Psychedelic Rock Essentials

I agree it's a great album, I love it!

 

imo, the two best psychedelic albums of the sixties are 'the piper at the gates of dawn' and 'the psychedelic sounds of the 13th floor elevators'. All the other albums don't even come close to those two masterpieces.

 

Well, I'm not a psychedelic expert by any means, but those would probably be my two favorite psych albums that I own. From the first listen of those two albums, I knew they were amazing. Actually, all it took was one listen to "Astronomy Domine" for me to know I loved The Piper at the Gates of Dawn. However, that would be a bit depressing to know that I already own the best psychedelic music and that there is nothing better to find, so I'll just assume that those are not the absolute best. (Besides, I've heard better things about Easter Everywhere than The Psychedelic Sounds of...) Plus, I know you're a big Syd Barrett fan, (as I am) so obviously you would think that PATGOD is the best.

On a side note, thanks for all the replies! Gives me a bunch of new music to check out. Oh, and, I have a question... where did you find some of the more obscure titles you have? I know I can get some of them on vinyl, but I stopped doing that after I bought The Psychedelic Sounds of the 13th Floor Elevators on vinyl and then longed for the CD version. I have found things on websites such as bestbuy.com that they don't carry in their stores, but I'm not sure just how much they carry...

 

well, i download the obscure albums. There's no other way (for me). I live in Belgium. Most of the albums listed in this thread are unavailable here (except for the beatles and the rolling stones albums. And yes i can order most of the obscure albums from amazon.co.uk, but my dad doesn't want to buy from internet shops). So I download the albums from soulseek. that's where i get all my music from. Excellent program. You can find almost anything you want on there. If i didn't have soulseek, the only music i could listen to is what the radio plays: the usual top-40 rubbish. www.slsknet.org

 

I get the bulk of mine online,

mainly from Amazon.com market place sellers for cheapest deals and sometimes Amazon.co.uk ( although the weak dollar makes it cheaper to get my CD's shipped from the states than buy at home in UK)

also buy alot on ebay.com (most people selling psychedelia use the keyword psych in their descriptions to make it easy to find, many a bargain to be had)

gemm.com is quite handy as a last resort but often get put on backorder from the dealers, competitive prices though

also the Freakemporium.com is well stocked but expensive, great if you are desperate to a hard to get title quickly, but at a cost

and I'm lucky to have a superb independent shop next to my work place that stocks lots of obscure psych titles, and does second hand too which is good for low price classic albums psych or not

 

All right, thanks guys. I'll check out some on eBay and such, see what I can find. There are a couple of shops near me that carry some slightly obscure psychedelia, but as I said, it's almost all on vinyl. I have over 200 vinyl LPs, so I think that's enough... just need to stick to CDs.

 

I have a few more good albums to add to the list:

Damnation of Adam Blessing - The Second Damnation
Glass Harp - Glass Harp
Fever Tree - Fever Tree
The Illusion - The Illusion

 

I am huge fan of both Pink Floyd's Saucer Full Of Secrets and Ummagumma.

 

Anyone ever hear of the Soft Machine? They were contemporaries of the early Floyd and were the number-two house band at the same underground club that Syd's Floyd played at in London, the UFO club (they also played as a backup band for Syd on one or two tracks in his solo albums). They're a very... uh... peculiar group, sort of a psychedelic-jazz-prog-rock band, their albums are simply numbered volumes, as far as I know. Their frontman was a drummer, Robert Wyatt, who still records solo work today, an old bearded man in a wheelchair. I like what I've heard of them, extremely jazz-influenced. I imagine they'd strike some people as rather self-gratuitous though.

 

Of course I've heard of the Soft Machine, I've known them for a while, I love them I completely forgot to put their Volumes 1 & 2 on my list...

 

I'd rate SM's Volume 1 as my overall favourite psych album to come out of the UK in the 60's, absolutely unbeatable for me

 

Hmm... sounds like I'll definitely have to check that out.

 

dude you have to get robin trower. any album is good. bridge of sighs is a good one. robin trower is great. also get some more beatles the beatles are jsut great.

 

~*mahogany frog*~ www.mahoganyfrog.com

 

Ummagumma for sure. But i believe it is beyond pyschedelic.

However, my definition of true pyschedelic music is the music that i imagine people here during an intense acid trip. The way everything is distored and all these odd sounds come around. its crazy shit.

You could also mention alot of old psy trance since it has its roots in true pyschedelic music.

 

some people get too caught up in genres

 

I can't believe this hasn't been mentioned:

Yes - Tales From Topographic Oceans

One of the greatest psychedlic albums ever created.

 

Happy Trails - quicksilver messenger service
AOXOMOXOA - grateful dead

 

Bigbeat released this a while back as a twofer with volume two, usually can be picked up very cheap secondhand on Amazon

 

Some more favourites

less obscure stuff
HP Lovecraft II (I is nice too but II was their psych masterpiece IMHO)

Funkadelic - Free Your Mind And Your Ass Will Follow

Them - Time In Time Out For Them (post-Van Them line up, one of the best Brit-psych albums ever released IMHO but rarely gets a mention)

Pearls Before Swine - Balaklava

Gong - Angel's Egg

more obscure stuff
New Tweedy Bros- S/T

The Freeborne - Peak Impressions (beautiful organ dominated Bosstown psych band similar to Ultimate Spinach/Byrds/CJ and Fish in places)

West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band (all their albums are worth checking)

Relatively Clean Rivers - S/T (Awesome laid back rural/country/folk/rock in a Grateful Dead sort of way and very psychedelic)

Linda Perhacs - Parallelograms (Amazing soft psychedelic folk)

Morgen - S/T (melodic heavy psych)

Anonymous - Inside The Shadow (hybrid of Byrds, Airplane and Rumours era Fleetwood Mac but don't let that put you off as this contains some real melodic gems, excellent stuff)

Kennelmus - Folkstone Prism (imagine Morricone on peyote playing acid folk in the middle of a desert in Arizona and this is what you'd get)