The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional". The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Analytics". This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. These cookies ensure basic functionalities and security features of the website, anonymously. It certainly filled the dancefloor at Middle Earth in 1968 like nothing else.Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This one is usually lumped in, although like Eight Miles High, the lyric works better taken at face value rather than reading a druggy message into it. I suppose as far as I'm concerned the single (by an American band domiciled in London) that was the peak of British psych for me was this one: Apart from the Floyd, of the other three you mentioned, only Tomorrow struck me as meaning it (man), but good though My White Bicycle and other things sounded, all that Grocer Jack stuff was to laugh at, wasn't it? Kevin Ayres was often roped into the scene, but he was more about wine than roses, established bands like the Zombies and Pretty Things made 'psychedelic' albums, and of course there were some fine freakbeat singles such as Crawdaddy Simone, but I'm floundering really. It was much more whimsical, occasionally camp, often fey. And the fact that so many took their inspiration from Sgt Pepper, with its Music Hall overtones, meant that it had a different flavour from the San Franciscan bands who had grown out of folk and blues outfits, and the rockier LA bands (Love and the Doors were both roped in to the 'movement' as I seem to remember). I only really know British psych from much later comps really, and I got the impression that a lot of them were adopting it as a style then abandoning it, rather than being really into it. Drug-soaked acts such as Edgar Broughton and Hapshash and the Coloured Coat never really appealed And after I got into psychedelic drugs, I found Spector and the VU and Joni Mitchell and girl groups and doo wop and jazz much more conducive to my listening pleasure, and the most psychedlic of all UK bands to be the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band.
Lyrics were not the most important thing - Itchykoo Park was obviously a drug song, for instance, while also being pop mainstream. But back then (before I got into drugs at all, all of this) psychedelia meant long meandering epic tracks to me. It's a then and now thing, really: of course the Floyd were psych, it's just that then, when I had very little to compare it to, I thought of their singles as being bright and poppy - which they were, of course. I'm interested, as it's something I'm not really familiar with, and the few things I have heard called British psych (The Smoke, Tomorrow, Dantalion's Chariot) I really haven't liked much. Nick wrote:What would you cite as examples of British psych Ray? The tune is seen to be either the first psych song (as Jon Savage said in his 1997 list of greatest psychedelic songs of all-time) or certainly one of the first. I must admit to finding these arguments about what's "psych" or not (much like similar debates about punk or metal) to be slightly tedious. The Elevators had been calling themselves "psychedelic" since '65 and the nascent counter culture was well underway. The Coltrane-inspired, sitar-like guitar work married with lyrics about being high (whether on an airplane as McGuinn claimed, or on drugs) would definitely pass for psychedelic in the spring of that year.
"Eight Miles High" is as psychedelic as anything from 1966, and the term means different things on both sides of the pond. Weird noises in pop records (or gimmicks) preceded the psychedelic period. Psychedelia as a musical style had yet to solidify.Īnd of course Emily, recorded a year later, has psych tropes all over it, but at the time I bought it as a pop song, as I did Arnold Layne (and would later the first Roxy Music singles, just as psychedelic in a way). It was a song about flying to the UK on an airplane, with guys trying to play guitars like Coltrane played sax in the background. Now, perhaps, but not then, and especially not EMH. Matt Wilson wrote:They're both completely pysch.