The San Francisco sound refers to rock music performed live and recorded by San Francisco -based rock groups of the mids to early s. It was associated with the counterculture community in San Francisco, particularly the Haight-Ashbury district, during these years. Hence, it could support a 'scene'. According to an announcer for a TV show that Ralph J. Gleason hosted: "In his syndicated newspaper column, Mr. Gleason has been the foremost interpreter of the sounds coming out of what he calls 'the Liverpool of the United States.
Gleason believes the San Francisco rock groups are making a serious contribution to musical history. The new sound, which melded many musical influences, was perhaps heralded in the live performances of Jefferson Airplane from on , who put out an LP record earlier than nearly all the other new bands August Thompson , one of the Bay Area cultural-scene boosters, was a big early fan of the group: "Thompson extolled the sonic energy of the Jefferson Airplane as it pulsed around the California locales that nursed the psychedelic era The bohemian predecessor of the hippie culture in San Francisco was the " Beat Generation " style of coffee houses and bars, whose clientele appreciated literature, a game of chess, music in the forms of jazz and folk style , modern dance, and traditional crafts and arts like pottery and painting.
Acoustic music had had an avid following far and wide, but it was "a fading world of traditional folk and Brechtian art songs. According to biography author Robert Greenfield, "Jon McIntire [manager of the Grateful Dead from the late sixties to the mid-eighties] points out that the great contribution of the hippie culture was this projection of joy. The beatnik thing was black, cynical, and cold.
The new music was loud and community-connected: bands sometimes presented free concerts in Golden Gate Park and " happenings " at the city's several psychedelic clubs and ballrooms.
The many bands that formed signalled a shift from one subculture to the next. Monterey, California is about road miles south of San Francisco. At the June Monterey Pop Festival , Bay Area groups performed from the same stage as established and fast-rising musical groups and well-known individual artists from the U. Soon after, Ralph J. Each San Francisco band had its characteristic sound, but enough commonalities existed that there was a regional identity.
