Edges of the City Vol. III, Pipe Dreams

By 1966, the San Francisco Bay Area was beginning to feel the effects of Kesey's Acid Test cultural revolution. It was the transformation of the Beat subculture into the new Hippie movement. Young people started waking up to the new vision psychedelic experience offered.  The national media was intrigued by the novelty of the Haight Ashbury scene, and the image of the "hippie" became a new cultural archetype. It was also a needed distraction from the Vietnam War, which grew more controversial by the week.  The questioning of cultural values, the 9 to 5 rat race, the entire middle class suburban lifestyle, the perception that there was something more than just the materialism offered by consumer culture, all emerged in 1966, along with some of the best rock music ever heard. 

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1966 was the year when the the vinyl record album was recognized as a new art form. The song cycle was reborn as an LP record. The two albums responsible for this perception were the Beatles "Revolver," and Bob Dylan's fourteen song double album "Blonde on Blonde."  They were immediately recognized as musical landmarks demonstrating a broader range of musical and lyrical maturity than had been heard before, and proved that Rock'n Roll had grown up and turned into a newer, more self conscious genre, Rock Music.  It was now the equal of any other established genre, its musical potentialities only beginning to be revealed.    

Revolver had an enormous impact  insofar as it helped invent the sound of psychedelic Rock.  The impact of these two albums, released within a few months of each other, had an earth shaking effect on me as a teenage musician.  It literally changed my life.  I gained a different outlook , not just on music, but my entire world view.  It was a wakeup call that a new sound was changing music, yet again.  The psychedelic era was at hand, and it was now all about the record.  The LP vinyl record, the song cycle, was the art form I fell in love with in 1966.  I felt the same way about records as I did about books.  They were sacred objects of veneration.  

Edges of the City a four cd concept series in which past and present merge in an exploration of the parallels and contradictions between the years 1964-1967, and 2004-2007.  These two periods stand as bookends in the ongoing saga of the post-WWII “Baby Boomer” generation, one of the most conflicted generational cycles in American history.   It is a look back, from a  personal perspective, to a utopian experiment that resonates to this day.

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