"Something out there churns again, a power that's hard to place, sometimes overlapping with the new explorers, but just as often not."
"The Dead and their hordes require vast tracts of space to fully unfurl their carpet across the landscape and take their substances and dance and congregate."
"The question is, can we do it and stay high?" Jerry Garcia.
For those interested in the psychedelic subculture in America this book pretty much lays it all out in an easy to read and understand style. If you grew up in that era (roughly beginning in the late '60s) no doubt you're familiar with that scene. And the author has put together a number of narratives that put much of that whole scene (from East Coast to West Coast) in perspective if you weren't "tuned in". Some narratives are related, others not. But everything is tied together with the band the Grateful Dead who pop up throughout much of this book. Saying that, is this a book about The Dead? Not really but kind of.
"The ins and outs of stonerdom act as a subtle and ongoing counterpoint that sometimes intersects directly with the psychedelic narrative."
If you're a fan of the band (like me beginning in 1967) the book is even more interesting and informative. The Dead is there from just about the beginning up through the end of the book, so important are they to the story--not only the band itself but the people who came together around them and made up a large part of that entire scene--artists, musicians, writers, poets, academics, heads, and anyone else loosely tied to that whole scene that was growing and spreading across America. Jarnow weaves a tale that begins, and goes through here, and then there, then through that, and pops out the other side of this subculture. And along the way we meet all sorts of people--some big, some smaller in the story, but all a part of that greater electric-mind-melting sheet of blotter acid that was (and is) psychedelic America.
"I believed, like a bunch of other people, that if Kennedy and Krushchev took some LSD together, we'd have world peace forever." Peter Stampfel.
"Reggae and the many genres it spawns become entries to a borderless global drug culture with it's own vast roots."
Basically beginning with the Acid Tests/Trips Festival (but I was also happy to see touching on the "The Last Acid Test" labeled by Neil Meriwether, in 1972, at Veneta, Oregon benefiting the Springfield Creamery, the "Sunshine Daydream" 3 CD/1 DVD box set, one of the Grateful Dead's best shows and a personal favorite of the period) and those early years of the '70s/'80s/,90s, then moving into the era of Burning Man and Bonnaroo, author Jesse Jarnow weaves together a picture that takes in not only The Dead, but other musicians including Peter Stampfel (Holy Modal Rounders, a true early psyche-folk duo) and his connection with LSD back in the days when only a few people knew what "acid" was, and Phish who, for a new generation, were treated similar to The Dead in their day. Plus poets/writers like Ginsberg, Kesey, Kupferberg, Sanders, and others, academics including (of course) Leary, the ARPANET and SAIL, where as Stewart Brand wrote at the time, "These are heads. Half or more of computer science is heads.", plus the Merry Pranksters, Owsley ("the person soon most responsible for psychedelicizing the United States"), LSD discoverer Albert Hoffmann (for which "Bicycle Day" is celebrated), keeper of the Grateful Dead tape vault Dick Latvala ("Swallowed peyote tar balls and listened to Dead concert tapes."), and various artists like Keith Haring ("I saw the Grateful Dead and got high."), and others including Hippies, Yippies, Zippies (psychedelicized pranksters), and others of that period that are all part of the psychedelic picture of America at that time. And all have a seemingly interwoven connection to each other and the growing counter culture at large and the LSD subculture in particular.
"Computers are good news, maybe the best since psychedelics." Stewart Brand.
"We have a kind of continuity, from off the street to outer space, so to speak." Jerry Garcia.
The b&w photos help put faces and other images to the text. Included is an early photo of The Fugs in their East Village glory, the Grateful Dead, artist/LSD dealer Johnny Crunch, and others. Also here (but I wish the photos were in color) are pictures of sheets of blotter acid with their unique artwork, a photo of Albert Hoffman (discoverer of LSD), underground chemists, and others who were connected to this subculture.
Taken together, the text and photos give an in-depth look into that whole scene from it's beginnings, through the seventies/eighties/nineties, and up through the recent past. This isn't a dry treatise on the deleterious use of LSD or a book full of statistics. Instead Jarnow has written an interesting and informative story of psychedelics in America, and how, from areas like New York and San Francisco, this new subculture began branching throughout America as--"... the heads connect and reconnect across a bohemian circuit of folk clubs, coffee houses, music shops, bookstores, shared apartments, and crash pads...". And being a deep fan of The Dead I found (of course) the many parts of the book dealing with the band and everything that revolves around them especially interesting. This is a very readable book that sheds some interesting and informative light on a part of, and a time in, America I thought I knew fairly well. But even as a first-hand observer of all that was happening around me while I was a college student in Palo Alto in the late '60s/early '70s (the music was fantastic), this book showed me there was a lot more going on than I could see in front of me.
"Grateful Dead shows continue to remain sites of active counterculture. Besides being a place to take LSD and dance, one of the very few left, they are a place where old friends meet and where narratives spontaneously collide or brush up against one another, putting unexpected ideas into close proximity. As the '70s get going and the '60s really get to ending, a ticket to a Dead show remains a ticket to the unbroken psychedelic America."
There's an Introduction, 393 pages of text, 32 pages of photos, a list of the many dozens of interviews Jarnow did for the book, 18 pages of sources, 27 pages of notes, and an (much needed) index.
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