There are many ways to learn about history and events. One is by researching published accounts of the time – books, newspapers and magazines. Another is to get first hand accounts through interviews. A third way is to actually have lived through the time and events and report what happened through first-hand observation. The The Explosion of Deferred Dreams: Musical Renaissance and Social Revolution in San Francisco, 1965-1975 by San Francisco native Mat Callahan, published by PM Press uses all three. Often times books about popular music become fan literature and lightweight puff-pieces, highlighting the usual tabloid events. In contrast The Explosion of Deferred Dreams looks deeply into politics, the music business, journalism and human interactions of the time and shows how for a very brief period a special sort of music freedom and political idealism existed in San Francisco only to eventually be coopted and controlled by the press and music industry.
While Callahan is not an academic, the book at times takes on the flavor of a graduate-level thesis with an abundance of footnotes and references. It is a very well-researched, insightful look at a dynamic time in the Bay Area. No stone is left unturned and the interactions between the Black Panthers, The San Francisco Mime Troupe, Sly and the Family Stone, Jefferson Airplane, The Diggers, Bill Graham and many others shows how different the actual history was when compared to how the history eventual was marketed by the music industry and press. Callahan likes to set the record straight. He points out how journalists and the music industry coopted and invented terms such as “The Summer of Love,” “hippie” and the “The San Francisco Sound.” that were actually foreign to the people and movements of the time. (There is no mention of the term “groovy” but I have a feeling that was some marketing department as well.) In actuality, the time period was really about protesting the Vietnam War, the movement, consciousness and liberation, ideas and goals that were revolutionary and a bit too much for the people in power. In short time the music industry relegated the music and time period to a genre or style while the music at that time was about doing away with categories and genres.
“..there was no “Summer of Love.” This was a media creation that passed into popular usage the same way Tampax became the generic name for sanitary napkins. Journalists and publicity agents (is there really a difference?) repeated this phrase so often that it became a common referent; it was a short easy way to identify a time and place without doing the hard work of chronicling what actually transpired , thereby preventing its lessons from being learned.”
With all history there is nothing like the ability to be a fly on the wall. The book begins with a personal story of being on the Hoover Middle School playground in 1965 and the life-changing event of simply learning about the Beatles. There are many interesting parts of the book that relay these personal experiences during his youth including the interactions between certain San Francisco High schools and what was going on in the Haight-Ashbury and Mission Districts. Definitely insider knowledge where you sometimes get the feeling that you a talking to some local at a corner bar. With all the careful research this barstool wisdom does come off all the more believable.
While the music industry is so often a slick packaged product wanting things in neat buckets we all know that in reality, events and people are complicated. I never knew that Bill Graham got his start with the Mime Troupe, a very anti-corporate, leftist theater group still in action today. There are other interesting facts along the way. Reaching back a few decades you learn that Jerry Wexler was the guy in 1949 who came up with the idea of replacing the category “Race Music” with “Rhythm and Blues.” Who knew? It is this sort of romp through an academic angle and the first-hand accounts that makes the book so compelling.
Anyone interested in San Francisco, music and politics and the history of this time period will enjoy The Explosion of Deferred Dreams: Musical Renaissance and Social Revolution in San Francisco, 1965-1975. Some university should give Mr. Callahan an honorary doctorate. He did his homework.
SKU: 9781629632315
Author: Mat Callahan
Publisher: PM Press
ISBN: 9781629632315
Published: 1/2017
Page count: 352