Big Beat Acid Test – 12/18/65

From Third year Is the Charm and Acid Test overview

Detail from bottom right corner of handbill above

Eight days after the Fillmore gig was the Acid Test at the Big Beat club near Palo Alto. Having taken LSD on two occasions at Esalen, and being familiar with the emerging scene, I was planning to, and did, drink the Kool Aid. More than 50 years later, it’s a little difficult to conjure up such an unusual event without immersing myself in contemporary descriptions, but one thing comes to mind. If the Esalen LSD trips were a major plunge into an initiatory process, they were individual and somewhat solitary. The Palo Alto Acid Test was a communal initiation, stepping into another world together. This was the night that, among other things, for better or for worse, I entered fully into the LSD counterculture.

#3.2 of SA3. Bands and Farm

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The Acid Test Chronicles page 14

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