2.+Roots

- Started in the folk scene in 1964 when a New York - based band called the Holy Modal Rounders released a cover of the 20's song "Hesitation Blues," changing the word "Hesitation" in the chorus to "Psychedelic." This was the first time this term had been used in popular music. - The first band advertised as a psychedelic rock group was the Texan-based 13th Floor Elevators in 1965 (first printed in an //Austin// Statesman article about the band titled "Unique Elevators shine with Psychedelic Rock” in February 1966, and as a part of its August 1966 album title, The Psychedelic Sounds of the 13th Floor Elevators ).
 * Foundations:**

- __William Burroughs__ : American writer - __Jack Kerouac__ : Beat Generation novelist and poet - __Allen Ginsberg__ : Beat Generation writer - __Allen Watts__ : Interpreter of easter philosophy - __Aldous Huxley__ : Writer (Brave New World) //- __Augustus Owsley Stanley III__ : Chemical genius behind mass production of acid -// __Timothy Leary__ //: Professor Timothy Leary, also known as the “guru of LSD” //
 * Major Influences:**
 * //Went around college campuses in 1967 giving lectures about using psychedelic music to explore the mind, using this Beatles album as the best example. He touted the use of the “Sgt. Pepper’s...” album for promoting experimentation with LSD at home, while encouraging kids to tune in, turn on and drop out.//

 Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters //In 1965, Ken Kesey was “living comfortably off the royalties of One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest” in San Francisco, California with his buddy Neal Cassidy (who helped inspire the main character in Jack Kerouac’s novel “On The Road”). And what to do when you have money and time? Throw parties, obviously. And starting in November 1965, the mission of these underground parties was, in essence, “to spread the word of acid revelation.” For them, LSD was more than just a semi-synthetic psychadelic drug: it was a doorway to different planes of reality. After spiking the punch with LSD, the Pranksters would broadcast a variety of sound effects on the stereo system (ranging from happy to sad to scary) with the help of Kesey's house band The Warlocks, who would later become the Grateful Dead, and watch and see what happened.
 * Development of the SAN FRANSISCO SOUND**

In 1968, Tom Woolfe published The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Tests, a novel that follows Kesey and the Pranksters on their cross-country road trips on a psychedelically painted bus.


 * June 1967: Monterey Pop Festival**//


 * Organized by Lou Adler, Alan Pariser, John Phillips (from the Mamas and the Papas), and Derek Taylor (the Beatles publicist)
 * Estimated 55,000 to 90,000 in the crowd
 * Development of the "San Francisco Sound"
 * Point of festival was to draw in "noncommercial" musicians from the Bay Area to sign record contract (going from underground Haight Ashbury fame to "national attention" overnight

Bands included://
 * 1) Jefferson Airplane
 * 2) Big Brother and the Holding Company
 * 3) The Grateful Dead
 * 4) Moby Grape
 * 5) The Electric Flag
 * 6) The Miller Blues Band
 * 7) Quiksilver Messenger Service
 * 8) The Butterfly Blues band
 * 9) Jimi Hendrix (who set his guitar on fire at this festival)
 * 10) The Who
 * 11) The Mamas and the Papas
 * 12) Buffalo Springfield
 * 13) Janis Joplin

“The San Francisco bands favored exploratory music long guitar rifts, lyrics that meandered almost as much as the music did, contrasting rhythms, and a mixed repertoire that included hillbilly, rock and roll, and Indian ragas occasionally interspersed with the screeching feedback of an amplified guitar.” (Portable 60s reader, 296)

"During 1966, a new generation of groups was formed in San Francisco who made no attempt to shape their repertoire and approach to the requirements of top forty radio... San Francisco-based groups seemed to embody something closer to the orignial carefree spirit of rock 'n' roll that [what] had been represented in the records made by the professional careerists in Los Angeles. A new generation of journalists... cultivated this impression, acclaiming the new musicians as visionaries with a special purity that could permanently alter art, politics, and society" - Charlie Gillet

The burgeoning music industry was indicated by the popularity of new venues like the Avalon Ballroom and the Matrix, a club created by Marty Bolin (the vocalist of the house band Jefferson Airplane) that played 50 cent concerts with Janis Joplin in Haight Ashbury (in the basement of a 20 room boarding house). Also just as popular were the October 1965 “Family Dog” Concerts and the January 1966 Trips Festival at the Longshoreman’s Hall.