Who Did Psychadelia Better?

[PS]

1. The Beatles' LOVE mixes in surround on a great system (particularly STRAWBERRY and WALRUS and some of the collages) come closest to what I THOUGHT I was hearing in those glory days when I used to get blitzed. A 3-D glasses exploded view of their music, where every detail hangs in mid-air around the room...)

Other Beatles psych candidates besides Tomorrow in terms of feel or ambience:

I'm Only Sleeping
Blue Jay Way
Only a Northern Song
Long, Long, Long
Rain
Revolution 9
Baby You're a Rich Man
Hello, Goodbye
Magical Mystery Tour
Day in the Life
Flying

2. The ultimate psychedelic listening experience for me in college (albeit a little late, 1973) was Side 1 of Todd Rundgren's A WIZARD, A TRUE STAR, straight through. The acoustic spaces and cartoon places (and the sheer beauty of the endless layers of background vox, inseparable from the instruments in the spacious mix) was the closest approximation of the psychedelic experience for me. You would fly right off the cliff into space at the end of LE FEEL INTERNACIONALE. It was an absolute shock coming off of the brilliant pop of SOMETHING/ANYTHING...became a Friday night ritual in my dorm room. That album was truly visionary, in the SONG CYCLE sense (another great album to trip to - imagine this album re-mixed in DTS surround...).

ECHOES side 2 by Floyd was also a place to go on occasion.

3. SMILEY, for me, is much more about pot than acid.

[Mahalo]

Syd Barret is the most psychadelic songwriter there ever was, IMO.

God rest his soul.

 


The Beatles and BB's wrote some incredible psychadelic songs, but EVERYTHING Syd did sounds psychadelic--

[John]

For my part, the Beatles did psychedelic music much better. Brian doesn't even approach what they were doing, because it wasn't his fight. His music, as he said himself, isn't psychedelic, it's psychedelicate. It's a whole other ballgame. He didn't write music intended to be psychedelic, he wanted to hit the heights.

It's a funny question anyway; and I'm surprised in six pages, no-one has mentioned the theory in Revolution In The Head: that LSD affected the English and the Americans differently. That something in our (British) genetics or upbringing / experiences made the music the Brits made go one way, and the American mind go another.

The Brits take acid and revert to childhood - look at Piper, or Traffic's "Here We Go Round The Mulberry Bush" or The Beatles' stuff: "When I was a boy, everything was right" / "All the world is birthday cake" plus the Northern childhood semi-concept that is Peppers - all floral clocks, Lewis Carroll, circuses and other off-kilter Victoriana. Everyone's in toytown.

The American musicians largely went revolutionary or in some other way future oriented - "Up Against the Wall" or "Change Is Now".

Not even close to a perfect theory, but I just thought I should throw it in.

[Roger Ryan]

That's an interesting theory. As an American, I prefer the British's "Everyone's In Toytown" take on psychedelia. If we are to judge SMiLE as Brian's psychedelic album, it seems he is more taken with the British approach as well. But instead of Victoriana, SMiLE embraces the wild west and the pioneers which I guess would be the American equivalent.

[Ana-Lu]

I think psychedelia in general was best in 1966.  By the time of Sgt. Pepper in mid 67, it had gone over the top.

[Mark H.]

The intro to Cal Girls is way psychedelic...very mystical, a sense of bright sun, aural candy....and then you come back to earth as the verses kick in.

Revolver is the best psychedelic album with Piper at the Gates of Dawn a close second.

Smiley Smile is a weed album.

[Ana-Lu]

Revolver is the best psychedelic album with Piper at the Gates of Dawn a close second.

The mono versions of both.

[Bicyclerider]

No contest, the Beatles.  Brian made music inspired by drug experiences, but the music was not itself "psychedelic"  (i.e. trying to replicate in sound the psychedelic experience or making the subject matter of the song drugs). 

[brianc]

**If we are to judge SMiLE as Brian's psychedelic album, it seems he is more taken with the British approach as well. But instead of Victoriana, SMiLE embraces the wild west and the pioneers which I guess would be the American equivalent.**

Musically, maybe. There are some definite campy elements to the "Smile" productions. But lyrically, it'd be hard for me to label songs like "Bicycle Rider," "Wonderful," "Child Is the Father of the Man" or "Surf's Up" as toytown.

[RONDEMON]

I don't do that kinda stuff, but Dark Side of the Moon makes me feel like I should. The spacey chords, tons of phasers and watery guitars. So good.
Also, Wizard a True Star is mindblowing as well. So much packed on those songs.

[Roger Ryan]

**If we are to judge SMiLE as Brian's psychedelic album, it seems he is more taken with the British approach as well. But instead of Victoriana, SMiLE embraces the wild west and the pioneers which I guess would be the American equivalent.**

Musically, maybe. There are some definite campy elements to the "Smile" productions. But lyrically, it'd be hard for me to label songs like "Bicycle Rider," "Wonderful," "Child Is the Father of the Man" or "Surf's Up" as toytown.

Well, of course John's use of the term "toytown" was a catchall. The point being that American psychedelia was more on the order of "Let's start a revolution" and "these are the shapes of things to come in the 21st dimension" whereas SMiLE's more childlike interest in cowboys and indians, vegetables and barnyards is closer to the nostalgic British version of psychedelia. To compare the Beatles and Beach Boys: "Wonderful" = "She's Leaving Home", "Surf's Up" = "A Day In The Life", "Child Is Father Of The Man" = "Tomorrow Never Knows", etc.

[brianc]

I see. Makes sense.

"Smile" is very playful, although there seems to be some slight revolution lyrics.

[John]

Yeah, but the revolution had already passed, because surely they were singing about the colonization of the United States. Singing about a golden future that had already happened centuries ago. That's pretty cool. Driving the golden spike and moving on to civilization and utopia, as if it hadn't already happened.

Although the main Worms theme is very music-boxy.

[brianc]

"Come about hard and join the young."

I think they used some of those colonial subjects as way of interpreting for then-present relevance. Plus, Van Dyke seems to be obsessed with America as flawed, improvisational subject. I said it somewhere else, but VDP approached America in an almost post-modern way.

[John]

Maybe the concept was they were mapping the new young America, and it paralleled the mapping of the old America.

[chris.metcalfe]

The Brits take acid and revert to childhood - look at Piper, or Traffic's "Here We Go Round The Mulberry Bush" or The Beatles' stuff: "When I was a boy, everything was right" / "All the world is birthday cake" plus the Northern childhood semi-concept that is Peppers - all floral clocks, Lewis Carroll, circuses and other off-kilter Victoriana. Everyone's in toytown.

The American musicians largely went revolutionary or in some other way future oriented - "Up Against the Wall" or "Change Is Now".

Pretty simple reason for this - as Robyn Hitchcock recently noted - you guys were getting killed in Vietnam, had civil rights traumas, Watergate break-ins and a lot to protest about. We (Brits) were happily drinking tea, listening to Bookends and the Incredible String Band, and pretending to be really radical at the Isle of Wight festival by, er, not paying to get in.

[chris.metcalfe]

Blue Jay Way is psychedelic even though it's just about George's friends getting lost on on their way to his house, just because of the way it was played and recorded.

Big parallel with that song to 'Busy Doin' Nothin'?
Both songs take on an eerie aftertaste in light of the Manson events of a year or so later. Did he get lost in Beverley Hills too?

[John]

The Brits take acid and revert to childhood - look at Piper, or Traffic's "Here We Go Round The Mulberry Bush" or The Beatles' stuff: "When I was a boy, everything was right" / "All the world is birthday cake" plus the Northern childhood semi-concept that is Peppers - all floral clocks, Lewis Carroll, circuses and other off-kilter Victoriana. Everyone's in toytown.

The American musicians largely went revolutionary or in some other way future oriented - "Up Against the Wall" or "Change Is Now".

Pretty simple reason for this - as Robyn Hitchcock recently noted - you guys were getting killed in Vietnam, had civil rights traumas, Watergate break-ins and a lot to protest about. We (Brits) were happily drinking tea, listening to Bookends and the Incredible String Band, and pretending to be really radical at the Isle of Wight festival by, er, not paying to get in.

What do you mean "you guys"? I'm in Manchester, England.

Hitchcock may be right, but I don't think that accounts for the childlike music-hally nature of things in 1967 British music.

[DonnyL]

I think the first pysch-rock song released is "See My Friends" by the Kinks, certainly the earliest to use raga-inspired riffs as well.  released july 30 65, which predates the release of "sunshine superman" and "eight miles high" by at least a few months.

[donald]

Surely it was all in the mind of the bee holder.

Jethro Tull, Frank Zappa, CSN, and Jefferson Airplane all were equally interesting during those times of introspection and heightend perception.  I found George Harrison Electronic Sounds positively mind zappling one day.