Category Archives: Grateful Dead

Woodstock’s Contradictions, 50 Years Later

Posted on August 10, 2019 by

Overwhelmed and underprepared, the promoters declared that Woodstock was a free festival and welcomed the hordes that they couldn’t have turned back anyway. “Fifty years later, I still have what’s left of a pair of three-day tickets to the 1969 … Continue reading →

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LSD Turns 75: What a Long, Strange Trip It’s Been

Posted on April 25, 2019 by

March 25, 1966: LIFE Magazine “It would be another 24 years until Jimi Hendrix would release ‘Are You Experienced,’ but Albert Hofmann became the first person in history who could conceivably answer in the affirmative to that when he discovered LSD’s … Continue reading →

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Live/Dead – Grateful Dead (1969)

Posted on September 6, 2018 by

“Live/Dead is the first official live album released by the San Francisco-based rock band Grateful Dead. Recorded over a series of concerts in early 1969 and released later the same year, it was the first live rock album to use … Continue reading →

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From Folk to Acid Rock, How Marty Balin Launched the San Francisco Music Scene

Posted on July 27, 2018 by

Top: Marty Balin at Monterey Pop, 1967. Photo by Suki Hill. Above. Jefferson Airplane enjoyed a close relationship with promoter Bill Graham, who booked the band, which he managed during most of 1967, into the Fillmore in San Francisco and … Continue reading →

Posted in Bill Graham, Counterculture, Grateful Dead, Haight-Ashbury, Hippie, Music, Rolling Stones | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Synthedelia: Psychedelic Electronic Music in the 1960s

Posted on July 7, 2018 by

“‘Rock & roll is electronic music – because if you pull the plug, it stops.’ So says Louis ‘Cork’ Marcheschi of Fifty Foot Hose, whose sole album, Cauldron – a pioneering collision of abstract electronics and psychedelic rock originally released … Continue reading →

Posted in Counterculture, Environmental, Grateful Dead, Happenings, Jazz, Music, Street theater | Tagged , , , , , , | 1 Comment

A Space Cowboy’s Curriculum

Posted on June 27, 2018 by

“Ten things I know about John Perry Barlow: 1. John Perry Barlow died this past February at age seventy, but people have been trying to describe him for decades. Among the attempts: ‘Internet guru,’ ‘the thinking man’s Forrest Gump,’ and … Continue reading →

Posted in Counterculture, Grateful Dead, Haight-Ashbury, Ken Kesey, LSD, Merry Pranksters, Music | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

The Science of the Psychedelic Renaissance

Posted on June 4, 2018 by

Three new books suggest that psychedelic drugs did not necessarily have the power to rewrite society, but, instead, brought on revelations concerning earthly themes. “In 1960, Allen Ginsberg wrote a letter to Timothy Leary, then a professor at Harvard. Leary … Continue reading →

Posted in Allen Ginsberg, Books, CIA, Grateful Dead, Hippie, Jack Kerouac, Jazz, Ken Kesey, LSD, Marijuana, Merry Pranksters, Music, Poetry | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment