Definitive Psychedelic Albums

[Jason]

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

[Mitchell]

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

[b.dfzo]

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.

[Jeff Mason]

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

[trumpet sounds]

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

[Billy Bob 1984]

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

[b.dfzo]

Oh, wait!!!

How could I forget...

...Odessy And Oracle!

[koeeoaddi there]

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

[Old Rake]

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

[I. Spaceman]

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

[richardsnow]

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.

[Old Rake]

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

[donald]

Lawrence Welk

The Accordian Player at the Gates of Dawn

Ray Conniff

Incense and liniment

[Lester Byrd]

Iron Butterfly In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida

Electric Prunes Mass in F Minor

[Jason]

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

[I. Spaceman]

Vanilla Fudge, too.

[Jason]

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!

[I. Spaceman]

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

[Jason]

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

[I. Spaceman]

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

[Jason]

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.

[cabinessence]

the Hangman's Beautiful Daughter - the incredible string band

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

I'm the original discriminating buffalo man
And I'll do what's wrong as long as I can
(He'll do what's wrong as long as he can)...
...I can't dream well because of my horns...

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:

Howling the pack in formation appears
diamonds and clubs, light misted fog, the dead
waving us back in formation,
the pack in formation
bowling they bat as a group
and the leader is seen -

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!

[dude ll doo]

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

[I. Spaceman]

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.

[pavlos brenos]

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