The Smiley Smile Message Board

Love - Forever Changes
Os Mutantes - Self-Titled
Caetano Veloso - First Self-Titled album
The Doors - Self-Titled
Pink Floyd - The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn

The Beach Boys - Smiley Smile
The Beatles - Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
The 13th Floor Elevators - The Psychedelic Sounds of the 13th Floor Elevators
Various Artists - Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era, 1965-1968

I'll mention, in passing, "Sgt. Pepper"; to elaborate on why it is generally considered the greatest psychedelic album of all time would dismantle its very standing as that.

Some other popular choices: Smiley Smile, Magical Mystery Tour, Revolver, Disraeli Gears, Are You Experienced?, Younger Than Yesterday, The Psychedelic Sounds of the 13th Floor Elevators, Hurdy Gurdy Man.

Uh, Satanic Magesty's Request?  Notorious Byrd Brothers?  HELLO?

Anthem of the Sun - Grateful Dead   

Ogden's Nut Gone Flake - The Small Faces   

The Time Has Come - Chambers Brothers   

Twelve Dreams of Dr Sardonicus - Spirit   

Happy Trails - Quicksilver Messenger Service   

Vincebus Eruptum - Blue Cheer

Sell Out - Who

Any Hendrix

The Move (self-titled)
A Gift From a Flower to a Garden by Donovan

Oh, wait!!!

How could I forget...

...Odessy And Oracle!

the Hangman's Beautiful Daughter - the incredible string band
s.f. sorrow - the pretty things

there's plenty, but these two cannot be beaten.


as for modern stuff, i'd go for:

dusk at cubist castle - olivia tremor control
vibrasonic - vibrasonic

Anthem of the Sun -- Grateful Dead
S.F. Sorrow -- the Pretty Things

Easter Everywhere - The 13th Floor Elevators
The Perfect Prescription - Spacemen 3

Any one heard Del Shannon's album "The Further adventures of Charles Westover"

His attempt at going Psych, a really good album too IMO.

Another fave of mine;
Electric Music for the Body and Mind- Country Joe and The Fish.

Oh, hell, Ian, if we're opening it up to other decades, I have to add "Loveless" by My Bloody Valentine!

Lawrence Welk

The Accordian Player at the Gates of Dawn

Ray Conniff

Incense and liniment

Iron Butterfly In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida

Electric Prunes Mass in F Minor

Iron Butterfly, interesting choice. THE band that led from the evolution of psychedelia into heavy metal. Either them or Blue Cheer.

Vanilla Fudge, too.

Vanilla Fudge is in my top 5 favorite groups. One of the most underrated bands in any form of music. They only had the best rhythm section in rock 'n roll, man! Bogert and Appice!

Do you like their albums with Beck? Lester Bangs was a big booster of those.

BBA is one tight jamming powerhouse. I dig them, have their album on vinyl.

Cool. I think they blow away the overrated and Muzaky Jan Hammer lineup of the Beck Group.

Meh.....I do like Hammer's album "The First Seven Days", a very good jazz/electro set. He's an awesome keyboardist, especially with Mahavishnu Orchestra.

They deserve their own thread one of these days. (I'd start one myself but I haven't given them a career retrospective listen in many decades). Genuinely psychedelic, but also, on occasion, lucidly, brilliantly hilarious, a quality in somewhat short supply on most psych offerings. Their "Minotaur's Song" predicts much of what's absurd in both Monty Python and Robyn Hitchcock, as in

Equally funny at times, and in a rather similar way, but more genuinely disintegrated and disturbing are Syd Barrett's two solo records. Where does contrived nursery whimsy (like Effervescing Elephant) leave off and utter ravings of a (sensitive) lunatic locked up in Broadmoor or Bedlam begin? These records pose that puzzler again and again. Wolfpack could just be smart Rudyard Kipling-esque 'discriminating buffalo man' projection into the jungle or forest primeval... taken as a lyric alone, it's coherent and first rate as poetry:


nightmare poetry however, and the panic-excitement of the agitated shaman performance is almost too vividly breathing in your face from moist muzzle and slathering jaws!

Between the light, manic witty flights  and the infestations of savage beasts into his cell and self (transforming into a wolf after dark; chased by armies of rats, rats, rats!), there are long desolate stretches of  feeling "alone and unreal". Barrett is only rivalled by Romantic poet gone mad John Clare in being able to articulate his own broken down state with words and music that make sense and move us. The following could be the emblematic verse summing up both albums (Barrett, and Madcap Laughs):
"Reason it is written on the brambles
stranded on the spikes - my blood red, oh listen"

EDIT: What do you know? Syd turned 60 today. Happy birthday, Syd!

"Are You Experienced?"
"Court of the Crimson King"

Yes, we need a String Band thread. We REALLY need to hip some folks round these parts to the CRIMINALLY UNDERAPPRECIATED delights of one of the greatest bands in history.

No-one has mentioned the great album by The Crazy World of Arthur Brown produced by Pete Townshend. Classic psychedelia.

One (or was it both?) of the Incredible String Band mainstays joined the Scientologists (which I understand scuppered the band's career). Maybe someone can kindly post a yousendit of a sample of the ISB for the delectation of Board members............................

The United States of America album is pretty psychedelic.

Good call on the Crazy World of Arthur Brown.

No one mentioned Free Your Mind And Your Ass Will Follow by Funkadelic yet. That was recorded ON acid in one night.

hrrmmm

Ogden Nut Gone Flake/ Small Faces

Oddessey and Oracel/ The Zombies

Revolver/ The Beatles

Tangrine Dream / Kelidioscope (even tho flight from ayshia aint on there)

Nuggets both artiyfacts from the original pyshcdellic era and the sunny pop sh*t

xoxoxo
suga

Where is the Pere Ubu?

dood
 I have been wanting to check them out forever, I just havent gotten around to looking into which is a good album to get

 Oh yeah you cannot forget about the rainparade, oliva tremor or the 14 iced bears (that is my shizz)

xoxoxoxo
suga

Ah, well my faviortes are The Modern Dance, Dub Housing, and New Picnic Time.  If you can find their box set, get that.

Thanks man

xo
suga

Let's not forget that masterpiece of psychedelia by Van Dyke Parks entitled Song Cycle--the best psychedelic album of all time as far as I'm concerned (Piper is a VERY close second).

Dude! What about "Terminal Tower"? That would be my Ubu pick par excellence.

It's good, but I never listen to it after getting the box.  They really should have made disc one of the box set its own release, but Terminal Tower isn't a bad place to start.  That's what I did.

I went whole-hog and ponied up for the box, too, but for the more trepidatious "Terminal Tower" isn't bad. But the box is great. And OOP.

 I am just now warming up to song cycle... its good, it was just hard for me to wrap my ears around it... but with time.... I am sure I could really dig it...

xoxoo
suga

When the alt version of "Tomorrow Never Knows" was released in '96 on Antholgy 2, it would have been interesting to have put it into the hands of Tricky (who was at the apex of his career as the king of trance/trip-hop acid-house music) and get him to do a remix for the ravers.........................

'Live/Dead'

Can't believe no-one's mentioned Pink Floyd's 'Piper At The Gates Of Dawn' in this thread yet.  That's a fantastic album.

I can't believe nobody's mentioned Jefferson Airplane's "Surrealistic Pillow" or the first (and only?) Great Society album.

I can't believe you didn't see the 3 or 4 times it's already been mentioned.

Jefferson Airplane's "After Bathing At Baxter's" and "Crown of Creation" are supreme psychedelic albums. You can be a person who never touches drugs or booze, but if the music can rip your head open and mess with your brain, well it must be pretty powerful stuff.............

Those two JA albums were actually the background music of of a couple of my early solo "flights".......I remember listening to If You Feel as I was "taking off"....perfect lyrics for such a thing

.............if you feel like china breaking if you feel like laughing...break china laughing..

if you feel like leaves fallin,  if you feel like smilin......fall leaves smiling...fall leaves smilin..

if you feel like love makin,  if you feel like flyin,  make love flyin flyin flyin!!!!

and the band just a cookin....and that Jorma Kaukonen screeching wah-wah......

.................

The Moody Blues - Days of Future Passed
The Moody Blues - In Search of the Lost Chord
The Beatles - Magical Mystery Tour

HEAD!

Where's your HEAD at?

PROCOL HARUM'S FIRST ALBUM!  Kaleidescope, Whiter Shade Of Pale, Repent Walpurgis. 

Trower's work on there sounds like the building blocks of David Gilmour's signature wonderful guitar sound.


Monkees - PAC&J

Whatever The Small Faces "Itchycoo Park" was on.   That song PURE psychedelia. 


Now Love's Forever Changes?  What is so great about that mediocre thing?   People act like it's like some major stuff when compared to the rest of psychedelic rock, it's like comparing the Eagles to Yes when it comes to musicianship.

Or Yes to Steely Dan.  Why would you listen to the Eagles?

 ;D ;D ;D :'(

Hahahaha.  Good call.  I'd never listen to that bland castor-oil-taste-sound of a band.  I hear that and I think of groups of socially inept idiots who drink nothing but Budweiser.

And Jeff Baxter is a blazing guitarist...big ego self-serious exaggerator, but an excellent axeman.

Very true.  And I like some Yes.  I need to get a vinyl copy of the one you mentioned since Keith Levene is a big fan.

 ;D

Who gives a f*** about the musicianship? Forever Changes could have been played on tin cans for all I care -- that album is about the SONGWRITING. And damn brilliant it is, too.

Yep. Who loves ya, Rake.

Well, wood for trees I suppose.  We all make mistakes.

Juts fodain' witcha, buddy!

Peanut Butter Conspiracy
Cream 'Disraeli Gears' and the studio 'Wheels of Fire'
Left Banke
Strawberry Alarm Clock
Traffic 'Mr Fantasy'
Donovan 'Gift from a flower to a garden'
Soft Boys 'Underwater Moonlight' (1980)
Nick Nicely 'Hilly Fields(1892)' (1983) (heehee)

i love donovans gift album, monkees head, simon & garfunkle parsley ....& Bookends...

but truthfully, this is for the Tripper's here, which of these Definate Psych albums will u turn OFF if the TRIP became way toooo much???

i actually turned off strawberry fields b/w are you exp. (the song) i had recorded on tape in the middle of Exp. once cause it actually induced a freak out in my mind....no sh*t!!! i got thru strawberry fields though....

after which i put on bookends and came back down....

i actually turned off sgt.peppers cause it was so familliar, it bored me!!!
btw...the beach boys concert'73 is a great come down record!!!!

WHAT??? No Music Machine represented??
Turn on! on Original Sound & Bonniwell Music Machine self titled release on Warner Brothers.
Both undeniable psyche classics.

Is anyone familiar with them besides Ian & myself? Very dark, percussive sounding pop.
They used to tune their guitars down 1 full step to D to give it a more haunting tone.
UK's Big Beat is supposed to release a monster 2 CD set this spring with loads of unreleased goodies!
Dig 'em folks, really!

Speaking of ultimate psychedelic music...have you heard the Robert Goulet version of Green Tambourine?

Man ...what a trip!!! :D :D :D

That to me is THE most psyched out record. Other records of that era try to be (Sell Out isn't- that is the sound of a band with focus and not doing hard drugs). Mr Fantasy is just whacked out. Totally.

THe Beatles real true moment of psychadelia was, of course, before the herd. Tomorrow Never Knows is IT. Sgt Pepper is whimsy.

Satannic Majesties is PROBABLY the real thing but they were still in their copying the Beatles phase so they could have just been faking it.....

I think Are You Experienced and Axis:Bold As Love encapsulate the feeling of the psychadelic era better than most, even though they weren't trying to - I think Jimi was just naturally psychadelic - it just flowed out of him. Others had to ingest huge quantities of drugs to get the same effect and look what it did to most of them. Poor Syd....

(http://images.windowsmedia.com/img/prov_i/300_80/2b983146-98d6-4c25-b039-cea3e03e398f_077774638456_800.jpg)

(http://images-eu.amazon.com/images/P/B000024D4P.03.LZZZZZZZ.jpg)

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Those albums...fNck...I'm tripping...ya'll feelin' that sh!t???

The Beatles - Magical Mystery Tour
The Beach Boys - Smiley Smile
The Rolling Stones - Their Satanic Majesties Request
The Who - The Who Sell Out
The Doors - The Doors
The Jimi Hendrix Experience - Are You Experienced
The Velvet Underground - The Velvet Underground & Nico
The Zombies - Odyssey And Oracle
The Small Faces - Ogdens' Nut Gone Flake
Pink Floyd - The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn
Cream - Disraeli Gears
Iron Butterfly - In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida
Love - Forever Changes
Jefferson Airplane - Surrealistic Pillow

Rei,  I see you are busy pulling up "old threads" this morning...and I like this one.Steve Miller Band - Sailor

Outsideinside Blue Cheer

Hit To Death in the Future Head by THE FLAMING LIPS.  :3d

I'll never understood how people think this album is psychedelic.

It may not be a full Psychedelic album - it's more Proto-punk - but it does have psychedelic elements

I think people have "psychedelic" confused with "avant-garde."

  Agreed

Buffalo Springfield Again hasn't been mentioned yet.

Psychedelia is different category to pin down. 'Surrealistic Pillow' might have a trippy feel, but it's mostly folk-rock. British, San Francisco, and Los Angeles psychedelic rock were all quite distinct.