what is your definition of psychedelic?

[oldblue]

just wondering

[usedtobebabson]

Music from the '67 to '75 period where most folks were on some form of hallucinogen, including the band members.

Which music is more psychedelic is hard to say. Maybe the bands who's songs ventured more out on the edge or boundaries of straight thinking, The Doors for instance. Some bands had a more trippy sound, like Country Joe and the Fish's Electric Music for the mind and body.

Hey, it's a tough question...

[Susan Butcher]

I think of psychedelic music as having a hard core of music directly influenced by psychedelic drugs, acid rock in other words, surrounded by a large fuzzy area that's psychedelic in style. Right at the centre you'd have groups like the Elevators and Ash Ra Tempel, who made an effort to record and perform while tripping, and somewhere near to that would be JA, a bit too professional to be quite that extreme. At the outer edge you'd have the imitators who didn't take the drugs and made it into a style. This is where I'd stick the Strawberry Alarm Clock.

That doesn't tell anyone what "psychedelic" sounds like, because my definition of "psychedelic" is the conviction that "those guys knew!"

[usedtobebabson]

That's good Susan. We know Carlos Santana was peaking on mescaline when he played at Woodstock. Believe the airplane tripped on the Orange, not sure though. The Warlocks/Greatful Dead played tripping at the Acid tests. We know Morrison and some Doors tripped at times while playing live. Think even the Marshal Tucker band tripped a lot. Whether they tripped while actually playing or their music and live performances were influenced by tripping is a fine line. According to the Acid test, sometimes the band could play on acid, sometimes it couldn't and had to leave.

[oldblue]

no less a light than phil lesh differentiated between psychedelic music and acid rock:

Garcia recalled:

Phil defined it pretty good once. He said ummmmm . . . Oh, somebody asked him once what acid rock was — [and] which [kind] is psychedelic music. Okay, whatever, we’ll use those two as an equation — and he said, ‘Acid rock is music you listen to when you’re high on acid.’ Psychedelic music is music you listen to when you’re psychedelic. I think that’s what its real definition should be because subjectively I don’t think that there really is any psychedelic music, unless except in the classical sense of music which is designed to expand consciousness. (Reich 83-84)

even so, he as those who put forth thoughts hasn't defined psycedelic.

there's something more than just sound, pharmaceutical intake, etc., at work. but what is it?

[usedtobebabson]

there's something more than just sound, pharmaceutical intake, etc., at work. but what is it?

The only other ingredient would be the exponentially growing Hippie Culture that blossomed around the music, in direct or indirect opposition to the Vietnam war.

[redrabid]

A definition is useful when it distinguishes an idea from other ones. It narrows things down. The broader the definition, the fuzzier and less illuminating it gets.
So I'll leave all the social connotations out. To me psychedelic music is music that tries to recreate, by use of soundeffects (and sometimes lyrics), the changed way we perceive things, when our senses are effected by hallucogenic drugs. So in my opinion "Strawberry Fields" is psychedelic, but "Penny Lane" isn't.

[oldblue]

Writer Ken Kesey believed that viewing the psychedelic phenomenon solely through the lens of drugs did it an injustice by providing too limited a view. As he wrote in the introduction to the 40th anniversary edition of his novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, psychedelia “was about much more than drugs,” though he conceded they are as good a starting point or frame of reference as any from which to begin a discussion of the subject.

oh i think penny lane is extremely psychedelic in the way it duplicates the cinematic way things can appear at certain times.

[redrabid]

As for "Penny Lane", that was to be expected of course, as a person's reaction to psychedelic drugs is highly personal. Lovely! This way we can have completely senseless but highly enjoyable, hairsplitting discussions about what is and what isn't psychedelic. I do agree that the psychedelic experience was part of an optimistic counterculture, striving for social change, for a better world: "Take drugs and change the world". But the truth is cruel. Drugs did change the world, but not for the better. Drugs, the psychedelic experience are still around and so is its music, but that movement for social and political change is gone. We were too naive, too careless, not ready to pay the price and it died a slow death, while we were having the time of our lives. And not even Wondermaker Obama can call it out of its grave.

[usedtobebabson]

We were too naive, too careless, not ready to pay the price and it died a slow death, while we were having the time of our lives. And not even Wondermaker Obama can call it out of its grave.

Some would refer to this as simply surviving or making a living. Can't steal your dinner forever...

Well said though. The fact is psychedelics and music are still there but something is missing. The large numbers of people and that common feeling.

[redrabid]

And good new ideas what that change would be and how to achieve it, Wanting things to change is not enough, as we know now.

[usedtobebabson]

I tend to think that if we weren't naive, and had all the answers and organized some demands, it wouldn't have worked.

We didn't seem to care if any of what we were doing worked or not. I , personally, was amazed that anything worked and some social change was realized along with a premature ending to a senseless war.

Now that I think about it, probably the music bloomed around the counterculture, not the other way around.

I do think people organize protests today for inconsequential things.

[okeedoe]

''Nothing is stronger than an idea whose time has come'', or something like that, as one clever old geezer once said.

The 1960's countercultural movement didn't have a singular ideological substratum strong enough to integrate a number of various different movements and ideas to change the values more than it did.It had had an enthusiasm more than a strengh and thus ended up (politically) not much more than a colourful, utopistic reaction to conservative society and its anachronic system of values.But cultural(and social) legacy of the time is immanent and strong.Maybe inwrought forever in our way of lives.


Does psychedelic have a valid definition at all or someone is testing our intelligence ?

[usedtobebabson]

Does psychedelic has a valid definition at all or someone is testing our intelligence ?

I guess only to those of us who were there. I just re-act to the term psychedelic music, as the music from that time period of the counterculture.

OK, Oldblue, we are tapped out. What's the answer?

[jimmie ray]

I think of psychedelic music as that which has a rippling effect that imbeds deeper in the conciousness than other forms of entertainment. It formed more out of a certain period of instrumentation technology and drug availability, than anything cultural. It was not relegated to any one area of the world, or event such as war, and is still apparent in some newer bands. I enjoy it very much, but do not look at it as a stimulation to unite or change - but a sort of selfish pleasure.