“ Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” – The Beatles (1967) Jim Morrison haunts his own brooding vocals in a ghostly whispered overdub, perhaps an ominous portent that this would be the last track he recorded before his untimely death. It was a dark and stormy night - and Ray Manzarek’s extended keyboard solo shimmers through this song’s rainy sound effects, itself at times morphing into raindrop-like cascades. “ Riders on the Storm” – The Doors (1971) The transcendental psychedelic track leans deep into elements of surf rock à la The Beach Boys, strung together by distinctive falsetto harmonies before fading out in a disorienting cacophony of joyful noise. How many tomorrows can you see? Sit with the guru in this blissful recapitulation of a meditative session to find out. “ Sit With the Guru” – Strawberry Alarm Clock (1968) Jimi Hendrix lives up to his reputation as one of the most influential electric guitarists in “Purple Haze.” Hendrix’s innovative guitar and surrealistic lyrics flirt around a metronomic syntax, punctuated by dramatic stop-time moments. Turn on, tune in, and be transported by the ebb and flow of this track’s free-form veena and tabla instrumental homage to Leary’s iconic quip. Yes - there’s a track credited to former Harvard psychologist Timothy Leary used as the soundtrack to a documentary of the same name, and it’s exactly what you’d expect. Let Grace Slick’s iconic soaring vocals carry you - and remember what the dormouse said. A creeping, subtly building rock riff on Alice’s titular wonderland, “White Rabbit” has come to represent the zeitgeist of the California psychedelic movement. Welcome to the entrance of the psychedelic rock rabbit hole. “ White Rabbit” – Jefferson Airplane (1967) Ready to get hooked on psychedelic rock? Take a trip through western psychedelia with some key tracks from three epicenters of the genre! Across the Atlantic, the London-centered British scene, led by groups like Pink Floyd, explored more whimsical and improvisational threads of the psychedelic. The East Coast scene, centered in New York, took on a more avant-garde, grungy tone as heard in the discography of The Velvet Underground. Californian psychedelic music sprouted from an existing substrate of political momentum and rock experiments like surf and folk rock, a founding framework which often deposited topical themes in vibrant compositions. Innovative twists on traditional musical elements and production, a renaissance of bygone instruments, and the introduction of non-western musical influences have facilitated a distorted, psychedelic experience for generations of fans.įrom the Human Be-In to Haight Ashbury’s Summer of Love to the Monterey Pop Festival, the California scene - and its British Invasion - both popularized and monopolized much of the psychedelic movement. Protesting against the constraints of radio-friendliness, the psychedelic scene saw long-haired, free-spirited hippies exploring long-form, free-style instrumentation. As a new generation pushed the boundaries of experience through hallucinogenic drugs, they also challenged, extended, and distorted the parameters of music. True to its name, psychedelic rock was born from a counterculture of radical experiments in experience.
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