Psychedelia

dave-dee dozy, beaky mick and tich, and...and what's that thing called again...uhm...the thoughts of emerlist davjack!canned heat...

 

13 FLOOR ELVEVATORS are amazing! i love them...

 

Sorry to correct you but the Velvet Underground is very psychedelic, you have to listen to their live concerts (bootlegs). They would play 20-30 minute versions of "Sister Ray" all jammed out, noise tapestry. They jam on many of there other songs too. If all you heard was "Workingmans Dead" would you think Grateful Dead was psychedelic?

 

I'm sure I've heard as much, if not more, Velvet Underground than you have. I have heard a great deal of their live recordings, including versions of "Sister Ray" nearly 40 minutes long. And still, the Velvet Underground was NOT a psychedelic band.

 

the velvet underground are psychedelic i guess. just not hippy.

like psychedelic doesnt necessarily mean hippy, and it doesnt have to mean underground either...

 

And it's not because the VU was a sixties band that their albums are psychedelic. Not every song recorded in 1966, '67 or '68 is psychedelic! The VU were just a couple of years ahead of their time, they didn't really in the psychedelic sixties.

 

Of course psychedelic doesn't mean "hippie." Syd's Pink Floyd was obviously psychedelic, but I certainly wouldn't call it "hippie."

Psychedelic music can loosely be defined as music inspired by psychedelics, especially LSD (hence the name "psychedelic music"), and the Velvets' music was not inspired by LSD. It's just not psychedelic music. I think a lot of people tend to call anything that's experimental "psychedelic," when that's really not the case. They were innovative, experimental, and influenced by drugs (like heroin and speed), but they were not psychedelic.

 

good point. although the definition of hippie in its strictest sense should be confined to the san francisco scene of 66-67 many people worldwide where considered hippies if they looked even slightly different and indeed many thought of themselves as such (and still do! me for one).