The Echo Chamber

On March 6, 1971, a group of some of the top musicians from the United States -– Ike and Tina Turner, Wilson Pickett, the Staple Singers, and more -– boarded a plane bound for Ghana to perform in a musical celebration that was dubbed the “Soul to Soul Festival.” Thousands of audience members filled Accra’s Black Star Square for a continuous 15 hours of music. The festival was planned in part for the annual celebration of Ghana’s independence, but also as an invitation to a “homecoming” for these noted African-American artists to return to Africa. This episode revisits the famed music festival on its 50th anniversary and explores the longstanding legacy of cultural exchange with African diasporans originally set forth in the 1950s by Kwame Nkrumah, the first president of Ghana. Tune in for interviews with noted musicologist John Collins, poet and scholar Tsitsi Ella Jaji, concert goers and more. This story was originally produced for AfroPop Worldwide.  To hear more stories from this Peabody-award winning show, visit www.afropop.org..

As we gather this week to witness the inauguration of our new president, we find our nation in a state of great political unrest.  While certain recent events of violence at the Capitol are no doubt unprecedented, it is certainly not the first time an inauguration in our country has been met with divide.   In 1973, the United States was reaching the concluding stages of our involvement in the Vietnam.  And while the war would soon come to an end, the proceeding weeks leading up to the inauguration were met with some of the most intense and deadly bombing campaigns  the war had witnessed.  The anti-war movement was unhinged.  They had marched, they had protest - all to seemingly no avail when it came to changing the foreign policies of Richard Nixon.   So what to do next....  American conductor, Leonard Bernstein, gathered an impromptu orchestra and choir to perform a "Concert for Peace", following his belief that by creating beauty, and by sharing it with as many people as possible, artists had the power to tip the earthly balance in favor of brotherhood and peace. Special thanks to Michael Chikinda, Alicia Kopfstein, Matt Holsen, and Bernie Swain for sharing their insight and memories of the musical events surrounding Nixon and his second inauguration in 1973. A Plea for Peace: Leonard Bernstein, Richard Nixon, and the Music of the 1973 Inauguration ARCHIVAL:  Not everybody is here this weekend to celebrate. Thousands of demonstrators are expected. They've spent weeks organizing and are here to protest the war.  "This is one anti-war demonstration that Mr. Nixon is not going to avoid.  Past demonstrations he has fled town, nobody sees him now. He's never explained to the nation why he ordered these saturation bombing rates on Hanoi and Haiphong, but this is one time he's going to have to be present.  We know he's not going to be out of town and we want to be there at the same time." Alicia Kopfstein (AK):  The number of people who were in DC, it was thousands upon thousands. 18,000 were at the cathedral alone.   To have the cathedral so full like that... full to the gills. There was no room. It was just overwhelming, to try to find a place to park, of course, but to be with so many like-minded people.  Contrasting with so many protests now where there's violence, it was so peaceful. There was such an attitude of goodwill and camaraderie and companionship. That was just incredible. I'm Dr. Alicia Kopfstein, I teach at American University and I'm a contributor and co-editor of a recent collection of essays called Leonard Bernstein and Washington DC. I was a singer in Leonard Bernstein's "Concert for Peace" that happened at the Washington National Cathedral in January of 1973.  ARCHIVAL:  Introduction to the three official inaugural concerts tonight. There's a fourth unofficial one. Leonard Bernstein is conducting what is called a "Concert for Peace" at the Washington Cathedral.  Admission is free, arrangements have been made to pipe the program outside.  It is thought that 10,000 persons might show up, many of them anti-war protesters.   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ku9HUWZDas AK:  There was hope, there was desire for peace, there was love, but there's also a resignation, a fear because people had done their utmost to try to protest the war and it didn't seem to change anything.  Years and years and years of protest still led to the Christmas bombing.  So it was just, we're getting desperate. Let's do everything we possibly can. The Vietnam War went from 1959 to 1975. When Nixon was elected the second time, it was shortly after some more horrors in the Vietnam war. We had Kent State and the Pentagon papers, the My Lai massacres. Films and photographs were available in Time and Look and all the major magazines and newspapers showing women and children and young people just lying dead by the road.  Shocking for people in this country.  There were a lot of anti-war protests and Bernstein participated in those an...

Some candidates have their campaigns for presidency planned out before they can even vote.  For others, such as General Eisenhower, it took a little Broadway magic to coax him into the race.  On this episode of The Echo Chamber, we bring you a special election episode – filled with a closer look into some unknown, and perhaps surprising, facts about campaign songs and how they have helped shape presidential history. Special thanks to David Haven Blake, Cheri Burk and Juliet Cesario, Paul Christiansen, and Bob Gardner.  And to the archivists at the Eisenhower, Nixon, and Ford Presidential libraries for their hard work and dedication to preserve this important campaign material.

This is an expanded version of a story that originally aired on KALW in 2018 when Yoko Arimichi and her Powell Street Blues Band were celebrating their 40th anniversary at The Saloon in North Beach.  The band formed when Yoko was busking around Powell and Market Streets in the late 70s.   Yoko Arimichi and her Powell Street Blues are currently one of the longest running acts at The Saloon, one of San Francisco's oldest bars.  Yoko can wail on an electric guitar with a flair that combines B.B. King, Chuck Berry, and Neil Young. "We arrived [in the US] the same date, different year, but same date, that The Beatles first came to the United States. Every year February 7th I see The Beatles anniversary and I always think, mine too!" She was born in Japan and raised playing classical music, but her life changed when The Beatles came to the Tokyo Budokan in 1966. She swapped her classical flute for a guitar, finagled passage on an American cargo ship toting Mazdas from Hiroshima,  and never looked back.   Special thanks to Yoko Arimichi and her Powell Street Blues Band, Myron Mu and all of the staff at The Saloon.  This story was produced in collaboration with Mary Franklin Harvin.

On this episode of The Echo Chamber, Shonen Knife – a story of cultural exchange through the cassette tape. But also a story of an era in history just before the stronghold of the looming internet drastically changed, among so many other things, the way we consume and discover music.  It was a time when culture – as writer Karen Schoemer said – was precious, you really had to fight for it.   A closer look at how cassettes, alongside fanzines and college radio, all worked to create an environment that made possible the seemingly improbable circumstance of an all-girl band from Osaka, Japan eventually opening for Nirvana – one of the biggest musical acts of the 90s, and how these women have retained their status of cultural influence some 40 years after their bands' origin.   This episode features interviews with Shonen Knife; Karen Schoemer, former music critic of the New York Times; and Brooke McCorkle Okazaki, Assistant Professor of Music at Carleton College and author of the forthcoming book, Shonen Knife's Happy Hour: Food, Gender, Rock and Roll The Osaka Ramones – The International Impact of Shonen Knife Naoko Yamano (NY):  Sheena is a punk rocker [sings The Ramones "Sheena is a Punk Rocker] NY:  I'm Naoko, I play the guitar. Atsuko Yamano (AY):  I'm Atsuko, I play the bass guitar. Risa Kawano (RK):  I'm Risa.  I play the drums. NY:  Shonen means boy in Japanese and it's a very old brand name of a pencil knife.  And the word 'shonen' has very cute feeling and the knife has a little dangerous feeling, so when cute and dangerous combined together, it's just like our band.  So I put that name.  Originally I liked The Beatles a lot when I was a child, and then in the late 70s, punk pop movement was happening and I became a big fan of The Ramones or Buzzcocks.  First I listened to their music through radio. There was a radio program in Osaka and they played The Ramones or Buzzcocks.  Many punk music... When I was 15 years old I got an acoustic guitar.  The strings were so hard and I hurt my fingers so I couldn’t play the acoustic guitar but after I get an electric guitar a few years after that. I rather like pop melody line punk rock, and inspired by such kinds of bands, I wanted to start my own band. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IsOGXEwl1Z8 Brooke McCorkle Okazaki (BM):  Shonen Knife – they formed in 1981.  Naoko decided to form a rock and roll band after she heard some Ramones on the radio.  My name is Brooke McCorkle Okazaki.  I am an Assistant Professor of Music at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota and I am the author of "Shonen Knife's Happy Hour: Food Gender and Rock and Roll".  Michie and Naoko were currently working as secretaries and workers in a machinery company in Osaka, and Atsuko was actually still  a high school student.  She wound up graduating and going to fashion school.  They all worked day jobs until 1994 when they went on the big North American tour.  And it was then when they decided to quite and become full time musicians.  So they were slugging it out for a good 13 years before becoming full time musicians.  And they've been full time musicians since then which is just amazing. NY:  The Japanese Minna Tanoshiku means “Let’s have fun together”.  We recorded it at our friend’s house and everybody was very DIY.  One day a guy who’s record label is called Zero Records came to our show and he offered that he would like to release our record.  For that cassette album we copied 40 cassettes and we put our kissmark on each jacket.  First I got postal mail from Calvin Johnson from K Records and then we exchanged letters because there was no internet at that time and of course there was no facsimile too.  So Calvin Johnson said he wanted to release our album from his label K Records.  So we sent our master tape to him by postal mail and then he made our cassette tape. Calvin Johnson (CJ):  The cassette came along and it was something where you could just make 30 or 50 cassettes and it d...

On today's episode, Maximum Rocknoll – the story behind the famed punk institution.   Beginning in 1977, a group of Bay Area music fans led by Tim Yohannan,  began a weekly radio show out of the studio at KPFA in Berkeley, California. The driving impulse behind the show was simple – an unabashed uncompromising world of punk rock.  By 1982, the punk scene had grown into a worldwide movement and the founders of the show launched Maximum RocknRoll as a print fanzine, dedicated to anti-corporate ideals, leftist politics and relentless enthusiasm for DIY punk and hardcore bands from every inhabited continent of the globe.  Over the next several decades, what started as a do it yourself labor of love amongst a handful of friends had extended to include literally thousands of volunteers and hundreds of thousands of readers. For many, it became the punk rock bible. The inky smudge of the black and white newsprint providing a voice in community for young teenagers around the world, introducing them to bands and a sense of creative expression they had not known before.  By 2019, the landscape of the punk underground as well as print media itself had dramatically shifted and MRR announced the end to its print publication. Over these 42 years with over 1600 radio shows and 400 issues of fanzine to its claim, MRR came to represent a certain do-it-yourself ethos that extended far beyond the music itself. As the print scene came to an end last year, I invited some well the longstanding Maximum contributors to come together for a night to talk about that the zine and its lasting impact on the global punk scene. Here's our conversation..  The Past, Present & Future of Maximum Rocknroll: The Story Behind the Famed Punk Institution Brandi Howell (BH): Tonight we have with us Martin Sprouse, Paul Curran, and Matt Badenhop.   And before I introduce them, I just wanted to play a little taste of the early days of the radio show.   BH:  So if you guys wanted to introduce yourselves a bit and kind of give your background and how you were first introduced to the magazine.  Martin Sprouse (MS):  Yeah. My name is Martin Sprouse. I grew up in Southern California. So my first introduction to the magazine was the first compilation.  Me and my friend, Jason Traeger, and Pat Weakland.   We were doing our own fanzine in San Diego called The Leading Edge. And we found that record, Pat knew it was coming out and we found like the day they were unboxing it in a record store and we just go – Oh wow!  Cause it was the first time we knew there were hardcore bands playing up here, you know, that they existed up here.  Because in Southern California, we're spoiled with them, but it was nice to see all these kids doing things.  And then from that our local record store started carrying Maximum Rocknroll from the first issue on. And when we first looked at it, it was like so different than what we're used to. You know, we're used to Flip Side and Ripper, but Maximum to our teenage eyes was this thick. It had politics right on the cover and I was going – Holy shit, this is great!  You know, it was newsprint, it was messy, just like it is now, you know, but it just looks so different, you know, and then we just kept buying issues. And we started coming up here and visiting in '84, '83 ... staying at the Maximum house. And then I moved up here in '85 to become part of Maximum. Is that enough background?   And I stopped doing Leading Edge and started working on Maximum and been involved with Maximum projects since then.  Leading Edge fanzine. artwork by Jason Traeger BH:  And Paul has also been with the magazine and various bands since 1983, contributing to all the graphics and the record reviews, he lists himself has a house cleaner. And now as a member of the powerful and mysterious MMR board.  Paul, how did you first learn about Maximum? Paul Curran (PC):  I first learned about Maximum probably by seeing the magazine. I grew up in Benicia,

The story of a small Filipino nightclub that transformed into one of San Francisco's most influential punk venues.   "To play, you need a place – be it where you live, the street, a venue.  For unrestricted play, you need an unrestricted playground.  Dirk Dirksen envisioned The Fab Mab just as such a playground.  Without him and The Mab, there might not have been the great punk scene in the late 1970s in San Francisco.  The San Francisco punk scene was fun.  I miss it.  But as Iggy Pop said, 'Let's Sing.'"                                                                                                     -- Mindy Bagdon Special thanks to Denise Demise Dunne, Liz Keim, Penelope Houston, Ron Greco, John Seabury, V Vale, Janet Clyde, and Kathy Peck.   The archival interview with Dirk Dirksen is from Vale's RE/Search Conversations 13.   Production support from Mary Franklin Harvin.  From Pinoy to Punk: The Rise of The Mabuhay Gardens An Oral History of San Francisco's Early Punk Scene Penelope Houston (PH):  The Mabuhay was not your average rock club. Denise Demise Dunne (DDD):  Here was this little club all of a sudden attracting the energy. Ron Greco (RG):  The Dills, Negative Trend, The Avengers... DDD:  So of course you are going to say, Oh, what is going on over there. PH:  More and more people started coming to town.  The Ramones played there.  Blondie played there.  It just became the punk mecca. RG: When I was real young, I would go by and see this place.  It was there for years. The music itself was nothing really developed yet in the very beginning.  It was just a supper club.  People would do the Mabuhay dance and stuff like that.    DDD:  Dirk was helping Ness with the Amapola show.  Amapola was this Filipino night club singer and she was popular within the Filipino community and had a TV show on Channel 26 and a number of characters from The Mab had performed there.  My name is Denise Demise Dunne.  I was Dirk’s assistant at the very beginning of The Mab. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFxkCuncwU0  V Vale (VV):  Hi, welcome to The Counter Culture Hour.  I’m your host V Vale and I published starting in ‘77 Search and Destroy, the punk publication chronicling the rise of the punk rock cultural revolution.   My guest tonight is Dirk Dirksen, the impresario of The Mabuhay Gardens. LINK:  RE/Search Publications Dirk Dirksen:  We were open for ten years, did 3,600 plus concerts.   VV:  The thing was at the time things were so conservative that no club wanted anything to do with punk rock until Dirk Dirksen showed up and made The Mabuhay Gardens available. DD:  Ness downstairs at The Mabuhay was having a tough go of it, so I came in and said, Look – how about if you give us Monday nights because that is your dark night.  Let me try that and I will guarantee you $175 a night at the bar.  I didn't have $175 at the time, but I figured there are enough people I know that if I say hey, c'mon down and if they each drink two beers, we'll meet the guarantee.  And within a very short time we were grossing more on the Monday than he was grossing on the weekend with name Filipino acts.   Mindy Bagdon (MB):  My name is Mindy Bagdon.  My film's name is "Louder Faster Shorter".  At one point on Mondays, which was a dead period on the Broadway strip, Dirk convinced Ness Aquino who owned the club to let him put on different acts.  Little by little, it went from sort of vaudevillian variety acts to where The Nuns, who were one of the first groups to play there, apparently they went up to Dirk and they found out this venue was available and they said, Well can we put on a show?  And I remember I was walking up Grant Avenue and Vale's then girlfriend was coming down and proceeding me was the drummer for The Nuns and he was handing out flyers.   VV:  My girlfriend who looked like a rocker – I guess I looked like one too, you know with platform shoes and spiked hair and all that junk,

This bonus episode features my interview with two of Dave Brubeck's sons, Dan and Chris Brubeck.  Excellent musicians in their own right, the two shared intimate memories of growing up with their father and his legendary contributions to modern jazz.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1369MM9B40 The Brubeck Brothers Chris Brubeck:  We're sitting about 10 miles away from the house where we grew up.  My dad used to work in San Francisco and come home and he'd go to bed. And then my mom would say like, you gotta be quiet. Your poor dad didn't go to bed till three or four in the morning. So part of the technique of keeping us quiet was that we had these little cheap record players almost in every room, including the room that was adjacent to my dad's room.  We had these Disney records. Tunes like Someday My Prince Will Come, Alice in Wonderland. So my dad's asleep and yet probably subconsciously he's hearing [hums melody of Someday My Prince Will Come].  After a while he comes up with this idea, he says, you know, those actually are really good tunes, even though they're from cartoons.  Then he started playing Someday My Prince Will Come.  Miles Davis walks into a club in San Francisco and hears my dad play.  Then his next record, Miles' record is called Someday My Prince Will Come.  So you're staring at two of the brats that accidentally had something to do with those songs becoming jazz standards. Just trying to be quiet. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zcTeAWh8OusChris Brubeck:  I'm Chris Brubeck, and I play in the Brubeck Brothers quartet. I play electric fretless bass, and sometimes bass trombone. Dan Brubeck:  And I'm Dan Brubeck. And I'm a drummer with the Brubeck Brothers Quartet.  Up here in Oakland it was just an open room with piano in it and whatnot.Chris Brubeck:  A kitchen and a big dining room table. And this redwood pocket door that opened up to this studio was big enough for a grand piano and for drums to set up and, you know, just a beautiful space with big bay windows.  And from those windows, you could literally see the Golden Gate Bridge, the Bay bridge, and the Richmond bridge.  As little kids it was really fun to go to camp outside and look at the twinkling lights and you know, it was very magical as a little kid also, if I wasn't thinking about music, I was thinking about like Willie Mays is down there somewhere playing baseball, you know, he was my hero.I know for me, one of my favorite things to do in the world, I'd like to hear the group we rehearse I'd crawl under the piano, And there, I couldn't be in anyone's way, knowing what step on me. And I got to hear all the low overtones of the piano and it got to you the bass and the bass drum really well. That, to me, it was like heaven, just lying down and listening. Dan Brubeck:  Where I slept, there was probably 10 feet from a door where my dad would practice and he'd often practice at night or be writing composing at night.  So I don't think there were too many nights where I didn't fall asleep when he was home to him practicing and composing.  It there's always, I was always hearing music.  But I was lucky too, because he had at his rehearsals Morello, who is an incredible drummer, but of course we didn't know they were incredible drummers.  We just heard all these guys and there, you know, it's Uncle Paul, Uncle Joe, you know, So for us, it was just like these guys that were friends of my dad's that played.  Chris Brubeck:  Paul was like a visiting member of the octet. Dan Brubeck:  He didn't study with Darius Milhaud, but he got called in to play in my dad's octet, which was the first group that he started.  Mostly people that were studying with Darius Milhaud. Chris Brubeck:  Milhaud was open-minded and loved American jazz so much that he said here's a counterpoint exercise and old school would be, it would be, you know, Bach Prelude #2,, analyze it. He would say the chord changes for that popular jazz tune How High ...

In 1958, the Dave Brubeck Quartet embarked on a tour of Europe and Asia sponsored by the U.S. State Department.  HEAR THE STORY. This episode features interviews with Keith Hatschek, Program Director for Music Management and Music Industry Studies at the University of Pacific; and Mike Wurtz, Assistant Professor and Head of Special Collections and Archives at the Holt-Atherton Special Collections at the University of Pacific Library. The archival recording of Dave Brubeck is from his interview with Monk Rowe from the Fillius Jazz Archive at Hamilton College. Dave Brubeck and The Jazz Ambassadors Dan Brubeck:  The more repressed a society is, the more they admire the freedom you can find in jazz. Jazz is America.  People behind the Iron Curtain started falling in love with jazz. Chris Brubeck:  The idea was if we get jazz musicians to go out, that represents freedom.  People could express themselves in this kind of way out of that kind of democracy comes that kind of expression.ARCHIVAL:  Louis ArmstrongChris Brubeck:  You're not going to get a repressed environment like communism. That seemed to be the idea. I mean, if you saw a Louis Armstrong back then you know, your heart opens up and you're like, wow, this is great.  This guy is totally cool. He loves everyone and he's expressing himself and he just made people happy all over the world. So that's a way better defense against fighting communism than fighting might with might and all that, you know.  It's like nowadays, maybe we would just bomb them or something.Brandi Howell:  Welcome to The Echo Chamber. I'm your host, Brandi Howell.  On today's episode, The Jazz Ambassadors, a blue note and a minor key, America has its secret sonic weapon, jazz. This was a headline in 1955 when the United States seeing jazz as propaganda to promote democracy abroad sent its top musicians overseas.  The music they thought was a universal language, knowing no national boundaries.  So off they sent the so-called jazz ambassadors, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, Dizzy Gillespie, and lastly, Dave Brubeck. His experience with the program is the focus of this episode.Keith Hatschek:   It was a brilliant use of what we have come to term soft power.  Eisenhower realized that bullets and bombs ultimately would never decide the outcome of the future of this battle between the capitalist system and the socialist system. He very wisely invested in cultural exchanges. They were dubbed unofficially the "jazz ambassadors", Duke Ellington, Dave Brubeck, Dizzy Gillespie. The groups were chosen to go overseas and play their music.  This battle for the hearts and minds of all these territories around the world who were not directly linked to either the Western powers or the Soviet Union played out not so much in a military sense, but in a cultural sense.  Why not send a jazz quartet and have them go and do their thing in these various countries and territories?  I'm Keith Hatschek. I'm the author of "The Impact of American Jazz Diplomacy in Poland During the Cold War Era". As far as my interest in the jazz ambassadors, I teach at the University of the Pacific and we are the place where the jazz musician Dave Brubeck and his wife Iola decided to bequeath their papers and all of their archival materials.  They both attended school here in the 1940s. Dave went on of course to become a world renowned jazz musician and composer and humanitarian. And one of the things that really struck him was that he was a GI during World War II. He was in the European theater of operations and he ended up leading a band called the Wolf Pack. And after the war, after hostilities had ceased. the band stayed on and they played both for GIs, but also refugees who were displaced over there. And it really gave him a look into what it was like in Europe in the aftermath of the devastation of World War Two. Later, when he became more popular in the 1950s, his music started to be broadcast over the Voice of A...

Rock critic Joel Selvin on the origins of psychedelic rock in San Francisco–including Ken Kesey and his Acid Tests, the Trips Festival, and birth of bands such as the Grateful Dead and Big Brother and the Holding Company. Joel Selvin:  In San Francisco in 1965, '66, '67, there was such an explosion of music, great rock bands – it was just impossible not to be swept up in it.  As a copyboy at the [San Francisco] Chronicle, I could get my name on the guest list at The Fillmore.  I think I was out like six nights a week watching bands.  I'm Joel Selvin, born and raised in Berkeley, CA.  At the age of 17, after having dropped out of high school, I went to work as a copyboy at the San Francisco Chronicle and I subsequently took a job there as the pop music critic, which I kept for 36 years.  San Francisco was the center of the rock music universe – a truly amazing parade of musical talent.  Not only local people, but from all around the world. Well, the first thing was LSD.  In 1964, Augustus Stanley Owsley, III became the first private party to synthesize the formula for LSD, which had been produced since the late 40s by a Swiss pharmaceutical company.  Owsley set up business in Berkeley down on Virginia Street, Bear Research Laboratories, and produced – we don't know?  Could be the first two million units of LSD.   Obviously from that epicenter in Berkeley this whole psychedelic movement just sort of spread out.  At The Fillmore in December of '65, The Fillmore was in a black neighborhood, they had run R&B shows there for years.  The Acid Tests came in, Ken Kesey and all those guys, had the same staff, right.  So the old door guard is this old black guy named John Walker.  And John Walker is sitting there and he is watching all this craziness go on. Can't imagine what he is thinking.  But the police come in – San Francisco police – they come in and want to see what is going on here.  And they think it's pretty weird too.  And they go to Walker and they go – What the hell is going on here?  He says – Don't worry, they's in love.  Nobody was pushy, nobody was obnoxious.  Everybody felt like being in this together was so special that we were automatically bonded and we were all friends immediately just because we were cool enough to be there.  Everybody else that wasn't there, they were missing it.   By 1966 when it was appearing on the cover of Life Magazine and this mind altering chemical, publicity had reached a point where everybody knew about it and those people who were inclined were gravitating toward using it.  And this was the center of that.  LSD had a tremendous effect on people who took it.  And San Francisco bay area, they began to form a kind of community around people who took LSD and one of the first things they did was throw dances with bands.  And these bands, who also took LSD, were not really playing old time rock n roll in the way that had been.  It just didn't make any sense.  Instead of like, 2-3 little songs, verse chorus, verse chorus, bridge, verse chorus...they started playing instruments and jamming.  The audience danced and everybody was on LSD.   The Avalon and The Fillmore in 1966 were pretty much LSD speakeasies.  This was like the ground zero for the explosion.  And it wasn't just music, I mean, you can see its effect on organic farming, interest in yoga, the personal computer movement – all those guys were acidheads.  Music is just one of the things that came out of that.  It was a real prominent, it became the forefront of all of that countercultural movement.   First thing that happens to the LSD community, they wanted to have these public gatherings where they could engage in activity while having the LSD experience.  The first of those were kind of informal affairs that were hosted by Ken Kesey, the author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, which had been a best seller.  He's been a volunteer at the Stanford Veterans Hospital where the CIA ran LSD experiments.

Long before there was Coachella, Outside Lands Festival, and the popular music gatherings of today, the Monterey Pop Festival was the first of its kind.   Taking place in the fairgrounds of Monterey in the summer of 1967, the three-day festival brought to the stage the likes of Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and The Who.  Their performances are now viewed as legendary markers in the history of rock and roll, but at the time, Jimi and Janis were newcomers to the rock scene.  These debut appearances introduced them to the rest of the world and in doing so, they helped revolutionized the entire landscape of rock and roll music to come. In this episode, Darice Murray-McKay, Jonathan King, and Rosalie Howarth recount their experiences as young teenagers attending the legendary music festival.  Additional commentary is provided by famed music critic Joel Selvin.   Monterey Pop Festival Revisited Joel Selvin:  Monterey – it was a watershed moment where everything pivoted in three days.  All of what pop music was on Friday was changed by Sunday night.  All the groups that came in on top – The Association, Johnny Rivers, the Mamas & Papas – they were history on Monday.  And everybody that came in unknown from London and San Francisco, they were the new stars.  The ones the record companies wanted.  That is what people wanted to hear.  It was this huge swivel spot.  The entire sound of popular music had changed in just that weekend.  Nothing was ever the same since. HOST:  Welcome to The Echo Chamber, I'm your host Brandi Howell.  It almost seems mythical now, what we hear about the Summer of 1967, of the music festival that took over the sleepy fairgrounds of Monterey, CA for those three days in June.  The idea seems so commonplace now with the Coachella's and Outside Lands of our day, but this was the first of its kind.  An idea hatched up by John Phillips of the Mamas & Papas and their producer Lou Adler.  Little did they know that their experiment would prove to be an unforgettable experience ushering in a new era of rock and roll for generations to come.  My friend's father was in the crowd that weekend and at the young age of 17, he said it changed his life.  A strong statement of course, but no doubt it's true.  To have witnessed firsthand these moments that are now permanently etched in the lexicon of rock and roll, the memories and music still hold their strength and power for him and the others that were there.  And so as we marked upon the 50th anniversary of Monterey Pop Festival, I began to talk to some of the others that were also there in the crowd.  To listen to their stories and share their experiences of those three days in Monterey.  And now on The Echo Chamber, we go back to Monterey Pop Festival.  Here are their stories. Jonathan King (JK):  I have memories of the festival.  I had just turned 17 at the time.  One thing I wonder about is how many veterans of that day, if their memories are crystal clear?  We are getting on in age.  And how much of that has been influenced by the movie that came out, Monterey Pop?  It's just a fun idea for me, it's like – Are people remembering what really happened, or are they remembering...but I, being the neurotic high school student, kept notes...  Darice Murray-McKay (DMM):  My name is Darice Murray-McKay.  We are in the San Francisco Public Library branch in the Haight and I have been working here since 2003.  When I was five years old, my mother woke me up, grabbed me out of bed and put me in front of the black and white television set and said – Watch this!  This is important.  It was Elvis on the Steve Allen show.  I was doomed.  It's almost hardwired DNA now, everything that was rock and roll.  It was 1967, I was living in San Diego, CA.  I was 16 years old.  When the Monterey Pop Festival was announced, my best friend in high school and myself got tickets. JK:  I'm Jonathan King.  I had just turned 17 when I went to the Monterey Pop Festival.

Welcome to The Echo Chamber, a new podcast that takes a closer at music and its effect on history and culture.  The first season will feature stories from the Monterey Pop Festival, the Jazz Ambassador program of the Cold War, St. John Coltrane Church and more. Stay tuned for the first episode, coming soon. For more information, check out www.theechochamberpodcast.com