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The Fillmore Acid Test
-Anonymous (05/12/2016)

Description from The Acid Test Files (http://www.nii.net/~obie1/deadcd/acid_test_files.htm), based on Wolfe and other sources: "On January 8, 1966, the Merry Pranksters put on a colossal Acid Test at the Fillmore Auditorium, in San Francisco’s black ghetto. They had put down a deposit on the hall two days earlier, ignoring the landlord’s earnest warning that there would be no ,way to publicize an event in that short a time. The Pranksters just smiled mysteriously. About twentyfour hundred people showed up. The Fillmore was a huge dance floor with a balcony running along two sides. The Pranksters wired it up with so much electronic equipment - including the TV Portapaks they were going to carryaround - that the floor was littered with electronic boxes and skeins of electric cable. The whole place actually gave off a low, buzzing hum. The show started in the usual fashion with Kesey’s Psychedelic Symphonette playing random sequences of notes at one end of the floor. Down at the other end, the Warlocks, who had rrecently changed their name to the Grateful Dead, were simultaneously playing rock & roll built around the expansive noodlings of guitarist Jerry Garcia. In the middle of the floor stood a baby bathtub full of Kool Aid spiked with LSD. From then on, the evening was psychedelic chaos. Pranksters wore comicbook superhero costumes and wandered around doing everything they could to make the trip weirder. Phrases that read like excerpts from a Kesey novel in progress were projected onto the walls. Perhaps this whole event was a Kesey novel, set in some kind of space age madhouse. Because of city regulations, the Acid Test was required to end at 2:00 a.m., and the police showed up to make sure the curfew was observed. “Who’s in charge?” they demanded. Hilarious. Everything had been totally out of con­trol for hours. The police went around pulling plugs and turning off switches. The Pranksters went around after them turn­ing everything back on again. When the lights went off, the crowd cheered. When they went back oon, they cheered again. A group of people on the floor had found a ladder and were climbing toward the police, chanting, “Hug the heat! Hug the heat!” just as Kesey’s lawyers arrived to smooth everything over. Neal Cassady, one of the origi­nal beatniks, was there that night. He had been hanging around with the Merry Pranksters for some time. Habitually wired on amphetamines, he would usu­ally be talking a motormouthed stream of consciousness while juggling a hammer to deal with his speed induced rest­lessness. But here, staring down from the Fillmore balcony at all the stoned people crawling through mountains of electronic equipment and giant sculp­tures, he seemed downright placid."
-Anonymous (05/12/2016)

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