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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13th Floor Elevators
Can
Family
United States of America
Gong

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Originally Posted by dooman

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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I'll check it out.

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Originally Posted by Tomorrow Never Knows

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.

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the Jazz psych-link goes way futher back to the early 1900s
the begginning of Jazz is psychedelic
I cant think of any particular band names but chck out for example A&E's documentary "History of Marijuana" with Woddy Harelson as the commentator, and they show a few jazz bands from 1920s getting groovy, smoking marijuana, and making some psychedelic music

but u nailed it where the Psychedelic-ROCK link beggins - as i said earlier sorta when they started integrating jazz into rock

Ummmm....I don't think you guys have ever seen a psychedelic. The Floyd Show is the absolute pinnacle of psychedelic experience. No other show on earth can even come close. It was a show of immaculate genious. I saw them twice on the Pulse Tour in 1994.

Check this out and then get back to me... http://video.google.com/videoplay?do...=David+Gilmour

Psytrance!! Psychedelic thats not 30 + years old OO

Astral Projection
Hallucinogen
Infected Mushroom
Dark Soho
Cosmic Gate
Virtual Moon :thumbsup:

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Originally Posted by Tomorrow Never Knows

13th Floor Elevators
Can
Family
United States of America
Gong

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can is so great. there is alot of great psych stuff going on now, most of it is underground though.

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Originally Posted by Euphoric

Psytrance!! Psychedelic thats not 30 + years old OO

Astral Projection
Hallucinogen
Infected Mushroom
Dark Soho
Cosmic Gate
Virtual Moon :thumbsup:

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there are such huge gaps between psy trance and psych rock.

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Originally Posted by JerryGarcia

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

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Yes Jefferson Airplane the fist band that got wide
play with a song about a psychedelic experience
"White Rabbit." I love that song it never gets old.

And the dead known as the warlocks back in those
days were greatly influenced by bluegrass.

This is the music I was raised on. My dad was
a Vietnam vet and became an antiwar protesting
hippie when he got back. I love to get high and
listen to his stories even though i have herd them
all 100s of times. Like the time he went to see The
Doors with my mom and Jim Morisson was to drunk to
sing.

Nice post, for a while i've been copping old schoold psyche rock from the late 60's and noticed how themes havent really changed too much, even the plentiful Emo plasticy teeny bop tracks that parallel the same today, though it sounds better from back then. 13th Floor Elevators are the shyt, esp. Easter Everywhere, Rocky Ericson has good vocals. I tripped the fukk out smoking 40x salvia and listening to Can - Horror Trip in the Paper House a while back, chaotic bliss.

More and Obscured by clouds are HARDLY bland buddy ;)

Pipers at the gates of dawn and A saucerful of secrets were extremely psychadelic. Pink Floyd aren't a one trick pony band. They didn't limit themselves to one genre. Nearly every album had a different theme. The Wall was a rock opera. They were psychadelic, they were progressive at times, they WERE classic rock. Who's to say only one band can claim to have the most influence on psychadelic rock? What, because of a year or two before?
All those bands you mentioned had an influence.

What are some good Gong songs?

Hendrix was the king of the mind-fuck, but there is no music on earth which suits a high better than the music of Bob Marely.

psychedelic is what makes you fly wherever you want.
we all have different destinations.
we all have a different criterion to judge what psychedelic is.
an it is subjective.

Psychedelic music is totally primed to make a big comeback, but one thing is holding it back; the lack of a marketable psychedelic pop/rock artist or band.

Fifteen minute aural paintings arenâ??t exactly going to attract a new audience to psychedelic music. However catchy, carefully produced, well-written and performed songs will.

Just as Pink Floyd needed The Beatles to come out with Revolver, and the Byrds to come out with Fifth Dimension in 1966 in order for Piper to be a hit. Contemporary psychedelic music needs a well-accepted and popular modern band to delve into the genre.

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Originally Posted by Reefer Rogue

What are some good Gong songs?

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Pretty much everything off their third album CAMEMBERT ELECTRIQUE (1971) is amazing. But if I had to go with go with one song off it would probably be You Can't Kill Me. It kinda sounds like early Pink Floyd mixed with Hendrix guitar work and extremely jazzy overtones.

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Originally Posted by UnViaje

Nice post, for a while i've been copping old schoold psyche rock from the late 60's and noticed how themes havent really changed too much, even the plentiful Emo plasticy teeny bop tracks that parallel the same today, though it sounds better from back then. 13th Floor Elevators are the shyt, esp. Easter Everywhere, Rocky Ericson has good vocals. I tripped the fukk out smoking 40x salvia and listening to Can - Horror Trip in the Paper House a while back, chaotic bliss.

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Erickson got fucked over by Texas, he got thrown in a mental institution for almost 4 years (and was electrocuted) for possession of like one joint.

precommercial YES should be included too! their 'tales of topographic oceans' was made for trips along with 'drama' and their other albums made throughout the 70's...

and yeah...elton john's 'madman across the water' is one for anyone's collection!

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Originally Posted by JerryGarcia

Don't forget the San Fransisco scene, with Jefferson Airplane and the Dead.

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i go by the jefferson airplane house like once a week going to pick stuff up in SF. also, if you go in some parts, people still put up old GreatFul Dead posters in their windows from waay back in the day.

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Originally Posted by m.g.

precommercial YES should be included too! their 'tales of topographic oceans' was made for trips along with 'drama' and their other albums made throughout the 70's...

and yeah...elton john's 'madman across the water' is one for anyone's collection!

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YES are more prog then psychadelic imo.

I think the Beatles were definitely the forerunners of the psychedelic sound. But, although somewhat psychedelic, it was still focused on the mainstream audience. Pink Floyd took it one step futher, at least in their early days, creating long, drawn out trip music. So, while the Beatles music was heavily influenced by their psychedelic experiences, Pink Floyd songs like Astronomy Domine, Intersellar Overdrive, etc. were meant to be psychedelic experiences in themselves.

Paralleling the English psychedelic sound was the San Francisco psychedelic sound. Similar but both unique. Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead are the best known but there are a lot of others. Big Brother and The Holding Company and Quicksilver Messenger Service are great too.

Another great psychedelic tune is Paul Butterfield Blues Band's East West. Check it out.

Hare's a link to a live recording of the Grateful Dead playing a free concert in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park back in 1967. http://www.archive.org/details/gd67-...108.sbeok.shnf
This was called the "Human Be-In" and was basically a giant acid party. Signifigant enough to warrant a wikipedia entry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Be-In