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Posted: February 15 2015 at 05:11
People here might also dig the Scorpions' 1974 debut LP Lonesome Crow.
It's very different from the style most associate them with, instead being psychedelic hard rock somewhere between The Jimi Hendrix Experience and Black Sabbath. Their country of origin is belied by the frequent strange atmospheric flourishes and wandering tangents that at times call to mind Amon Düül II, if nowhere as ambitious.
I'm guessing that its obscurity is a consequence half of the fact that most psych-rock fans wouldn't touch the band best known for Rock You Like a Hurricane with a ten foot pole, half from a lot of metalheads regarding the psychedelic rock that heavy metal evolved out of as a cultural dead end?
Edited by Toaster Mantis - February 15 2015 at 05:12
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Posted: February 15 2015 at 04:55
That was... unexpected. It's good to finally see the Elevators get the recognition they deserve, despite being one of the most important psychedelic music groups they've been rather obscure for most of rock history. (i. e. giving the genre its name with their debut LP) Like I mentioned earlier, they've only really been acknowledged as important by punks who regard them as a garage rock forerunner of their own movement, rather than by the subculture they helped create.
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Posted: February 13 2015 at 11:55
^Thanks for the suggestion Dan, I will definitely give them a spin. I've heard that this band is considered "heavy stoner music" but that's about all I know about them at present.
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Posted: February 13 2015 at 11:29
Toaster Mantis wrote:
Most of the shoegaze I've heard has a kind of new age ambient feel to it, also in the way the soundscapes are constructed, just filtered through the context of 1980s indie rock. The post-punk/new wave bands that probably were the closest to 1960s psychedelia in surface aesthetics I'd wager were The Soft Boys and The Teardrop Explodes... not to mention Robyn Hitchcock and Julian Cope's bands afterwards.
I have to clarify my statement regarding Shoegaze as I was quite overtired when posting yesterday. My friend's suggestion regarding Shoegaze as newer Psych rock music was that these bands were now focusing on subtle psych vibes in the music, as opposed to Neo-psych bands that still embraced the older Psych sound full on. Something he referred to allegorically as Psych going "underground and under the radar."
I'm still not sure that I totally agree with his opinion, but it's caused me to at least consider it.
Edited by SteveG - February 13 2015 at 11:30
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Posted: February 12 2015 at 15:09
The real missed opportunity is a collaboration between Roky Erickson and Sun Ra if you ask me, what with both being alien contactees! Though I'm not sure they'd have that much music taste in common, whereas Syd Barrett was at least a Sun Ra fan.
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Posted: February 12 2015 at 15:04
^I've heard that before but never bothered to confirm it. Can you imagine Roky and Syd in the same room? Something strange would happen to the universe!
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Posted: February 12 2015 at 14:57
Didn't The Teardrop Explodes at some point attempt to draw none other than Syd Barrett out of retirement, because they wanted him to do a guest spot on one of their albums? (would have been easier to get Roky Erickson!)
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Posted: February 12 2015 at 14:46
^Yes. I agree with that. I didn't make clear that I think shoegaze is also a reaction to bands like The Teardrop Explodes who maintained more of 60's Psych rock vibe even though they progressed greatly. Perhap's TTE was a bit too close to "your parent's Psych", causing noise effects pedals came to the fore.
Edited by SteveG - February 12 2015 at 14:47
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Posted: February 12 2015 at 14:35
Most of the shoegaze I've heard has a kind of new age ambient feel to it, also in the way the soundscapes are constructed, just filtered through the context of 1980s indie rock. The post-punk/new wave bands that probably were the closest to 1960s psychedelia in surface aesthetics I'd wager were The Soft Boys and The Teardrop Explodes... not to mention Robyn Hitchcock and Julian Cope's bands afterwards.
Edited by Toaster Mantis - February 12 2015 at 14:49
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Posted: February 12 2015 at 14:24
^Yes. I think that a lot of the so called noise bands, like the Shoegazer trend, is a post punk reaction and reformation of Psych in order to fit the (relatively) modern world of the 1980's. As a musicologist friend of my once opined, while spinning My Bloody Valentine, "This isn't the Psychedelic music your parents listened to."
I thought he was joking at the time. In retrospect, I think he was correct. What would have been sense in Post Punk bands rehashing Psych clichés from the sixties?
In time, his view that all revolutionary rock music must by means rewrite the rules of what constitutes old Psych, or any other genre, is what I feel has given me a new set of ears to listen with.
Whatever is vital to that generation, and newer generations, has now become musically interesting to me. Again, this is due to my friend's insights and views that musical styles can never remain static and have to change in order to identify with it's particular generation. if not, it can only be reproduced purposely, as is the case with the so called modern Neo-psych bands.
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Posted: February 12 2015 at 12:54
There also happened to be a lot of psychedelic influence in the post-punk movement not just through The Doors and Velvet Underground but also Can, Captain Beefheart, David Bowie's collaborations with Brian Eno etc.... it just gets overlooked because of the somewhat more "modernistic" aesthetic of that lot.
I'm under the impression quite a few of the 1980s neo-psych bands tried to leave the more obvious visual aesthetic cues of the 1960s/1970s psychedelic movement behind, partially in order to announce they were doing something new with the style but also to not be seen as nostalgia acts focused on style above substance. According to that book Turn on Your Mind that was linked to earlier, the 1980s psychedelic bands (also the Paisley Underground, dreampop/shoegaze and the noise-rock movements) were reacting as much against commodification of "spirit of the sixties"-type nostalgia aimed at the Baby Boomer generation as against the bleak conformism of the Reagan/Thatcher era. (did that kind of nostalgia exist yet in the 1980s? I weren't around then to be honest and I'm not sure, my parents were both born in 1950 but didn't keep tabs on popular culture during the eighties at all)
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Posted: February 12 2015 at 11:11
^ The Bunnymen certainly were part of the whole '80's neo-psych movement, and happened to be very much welded to the post-punk/alt rock of the time in a way most others in Britain weren't quite.
I'd say that The Bunnymen's connection to psych is much the same way that The Doors are connected to it, just different times and mixed genres.
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Posted: February 12 2015 at 11:05
Are Echo and the Bunnymen eligible for discussion in this thread? I've been listening to both Heaven Up Here and Ocean Rain recently, and to be honest? I must say that frankly, I prefer the former's weird spacy take on Joy Division-style noisy goth punk with more emphasis on the influence from The Doors and The Velvet Underground to the orchestrated gloomy pop of the latter. It's still psychedelic if not stereotypically so, but it does not feel kitschy to me the way that kind of Love-style "baroque pop" wedded to 1980s goth/new wave production does. I also really like that dark futuristic aesthetic a lot of music from the first half of the 1980s has.
Then again, like I said earlier in the thread I'm not sure to classify The Doors and VU as "psychedelic" because in terms of ideology they were more forerunners of the late-1970s/early-1980s goth rock movement than kindred spirits to most of their contemporary psych-rock acts. I wager that if they get in, then E&tBM should be included too however.
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Posted: February 12 2015 at 10:11
^Thanks for the tip, Kev. Yes, Pond seems to really enjoy the whole Neo-psych kick even more than Tame Impala! I'll be tied up for a for week or two, but I will give it a spin as soon as I have the chance.
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