Merry Pranksters Serve LSD-Laced Punch

Unfinished History

Longshoreman's Hall in North Beach

Photo: Brett Reierson

Longshoremen's Hall. January 21-23, 1966. Ken Kesey and his Pranksters ladled out electric kool-aid to the gathered throngs at the Trips Festival. A band called the Warlocks (later known as the Grateful Dead) provided musical accompaniment.

The Merry Pranksters

Can YOU pass the Acid Test? There's no way to think about it or read about it. There's no other way to know than go ahead on it. Can you die to your corpses? Can you metamorphose? Can you pass the 20th Century?

What is total dance?

We don't know.

Participants, beside yourself, are Henry Jacobs (who first carried out the fantasy of turning on an air dome), John Korty (illustrious filmmaker), Gordon Ashby (who designed the Light Matrix for IBM), Bruce Conner (illustrious filmmaker), Anna Halprin & dancers, Pauline Oliveros (with Elizabeth Harris and the 12-foot light sitar), Chinese New Years Lion Dancers & Drum and Bugle Corps, the Stroboscopic Trampoline, The Grateful Dead, Big Brother and the Holding Company, The Loading Zone, America Needs Indians, Open Theater, Tape Center, the Merry Pranksters, and

It's prayer, mostly.

Festival credits:

PRODUCED IN ASSOCIATION WITH BILL GRAHAM ENVIRONMENT: OSBORNE AND STEWART ARCHITECTS

PUBLICITY: JERRY MANDER/ZEV PUTTERMAN AND ASSOC.

SOUND-LIGHT COORDINATION: DON BUCHLA

SIDETRIPS: WORSHIP SERVICE AT 321 DIVISADERO ST., SUNDAY, January 23 at 11:00 A.M.

Chloe Scott, dancemistress—Lou Harrison, composer

Encore Theatre—Mime—Dance—Sound 3:00 P.M. Sunday, Jan. 23

The Music

The Dance

The Bows

Elizabeth Harris, Pauline Oliveros and large Mime Troupe Cast The Psychedelic Shop at 1535 Haight Street.

Gratitude to Blake, Moffitt and Towne for poster paper. General Radio Corp, Los Altos, for strobes. Comtel Engineering for TV, Harry McCune Sound Service East Wind Printers — Peter Bailey, designer Contact Printing Company — Wes Wilson, design Light Sculpture by Marr Grounds, Charles MacDermond & Don Buchla, Roger Hilliard, Steve Sanders, David Talcott.

The Trips Festival notes with approval and great interest the participation in the festival of Look, Newsweek, Time, and Life.