Eight Miles High: Folk-Rock's Flight from Haight-Ashbury to Woodstock

Frankly, I date the acceptance of Folk-Rock and/or Psychedelic Rock to July, 1966, when the Airplane played the Berkeley Folk Festival, sharing a stage with Pete Seeger and Shlomo Carlebach. And The Airplane's best album was "Takes Off". Speaking as one of the many folk who remember the era, to get through this, and several other books on the era, you have to (a) realize your memory applies to what you saw/did/heard, but it is just your own impression filtered through decades of context, and (b) remember not to get too tightly wound around somebody else's apparent need to take an experiential time and wrap it into some predetermined framework. The book captures some of the feeling of the time (much of which, if you remember, was pretty bloody judgmental in certain respects), and I submit that makes it worth reading. Definitive? Show me the agreed-to definitions for any of this stuff, and I'll be happy to apply them. But whoever has them hasn't showed up yet. Grab a chord, and come along for the ride.

Eight Miles High This is a great resource for fans of the late 50s early 60s musical period. Being interested in the US music scene of the period and living in Australia means that the availability of material on this period is almost non-existent. This book gives a excellent background to the music scene and importantly investigates forgotten players who played and influenced others at that time. For example, this book provided background on people such as Dino Valenti, along with others who have faded from the pages of music history but wrote songs and music that influenced other more well-known musicians during the sixties. I am really pleased with this book and recommend it to others. Anne

Another great book about the origins of todays rock n' roll! Very interseting and enlightening!

I found this to be a fine continuation of the story of folk rock. It's just as good as Unterberger's first book about folk rock, called Turn Turn turn. I highly recommend it to fans of Unterberger's other writing, as well as anyone who likes folk, folk-rock, or sixties /early seventies music in general. Unterberger writes with an opinionated but reader- friendly style. His writing lacks the bombast, snobbery, and smug attitude that we often find with some of the old guard of music critics. Unterberger tends to see things in a more open- minded,inclusive way than many of the famous writers like Christgau and Dave Marsh, and Jann Wenner and the other rolling stone writers, who seem to have picked the obvious choices of the era and a few pets like Springsteen and Jackson Browne when considering who is worthy of respect and worth hearing for the era. Nothing against those talented guys, but let's face it: they are where they are in large part because of their annointing by scribes with friends in high places. Everyone else is either dismissed as irrelevant or trash to those writers. Unlike Christgau,Unterberger doesn't waste time with poisonous diatribes. Unlike Marsh he doesn't stick to boring, predictable lists generally comprised of overplayed hits. it's all subjective, true, but anyone with the audacity to list the best Beatles single of all time at a lowly #29 simply should not be read, period! Unterberger lets you know where he stands on a musician or group but doesn't try to force his opinion on you. One can picture getting into a friendly argument with Unterberger , the way guys in bars debate who is worthy of enshrinement in a sports hall of fame, and that's something I have trouble imagining with some of these other writers. I don't always agree with Unterberger, for example, he calls the Jefferson Airplane album Surrealistic Pillow the best of the San Francisco sound, while i would say that while its a great disc, and it might be the most important, i would opt for Moby Grape's stunning debut, even though it is perhaps not exactly indicative of the S.F. sound per se( the most obvious parrallel album is probably Buffalo Springfield's first)- but that is what makes the book so compelling and thought provoking. I also wonder why he mentions the first , much more psychedelic and jazz influenced album by Mad River, who were probably, in my estimation, the best San Francisco area band that never made much of a dent nationally. While their second album is derivative of the likes of The Band, Creedence, the Youngbloods, and others, ( the first one was a lot like Quicksilver or Country Joe) I actually think it is the better of the two, and more of a folk rock/ country rock album. unterberger's book is sure to please the entire range of music afficionados; both the person who just wants to know the story of folk-rock and the sixties enthusiast who is hoping to unearth some interesting tidbits about obscure figures from the remote past are sure