San Francisco Sound

A 1960s rock style associated with San Francisco counterculture, marked by extended improvisation, electric guitar, and connections to psychedelic culture.

Psychedelic rock: A rock genre shaped by attempts to evoke or accompany altered states of consciousness. Its use of studio effects and expansive improvisation gave the San Francisco style much of its musical vocabulary.
Jefferson Airplane: An American rock band formed in San Francisco in 1965 and central to the city’s psychedelic scene. Its songs and performances became among the best-known expressions of the local sound.
Haight-Ashbury: A San Francisco neighborhood that became a center of 1960s counterculture. Its residents, venues, and communal life formed a prominent social setting for the music.
Jam band: A rock band whose concerts commonly feature extended improvisation and reworked songs. The San Francisco groups helped establish the improvisational concert tradition later associated with jam bands.
Acid rock: A loud, guitar-centered form of psychedelic rock associated with extended performances and distorted sound. The term often describes the heavier, improvisational side of San Francisco bands.
Grateful Dead: An American rock band formed in the San Francisco Bay Area in 1965, known for improvisational concerts. Its open-ended live performances made improvisation a defining public face of the style.
Human Be-In: A 1967 gathering in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park associated with the counterculture movement. The event joined local bands and countercultural audiences in a highly visible public gathering.
Live album: A music album recorded during a live performance rather than primarily in a studio. The scene’s emphasis on distinctive concerts made live recordings especially central to its legacy.
Folk rock: A style combining rock instrumentation and rhythms with folk songwriting and vocal traditions. Folk-rock supplied song forms and harmonies that some Bay Area groups expanded into longer performances.
Big Brother and the Holding Company: A San Francisco rock band best known for its association with singer Janis Joplin. Its raw, blues-inflected performances showed a less polished strain of the local sound.

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