Feed Your Head: San Francisco's Psychedelic Rock Revolution: From the Acid Tests to Altamont (Paperback)

In the mid- and late 1960s, San Francisco was the epicentre of a cultural and musical revolution which is still reverberating to this day. It was the place where the carefully cultivated American Dream of an ever-expanding conformist commercial culture slammed headlong into the day-glo visions and utopian ideals of a young generation that suddenly did not want to play by the old rules, but instead wanted to create something bold, beautiful and new. The musical soundtrack for the counterculture that formed in Haight-Ashbury (and in other cities across the country) was also startlingly new and different - it took elements of rock 'n' roll, folk, blues, jazz, Indian and seemingly a hundred other influences, and combined them in a rich psychedelic stew that was unlike anything the world had ever heard before. "Feed Your Head! San Francisco's Psychedelic Rock Revolution: From the Acid Tests to Altamont" traces the rise of the Bay Area music underground through five of the original bands: Jefferson Airplane, Grateful Dead, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Big Brother & the Holding Company/Janis Joplin and Country Joe & the Fish. Using the popular 'day-by-day' format of previous Jawbone titles, author Blair Jackson offers a compelling look at not only the work of those seminal bands during that important period, but also other important groups in the surrounding scene, and broader cultural themes including the spread of psychedelic drugs, youth's resistance to the War in Vietnam, and the 'straight' world's response to the hippie revolution. "Feed Your Head" is a detailed, colourful, and occasionally funny book that is certain to appeal to fans of San Francisco rock, or the '60s in general.