Messenger from the Summer of Love

Messenger from the Summer of Love

by: David Rey Echt

Amazon Price: $11.01 (as of 12/11/2009)

Review
"..after reading this book, I for one have a renewed sense of meaning and purpose." - Skip Stone author of Hippies from A-Z

"If you are curious as to what really went on during the hippie era, then this book is for you." - Paul De Mey, editor of New Renaissance Magazine

"There was definitely something extraordinary - even profound - about that time.. this novel is a perfect metaphor - It turned me on." - Melody Record, book reviewer for Good Times Entertainment Magazine, Santa Cruz, CA

Product Description
There are moments in history that usher in a new dawn. In America, in the sixties, that moment was the summer of 67'. My book is a story that goes to the foundation of the New Age movement, in the Haight-Ashbury district of San Francisco. Many of us remember how something mysterious and wonderful touched the world at that time. We remembered our essence: we remembered how to love.

I've always believed that this story would eventually be told. It has a universal message of Love and a very important warning for our time. I hope this will serve to reawaken that spirit that was The Summer of Love.

The Complete Monterey Pop Festival - Criterion Collection

Amazon Price: $31.99 (as of 12/11/2009)

Amazon.com review:
The Monterey International Pop Festival, the three-day event staged in 1967 that has become one of rock music's most famous and in some ways greatest concerts, gets the royal treatment with this three-disc boxed set.

Material on two of the three discs has already been widely available. Monterey Pop, D.A. Pennebaker's 79-minute, 1968 film, effectively sets the scene for the festival, which took place during the fabled "Summer of Love," when the hippie ethos was in its fullest flower, especially on the West Coast. And while not all the featured performances are thrilling, those that are--principally by the Who, Jimi Hendrix, and the amazing Ravi Shankar--are worth the price of admission, especially in the high-definition digital transfer and new 5.1 mix seen and heard here. The same can be said for Jimi Plays Monterey and Shake! Otis at Monterey, which appear in the boxed set on a separate disc and provide a much fuller look at Hendrix's and Otis Redding's incendiary sets (literally, in the former case).

Those two discs are also loaded with bonus features, including audio commentary by Pennebaker, festival producer Lou Adler (on Monterey Pop), and author Peter Guralnick (Shake!); audio-only remarks by some of the performers; photos; trailers; and other material. There's also a substantial booklet, filled with essays and photos. But it's the third disc, "The Outtake Performances," comprising some two hours of music that didn't make the final film edit, that will be of most interest to many viewers. The disc supplies a taste of some of the artists who didn't appear in Monterey Pop at all (the Byrds, Buffalo Springfield, Quicksilver Messenger Service), and a more complete look at some who did (the Who, Simon and Garfunkel, the Mamas and the Papas). A nice addition to an already very impressive DVD collection. - Sam Graham

The Haight-Ashbury: A History

by: Charles Perry

Amazon Price: (as of 12/11/2009)

Product Description
2005 marks the 40th anniversary of San Franciscos Haight-Ashbury district. The psychedelic community was probably the most widely written-about phenomenon of the 1960s apart from the Vietnam War. As unexpected as it was inevitable, the whole event from public manifestation to gaudy collapse happened in less than two years. In this acclaimed, definitive work, Charles Perry examines the history, the drama, and the energy of counter-cultures defining moment. First published by Rolling Stone Press in 1984 and now re-releasedwith a new introduction by the Grateful Dead's Bob Weir to time with Haight-Ashburys 40th anniversary, this highly acclaimed work is a must-have for anyone interested in the original sex, drugs, and rock n roll lifestyle.

Sleeping Where I Fall: A Chronicle

by: Peter Coyote

Amazon Price: $19.95 (as of 12/11/2009)

Amazon.com Review:
As the generation that launched America's counterculture in the 1960s matures into its gray ponytails and 401(k) plans, one might expect the autobiographies of its celebrities to be tinged with apology for goals unrealized. Indeed, with only a few notable exceptions, such as Peter Fonda's Don't Tell Dad, most celebrity autobiographies from '60s pop culture icons seem rooted in either bitterness or desperation. Fortunately, in Sleeping Where I Fall, Peter Coyote neither apologizes for his wild days nor waxes romantic for them. Nor should he.

This wise and witty, tightly crafted narrative reports on the turbulence of that era with philosophical integrity, wry humor, and unmitigated honesty. Looking back over his days with the San Francisco Mime Troupe, a street theater group that sought to break the conventional boundaries between performer and audience, Coyote rhapsodizes with equal vigor about the company's artistic triumphs and the pulchritude of its actresses. While his developing acting career and romantic misadventures comprise a great deal of the narrative, an even larger part dwells on his life as one of The Diggers, the band of anarchistic counterculturalists who fought against commercial culture's ability to co-opt the superficial elements of youthful rebellion by rejecting the very notions of ownership and extrinsic value. "The Diggers," writes Coyote, "understood that style is infinitely co-optable. What could not be co-opted was doing things for free-without money." And what things they did! Coyote recounts the lives and times of poets, actors, farmers, and philosophers who participated in a profound cultural experiment that tested the very limits of human consciousness and fell--eventually--to the excesses of personal indulgence.

Coyote's evolution from callow thespian to revolutionary communard to seasoned philosopher is fascinating, as much a social and political history as it is a reminiscence. The stories unravel like tender after-dinner tales in prose that captures the rasp and tickle of Coyote's corduroy voice. In the end, Sleeping Where I Fall reveals a man as complex and unpredictable as the totem animal from which he takes his name. - L.A. Smith

Memoirs of an Ex-Hippie: Seven Years in the Counterculture

by: Robert A. Roskind

Amazon Price: $14.95 (as of 12/11/2009)

Product Description
The counterculture of the 60s and 70s has been viewed as everything from naive to hedonistic. However, most of these views were formed by observing the movement from the outside. "Memoirs of an Ex-Hippie" offers a vastly different perspective, one developed from within.

After graduating college in 1968, Robert Roskind hit the road for seven years. Roskind's travels lead him into the heart of the counterculture--to Esalen Institute, Tassajara Hot Springs, Big Sur, Vancouver Island, the communes of Oregon and North Carolina, Altamont Pop Festival, Mt. Shasta, the Haight-Ashbury and the "motherland"--Northern California.

His personal odyssey, sometimes profane and funny, sometimes profound and serious, reveals this tumultuous era as a cultural and spiritual renaissance that birthed many of the solutions to problems humanity now faces.

About the Author
Robert Roskind is a writer and speaker. His ten books include "Rasta Heart: A Journey into One Love," "In the Spirit of Business," and "In the Spirit of Marriage," all teaching unconditional love. He lives in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina with his wife, Julia, and their daughter, Alicia.