The Explosion of Deferred Dreams: Musical Renaissance and Social Revolution in San Francisco, 1965–1975 Paperback – January 1, 2017

****1/2. Much has been written on the music of San Francisco roughly between 1965 and 1975, its musicians and characters, and also on the political events of the era, but this is the first treatment of the period in which music is portrayed as a catalyst or lubricant of socio-political change, a radical art by text and by sound whose power is visceral, emotional, and conceptual. Through it and the use of entheogens, youth began to question authority, decondition social standards, and explore social and world alternatives. Moreover, the book lays the foundation on why the San Francisco Bay Area was the hub. This, therefore, is not a musicology book but more a subcultural history. Its wide scope prevents fine detail because, as author Mat Callahan notes, "Things happened fast." Indeed, as a participatory-witness of this epoch, being a UC Berkeley undergraduate and graduate student at the time, I was immersed in all the sketched events and shared the the vast sea change in worldview. This is a book that we elders should hand down to younger generations as part of family history.San Francisco has always been a frontier, open, nonconformist, and innovative city since the Gold Rush of 1849. “I have always been rather better treated in San Francisco than I actually deserved.” quipped Mark Twain. The book rapidly flows by the ILWU Longshoreman-related general strike of the 1930s; the welcoming of Beats of Ginsberg and Kerouac; the numerous protests against city-dividing freeways, hiring and housing policies; the demonstration against HUAC – the House Un-American Activities Committee; the founding of the political street theater Mime Troupe; social critic Lenny Bruce in North Beach; the claim of the island of Alcatraz by American Indians; and the Free Speech Movement and strike at UC Berkeley. The stage was set for the whirlwind: Jefferson Airplane and the Matrix club, legal LSD, KMPX freeform radio, the Diggers, China Books, Black Panthers, the Vietnam War, Human Be-in, Santana, Cesar Chavez and the Grape Boycott, Theatro Camesino, the nation's urban riots, communes, Avalon and Fillmore Auditorium, and so forth. The author refuses to use the media term hippies and instead favored "freaks", adopted from within the community from the disparaging tourist shouts of "hippie freaks". I personally used "head", as pot head. [These days, for communicative purposes, I say academic hippie, as I turned on, tuned it, but dropped sideways.] The author also mentions the San Francisco Tape Center that led to classical music's minimalism of Steve Reich and Terry Riley. What IS missing is the rise of the ecology/environmental movement in 1970, the moon landing and the perspective of Spaceship Earth, the exploration of Hinduism, Buddhism, Sufism, and consciousness studies. Callahan was raised by Old Left labor Communists and thereby the book has a slight Marxist spin, but it is not distracting. The chapter on Counter-revolution and Defeat sketches some of the many reasons why the period ended, and the book closes pessimistically. This is a shame, and another book is needed to follow-up this generation's later contributions to the world. Steve Jobs, as but one example, dropped out, went to India, took LSD, and studied Soto Zen, and later founded Apple. As a scientist, I know many freaks or heads who have made advancements in medicine and technology, and a number of radical students entered politics to effect reforms.The period's outer aspects have waned but the inner life continues.

The 50th anniversary of the Summer of Love focused renewed attention on the San Francisco Bay Area in the 1960s. Matt Callahan's impassioned book provides a useful and necessary antidote to the outpouring of nostalgic and romantic looks backward. "The Explosion of Deferred Dreams" offers a rich blend of cultural and political history by an author who knows the worlds of music and protest inside out. I recommend this book for anyone and everyone who is eager to understand cultural revolution in the United States. Callahan writes with passion and with clarity. The sections in the book about San Francisco offer some of the most insightful comments ever about the city, its personality and identity. Whether you were or still are a bohemian, a Beat, a beatnik, a hippie or a punk, I think that this book will appeal to you. I'm a bit of all of the above. "The Explosion of Deferred Dreams" invited me to rethink the history of popular music and mass protest. Thank you Matt Callahan!!

This is an important contribution to the literature about the 60's and hippies and San Francisco, etc because it explains the larger social context in the Bay Area at the time. The bibliography is seven fabulous pages and I have it well marked up in my copy, because it will be my resource for further research. I often judge books by their bibliographies and this one is one of the best! The publisher, PM, always produces interesting books.