Culture and Counterculture
Underground papers, film, journalism and the psychedelic mindset.
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How the American counterculture of the 1960s challenged mainstream ideas about work, war, sex and authority, and how politicians, the press and parents responded.
Allen Ginsberg (1926-1997): the Howl obscenity trial of 1957, his role at the 1967 Human Be-In and Pentagon march, and his later activism and teaching.
How London boutiques like Biba and Granny Takes a Trip, Carnaby Street and the Haight shaped 1967 style, and how hippie dress was quickly turned into a product.
Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters, Richard Brautigan, Kurt Vonnegut and Joan Didion's Slouching Towards Bethlehem (1968): writing around the year 1967.
How record label signings of San Francisco bands, album-oriented FM radio and growing artist control changed the music business in and after 1967.
Bay Area psychedelic light shows, Andy Warhol's Exploding Plastic Inevitable and the artists around the Family Dog and the Avalon Ballroom in 1966-67.
The San Francisco Mime Troupe, the Living Theatre and Hair, which opened Off-Broadway on 17 October 1967 and reached Broadway in April 1968.
How The Monkees, quick-made hippie films and Laugh-In (premiered January 1968) turned hippie style into mainstream entertainment around 1967.
How LSD and consciousness-expanding ideas shaped 1960s art, music and design, and why US authorities moved to outlaw the drug from 1966 onward.
Backwards tape, sitar, Mellotron, feedback and long improvisation: the studio and stage techniques of psychedelic music, from Sgt. Pepper to early Pink Floyd.
How Tom Wolfe, Joan Didion, Hunter S. Thompson and others used the techniques of fiction to report the 1960s, and why the style fit an unsettled era.
How experimental filmmakers in New York and San Francisco, including Andy Warhol and Kenneth Anger, built an alternative to Hollywood in the 1960s.
How papers such as the Berkeley Barb and the East Village Other, linked by the Underground Press Syndicate, reported what mainstream media often overlooked.
Television coverage of Vietnam, Time magazine's July 1967 hippie cover story and the February 1968 Cronkite special: how the press shaped and reflected opinion.
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