The psychedelic movement generally describes the convergence of accessible hallucinogenic drugs with youth movements such as antiwar agitation, civil rights and the New Left its soundtrack was music that evoked the time-bending, echoic, disorienting effects of an acid trip its visual aesthetic privileged color blends and a meta-perceptual flourish, as in the poster for the 1968 rock musical “Hair,” with its racially ambiguous mirrored images in green and red, or Milton Glaser’s iconic 1966 poster of Bob Dylan, in which the singer’s black silhouette sprouts yarnlike strands of multicolored hair that appear to contain the word “Elvis.” The few historians who take psychedelic culture seriously assume its most important actors were white. history - psychedelia - even as the equally long history of co-opting and erasing Black innovation helps to explain why the term now conjures images of young white people dancing lethargically to the Grateful Dead. We might not be surprised, then, to find Black artists at the vanguard of one of the most “out” movements in U.S. Their brief invasion of Sullivan’s studio audience, while unusual for the show, followed a long tradition of Black artistic expansion - of “playing out,” “styling out,” “showing out.” These phrases describe African Americans’ longstanding, extravagant defiance of repressive musical, fashion and behavioral codes. If the group couldn’t make any more time for themselves (hence their pack-it-all-in medley), they could make a little more space and, for a moment, paint it Black. Men in the audience are wearing suits that “weren’t even cool suits - they look like accountants.” Before heading back to the stage, Stone finds what may have been the one Black man in the crowd and slaps him five. “We look like we just landed in a spaceship from Venus,” the group’s original drummer, Greg Errico, tells me of the clip. We see why when he leaves the organ and heads out into the studio audience with his sister Rose: After her solo, he performs a dance routine drawn from Africa, patting juba. An ensemble of seven Black and white men and women in sequined blazers, platinum wigs and vinyl vests, they played a rapid-fire medley of their most affirming hits: “Everyday People,” “Dance to the Music,” “Sing a Simple Song,” “I Want to Take You Higher.” They had just released their third studio album, “Life” (1968), and everyone looks excited, although Sly Stone alone appears confident that the whole thing will come off. IN DECEMBER OF 1968, the TV show host Ed Sullivan introduced the group Sly and the Family Stone onto his stage.
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