Editing San Francisco Sound (section)

=== Decline ===

Most of the new local bands signed for large advances with major out-of-town labels, and the creative impetus was gradually lost.  By 1968, the national media attention generated by the Airplane and others had precipitated a very different San Francisco scene than had existed in 1966.  The assassination of Robert F. Kennedy and the escalating Vietnam War darkened the optimism of the Summer of Love era, and the Haight-Ashbury district itself became overwhelmed by runaways and harder drug use. Jefferson Airplane's response to this shift can be heard on the more politicised ''[[Crown of Creation]]'' (1968) and ''Volunteers'' (1969).

By 1971, Chet Helms's Family Dog Productions had gone bankrupt, and Bill Graham was busy running a record label and organising large-scale outdoor concerts.  The original members of the Airplane and the Dead splintered into side projects — Jorma Kaukonen and Jack Casady into [[Hot Tuna]], Paul Kantner into a series of science fiction-themed solo records — as the cohesive communal scene that had defined the late 1960s dissolved.