Daydream Sunset The 60s Counterculture in the 70s

The 1960s are remembered for radical politics, explorations of sexuality, drug experimentation and rock and roll. All of these elements composed the 60s counterculture. Then things changed. Richard Nixon got elected president, and together with Congress, made the war on drugs a cultural and political crusade replete with lots of cops, guns and constitutional violations. Youthful protesters were murdered by authorities in Berkeley, Kent State and Jackson State. Divisions over tactics and politics combined with police repression to splinter and dissipate the left political movement. The Vietnam war finally ended and Abbie Hoffman went underground after a cocaine bust. Meanwhile, in one of its most manipulative moments, corporate America was quickly figuring out how to put sex, drugs and rock and roll up for sale. Hippies became freaks; Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison and Pigpen died untimely deaths, but the rock show went on. The 1970s were the decade the Sixties spirit struggled to survive while becoming a shadow of its dreams.

Daydream Sunset is the story Ron Jacobs tells in his colorful history of the 1970s. From the Fillmore East to Oakland Coliseum; from Berkeley's Telegraph Ave to the streets of Europe, this alternative history of this fraught time will make you feel like dancing in your seats and wondering what might have been. One part reminiscence and several parts cultural history, Jacobs has crafted a thrilling and intimate narrative that takes the reader on a trip through a crazy history some people don't remember and others want us to forget.