"Kaleidoscope Eyes" by Jim Derogatis

The first thing that I should say about Kaleidoscope Eyes is that it's a book not just about psychedelic rock but psychedelic music in general. It spends as much time on the psychedelic influence on blues, folk, jazz, funk, rap and electronica. What's remarkable is that Jim Derogatis starts by admitting that he's making no attempt at objectivity whatsoever in the book. While it does get a bit annoying at times how much he vents his opinions, at least he's honest about it.

I think my favourite aspect of the book is how Jim Derogatis has a great understanding of what music is supposed to do, what the effects of the psychedelic experience is on the human mind and how music can reflect this. Never having done anything harder than weed I'm taking his word for it, and it becomes clear that Derogatis understands the important thing as not as much the psych experience as the resulting broadening of horizons. It's only fitting in this regard that he focuses on many different genres, writing about the psychedelic inspiration on music that's generally not thought of as psychedelic, e. g. Roxy Music. Reading Kaleidoscope Eyes has gotten me interested in a lot of music I didn't have much of an inclination to listen to before.

He also goes into detail about psychedelia's influence on not just music but culture in general, and how it can be both positive and negative. I quite appreciated these parts of the book, since art does not exist in a cultural vacuum (maybe except the most outsider of outsider artists ) and knowledge of surrounding cultural context always brings a valuable perspective for this exact reason. I do think he's not quite critical enough here, even though this is the only part of the book where he's actually given it the old college try at being objective. In particular, his view of the beat/hippie subculture is way too rosy and nostalgic compared to There's a Riot Going On, which I reviewed for the forum a while ago. That one is written by Mojo scribe Peter Doggett who was a teen back in the heyday of the hippie movement and definitely sympathetic to its ideology but also very aware of all the hypocrisy and naïveté in that subculture not to mention how most of its members gave up when the going got rough.

Something that is a bit weird is how Derogatis tries to draw a very strict distinction between psychedelic rock and progressive rock. In fact, he treats the two sub-genres as mutually exclusive. It looks like his main criterion is the proportion of influence from classical music, something it becomes clear Derogatis thinks doesn't belong in rock music. He makes an exception for Genesis, though. These "psychedelic versus progressive" shenanigans look very much like historical revisionism, since the different subgenres of rock didn't become rigidly defined until the mid-seventies. That is no more obvious in Kaleidoscope Eyes than when you see Derogatis classifying Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention as psychedelic and King Crimson as progressive. Think about it and such a distinction quickly begins to look ridiculous. However, he also brings attention to a lot of rather obscure artists, some of which we today would probably think of as proto-prog, and that I consider a plus.

Kaleidoscope Eyes' biggest problem, however, is its combination of wide scope and rather short length which results in some completely head-scratching omissions. As I mentioned before, Jim Derogatis has quite obviously done enough research to quote interviews with people from very obscure bands from the 1960s and talk in-depth about it, same thing with the psychedelic revival of the 1980s and 1990s... but about the latter he completely neglects the psych-metal movement of the 1990s. You know: Kyuss, Monster Magnet, Sleep, Nebula, Acrimony and that entire crew. Likewise, in light of all the obscure stuff Derogatis knows about it's a bit odd that he mentions Soundgarden's increased incorporation of acid rock into grunge on Superunknown as innovative when the Melvins were doing the entire "psychedelic grunge" thing much earlier.

All in all, I can say that Kaleidoscope Eyes is a book that's definitely worth reading but needs to be taken with a grain of salt. It's got a lot of valuable information and insight about music, bringing exposure to a lot of music that's either under-appreciated or might just not be stuff I considered listening to much before. It's also admirable how much research he did. However, it's also way too short and expresses some rather questionable opinions.

Actually, Turn on your Mind is an expanded version of Kaleidoscope Eyes. It has some appendixes on things whose omission I complained about in my review, like the early-1990s "stoner metal" movement.

Rottenhat wrote: There is actually a list of Derogatis recommended bands on the "List of Bests" site: It is called "The Ultimate Psychedelic Rock Library" Here the link: http://www.listsofbests.com/list/19912

Thanks!

(I got Mr. Derogatis' book from the library)