San Francisco/Acid Rock

Link to Spotify playlist: Mus115 - 08. San Francisco / Acid Rock

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One of the enduring images of the 1960s was the "flower power" and psychedelic imagery, with tie-dyed shirts and the whole "drop out and turn on" idea.  San Francisco and, by extension, the Bay area in Northern California became the epicenter of this new movement. Counter-culture youth flocked to the area to escape traditional ways of life, and one of big destinations was the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood in San Francisco. This was a scene where all sorts of drugs were daily life, free sex with no strings attached, and the whole love-peace philosophy and accompanying music flourished. Whereas in the Beatles and the Byrds and others had drug songs shrouded in innuendo or double-entendre, the SF music scene gave up all pretense and  Up to 1500 bands were rehearsing and playing during the late 60s, as a melting pot of all the old R&B, folk-rock, rock, and other current styles. Up until this point, vocals had dominated popular music. 2-4 minutes was the standard. Even somewhat longer songs were still vocally driven. But in the SF scene, instrumental breaks were common, and became the focal point for many bands. 20-30 minute jams became the norm. This is also the time when the volume levels at concerts increased - whereas the Beatles were often downed out by the screaming fans, these new SF bands wanted the music to come first, so they upped the amplifiers and total power used and blasted their music so that talking and screaming over the band was impossible and pointless. Not that the audience was willing anyway - they were mostly stoned on one or several varieties of narcotic and wanted to just enjoy the moment.

By the 1970s, this San Francisco scene had somewhat subdued, but some of the most influential bands in the rock and roll canon came from this scene.

** San Francisco**

Janis Joplin

Born in Texas, Janis moved to San Francisco in the mid 1960s and got her break with "Big Brother and the Holding Company", and gained notoriety in 1967 for a live performance at the Monterey International Pop Festival. With a unique sounding voice, with a ton of soul, blues, and gospel influences, Janis was started charting her own course to music legend status, as one of the first female rock stars (more on that below with Jefferson Airplane).

• Piece of My Heart

Janis felt the band was holding her back, and went solo:

• Kozmic Blues
• Try (Just a Little Bit Harder)

She put together another band that was going to be bigger and better, and recorded her next album Pearl in 1970. Before the album could be released, she died of a Heroin overdose. Me and Bobby McGee was released as a single and was her only Top 40 hit, holding the #1 position for 2 weeks.

• Me and Bobby McGee

Other SF Groups

There were, of course, other San Francisco/Bay Area non-acid rock bands, but we will get to them in later chapters - Steve Miller Band, Santana, Tower of Power, Creedence Clearwater Revival, and Sly and the Family Stone.

** San Francisco Acid Rock**

The Warlocks

San Francisco Author Ken Kesey began writing One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest in 1960, and published in two years later. He took part in CIA-financed studies about LSD and mescaline while writing this book, and eventually built upon this experience by holding his own wild and weird parties with LSD as the main focus. This was an eclectic mix of people, from intellectual types, Hell's Angels types, hippie types, and a band called The Warlocks. Since these parties were LSD based and in the California Bay Area with the 1849 gold-rush being a big part of it's history, they became known as "acid-tests" (in reference to testing the purity of gold in the 1800s).

As the leader of The Warlocks said: "The Acid Tests were thousands of people, all hopelessly stoned, all finding themselves in a roomful of other thousands of people, none of whom any of them were afraid of."

This is where The Warlocks grew to expand upon loud, free-form, improvisatory music. Eventually they renamed themselves as the "Grateful Dead" and set the stage for jam bands to come. I'm skipping a lot of history here, and getting straight to the music:

Grateful Dead Songs

• 1965 Mind Bender (as the Warlocks) <- note, this is *NOT* a Spotify link, as I could not find this song on Spotify.
• 1967 Turn on Your Love Light (live)
• 1969 Uncle John's Band
• 1970 Casey Jones

Jefferson Airplane

Playing a mix of folk-rock and Beatle-like tunes, Jefferson Airplane formed in 1965 and featured Grace Slick as the first real female rock star, although both she and Janis Joplin were contemporaries (if very different stylistically) and friends. To quote Grace Slick: "They called us fire and ice. I was the ice and [Janis] was the fire."

Prior to Grace leading the Jefferson Airplane, females were somewhat relegated to pop, folk, soft rock, or Motown female-only groups. She was really the first mainstream female rock star.

Jefferson Airplane had quite a few personnel problems, and morphed into Jefferson Starship. Then a new group formed without Grace, called Jefferson Airplane's Volunteers. And then Jefferson Starship changed personnel a little bit and with Mickey Thomas on lead vocals, was simply called Starship. For legal reasons, they could no longer use the "Jefferson" part of the name. These previous few sentences don't do justice to the various incarnations, these wikipedia articles have much more info:

• Jefferson Airplane: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jefferson_Airplane
• Jefferson Starship: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jefferson_Starship
• Starship: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starship_(band)

In any event, here are some of the songs you should know:

• Somebody to Love
• White Rabbit
• We Built This City (Starship with Mikey Thomas)

Acid Rock outside of SF

Jim Morrison and the Doors:

• Light My Fire
• Hello I Love You
• People Are Strange
• Love Me Two Times

Jim Morrison had a brief but eventful time at the top - two hit albums in 1968 and 1969, arrest for public drunkenness and indecent exposure (during a live concert), and eventually died of a heart attack during recuperation in 1971.

The Jimi Hendrix Experience

Jimi was born in Seattle, and began his career playing backup guitar for artists like Little Richard, Ike and Tina Turner, Wilson Pickett, Jackie Wilson, the Islay Brothers, and others. His big break came when he was encouraged to go to England and seek his fortune there. He recruited an English bassist and drummer, forming a rock trio called "The Jimi Hendrix Experience". There were some major hits from this album, two of them listed below:

• Little Wing
• Purple Haze

But their debut at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967 is what made them (and, well, really, Jimi) a big deal in the US.

• Youtube Video - Live at Monterey

This captured America's attention, and he released several successful albums following. Electric Ladyland perhaps showed his most experimental side, where he showed himself to be ahead of his time.

• All Along the Watchtower
• 1983

Jimi too fell into the drug trap, and ended up dying from vomit inhalation caused by barbiturate use in 1971. He also had a whole pharmacological variety found in his bloodstream at the time of death. So in the period of about a year, the rock world lost Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, and Jimi Hendrix.