As I've written probably too frequently in these weekly rants, I've always had a fondness for, and even a fascination with, the music of my parents' generation. Unlike most children of the 1980s, I didn't listen to the music that was popular at the time (except for Billy Joel and Huey Lewis & The News--those guys rocked). While everyone else my age was listening to Michael Jackson and Madonna, I was listening to The Beatles and The Mamas and The Papas and the soundtrack to The Big Chill. If I could find an "oldies" station on my radio dial, that was where it stayed tuned as long as it was in range. Of course, back then, "oldies" were defined as music from the 1950s and 1960s--today, it's pretty much anything from about 1964 to the late 1980s and good luck hearing anything from the 1950s on the radio anymore.
I devoured not just the music of that era, but also any kind of literature I could find on those artists. This turned me on to other artists from that same era. Even then, you had musical categorizations that separated pop, rock, R&B, folk, etc., and, naturally, there were categories within categories (such as soul music), but for me, it was all just "'60s music." I've never understood why, but for some reason, the one sub-genre of rock that I was particularly drawn to was of the psychedelic variety. Maybe it was the funky band names like The Electric Prunes, The Strawberry Alarm Clock, Iron Butterfly, Vanilla Fudge, The Chocolate Watch Band, Moby Grape, The Thirteenth Floor Elevators, and Big Brother & The Holding Company--and yes, all of those are actual bands of that era, a couple of which, I have to confess, even I have never listened to. It could be that I got a weird, illicit thrill out of it. A lot of the artists were purported to have been under the influence of illegal substances (many of whom admitted it outright) and their songs were supposed to be a glorification of drug use. For years, I actually thought that Richard Harris's recording of Jimmy Webb's "Mac Arthur Park" was a drug song with its cryptic lyrics about cakes melting in the rain and whatnot ("all the sweet green icing flowing doooooowwwwwnnn...")--imagine my disappointment when I discovered it was just about a relationship that went south. But that didn't stop me from laying back with my eyes closed and feeling like I was getting high listening to it along with all sorts of other great psychedelic numbers like "Incense and Peppermints" and "I Had Too Much to Dream (Last Night)." (HELPFUL HINT: If you're looking to get high while listening to music, for "Mac Arthur Park" to achieve full potency, pair it with The Doors' "Riders on the Storm.")
The problem with psychedelic music is that it does seem dated. Just the word "psychedelic" evokes images of hippies in San Francisco during the "Summer of Love" in 1967. And even though it does have a late-1960s vibe, it had a long-lasting influence on artists like Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin. There was a change in the music of that time--artists started getting experimental and dared to try new things on their recordings (the advent of multi-track recording technology certainly helped in this endeavour). Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't. Some fans liked it, some fans didn't--for example, as much as I do enjoy Pink Floyd, I thought their 1969 epic Ummagumma was so experimental and "out there," that I couldn't finish listening to it. (Granted, it's been roughly thirty years--maybe I should give that one another try.) Even established artists like The Beatles and The Stones tried their hand at the whole "flower-power" thing with arguably mixed results.
I've always been kind of fascinated by this week's album. While very much a product of its time--it's not like you would have thought it was recorded in the 1990s--I find I've been listening to it quite a bit in recent months. Like so many things in my life, I don't really know why--I'm not sure I want to know. Sometimes I find it's best to not question it and just enjoy the ride while it lasts. For me, it's the group's trippiest album--not as accessible as their other albums, before or after. Drugs were definitely heavily involved--even the title was code among the band members for "After taking LSD."
Released in November of 1967, this was the group's third album, following their landmark Surrealistic Pillow which had catapulted them to stardom upon its release the previous February. This album only climbed to #17 on the Billboard Album chart (it didn't chart at all in the U.K.), but most critics as well as other musicians gave it a lot of praise upon its initial release and still do today. Please enjoy what I think is the quintessential psychedelic band, Jefferson Airplane, with their most psychedelic album, After Bathing at Baxter's.
Until next week, stay safe, be good to your neighbours, and please remember that if at first you don't succeed, then skydiving definitely isn't for you.
Yours in peace, love, and rock and roll!
The Reverend Will the Thrill
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