Psychedelic revival?

[S. Cane]

Inspired by the prog rock thread: do you guys like trippy psychedelic music?

I do, and it doesn't necessarily have to be heavy, or even rock, so to speak. I like it when bands overdo a little with some wet reverb, phasers and leslie speaker emulators.

Tame Impala is an obvious reference, and I like their stuff, though I didn't quite dig the last album.



There's also these folks from the city where my own band is based:

[S. Cane]

I think I've mentioned these guys here before, they're from California but one of the members is Brazilian, IIRC

[OldStrummer]

"Psychedelic," like "prog rock" in the earlier thread, has been redefined a number of times, so I'm not sure exactly what it means anymore. In the 1960s, psychedelic was aimed at the LSD consuming, pot-smoking crowd, where long, extended jams and meandering threads put the listener into drug-induced trance states. If you watch concert videos recorded at the Fillmore Auditorium and the Avalon Ballroom for example, the light show was as much -- if not more sometimes -- than the music. Eric Clapton once remarked something to the effect that Cream would play for hours just repeating the same phrases and noodling because the crowd (and the band!) were too stoned to appreciate anything more.

In the 1990s, the term "psychedelic" was adopted by the ambient/electronic crowd. Also based on drug-induced fevers, the terms "chill" and "downtempo" were taken up to help bring trippers off their psychedelic high. But the music wasn't a band using traditional (?) instruments, but almost entirely electronic, with synths, sequencers, pads and computers.

I know it's popular to put labels on musical styles, but I'm lost these days. "Country" as it's played today I regard as "pop" music with cowboy hats and singers with a twang. R&B isn't what I used to know it then, such as in the Motown Sound, but is now a term applied to Rap. Huh?

What I guess I'm trying to say is that I tend to eschew labels on music, because that sort of means painting performers into corners or boxes. And then I would likely find myself avoiding artists simply because in my mind I don't like the kind of music they're producing based on the label. "Hey, I don't like jazz, and so-and-so plays jazz, so there's no point in me listening to them." I don't want to fall into that rut.

[S. Cane]

Just found these guys on KESP’ YouTube channel. I didn’t know them and they’re from Brazil…

[S. Cane]

Stumbled on these kids, very good stuff:

[DanTheBluesMan]

is there a missing polepiece on the middle pickup?

that was quite good. although I was taking my eye drops after eating a sizable supper and kept drifting off (the drops have a tendency to make me fall asleep and a full belly didn't help)

[Offshore Angler]

I really dig the psychedelic music scene.

But with a caveat - it's out of context today and modern listeners will never understand how it sounded to us in the day and understand its full force. It was more than music. It was the heartbeat of a generation and it's called psychedelic for a reason. It was the soundtrack to the use of psychedelics and represented a movement. Listening to it today sometimes makes me feel like I'm listening to an iso track on a recording or looking at a faded old photograph.

I was just old enough to be dabbling in around the edges of scene, started getting into The Dead in 74 so that was at the tail end of it. By 1980 it was all coke and money and destructive drugs and the scene was pretty much gone.

Chuck

[gibsonjunkie]

When I hear that music now it brings me back to sitting on the beach listening to WABC.

[S. Cane]

When I hear that music now it brings me back to sitting on the beach listening to WABC.

Is that a radio station? From NY?

[gibsonjunkie]

Is that a radio station? From NY?

Yep... WNEW had better music, but the Connecticut Shore rarely got it.

[phantomman]

To me, psychedelic music represents a certain era spawned in the Bay Area during the "Summer Of love" (1967) and its end corresponded -- roughly -- with the festival at Woodstock in August of '69. Few contemporary bands if any can replicate that style. I guess you had to have been there......

[ch willie]

I first started becoming aware of music around the time of Help! and by Sgt. Pepper, I wore paisley scarfs and bell-bottom cords. Most kids in the neighborhood thought me and my brothers to be hippie freaks--we were working class kids who just loved rock and thought psychedelia to be the coolest thing.

Of course as I got older and dabbled in acid and mushrooms, the music had a great purpose. But the last time I tripped on mushrooms, I had an epiphany that every atom of us is separate and that we're all separate, always alone no matter how many folks we have a close relationship with. So much for the universal oversoul.