Psychedelia: Did Prog enhance it or escape it? |
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Eddy
Forum Senior Member Joined: September 22 2004 Location: USA Status: Offline Points: 630 |
Posted: September 11 2014 at 20:30 | |
meh i would consider prog to be the wiser, more level headed, smarter older brother of psychedelic rock. even tho phc was first so having prog be older bro makes no no sense!
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Svetonio
Forum Senior Member Joined: September 20 2010 Location: Serbia Status: Offline Points: 10213 |
Posted: September 12 2014 at 02:46 | |
Yes I know that Zappa did actively distance himself from psychedelia. It was / is a common knowledge. However, in late 70s, I meet a lot of ex-Yugoslavian hippies who were in 1969 considered Zappa's Hot Rats as Psychedelic rock as well. Actually, these first hippies in ex-Yugolsavia, they were serious LPs collectors and well informed about the music of their time.They were travelling to swinging London very often; they were smoked hashish and enjoy the LSD ; they were reading MM, Sounds, DIsc (btw, that's a zine where Penny Valentine reviewed Bowie's debut and predicted that unknow 19-yrs old singer-songwriter will make it), and NME, what all were available to buy in Marshal Tito's Yugoslavia in a kiosk + our local rock press as well. And I remember very well that they were considered Zappa's Hot Rats as "psychedelia" although ex-Yugoslavian Psychedelic rock in late sixties / early seventies was something very different from Zappa, e.g. this song released in 1968 by the band of Zagreb's singer-songwriter Drago Mlinarec, what is ex-Yougoslavian '60s Psychedelic rock at its best. This song (engl. "There is Someone Somewhere") is typically what happens in this corner of the world that has been accepted as a Psychedelic rock. Progressive psychedelia - as we considered it today - was hardly show up here until 1979 and that debut album by Belgrade's band Igra Staklenih Perli (engl. "The Glass Bead Game"). But they also have nothing to do with Zappa. How, then, that Progressive rock album Hot Rats was widely accepted as "psychedelia" by knowledgeable people back then, even though they lived in a time without the internet, i.e. instant knowledge? Because It seems to be, always and everywhere, & as I have already said in my previous reply as well, basically all of the matter of acceptance and perception of the audience (fans, journalists), not what an artists wanted the audience to think about his work. Edited by Svetonio - September 12 2014 at 06:49 |
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Toaster Mantis
Forum Senior Member Joined: April 12 2008 Location: Denmark Status: Offline Points: 5898 |
Posted: September 12 2014 at 03:52 | |
I think Derogatis makes that exact point in Turn on Your Mind: That Zappa might not have counted his own music as psychedelic, but his earliest LPs came from a similar Zeitgeist as the Californian psychedelic garage rock scene and shows a similar musical ethos to combining those specific influences, ending up being a major influence on that scene.
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"The past is not some static being, it is not a previous present, nor a present that has passed away; the past has its own dynamic being which is constantly renewed and renewing." - Claire Colebrook
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Dean
Special Collaborator Retired Admin and Amateur Layabout Joined: May 13 2007 Location: Europe Status: Offline Points: 37575 |
Posted: September 12 2014 at 05:55 | |
Revisionism and hindsight changes our perception of Psychedelic Music, from a distance of 45 years we see things differently to how things were regarded at the time. The music produced as part of the psychedelic movement didn't follow any rule-set or predefined template that would characterise it as a specific style of music, sometimes just having a Pop-Art album cover or dressing the band up in paisley shirts and Afghan coats was enough allusion to psychotropic drug-use for it to be tagged as Psychedelic Rock or Pop or Soul. This is because any music produced from within (or adjunct to) the psychedelic movement could rightfully be called psychedelic music.
As the Hippy ideology of rejection of "the man" and the anti-everything protest that involved, the escapism of mind-altering drugs and the concept of "doing your own thing" migrated across the globe each locale adapted it to their own set of problems and issues and to their own current music scene. So the spread of hippy/psychedelic subculture through America the music produced quickly diverged from a single style as each "community" added their own take of the subculture into the mix that was affected by the local scene, which is why the Psychedelic Soul music of Detroit easily slots into the general Psychedelic scene without being Rock or having any direct musical connection to San Francisco scene. This diversification continued as it crossed the Atlantic to Britain, Europe and beyond as different local elements were affecting the music. For example the Draft and the Vietnam war had less meaning to the Hippies of Europe, they had different things to protest about and rebel against and that is reflected in the kind of Psychedelic Rock music they produced, it still carried the general "anti-war" theme, but now more generalised and coloured by the post-WW2 climate that prevailed across Europe; something that is reflected strongly in the bleaker more intense, introvert nature of German Psychedelic music that essentially rejected all things American (and British) by adopting a complete disregard for convention and conventional music forms and in the more nostalgic escapism of British Psychedelic Pop that harped back to "the good old days" before the war (another form of rejection) - the whimsy and silliness has darker undertones when viewed in context of a post-war, post-colonial Britain (e.g the initial influence of Indian music and Indian mysticism into Psychedelic music was at the time uniquely British). This cultural continental-drift reached the point where what was considered to be psychedelic in one state or country bore little resemblance to the music of another, in Inside Out (Page 38) Nick Mason wrote: "Sometimes the names of these US bands, which sounded weird to us, suggested an alternative group, but their music would turn out to be quite conventional. When we did get to hear many of the Americans like Country Joe & The Fish or Big Brother & The Holding Company we were often surprised to find that their music was in fact inspired by American country or blues music, although the content of their lyrics was radical enough for them to be thought of as underground bands". [you could probably add New Riders of the Purple Sage to that list]. However, the migration was not simply a one-way traffic, there was a cross-fertilisation of ideas and developments, what was happening in Europe affected British music, and what happened in Britain affected the American music scene and vice versa. Two bands in particular illustrate this: The Animals and The Jimi Hendrix Experience, with the former playing American-influenced American Psychedelic Rock with an English accent and the latter playing British influenced Transatlantic Psychedelic Rock with an American accent. On the other extreme there is CSN who essentially rejected Psychedelia at this time and signalled the transition into post-Psych Americana that typifies the predominant return to basics (Blues and Country) American Classic Rock of the 1970s. American Psych did not develop into Progressive Rock in any form. While it is reasonable to say that the birth of American Psychedelic Rock was instrumental in all these later developments the fact remains that Krautrock developed solely out of German Psychedelic, Prog Rock developed wholly out of British Psychedelic Rock. From this it is easy to understand why Frank Zappa and Freak Out! can be viewed as Psychedelic while Zappa himself would dismiss the idea since the music he was producing was completely divorced from the American Psychedelic Rock scene. |
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What?
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tamijo
Forum Senior Member Joined: January 06 2009 Location: Denmark Status: Offline Points: 4287 |
Posted: September 12 2014 at 08:55 | |
And
It is not that often the artists are in favor of there Work beeing boxed in a closed genre definition. |
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Prog is whatevey you want it to be. So dont diss other peoples prog, and they wont diss yours
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Davesax1965
Forum Senior Member Joined: May 23 2013 Location: UK Status: Offline Points: 2826 |
Posted: September 13 2014 at 04:00 | |
I certainly don't write any music whilst thinking "Should stick a bit of dark ambient/ psy drone / space rock in here", I just..... write music. If someone wants to categorise it from there, it's up to them, but I can tell you that most musicians don't think like that. ;-)
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Dean
Special Collaborator Retired Admin and Amateur Layabout Joined: May 13 2007 Location: Europe Status: Offline Points: 37575 |
Posted: September 13 2014 at 04:35 | |
I kinda agree to an extent. Certainly when I'm writing music I generally know what kind of music I'm writing, if I'm writing a dark ambient piece it may develop into an allied genre or adopt a spacey or jazzy vibe, but it won't magically turn into a completely unrelated genre on completion, like a lot of musician/composers I would be reluctant to categorise my own music, not for fear of being restricted by a pigeon-hole but for the simple hope that what I had produced was different enough from other artists work to avoid direct comparison. When I was managing a metal band during the writing of a new song the band would set out with the intention of producing a piece that fitted their chosen subgenre of metal, occasionally a riff or section would be worked on for several hours before being discarded as "too Slayer" or "too Iron Maiden" or whatever - musicians are aware of what they are producing.
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What?
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Davesax1965
Forum Senior Member Joined: May 23 2013 Location: UK Status: Offline Points: 2826 |
Posted: September 13 2014 at 10:23 | |
Psychedelia turned into nothing more than a cynical marketing exercise. The one good thing it did introduce was a culture where you could play more exotic instruments and get away from Western scales and song construction.
Let me give you an example which I think sums the late 1960's up. Ravi Shankar was once applauded at a gig.... for tuning up.
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SteveG
Forum Senior Member Joined: April 11 2014 Location: Kyiv In Spirit Status: Offline Points: 20244 |
Posted: September 13 2014 at 15:18 | |
"Doing the right thing is never superfuous." Edited by SteveG - September 15 2014 at 14:30 |
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Toaster Mantis
Forum Senior Member Joined: April 12 2008 Location: Denmark Status: Offline Points: 5898 |
Posted: September 13 2014 at 15:37 | |
Well, it's more that music genres that double as "cultural movements" burn out more quickly as the social context changes. Same thing with the original generation of glam rock and disco in the mid-1970s or punk in the late 1970s before it split into new wave and hardcore. In the early 1990s you see this with grunge, the golden age of hip-hop and the black metal inner circles.
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"The past is not some static being, it is not a previous present, nor a present that has passed away; the past has its own dynamic being which is constantly renewed and renewing." - Claire Colebrook
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Slartibartfast
Collaborator Honorary Collaborator / In Memoriam Joined: April 29 2006 Location: Atlantais Status: Offline Points: 29625 |
Posted: September 13 2014 at 18:01 | |
Yes
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Released date are often when it it impacted you but recorded dates are when it really happened...
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Polymorphia
Forum Senior Member Joined: November 06 2012 Location: here Status: Offline Points: 8856 |
Posted: September 13 2014 at 18:04 | |
Psychedelics: Used to enhance Prog or escape it?
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Watcher of the Sky
Forum Groupie Joined: May 25 2014 Location: Brazil Status: Offline Points: 89 |
Posted: September 13 2014 at 18:15 | |
Totally agree |
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Nous sommes du soleil
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Davesax1965
Forum Senior Member Joined: May 23 2013 Location: UK Status: Offline Points: 2826 |
Posted: September 14 2014 at 04:42 | |
[/QUOTE]I agree on many sixties tunes like Watch The Flowers Grow from the Four Seasons that it was a gimmick, but would not Floyd's Saucer Full and Ummagumma be deflated without psychelia? Or Meddle and DSOTM also? "Doing the right thing is never superfuous." [/QUOTE] Oh, no, Saucerful and Umagumma etc were definitely properly psychedelically influence. Then take such stuff as "White Rabbit". Good tune. But commercial rubbish, really. By about 1970, I remember it was difficult to get anything in the UK which actually didn't have a psychedelic pattern on it. Even paper shopping bags. ;-)
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SteveG
Forum Senior Member Joined: April 11 2014 Location: Kyiv In Spirit Status: Offline Points: 20244 |
Posted: September 15 2014 at 14:30 | |
[/QUOTE] Oh, no, Saucerful and Umagumma etc were definitely properly psychedelically influence. Then take such stuff as "White Rabbit". Good tune. But commercial rubbish, really. By about 1970, I remember it was difficult to get anything in the UK which actually didn't have a psychedelic pattern on it. Even paper shopping bags. ;-) [/QUOTE]
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Rednight
Forum Senior Member Joined: January 18 2014 Location: Mar Vista, CA Status: Offline Points: 4807 |
Posted: September 16 2014 at 11:21 | |
Oh, no, Saucerful and Umagumma etc were definitely properly psychedelically influence. Then take such stuff as "White Rabbit". Good tune. But commercial rubbish, really. By about 1970, I remember it was difficult to get anything in the UK which actually didn't have a psychedelic pattern on it. Even paper shopping bags. ;-) [/QUOTE] [/QUOTE] Yeah, the appearance of paisley ties and shirt patterns were finally beginning to ebb at around that time; always looked like decorative leeches to me. |
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SteveG
Forum Senior Member Joined: April 11 2014 Location: Kyiv In Spirit Status: Offline Points: 20244 |
Posted: September 16 2014 at 14:03 | |
^Yes everyone looked like an extreme version of Jimi Hendrix. If that's possible.
"Doing the right thing is never superfluous." |
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SteveG
Forum Senior Member Joined: April 11 2014 Location: Kyiv In Spirit Status: Offline Points: 20244 |
Posted: September 16 2014 at 14:04 | |
"Doing the right thing is never superfluous." |
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Drumstruck
Forum Newbie Joined: July 15 2014 Location: Australia Status: Offline Points: 33 |
Posted: September 22 2014 at 01:48 | |
You made me smile, but you may be right ;-) And re FZ - it's difficult to post-analyse the creative mind of a genius.
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TODDLER
Forum Senior Member VIP Member Joined: August 28 2009 Location: Vineland, N.J. Status: Offline Points: 3126 |
Posted: September 22 2014 at 09:18 | |
Some of the more experimental psychedelic music influenced Progressive Rock. This had mostly to do with the experimentation within sound effects and in some cases observing Classical music and traditional European Folk music and borrowing just a few chords and reflections of melody. Take "Lather" by Jefferson Airplane for example. It has acoustic guitar, strange sound effects, and a haunting melody reminiscent of an early Pink Floyd song or even a song drawn from The Madcap Laughs by Syd Barrett. This particular vibe created by the song..was a Progressive Rock approach that could be easily spotted and was often indicated on Progressive Rock recordings in the early 70's. Curved Air would be a prime example.
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