Author: Rob Chapman
Publisher: Faber & Faber
ISBN: 057128275X
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 509
Book Description
In Psychedelia and Other Colours, acclaimed author Rob Chapman explores in crystalline detail the history, precedents and cultural impact of LSD, from the earliest experiments in painting with light and immersive environments to the thriving avant-garde scene that existed in San Francisco even before the Grateful Dead and the Fillmore Auditorium. In the UK, he documents an entirely different history, and one that has never been told before. It has its roots in fairy tales and fairgrounds, the music hall and the dead of Flanders fields, in the Festival of Britain and that peculiarly British strand of surrealism that culminated in the Magical Mystery Tour. Sitars and Sergeant Pepper, surfadelica and the Soft Machine, light shows and love-ins - the mind-expanding effects of acid were to redefine popular culture as we know it. Psychedelia and Other Colours documents these utopian reverberations - and the dark side of their moon - in a perfect portrait.
Psychedelia and Other Colours
Author: Rob Chapman
Publisher: Faber & Faber
ISBN: 057128275X
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 509
Book Description
In Psychedelia and Other Colours, acclaimed author Rob Chapman explores in crystalline detail the history, precedents and cultural impact of LSD, from the earliest experiments in painting with light and immersive environments to the thriving avant-garde scene that existed in San Francisco even before the Grateful Dead and the Fillmore Auditorium. In the UK, he documents an entirely different history, and one that has never been told before. It has its roots in fairy tales and fairgrounds, the music hall and the dead of Flanders fields, in the Festival of Britain and that peculiarly British strand of surrealism that culminated in the Magical Mystery Tour. Sitars and Sergeant Pepper, surfadelica and the Soft Machine, light shows and love-ins - the mind-expanding effects of acid were to redefine popular culture as we know it. Psychedelia and Other Colours documents these utopian reverberations - and the dark side of their moon - in a perfect portrait.
Publisher: Faber & Faber
ISBN: 057128275X
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 509
Book Description
In Psychedelia and Other Colours, acclaimed author Rob Chapman explores in crystalline detail the history, precedents and cultural impact of LSD, from the earliest experiments in painting with light and immersive environments to the thriving avant-garde scene that existed in San Francisco even before the Grateful Dead and the Fillmore Auditorium. In the UK, he documents an entirely different history, and one that has never been told before. It has its roots in fairy tales and fairgrounds, the music hall and the dead of Flanders fields, in the Festival of Britain and that peculiarly British strand of surrealism that culminated in the Magical Mystery Tour. Sitars and Sergeant Pepper, surfadelica and the Soft Machine, light shows and love-ins - the mind-expanding effects of acid were to redefine popular culture as we know it. Psychedelia and Other Colours documents these utopian reverberations - and the dark side of their moon - in a perfect portrait.
Psychedelia
Author: Patrick Lundborg
Publisher:
ISBN: 9789197652322
Category : Hallucinogenic drugs
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
This book is a pioneering effort that presents psychedelia as a culture and lifestyle with its own history, philosophy, art, visions, and traditions -- Back cover.
Publisher:
ISBN: 9789197652322
Category : Hallucinogenic drugs
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
This book is a pioneering effort that presents psychedelia as a culture and lifestyle with its own history, philosophy, art, visions, and traditions -- Back cover.
Psychedelic
Author: David Rubin
Publisher: Mit Press
ISBN:
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 148
Book Description
"This eye-popping book offers a visual history of the psychedelic sensibility. In pop culture, that sensibility is associated with lava lamps, album covers, and "teashades," but it first manifested itself in the extreme colors and kaleidoscopic compositions of 1960s Op Artists. The psychedelic sensibility didn't die at the end of the 1960s; Psychedelic traces it through the day-glo colors of painters Peter Saul, Alex Grey, and Kenny Scharf, the pill and hemp leaf paintings of Fred Tomaselli, the intensified palettes of Douglas Bourgeois and Sharon Ellis, and mixed-media and new media works by younger artists in the new millennium." "Although the term "psychedelic" was coined to describe hallucinatory experiences produced by drugs used psychotherapeutically, the story these images tell is about the influence of psychedelic culture on the art world - not necessarily the influence of drugs. As contemporary art evolved into a diverse and pluralistic discipline, the psychedelic evolved into a language of color and light. In Psychedelic, more than seventy-five vivid color images chart this development, exploring the art chronologically, from early Op Art through recent work using digital technology. The book, which accompanies an exhibition organized by the San Antonio Museum of Art, includes three essays that set the works in historical and cultural context." --Book Jacket.
Publisher: Mit Press
ISBN:
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 148
Book Description
"This eye-popping book offers a visual history of the psychedelic sensibility. In pop culture, that sensibility is associated with lava lamps, album covers, and "teashades," but it first manifested itself in the extreme colors and kaleidoscopic compositions of 1960s Op Artists. The psychedelic sensibility didn't die at the end of the 1960s; Psychedelic traces it through the day-glo colors of painters Peter Saul, Alex Grey, and Kenny Scharf, the pill and hemp leaf paintings of Fred Tomaselli, the intensified palettes of Douglas Bourgeois and Sharon Ellis, and mixed-media and new media works by younger artists in the new millennium." "Although the term "psychedelic" was coined to describe hallucinatory experiences produced by drugs used psychotherapeutically, the story these images tell is about the influence of psychedelic culture on the art world - not necessarily the influence of drugs. As contemporary art evolved into a diverse and pluralistic discipline, the psychedelic evolved into a language of color and light. In Psychedelic, more than seventy-five vivid color images chart this development, exploring the art chronologically, from early Op Art through recent work using digital technology. The book, which accompanies an exhibition organized by the San Antonio Museum of Art, includes three essays that set the works in historical and cultural context." --Book Jacket.
Syd Barrett & Pink Floyd
Author: Julian Palacios
Publisher: Plexus Publishing
ISBN: 0859658821
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 841
Book Description
Syd Barrett was an English composer and purveyor of some of the most intriguing music ever written. Famous before his twentieth birthday, Barrett led the charge of psychedelia onstage at London's famed UFO club. With a Fender Telecaster and a primitive Binson echo unit, Barrett liberated the guitar from being, in critic Simon Reynolds' words, 'a riff machine, and turned it into a texture and timbre generator.' His inspired celestial flights of improvisation, and his more structured and whimsical short songs indicated a mind of unusual inventiveness. Chief in Barrett's mind was a Zen-like insistence on spontaneity; each performance had to be unique, and Barrett strived to push his music farther and farther out into the zone of complete abstraction. This in-depth analysis of Pink Floyd founding member Syd Barrett's life and work is the product of years of extensive research. Lost in the Woods traces Syd's swift evolution from precocious young art student to acid-fuelled psychedelic rock star, and examines the myriad musical and literary influences that he utilised in composing his hypnotic, groundbreaking songs. A never-forgotten casualty of the excesses, innovations, and idealism of the 1960s, Syd Barrett is one of the most heavily mythologized men in rock, and Lost in the Woods offers a rare portrayal of a unique spirit in freefall.
Publisher: Plexus Publishing
ISBN: 0859658821
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 841
Book Description
Syd Barrett was an English composer and purveyor of some of the most intriguing music ever written. Famous before his twentieth birthday, Barrett led the charge of psychedelia onstage at London's famed UFO club. With a Fender Telecaster and a primitive Binson echo unit, Barrett liberated the guitar from being, in critic Simon Reynolds' words, 'a riff machine, and turned it into a texture and timbre generator.' His inspired celestial flights of improvisation, and his more structured and whimsical short songs indicated a mind of unusual inventiveness. Chief in Barrett's mind was a Zen-like insistence on spontaneity; each performance had to be unique, and Barrett strived to push his music farther and farther out into the zone of complete abstraction. This in-depth analysis of Pink Floyd founding member Syd Barrett's life and work is the product of years of extensive research. Lost in the Woods traces Syd's swift evolution from precocious young art student to acid-fuelled psychedelic rock star, and examines the myriad musical and literary influences that he utilised in composing his hypnotic, groundbreaking songs. A never-forgotten casualty of the excesses, innovations, and idealism of the 1960s, Syd Barrett is one of the most heavily mythologized men in rock, and Lost in the Woods offers a rare portrayal of a unique spirit in freefall.
Heads
Author: Jesse Jarnow
Publisher: Da Capo Press
ISBN: 0306822563
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 514
Book Description
Heads: A Biography of Psychedelic America uncovers a hidden history of the biggest psychedelic distribution and belief system the world has ever known. Through a collection of fast-paced interlocking narratives, it animates the tale of an alternate America and its wide-eyed citizens: the LSD-slinging graffiti writers of Central Park, the Dead-loving AI scientists of Stanford, utopian Whole Earth homesteaders, black market chemists, government-wanted Anonymous hackers, rogue explorers, East Village bluegrass pickers, spiritual seekers, Internet pioneers, entrepreneurs, pranksters, pioneering DJs, and a nation of Deadheads. WFMU DJ and veteran music writer Jesse Jarnow draws on extensive new firsthand accounts from many never-before-interviewed subjects and a wealth of deep archival research to create a comic-book-colored and panoramic American landscape, taking readers for a guided tour of the hippie highway filled with lit-up explorers, peak trips, big busts, and scenic vistas, from Vermont to the Pacific Northwest, from the old world head capitals of San Francisco and New York to the geodesic dome-dotted valleys of Colorado and New Mexico. And with the psychedelic research moving into the mainstream for the first time in decades, Heads also recounts the story of the quiet entheogenic revolution that for years has been brewing resiliently in the Dead's Technicolor shadow. Featuring over four dozen images, many never before seen-including pop artist Keith Haring's first publicly sold work-Heads weaves one of the 20th and 21st centuries' most misunderstood subcultures into the fabric of the nation's history. Written for anyone who wondered what happened to the heads after the Acid Tests, through the '70s, during the Drug War, and on to the psychedelic present, Heads collects the essential history of how LSD, Deadheads, tie-dye, and the occasional bad trip have become familiar features of the American experience.
Publisher: Da Capo Press
ISBN: 0306822563
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 514
Book Description
Heads: A Biography of Psychedelic America uncovers a hidden history of the biggest psychedelic distribution and belief system the world has ever known. Through a collection of fast-paced interlocking narratives, it animates the tale of an alternate America and its wide-eyed citizens: the LSD-slinging graffiti writers of Central Park, the Dead-loving AI scientists of Stanford, utopian Whole Earth homesteaders, black market chemists, government-wanted Anonymous hackers, rogue explorers, East Village bluegrass pickers, spiritual seekers, Internet pioneers, entrepreneurs, pranksters, pioneering DJs, and a nation of Deadheads. WFMU DJ and veteran music writer Jesse Jarnow draws on extensive new firsthand accounts from many never-before-interviewed subjects and a wealth of deep archival research to create a comic-book-colored and panoramic American landscape, taking readers for a guided tour of the hippie highway filled with lit-up explorers, peak trips, big busts, and scenic vistas, from Vermont to the Pacific Northwest, from the old world head capitals of San Francisco and New York to the geodesic dome-dotted valleys of Colorado and New Mexico. And with the psychedelic research moving into the mainstream for the first time in decades, Heads also recounts the story of the quiet entheogenic revolution that for years has been brewing resiliently in the Dead's Technicolor shadow. Featuring over four dozen images, many never before seen-including pop artist Keith Haring's first publicly sold work-Heads weaves one of the 20th and 21st centuries' most misunderstood subcultures into the fabric of the nation's history. Written for anyone who wondered what happened to the heads after the Acid Tests, through the '70s, during the Drug War, and on to the psychedelic present, Heads collects the essential history of how LSD, Deadheads, tie-dye, and the occasional bad trip have become familiar features of the American experience.
New Psychedelia
Author: Leif Podhajsky
Publisher: National Geographic Books
ISBN: 0500024022
Category : Design
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
The definitive monograph on the work of celebrated mind-altering artist and album cover designer, Leif Podhajsky. Over the past decade, Leif Podhajsky’s kaleidoscopic artwork has helped popularize the resurgence of psychedelia by reinventing the style for contemporary culture. By exploring the relationship between the organic and digital realms, Podhajsky’s work speaks to a new generation of curious minds. Best known for his striking, Grammy-nominated album covers for musicians, like Foals, Bonobo, Lykke Li, and Young Magic, Podhajsky deftly crosses the boundary between sound and visual art. The reverberating, ethereal vocals of Tame Impala’s debut album Innerspeaker, for instance, are embodied in the visual space of Podhajsky’s iconic, ever-retracting dreamscape cover. Fascinatingly, synaesthesia, which manifests itself for Podhajsky as the appearance of colors with sounds, plays a significant role in his creative process. Music becomes a pebble dropped into a pool of color inside his mind, causing ripples to spread and shades to surface. The results are his hypnotic one-of-a-kind graphics, presented in this volume for the first time.
Publisher: National Geographic Books
ISBN: 0500024022
Category : Design
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
The definitive monograph on the work of celebrated mind-altering artist and album cover designer, Leif Podhajsky. Over the past decade, Leif Podhajsky’s kaleidoscopic artwork has helped popularize the resurgence of psychedelia by reinventing the style for contemporary culture. By exploring the relationship between the organic and digital realms, Podhajsky’s work speaks to a new generation of curious minds. Best known for his striking, Grammy-nominated album covers for musicians, like Foals, Bonobo, Lykke Li, and Young Magic, Podhajsky deftly crosses the boundary between sound and visual art. The reverberating, ethereal vocals of Tame Impala’s debut album Innerspeaker, for instance, are embodied in the visual space of Podhajsky’s iconic, ever-retracting dreamscape cover. Fascinatingly, synaesthesia, which manifests itself for Podhajsky as the appearance of colors with sounds, plays a significant role in his creative process. Music becomes a pebble dropped into a pool of color inside his mind, causing ripples to spread and shades to surface. The results are his hypnotic one-of-a-kind graphics, presented in this volume for the first time.
Psychedelia
Author: Richard Morton Jack
Publisher: Palazzo Editions
ISBN: 9781786750280
Category : Design
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
It wasn't just clothes and hair that changed as the 1960s progressed - social awareness crept into youth culture and music ceased to be simply about dancing. A counter-culture gradually emerged, and rock 'n' roll was its defining feature. Pop music broadened beyond the traditional guitar-bass-drum format and started to experiment with new sounds. Musicianship reached unsurpassable levels, and for a brief, glorious time, genuinely experimental music coincided with the popular taste. The explosion of imagination and ambition that characterised the psychedelic movement of the late 1960s stretched the possibilities of the pop song to their limits. Never before or since were so many classic albums made in such a short time. Psychedelia is the most colourful, detailed and authoritative guide to these albums ever published. One hundred of them are evaluated here, using contemporary reviews, rare photographs and interviews, accompanied by a plethora of iconic images and reproductions of cover artwork.
Publisher: Palazzo Editions
ISBN: 9781786750280
Category : Design
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
It wasn't just clothes and hair that changed as the 1960s progressed - social awareness crept into youth culture and music ceased to be simply about dancing. A counter-culture gradually emerged, and rock 'n' roll was its defining feature. Pop music broadened beyond the traditional guitar-bass-drum format and started to experiment with new sounds. Musicianship reached unsurpassable levels, and for a brief, glorious time, genuinely experimental music coincided with the popular taste. The explosion of imagination and ambition that characterised the psychedelic movement of the late 1960s stretched the possibilities of the pop song to their limits. Never before or since were so many classic albums made in such a short time. Psychedelia is the most colourful, detailed and authoritative guide to these albums ever published. One hundred of them are evaluated here, using contemporary reviews, rare photographs and interviews, accompanied by a plethora of iconic images and reproductions of cover artwork.
A Very Irregular Head
Author: Rob Chapman
Publisher: Da Capo Press
ISBN: 0306819368
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 482
Book Description
“I don't think I'm easy to talk about. I've got a very irregular head. And I'm not anything that you think I am anyway.”—Syd Barrett’s last interview, Rolling Stone, 1971 Roger Keith “Syd” Barrett (1946–2006) was, by all accounts, the very definition of a golden boy. Blessed with good looks and a natural aptitude for painting and music, he was a charismatic, elfin child beloved by all, who fast became a teenage leader in Cambridge, England, where a burgeoning bohemian scene was flourishing in the early 1960s. Along with three friends and collaborators—Roger Waters, Richard Wright, and Nick Mason—he formed what would soon become Pink Floyd, and rock ’n’ roll was never the same. Starting as a typical British cover band aping approximations of American rhythm ’n’ blues, they soon pioneered an entirely new sound, and British psychedelic rock was born. With early, trippy, Barrett-penned pop hits such as “Arnold Layne” (about a clothesline-thieving cross-dresser) and “See Emily Play” (written specifically for the epochal “Games For May” concert), Pink Floyd, with Syd Barrett as their main creative visionary, captured the zeitgeist of “Swinging” London in all its Technicolor glory. But there was a dark side to all this new-found freedom. Barrett, like so many around him, began ingesting large quantities of a revolutionary new drug, LSD, and his already-fragile mental state—coupled with a personality inherently unsuited to the life of a pop star—began to unravel. The once bright-eyed lad was quickly replaced, seemingly overnight, by a glowering, sinister, dead-eyed shadow of his former self, given to erratic, highly eccentric, reclusive, and sometimes violent behavior. Inevitably sacked from the band, Barrett retreated from London to his mother’s house in Cambridge, where he would remain until his death, only rarely seen or heard, further fueling the mystery. In the meantime, Pink Floyd emerged from the underground to become one of the biggest international rock bands of all time, releasing multi-platinum albums, many that dealt thematically with the loss of their friend Syd Barrett: The Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here, and The Wall are all, on many levels, about him. In A Very Irregular Head, journalist Rob Chapman lifts the veil of secrecy that has surrounded the legend of Syd Barrett for nearly four decades, drawing on exclusive access to family, friends, archives, journals, letters, and artwork to create the definitive portrait of a brilliant and tragic artist. Besides capturing all the promise of Barrett’s youthful years, Chapman challenges the oft-held notion that Barrett was a hopelessly lost recluse in his later years, and creates a portrait of a true British eccentric who is rightfully placed within a rich literary lineage that stretches through Kenneth Graham, Hilaire Belloc, Edward Lear, Lewis Carroll, John Lennon, David Bowie, and on up to the pioneers of Britpop. A tragic, affectionate, and compelling portrait of a singular artist, A Very Irregular Head will stand as the authoritative word on this very English genius for years to come.
Publisher: Da Capo Press
ISBN: 0306819368
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 482
Book Description
“I don't think I'm easy to talk about. I've got a very irregular head. And I'm not anything that you think I am anyway.”—Syd Barrett’s last interview, Rolling Stone, 1971 Roger Keith “Syd” Barrett (1946–2006) was, by all accounts, the very definition of a golden boy. Blessed with good looks and a natural aptitude for painting and music, he was a charismatic, elfin child beloved by all, who fast became a teenage leader in Cambridge, England, where a burgeoning bohemian scene was flourishing in the early 1960s. Along with three friends and collaborators—Roger Waters, Richard Wright, and Nick Mason—he formed what would soon become Pink Floyd, and rock ’n’ roll was never the same. Starting as a typical British cover band aping approximations of American rhythm ’n’ blues, they soon pioneered an entirely new sound, and British psychedelic rock was born. With early, trippy, Barrett-penned pop hits such as “Arnold Layne” (about a clothesline-thieving cross-dresser) and “See Emily Play” (written specifically for the epochal “Games For May” concert), Pink Floyd, with Syd Barrett as their main creative visionary, captured the zeitgeist of “Swinging” London in all its Technicolor glory. But there was a dark side to all this new-found freedom. Barrett, like so many around him, began ingesting large quantities of a revolutionary new drug, LSD, and his already-fragile mental state—coupled with a personality inherently unsuited to the life of a pop star—began to unravel. The once bright-eyed lad was quickly replaced, seemingly overnight, by a glowering, sinister, dead-eyed shadow of his former self, given to erratic, highly eccentric, reclusive, and sometimes violent behavior. Inevitably sacked from the band, Barrett retreated from London to his mother’s house in Cambridge, where he would remain until his death, only rarely seen or heard, further fueling the mystery. In the meantime, Pink Floyd emerged from the underground to become one of the biggest international rock bands of all time, releasing multi-platinum albums, many that dealt thematically with the loss of their friend Syd Barrett: The Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here, and The Wall are all, on many levels, about him. In A Very Irregular Head, journalist Rob Chapman lifts the veil of secrecy that has surrounded the legend of Syd Barrett for nearly four decades, drawing on exclusive access to family, friends, archives, journals, letters, and artwork to create the definitive portrait of a brilliant and tragic artist. Besides capturing all the promise of Barrett’s youthful years, Chapman challenges the oft-held notion that Barrett was a hopelessly lost recluse in his later years, and creates a portrait of a true British eccentric who is rightfully placed within a rich literary lineage that stretches through Kenneth Graham, Hilaire Belloc, Edward Lear, Lewis Carroll, John Lennon, David Bowie, and on up to the pioneers of Britpop. A tragic, affectionate, and compelling portrait of a singular artist, A Very Irregular Head will stand as the authoritative word on this very English genius for years to come.
Electrical Banana
Author: Norman Hathaway
Publisher: Damiani Limited
ISBN: 9788862082044
Category : Design
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
"Electrical Banana is the first definitive examination of the international language of psychedelia, focusing on the most important practitioners in their respective fields. With a deft combination of hundreds of unseen images and exclusive interviews and essays, Electrical Banana aims to revise the common persception of psychedelic art, showing it to be more innovative, compelling, and revolutionary than was ever thought before."--P. [4] of cover.
Publisher: Damiani Limited
ISBN: 9788862082044
Category : Design
Languages : en
Pages : 0
Book Description
"Electrical Banana is the first definitive examination of the international language of psychedelia, focusing on the most important practitioners in their respective fields. With a deft combination of hundreds of unseen images and exclusive interviews and essays, Electrical Banana aims to revise the common persception of psychedelic art, showing it to be more innovative, compelling, and revolutionary than was ever thought before."--P. [4] of cover.
Hawkwind: Days of the Underground
Author: Joe Banks
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 1913689123
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 530
Book Description
An account of the English rock band Hawkwind shows them to be one of the most innovative and culturally significant bands of the 1970s. Fifty years on from when it first formed, the English rock band Hawkwind continues to inspire devotion from fans around the world. Its influence reaches across the spectrum of alternative music, from psychedelia, prog, and punk, through industrial, electronica, and stoner rock. Hawkwind has been variously, if erroneously, positioned as the heir to both Pink Floyd and the Velvet Underground, and as Britain's answer to the Grateful Dead and Krautrock. It has defined a genre—space rock—while operating on a frequency that's uniquely its own. Hawkwind offered a form of radical escapism and an alternative account of a strange new world for a generation of young people growing up on a planet that seemed to be teetering on the brink of destruction, under threat from economic meltdown, industrial unrest, and political polarization. While other commentators confidently asserted that the countercultural experiment of the 1960s was over, Hawkwind took the underground to the provinces and beyond. In Days of the Underground, Joe Banks repositions Hawkwind as one of the most innovative and culturally significant bands of the 1970s. It's not an easy task. As with many bands of this era, a lazy narrative has built up around Hawkwind that doesn't do justice to the breadth of its ambition and achievements. Banks gives the lie to the popular perception of Hawkwind as one long lysergic soap opera; with Days of the Underground, he shows us just how revolutionary Hawkwind was.
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 1913689123
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 530
Book Description
An account of the English rock band Hawkwind shows them to be one of the most innovative and culturally significant bands of the 1970s. Fifty years on from when it first formed, the English rock band Hawkwind continues to inspire devotion from fans around the world. Its influence reaches across the spectrum of alternative music, from psychedelia, prog, and punk, through industrial, electronica, and stoner rock. Hawkwind has been variously, if erroneously, positioned as the heir to both Pink Floyd and the Velvet Underground, and as Britain's answer to the Grateful Dead and Krautrock. It has defined a genre—space rock—while operating on a frequency that's uniquely its own. Hawkwind offered a form of radical escapism and an alternative account of a strange new world for a generation of young people growing up on a planet that seemed to be teetering on the brink of destruction, under threat from economic meltdown, industrial unrest, and political polarization. While other commentators confidently asserted that the countercultural experiment of the 1960s was over, Hawkwind took the underground to the provinces and beyond. In Days of the Underground, Joe Banks repositions Hawkwind as one of the most innovative and culturally significant bands of the 1970s. It's not an easy task. As with many bands of this era, a lazy narrative has built up around Hawkwind that doesn't do justice to the breadth of its ambition and achievements. Banks gives the lie to the popular perception of Hawkwind as one long lysergic soap opera; with Days of the Underground, he shows us just how revolutionary Hawkwind was.