the inflation and the bandwagon of all things Psychedelic

[Chankgeez]

that was the first rock gig i ever attended where they handed out earplugs at the door.

Oh, yeah, you definitely needed 'em.

... an old avant-gardeist friend of mine ...

Who?

[dubkitty]

Michael Zerang, the percussionist. i was trying not to namedrop.

[Chankgeez]

Michael Zerang, the percussionist. i was trying not to namedrop.

Nice. (I know you weren't, dubkitty. I was just curious.) Zerang's good, but my fave Chicago drummer's Hamid Drake.

Have you ever read The Mysticism of Sound and Music by Hazrat Inayat Khan, dubkitty?

[kaeth]

I make hallucinogen-music. It's created to mimic the music the psychedelic mind creates out of silence, such as the experience inside of an isolation tank. It's sounds are sculpted to be enhanced in a psychedelic state. It's full of heavily filtered synthesizers, stereo-separated effects, ambience and noise. I often call it psychedelic music, but it has little to do with the psychedelic music that came before. When I call it psychedelic, it's because it's been inspired by acid, and not by Jimi Hendrix. Any similarities are purely coincidental. I don't really care if that's incorrect genre-wise.

[dubkitty]

Michael Zerang, the percussionist. i was trying not to namedrop.

Nice. (I know you weren't, dubkitty. I was just curious.) Zerang's good, but my fave Chicago drummer's Hamid Drake.

Have you ever read The Mysticism of Sound and Music by Hazrat Inayat Khan, dubkitty?

that's what Michael says, too

no, i haven't read that...i've read a couple of his other books, but i've never seen that. i'll make a note of it.

[Chankgeez]

Michael Zerang, the percussionist. i was trying not to namedrop.

Nice. (I know you weren't, dubkitty. I was just curious.) Zerang's good, but my fave Chicago drummer's Hamid Drake.

Have you ever read The Mysticism of Sound and Music by Hazrat Inayat Khan, dubkitty?

that's what Michael says, too

no, i haven't read that...i've read a couple of his other books, but i've never seen that. i'll make a note of it.

Hamid Drake is untouchable in terms of sheer drumming. I know he and Zerang have played together a bit.

Yeah, you should read that book (and so should everyone else). I think you'd like it a lot.

[Zounds Perspex]

not to be overly argumentative, because i think you have something of a point, but saying that all music has some effect on the nervous system is like saying that drugs of abuse affect consciousness, or that all food is nutritious. an old avant-gardeist friend of mine, who went on to the kind of rarefied fame that finds you in the review pages of the WIRE every month, used to say that music is sound with intent. i believe that what makes "psychedelic music" is intent. simply put, is your main intent to alter people's consciousness? not to make pretty songs, sell records, get laid, or buy your Mom a house in Bellevue, but to make sounds that get people out there? wherever "there" is?

this is such a narrow definiton of what constitues psychedelic music.
perhaps all you're interested in this stuff is music whose "main intent is to alter people's conciousness",
but most musicians are not as deliberate as that.
we play what comes out. we are a delivery source for inspiration on our best days,
and it's best to take that inspiration where you find it.
some dudes are inspired to alter conciousness, fine.
me, I play the music that flows through me (and I don't play psych.)
I don't think most 60's psych bands were that deliberate, either.
they played the songs that came out, and sometimes dudes take weird drugs and weird songs/sounds come out.
Jefferson Airplane, 13th Floor Elevators, Hawkwind, whoever...they wrote the best dumb rock/pop songs they could come up with,they just happened to be zonked out of their minds.
I think I lot of that stuff 60's cats said about "deliberating altering conciousness" was a product of the times more than anything-
people could say shit like that back then and not catch too many eye rolls.

are all modern psych bands fantastic? or course not. are some of them? yeah, absolutely.

all labels are just marketing shit, anyway.

[hazelwould]

Can we make this a recommend -->

Some good psych (old/modern)?

[Zounds Perspex]

on the OTHER hand - to counter my own argument - ha! - if you want to say that a lot of these bands are lacking in inspiration or are overly derivative, I can dig that.
for instance - Black Angels. they're pretty much The Black Crowes of modern psych. They might hit some points or moments of real inspiration,
but usually it's Jefferson Airplane/Can/VU all in a blender and voila! (versus the Crowes Stones/Faces/whatnot).
Is a band like this ever going to give us the weird shivery pleasure of Chico Magnetic Band? Highly unlikely.
But that's hardly a condemnation of modern psych - that's just an instance of a derivative band.
As long as there are dudes like Boredoms or Vermonster or Wooden Shjips (who are derivative but take that shit somewhere ELSE, too),
you can't write it off. or lots of "garage psych" bands, where shit like "originality" has never really mattered much, anyway - it's more a reaction to a primal beat and some weird drugs percolatin' along with it. It's energy.

I can dig being down on watered-down sounds, though - throughout the history of modern pop/recorded music/whathaveyou pretty much every "scene" has devolved like that.
When new forms of music are created, it's usually because the musicians have been diggin' SEVERAL kinds of music and it all makes a cool gumbo to make something new,
and often these new forms of music use some recreational drugs as the roux, if you will.
original psych bands were into Beatles & Stones (unless they were the Beatles), Indian music, jazz, lots of bluegrass influence on the West Coast, and some serious blotter and psych was born.
punk took old rock & roll, some reggae, some glam, plus some bad speed and a shitty economy and bango presto!
hiphop took disco, playing the dozens, funk, and mixed 'em all up with new technology.
old jungle dudes were into dub, dancehall, hiphop, and original techno, and mega-doses of E and made their shit.
but always when the people making the music stop listening to all that and just listen to THEIR GENRE of music, it starts to die.

the longer psych bands just copied other psych bands, the longer punk bands just listened to punk bands, etc. etc., the more insular the scene gets, the less interesting the music is.

[Zounds Perspex]

Can we make this a recommend -->

Some good psych (old/modern)?

uh, there's SO much. do you want some vaguely trippy shit that still has edges you can grab onto, or do you wanna go straight to facemelting?

or really...fuck that. just go listen to Trout Mask Replica and Lick My Decals Off, Baby and call me in the morning.

[hazelwould]

Lick my Decals Off, baby is pretty badass. Is this considered psych? I'd consider it more avantjazz.

[hazelwould]

Nvm, I was listening to Lisa Mezzacappa's Bait and Switch. Pretty sweet, but not Captain Beefheart. Lol

[retinal orbita]

Black Angels. they're pretty much The Black Crowes of modern psych.

Is a band like this ever going to give us the weird shivery pleasure of Chico Magnetic Band?

Liked the whole post, but this in particular was

[sonidero]

Acid and shrooms are popular again that's all there is to it...

[D.o.S.]

Wait.... sonidero's in the thread.






Let's blame Austin.