Counter Culture Essay Research Paper Causes of

Music helped define this era and youth movement because it was an indictment on the scene of what was conventional and what you could and couldn’t do in music. People and bands

were starting to experiment with new sounds which drew attention to the fact that they could do something new every time they played. Pink Floyd tested the waters (no pun intended) of early techno and trance music that is so popular today. Computers were being used to produce beats, rhythms, and new sounds that boggled the minds of this new generation. The Beatles started to act like the Grateful Dead experimenting with the psychedelic sound which also spawned he Haight-Ashbury district of California. Bob Dylan spoke as the voice of this new American generation with his folk style of guitar. Then there was protest music which was prevalent when Vietnam hit full force in such people like Joe Cocker.

Poetry was being incorporated into the music scene also with the help of some of the Beat generation like Allen Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, and Neal Cassidy. Allen Ginsberg performed some nights with the Grateful Dead at some of the early acid tests with Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters. Jack Kerouac’s book “On The Road” was also getting notoriety with new ideas starting to surface and it became known as Beatnik thoughts. These poets helped out the generation because they added to poetic scope to the society. It was almost like a puzzle that needed every piece to have its full effect. Their poems consisted of many things from homosexuality to taking peyote in the dessert. This interested their audience because it was very uncommon to hear or see a poet talking about such counter culture of things. Neal Cassidy was an intricate part also of the 1960’s generation.

Drug use increased more and more with this new subculture whether for fun or an escape. People were starting to smoke marijuana and realized that it wasn’t as bad as what “Reefer Madness” had shown it to be. So that increased in use along with a new drug that was developed and discovered by Dr. Albert Hoffman called LSD. This drug, which is said to be extremely dangerous, was being handed out at government buildings and colleges for them to do tests on the drug. Allen Ginsberg said he sent some acid to jazz great Dizzy Gilespie and Dizzy commented that he would like something stronger. Allen, himself, said it was the second most powerful drug he ever tried number one being peyote. The LSD that was used at the time was LSD 25 and was a lot more strong as what is going around the streets in the 21st century. Timothy Leary, an ex-Harvard professor, was a major spokesperson for the drug and he developed a new saying about the generation “Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out.” Timothy Leary also brought magic mushrooms to the publics attention when he smuggled some into the U.S. from South America. He gave it to some other Harvard professors and they started doing some more tests on it. Acid tests were these concerts where you were given an amount of acid and if you went crazy then you failed the acid test. A key slogan of the time was actually, “Can you pass the acid test?” These were done all over the U.S., but mostly California and were mostly at all Grateful Dead shows. The Grateful Dead introduced many things to music’s mystique. They started using eye pleasing lighting techniques and incorporated weird noises into their shows. Jimi Hendrix was another big advocate for LSD use and usually played while tripping. Once he cut his forehead and put a drop of acid in his cut and put a bandanna over the cut and played an amazing show. LSD seemed to open up people’s heads to new ideas and gave them a new outlook on life.

The Woodstock Music Festival has been deemed the culmination of the counterculture. As Wavy Gravy put it once, “If you weren’t a part of [this] culture before Woodstock then you definitely were after.” The bringing together of music’s brightest minds at the time and 500,000 people was the solidifier of this decade. By solidification I mean that everyone from this culture could actually experience love, peace, and community for three days. Despite the rain, lack of toiletries and toilets, and lack of food most of the youth at the festival stayed throughout the whole thing.

This along with many other things had opened up the youths’ eyes about a near perfect generation and about love. Each generation after the 1960’s has been compared to that generation. Most generations are trying to rekindle those feelings brought around by the 1960’s. Unluckily it has brought around a resurgence of those hard drugs that remain prevalent in the 21st century now. The music has also had a resurgence that has brought around the Grateful Dead and bands influenced by them like Phish, Moe, and Acoustic Hooka. All generations wish to strive to be more like that age when things seemed golden or was it a flashback?