Psychedelic Music

I have noticed that pretty much everyone my age (I am going to college in the fall) thinks of Pink Floyd as the benchmark for psychedelic music. However I am not sure how they came up with this idea. Just of note, I donâ??t â??hateâ?� Pink Floyd, and this isnâ??t meant to bash them, just question their reputation a bit.

First off Pink Floyd should really be remembered as a prog-rock band. After there first two solid psychedelic albums Piper At The Gates Of Dawn (1967) and A Saucerful Of Secrets (1968), they moved into bland movie soundtracks and then finally mid 70s prog-rock with The Dark Side Of The Moon (1973). Yes they still through in some â??trippyâ?� sound collages in the 70s, but Elton John was doing roughly the same thing at the same time (with much better songwriting).

On the other hand The Beatles became fully psychedelic with Revolver (1966); although Rubber Soul (1965) had many psychedelic overtones. They continued with two psychedelic albums in 1967, Sergeant Pepperâ??s and Magical Mystery Tour. In addition they scattered random psychedelic songs over the next few years (Revolution 9 (1968), Long, Long, Long (1968), Wild Honey Pie (1968), Whatâ??s the New Mary Jane (1968), Only A Northern Song (1968), Its All Too Much (1968) Hey Bulldog (1968) Across The Universe (1970).

The point is to look at Pink Floyd as the preeminent psychedelic band in music history is just wrong. The Beatles had much better songwriting, better musicianship, better lyrics, better selling psychedelic albums (although Floydâ??s also sold amazingly) and they began recording Revolver in 1965, two years before Pink Floydâ??s Piper At The Gates Of Dawn.

While I would call neither The Beatles nor Pink Floyd purely psychedelic (go check out Gong if thatâ??s what you want), in the end Beatles songs like I Am The Walrus, Tomorrow Never Knows, Strawberry Fields Forever and Lucy In The Sky with Diamonds should be remembered as the gold standard for the genre. This is what modern bands should strive to imitate.

The lack of a real good modern psychedelic band stems from this. The 1980s had Robyn Hitchcock and XTC and the 90s had the Brian Jonestown Massacre, and Britpop (Oasis, The Verve, etcâ?¦) all influenced by The Beatles and their contemporaries.

These days we are subject to Pink Floyd imitators like The Mars Volta. Diverse instrumentation, intelligent lyrical themes, lush arrangements, and respect for listenability have all gone away (sorry Mars Volta fans but once the vocals finally come back in after about a half hour Cassandra Gemini has overstayed it welcome by about twenty five minutes).

Opinions?

BTW This kinda dragged on, but somebody better read it, it took me a while to write. :thumbsup:

Don't you think Jimi Hendrix is one of the more noteable psychadelic muscicians?

i think of jazz as the beginning of psychedelic music.
if u trace the roots back of jazz it goes back to musicians who started using marijuana in early 1900s. They played a wacky style that was intellectual, outside the box, relaxing, and just fun. the whole conecpt of jazz is psychedelic. take allan holdsworth - every note he plays is so outside the box yet fits together and flows so nicely and subtley melodic. jazz takes unexpected twists and turns more than any other you music will find. the entire genre title of "progressive" to is linked to jazz in my eyes. take rock or metal and "jazz it up a bit" - extend those chords, add some complexity to the song structure, create sounds outside the box, etc - and its progressive.

oh and about modern day psychedelic bands...theres tonnnnnnnnnes of extremely good ones, let me take a min ill write a post

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Originally Posted by dooman

i think of jazz as the beginning of psychedelic music.
if u trace the roots back of jazz it goes back to musicians who started using marijuana in early 1900s. They played a wacky style that was intellectual, outside the box, relaxing, and just fun. the whole conecpt of jazz is psychedelic. take allan holdsworth - every note he plays is so outside the box yet fits together and flows so nicely and subtley melodic. jazz takes unexpected twists and turns more than any other you music will find. the entire genre title of "progressive" to is linked to jazz in my eyes. take rock or metal and "jazz it up a bit" - extend those chords, add some complexity to the song structure, create sounds outside the box, etc - and its progressive.

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I agree, two really good examples of the jazz-pych link are free-jazz musician Sun Ra, and The Byrds lead guitarist, and co-founder, Roger McGuinn, who was heavily inspired by Coltraine. Check out The Byrds breakthrough acid rock song Eight Miles Eight from 1966. McGuinnâ??s soloing sounds like a saxophone, while he actually played it on a slightly distorted 12 string.

Don't forget the San Fransisco scene, with Jefferson Airplane and the Dead. Country Joe and the Fish were great too.

psychedelic music has only expanded and grown in rock and metal especially.
its expanded so much and there are soo many bands in the style that it has spawned subgenres such as doom, post-rock, stoner, ambient, noise, drone, experimental, sludge

for an example of just a few hundred bands check here
http://www.metal-archives.com/
and in the search use keyword psychedelic, progressive, doom, post-rock, stoner, ambient, noise, drone, experimental, sludge, etc.
and change search in to "music genre" from "band name"

If you want to talk about the "most psychedelic" band, I suggest a good, long look at Strawberry Alarm Clock.

a few of Subterranean Masquerade's reviews, one band of hundreds on that site

"I will warn you all right from scratch: Subterranean Masquerade is different. You need an open mind to listen to this and fully appreciate every song on the album. I've been listening to the album for a few months and only now do I appreciate everything on it fully.

SubMasq have managed to blend jazz, progressive rock, psychedelic rock and elements of metal together to a diverse mixture that both soothes the mind but puts it to work as well.

It's unique, soothing, philosophical, everything fits.

While there appears to be a running theme of psychosis that the band utilizes, they manage to invoke feelings of euphoric and tranquil states, of the lighter side of insanity if you will. Indeed, at times it feels as though you are in a floating dream, a realm in which the shapes, colors and feelings float by, and suspend for a minute, before new ones sweep in to take their long forgotten place."

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Originally Posted by JerryGarcia

If you want to talk about the "most psychedelic" band, I suggest a good, long look at Strawberry Alarm Clock.

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