A man wearing a hat, shorts, and fringed vest, with a pipe strung onto hit belt loop, dances among a crowd of other audience members at the Sound Storm music festival Poynette, Wisconsin 1970
Like Acid Raindrops
There had been a rumor going around the 1970 Sound Storm music festival being held in Wisconsin, Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters had followed the Grateful Dead to the venue and had something special planned. So when a helicopter hovered over the sea of people and dropped thousands of papers onto them, of course it was acid!
Well it wasn’t…
Two girls smoking Marijuana at Sound Storm music festival Poynette, Wisconsin 1970
Kesey was in actuality not at the concert, there was no big bag of orange sunshine supplied by the brotherhood of eternal love and there was in fact no acid raining from the sky.
Turns out festival staff had identified multiple undercover agents busting people in the crowd and decided to help everyone out. The staff quickly printed thousands of fliers identifying the narcotics officers in the crowd and somehow convinced an idle helicopter pilot to distribute them equally over the crowd.
Even after reading the flier many people in attendance didn’t take a chance, and sampled the flier just in case…
Helicopter dropping fliers identifying undercover narcotics agents at the Sound Storm music festival Poynette, Wisconsin 1970
To the Possibilities of life!
Crowd at the Sound Storm music festival. Poynette, Wisconsin 1970