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Psychedelic scholars have long tried to pin down just what the Grateful Dead's Jerry Garcia did on this album (he is credited as "musical and spiritual adviser"). But the real trip is the Airplane's concise sorcery, a hallucinatory distillation of folk-blues vocals, garage-rock guitar and crisp pop songwriting. The effects were felt nationwide. Grace Slick's vocal showcases, "White Rabbit" and "Somebody to Love," made Surrealistic Pillow a commercial smash during San Francisco's Summer of Love, and Marty Balin's spectral "Today" is still the greatest ballad of that city's glory days.
Total album sales: 500,000
Peak chart position: 3