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Acid Tests

Part of the Hippie movement
An Acid Test handbill
Date	1965–1966
Location	California, Texas

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The Acid Tests were a series of parties held by author Ken Kesey primarily in the San Francisco Bay Area during the mid-1960s, centered on the use of and advocacy for the psychedelic drug LSD, commonly known as "acid". LSD was not made illegal in California until October 6, 1966, under Governor Ronald Reagan’s administration.

History

The name "Acid Test" was coined by Kesey, after the term "acid test" used by gold miners in the 1850s. He began throwing parties at his farm at La Honda, California. The Merry Pranksters were central to organizing the Acid Tests, including Pranksters such as Lee Quarnstrom and Neal Cassady. Other people, such as LSD chemists Owsley Stanley and Tim Scully, were involved as well.

Kesey took the parties to public places, and advertised with posters that read, "Can you pass the acid test?", and the name was later popularized in Tom Wolfe's 1968 book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. Musical performances by the Grateful Dead were commonplace, along with black lights, strobe lights, and fluorescent paint. The Acid Tests are notable for their influence on the LSD-based counterculture of the San Francisco area and subsequent transition from the beat generation to the hippie movement. The Jefferson Airplane song "A Song for All Seasons" (from Volunteers) mentions the Acid Tests.

Timeline

1965

• 27 November; Soquel, California: The first Acid Test was a party at Ken Babbs' house on 27 November 1965, although Babbs recalls it as being on Halloween night. A flyer allegedly shows that the Warlocks (one week before the band became known as the Grateful Dead) played at Soquel as the Warlocks on November 27. However, the authenticity of this flyer has been questioned, and several witnesses confirm that the Warlocks did not play a set at Soquel; they only casually played some of the Merry Prankster instruments. An original fluorescent paint and newsprint-collage Acid Test sign donated to the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History by event co-organizer Ken Kesey in 1992 lists 'The Grateful Dead' as a musical performer, as well as The Fugs, alongside hand-drawn text on the sign reads: "Your essaying of it will be shared almost certainly (?) by some permutation or combination of the following ." In his book, Phil Lesh confirms that he did attend: "We were at the first Test not to play, but just to feel it out, and we hadn't brought any instruments or gear." Most likely Lesh was joined by Bob Weir and Jerry Garcia at the party.
• 4 December; San Jose, California: This time, the newly-renamed Grateful Dead did play, the first performance of their long career.
• 11 December; Muir Beach, California
• 18 December, Palo Alto, California

1966

• 8 January; San Francisco, California (Fillmore)
• 15 January; Portland, Oregon
• 21–23 January; San Francisco (Trips Festival at Longshoreman's Hall)
• 29 January; San Francisco, California (Sound City Studios)
• 5 February; Los Angeles, California - Sepulveda Unitarian Universalist Society
• 12 February; Watts, Los Angeles – Youth Opportunities Center
• 25 February; Los Angeles, California (Hollywood) – Cinema Theatre
• 12 March; Los Angeles, California (Danish Center)
• 19 March; Los Angeles, California (Pico) Carthay Studios
• 25 March; Los Angeles, California (Sunset Strip) – Troupers Club
• 30 September – 2 October; San Francisco State College – Whatever It Is Festival – three days
• 31 October; San Francisco, California — Acid Test Graduation (Bill Graham cancelled Winterland Ballroom event, Grateful Dead played at the California Hall (San Francisco, California) that night, and the event was held at a SoMa warehouse.)

1967

• 16 March; Houston, Texas (Brown College, Rice University) (despite the "graduation" concept of the final West Coast Acid Test, the actual final Acid Test of The Merry Pranksters was organized in Texas by Kesey's friend Larry McMurtry)

1968

• 24 October; Congress passes the Staggers–Dodd Bill, criminalizing the recreational use of LSD-25

Trips Festival

Trips Festival
Genre	psychedelic
Dates	January 21, 22 and 23
Location(s)	Longshoreman's Hall in San Francisco
Years active	1966
Founders	Ramon Sender, Ken Kesey, Stewart Brand

Ramon Sender co-produced the Trips Festival with Ken Kesey and Stewart Brand. It was a three-day event that, in conjunction with The Merry Pranksters, brought together the nascent hippie movement. The Trips Festival was held at the Longshoreman's Hall in San Francisco in January 1966. Counterculture sound engineer Ken Babbs is mostly credited for the sound systems he created for the Trips Festival. Prior to Babbs' creation, it was discovered that particular music usually sounded distorted when cranked to high levels because of the cement floor on the San Francisco Longshoreman's Union Hall (where the Trips Festival was taking place). Babbs being a sound engineer resolved the problem. He made sound amplifiers that would not create distorted sounds when turned up to high sound levels.

Organized by Stewart Brand, Ken Kesey, Owsley Stanley, Zach Stewart and others, ten thousand people attended this sold-out event, with a thousand more turned away each night. On Saturday January 22, the Grateful Dead and Big Brother and the Holding Company came on stage, and 6,000 people arrived to drink punch spiked with LSD and to witness one of the first fully developed light shows of the era.

Big Brother and the Holding Company was formed at the Trips Festival. In the audience was painter and jazz drummer David Getz, who soon joined the band.

See also

• List of historic rock festivals

References

1. Jarnow, Jesse (October 7, 2016). "LSD Now: How the Psychedelic Renaissance Changed Acid". Rolling Stone. Retrieved November 18, 2024.
2. "Psychedelic 60s: Ken Kesey & the Merry Pranksters". 2.lib.virginia.edu. December 16, 2009. Archived from the original on November 4, 2011. Retrieved November 6, 2011.
3. "View image: 5572". December 22, 2015. Archived from the original on December 22, 2015. Retrieved November 9, 2021.
4. ^ Jarnow, Jesse (November 30, 2015). "Acid Tests Turn 50: Wavy Gravy, Merry Prankster Reminisce". Rollingstone.com. Retrieved November 9, 2021.
5. "Signboard, Pass the Acid Test". National Museum of American History. Retrieved August 30, 2023.
6. Lesh, Phil, Searching for the Sound, Back Bay Books, San Francisco, 2005 pp 63, 64
7. "The Acid Test Chronicles - Page 11 - The Warlocks - The Very First Acid Test - The Spread (Ken Babbs House), Soquel, outside of Santa Cruz". Postertrip.com. Retrieved November 9, 2021.
8. "December 18, 1965: The Big Beat, Palo Alto--Lost and Found". April 11, 2013.
9. "How pop music and icons have taken San Francisco higher". March 29, 2015.
10. "Youth Opportunities Center - Home of the Watts Acid Test". December 18, 2015.
11. Wolfe, Tom (1968). "Ch. 20: The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test". The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (paperback ed.). New York: Picador/Farrar, Straus and Giroux. p. 273.; Severn Darden attended
12. "1966-03-12 Danish Center, Los Angeles, CA, USA". Jerrygarcia.com.
13. "University of Southern California - Breaking ground for new dancing school, 607 South Western Avenue, Los Angeles, CA, 1930". Digitallibrary.usc.edu. Retrieved November 9, 2021.
14. "University of Southern California - Exterior of building, 607 South Western Avenue, Los Angeles, CA, 1933 [image]". Digitallibrary.usc.edu.
15. "Valley News from Van Nuys, California on October 3, 1967 · Page 3". Newspapers.com. October 3, 1967. Retrieved November 9, 2021.
16. Slide, Anthony (March 12, 2012). The Encyclopedia of Vaudeville. Univ. Press of Mississippi. ISBN 978-1-4968-0108-1. For many years, the small Troupers Theatre was a familiar site on La Brea Avenue in Hollywood...
17. "B'nai B'rith Messenger, February 2, 1962". Nli.org.il. Retrieved November 9, 2021.
18. "Rare Grateful Dead Troupers Club Concert Poster Designed by 1960's Counterculture Icon Owsley Stanley to be Auctioned by Psychedelic Art Exchange". Prweb.com.
19. "The Acid Test Chronicles - Page 23 - Troupers Club - (12th Acid Test [Sunset] - March 25, 1966". Postertrip.com.
20. "1966-03-25 Trouper's Club., Los Angeles, CA, USA". Jerrygarcia.com.
21. "Whatever it is Festival at SF State - Bay Area Television Archive". Diva.sfsu.edu. Retrieved November 9, 2021.
22. "Grateful Dead Live at San Francisco State University on 1966-10-02". Archive.org. October 2, 1966.
23. "Acid Test – Grateful Dead – Whatever It Is/SF State Acid Test Poster Handbill". Recordmecca.com. April 29, 2012.
24. "Whatever It is – Michael J. Kramer". Michaeljkramer.net. March 18, 2016.
25. "Halloween 1966: The End of One Era, and the Beginning of Another". Summerof.love. October 31, 2016.
26. "Lysergic Pranksters in Texas". November 20, 2014. Archived from the original on June 24, 2011. Retrieved November 21, 2014.
27. United States Congress (October 24, 1968). "Staggers-Dodd Bill, Public Law 90-639" (PDF). Retrieved September 8, 2009.
28. "San Francisco sound: From Janis Joplin to Grateful Dead, music from 1960s fuels a social revolution". Sfchronicle.com. July 4, 2015.
29. "Photographic image of concert audience" (JPG). S.hdnux.com. Retrieved November 9, 2021.
30. Andrew Gilbert, "Loading Zone Reloaded", East Bay Express, 13 August 2008 Archived September 26, 2009, at the Wayback Machine
31. "Trips Festival – Acid Test – Grateful Dead – Stewart Brand Memo to Ralph J. Gleason". Recordmecca.com. April 29, 2012.
32. "Chronology of San Francisco Rock 1965-1969". Sfmuseum.org.
33. "San Francisco 1966 Beat Generation, Hippies; Trips Festival". Gettyimages.com. February 14, 2020.
34. "Trips Festival". May 7, 2006. Archived from the original on May 7, 2006. Retrieved November 9, 2021.
35. Ralph J. Gleason. The Jefferson Airplane and the San Francisco Sound (1969), Ballantine Books OCLC 19838 cited in: Tamony, Peter. (Summer, 1981). Tripping out from San Francisco. American Speech. Vol. 56, No. 2. pp. 98–103. Tamony, 1981, p.98
36. "Merry Prankster History Project". Archived from the original on October 11, 2007. Retrieved June 2, 2015.
37. Brant, Marley (2008). Join Together: Forty Years of the Rock Music Festival. Hal Leonard Corporation. p. 16.
38. Sinclair, Mick (2004). San Francisco: a cultural and literary history. Interlink Books. p. 204. ISBN 9781566564892.
39. "Chronology". janisjoplin.net. 1998–2010. Retrieved June 10, 2010.

Sources

• Wolfe, Tom (1968). The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.
• Lesh, Phil. "The Acid Test Chronicles - Page 16 - Portland Oregon - 6th Acid Test - Jan. 15, 1966". Acid Test Chronicles. Archived from the original on April 25, 2012. Retrieved April 9, 2012.

External links

• Video from the National Museum of American History featuring the Sign for the November 27, 1965 first Acid Test

v t e Ken Kesey
Novels	One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1962) Sometimes a Great Notion (1964) Caverns (1989) Sailor Song (1992) Last Go Round (1994) Novel adaptations One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1963) Sometimes a Great Notion (1971) One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975) Novel collections Kesey's Garage Sale (1973) Demon Box (1986)
The Merry Pranksters	Furthur Acid Tests Documentaries The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test Magic Trip Going Furthur Notable followers Neal Cassady Ken Babbs Carolyn Garcia Paul Foster Dorothy Fadiman Stewart Brand Del Close Wavy Gravy Paul Krassner Lee Quarnstrom Ed McClanahan Gurney Norman Robert Stone Emilia Hazelip
Plays	Twister
Memorials	The Storyteller Kesey Square

• Culture in the San Francisco Bay Area
• Lysergic acid diethylamide
• Psychedelia
• Counterculture festivals
• Counterculture of the 1960s
• California culture
• 1965 in California
• 1966 in California
• 1960s in San Francisco