Open Up, Tune In, Turn On

ROCK 'N' ROLL

The snarl of an engine splits the stillness. Out of the half-light, the projected silhouette of a Piper Cub glides ghostlike across a side wall. Suddenly, sound track and silhouette become a screaming, whooshing jet that dives at the stage and disintegrates with a shattering roar in the midst of six musicians. The drummer roars back with a thumping beat. The guitarists twang away lustily. And, momentum building, voices wailing and all systems gogo, the Jefferson Airplane blasts off.

The launching pad is San Francisco's Fillmore Auditorium, where for the past year and a half the combo with the singular name has fashioned a freewheeling style of music that has made it the hottest new rock group in the country. The Airplane is the anointed purveyor of the San Francisco Sound, a heady mixture of blues, folk and jazz that began as the private expression of the hippie underground and only recently bubbled to the surface. Now, in such cavernous San Francisco halls as the Fillmore and the Avalon Ballroom, as well as in rollerskating rinks, movie theaters, veterans' halls, park bandstands, college gyms and roped-off streets from Pacific Heights to Butchertown, about 300 bands are inviting the faithful to "blow your mind" with the new sound. Hairy hippies all, they go by such fanciful names as the Moby Grape, the Grateful Dead, the Allnight Apothecary, the Quicksilver Messenger Service, Big Brother and the Holding Company, Country Joe and the Fish, the Loading Zone, and the Yellow Brick Road.

Frock Coats & Turbans. In its permutations, the San Francisco Sound encompasses everything from bluegrass to Indian ragas, from Bach to jug-band music—often within the framework of a single song. It is a raw, raucous, rough-hewn sound that has the spark and spontaneity of a free-for-all jam session. Most of the groups write their own songs and, unlike most rock 'n' rollers, improvise freely, building climax upon climax in songs that run on for 20 minutes or more. It is a compelling entreaty to open up, tune in and turn on. Says one regular Fillmore irregular: "Fight it, stay aloof and critical, and you'll suffer one of the most painful headaches imaginable."

The sound is also a scene. With its roots in the LSDisneyland of the Haight Ashbury district, the music is a reflection of the defiant new bohemians, their art nouveau and madly mod fashions. Performances at the Fillmore attempt to induce psychedelic experiences without drugs. The hippies and teenyboppers, wearing everything from Arab caftans and top hats to frock coats and turbans, huddle over sticks of burning incense, casually daub the floors and each other with fluorescent paint.