World Countdown was a hip Californian bi-weekly music newspaper that was published only between August 1967 and July 1968. It became stuff of legends as original copies are very rare and are quite expensive to acquire.
Now, Lansdowne book publishers have prepared a new book of the same name that is edited by Richard Morton Jack and contains complete reproductions of the first sixteen issues of this now legendary music newspaper.
As the editor himself notes, “Although it offers a huge range of information and imagery relating to the flowering of the hippie / psychedelic movement, its true joy is that it focuses on music, spanning legends like Buffalo Springfield, Big Brother and the Holding Company, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Love and Jefferson Airplane as well as lesser-known heroes such as the Daily Flash, the Charlatans, the Wildflower, Kaleidoscope and the Sons of Adam.”
World Countdown is a lavish hardback, quarter-bound in cloth – but its print run is far smaller, so I recommend ordering immediately.
The first 150 copies will be accompanied by a beautiful Monterey Pop Festival poster, as featured in the paper in June 1967.
