“Acid Rock, the Psychedelic Era, and Woodstock”

  1. Rock Finds it Voice
    1. “Mainstream” rock turns from entertainment to social comment.
      1. From the folk movement comes the possibility of an alternate social structure and the remnants of a “we can change the world” mindset.
      2. From the Beats comes the idea of withdrawal from dominant society, freedom from moral restraint, and the quest for altered states of consciousness.
    2. San Francisco, particularly the Haight-Ashbury district (near San Francisco State College), became the hub of activity. Significant figures from the Beat movement – Allen Ginsburg, Ken Kesey, Neal Cassady, and others – provided the focus for the Haight-Ashbury scene.
      1. Trips Festival (Jan. 1966) – Grateful Dead and Big Brother & the Holding Co. The LSD-spiked punch became known as the Kool-Aid acid test.
      2. The “First Human Be-In” at Golden Gate Park Stadium Jan. 14, 1967. Ginsberg & others helped stage the event, with music by the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane.
    3. By 1967, 50,000 “hippies” had migrated to the Haight.
      1. According to Hunter Thompson, most were white and “voluntarily poor.”
      2. Most had been raised in relative affluence but had rejected their middle-class background, both in terms of its materialism and its morality.
      3. A counterculture embraced the notion of the superiority of “primitive” societies. A communal spirit prevailed, at least for a time.
      4. “Underground” newspapers and alternative press helped inform adherents.
    4. The use of drugs to obtain “altered states” became prevalent, almost a rite of initiation. Timothy Leary posited 4 levels of consciousness – stupor (alcohol), conventional, sensory (marijuana), and cellular (LSD).
  2. Key figures in Acid/Psychedelic Rock
    1. Grateful Dead
    2. Jefferson Airplane
    3. Doors
    4. Big Brother & the Holding Company.
  3. On October 4, 1967, the Psychedelic Shop closed. On the 6th, “original” hippies in the Haight burned a coffin loaded with beads, peace signs, flowers, etc., proclaiming the “death of hippie, loyal son of media.” Most of the psychedelic bands signed contracts with major record labels. Anti-Vietnam protests marked the rest of the 60s.
    1. Although anti-war protests were not new, 1967 showed a marked increase in their number and size.
      1. Central Park April 1967 – 100,000 demonstrators
      2. 75,000 same day in San Francisco
      3. October 21, 1967 – Ginsberg, Abbie Hoffman, and Jerry Rubin and others, with 150,000 “co-conspirators,” attempted to levitate the Pentagon; 647 protestors were arrested.
    2. Campus protests and police reaction
      1. Columbia University May 1968 – police attempted to remove students who had taken over University buildings.
      2. Democratic convention August 1968
      3. Berkeley, May 1969
    3. The “Psychedelic Blues”

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