th 1986 and was held on the pier at Lowestoft in Norfolk, sadly marred by logistical problems involving lots of people arriving late due to the coaches getting ‘lost’ in central London. Although rumour was that a 5th Mystery Trip was in the pipeline it never surfaced and Lowestoft sadly marked the end of an era............
Click HERE to read about this event.

Christian Paris also came up with another unique happening to satisfy the growing psychedelic revolution, these were the Alice In Wonderland All Night Psychedelic Film Festivals that ran for several years at the Scala Cinema on Pentonville Road, London.
These multi-media events involved the all night showing of ‘cult’ movies, psychedelic discos, Lightshows and Laser shows and live bands.
The first event was on the 7th July 1984 and featured the films:

Head
The Trip
Barbarella
Greatful Dead
I Keep Thinking It’s Tuesday

Live on stage during the evening were Doctor and The Medics.

See the handbill HERE

Autumn of 1984 saw the 2nd Film Festival on 29th September featuring:

Psych Out
Gimme Shelter
I Keep Thinking It’s Tuesday
Pop Down
Wonderwall
Blow Up

Live music for the evening was again provided by Doctor and The Medics.

See the handbill HERE

These events were very popular and the next event was run over 2 days to accommodate the many Night Trippers and was held on the 25th and 26th January 1985 featuring Doctor and The Medics the first night and The Treatment the second night. Films showing on both nights were:

You’re A Big Boy Now
Performance
The Model
Blue Sunshine
The 1969 Mick Jagger Interview
Jimi Hendrix Live in concert.

See the handbill HERE

As far as pOoTer and Sandoz can remember there was not another Film Festival until the 3rd May 1986 when entertainment was provided by Another Green World, Alice In Wonderland and Dead Dog discos and laser and lightshows.
Films for this event were:

The Magic Christian
I Keep Thinking It’s Tuesday
For A Few Dollars More
Dougal and The Blue Cat
Danger Diabolic
Gimme Shelter

See the handbill HERE

The final (to our knowledge) event happened on the 10th January 1987 and featured The Brindishi String Quartet with the following films:

Godzilla vs. The Thing
The Party
Morgan (A Suitable Case For Treatment)
Forgotten Planet
Fistful Of Dollars

See the handbill HERE

Alice in Wonderland continued for several more years promoting events at many London venues and also ran a successful head shop/boutique called Planet Alice at 284 Portobello Road, London for a while.
The club eventually stopped (reasons unknown) and we believe Christian went to live in the States, allegedly marrying Ringo Starrs daughter. although we are unsure about this last fact.
If anyone of you lot can give the official version of this we would be eternally greatful.............

Check out our Alice In Wonderland ‘Bonus Page’:
‘The Christian Paris Art Gallery’

STOP Press - 2011: A new book by Christian Paris
A Pretty Smart Way to Catch a Lobster (the Alice in Wonderland Years)

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