Dead and Company are heading to San Diego this Friday as Bob Weir continues the long, strange trip of the Grateful Dead into his old age. Anyone with even a passing knowledge of the group understands that perhaps more than any other band that started in the 1960s, the Dead are associated with psychedelia and the American Counterculture. For decades, their shows have carried the legacy of the Acid Tests (for which they were the house band) and served both as an inspiration for new generations of Deadheads and a convenient target for the DEA.
In his fascinating new book, How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Consciousness, Dying, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence, Michael Pollan touches on the history of the Acid Tests, noting their unintended origins as a result of a CIA funded experiment [Read more…]