Exit Through Head Shop

This is generally designated the starting point

January 1967, fifty years ago

The Human Be-in in Golden Gate Park

Many of us think of 1966 as the actual Summer of Love

we had already heard of it when Ramparts covered this event

 and endorsed the LSD-experienced wise ones of  Haight Ashbury

in Spring 1967 before the so-called  Summer of Love

when everybody got Hip and many of the Freak-out records of note were released

Nevertheless at least three museums are exhibiting

Hippie art  and psychedelia

for the anniversary,

BAMPFA rumaged around

in its storage and in film library

for this somewhat lacklustre exhibition

of multicolor sensory over-load

Jorma Kaukonen

guitarist for the Jefferson Airplane,

I saw them in their prime

at Providence college,

and still see him every few years

solo, or as Hot Tuna

acoustic or electric

He is never less than great

Wowie-zowie gizmo

Prismatic wheels spin

bells ring

13 for the letter "M"

marijuana

Skin suit

Young nude people

the essence of art

 DMT painting

a very short-duration high

 wonder if it was administered

throughout the painting session

or if it merely inspired it all at once

A room full of rapidly changing slides

from all directions

It was too stuffy

and I was too high

to remain inside for long

Older Asian squares there

seemed buzzed

Acid rock posters

of the Golden age

The psychedelic poster genre was not

over-curated for this show,

despite the obviousness

of their inclusion

Large

mixed media

self-explanatory

 

People's Park posters

Ironic in this exhibition

considering the first serious

plans for its demise in decades

were announced BY UC in January

We give them the inflatable-superlative

finger

Hippie Modernism

was at the last alas

rather underwheming

Some real hogwash

but then that was characteristic

of the period as well

Drug-influenced

wall paper design

Pretty much any

amorphous abstract

can call itself

"psychedelic"




Psychedelic
it means consciousness-expanding
yet it is a word
difficult to fully define

But we know it

when we see it

"Every town must have a place where phony hippies meet

Psychedelic dungeons popping up on every street"

 Mothers of Invention

whose Freak-Out was the first freak LP

released in 1966 as Lou Reed pointed out

so should have VU and Nico




In another gallery
"an early Magritte painting,"Jeunesse"

Symbolist, futurist, cubist
and certainly in its own right
psychedelic

2 March 2017