You could argue that psychedelic movement was when the sixties started to collapse in on itself. The Sergeant Pepper cover is iconic. It’s colourful. It’s as far from the dour monochrome 1950s, or even 1964, as you could get. But it’s also fuelled by mind-altering drugs. Which was unsustainable.
The hippy dream was over almost before it had got started. 1967 and The Summer of Love collapsed into Altamont, the break-up of The Beatles and psychedelia was taken down along with it. Idealism gave way to the grim realities of life in the seventies.
Like an evolving lifeform though, psychedelia may have gone underground but was finding ways to burrow to the surface in other evolving species. Psychedelic folk, psychedelic rock, acid rock and psychedelic pop all featured as fresh mutated forms in the early ‘70s.
Then in the late ‘70s and early ‘80s a new branch called ‘neo-psychedelia’, quite literally for want of a better term, got into its stride, first in the UK, with Echo and the Bunnymen and The Teardrop Explodes, next in the US with the LA ‘Paisley Underground’ bands such as The Dream Syndicate. After that, it’s been a free for all and psychedelia has warped into multiple genres. Arguably, for example, dream pop and shoegazing have a godparent in psychedelia.
So this episode tries to restrict itself to what you might, if you wanted to, term neo-psychedelia, closer in spirit to 1967 but without the noodly eight-minute space jams. It’s flourishing right now in Brisbane, of all places, and some of that city’s fine bands are featured here.
I had the privilege of seeing Nice Biscuit (awful name, great group) at The Croxton Hotel a few weeks ago, who are featured in this episode, and I would go so far as to suggest that it was my gig of the year to date. They demonstrated that old art forms don’t die, they can mutate into something better and stronger.
I hope you enjoy the episode.
Tracklist:-
Fuzz jam, The Lazy Eyes
Cornflake, Psychedelic Corn Crumpets
Happy man (Memphis version), Sparklehorse
Captain, Nice Biscuit
Race for the prize, The Flaming Lips
Typical music, Tim Burgess
Static resistance, Hookworms
Stars are stars, Echo and the Bunnymen
The late great Cassiopia, The Essex Green
Let’s get together (in our minds), Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci
Jumping fences, The Olivia Tremor Control
Bronx cheer, Mercury Rev
Forever heavy, Black Moth Super Rainbow
America’s Cup, Pond