Psychedelic Music: Psychedelic Music

Their dissatisfaction with the consumerism values and goals, with the work ethic, and with the dependence on technology (Edgar and Sedwick, 2008) fuelled their belief to set themselves free from this mainstream culture using drugs such as LSD to open their minds and become spiritual and free. Their fashion consisted of floral headbands and clothing, flared jeans and bare feet. In January of 1967, a Human Be-in in Golden Gate Park San Francisco publicised the culture and this lead to the Summer of Love (The Naked Truth……….., 2014). According to Philippa(Toturhunt.com, 2015), this culture has since moved on and developed, in the sense of beliefs, to become what is now known as the rave culture. Which followed on from the hippie culture of listening to music in fields, with spiritual and honing on values that counter the popular culture whilst using recreational drugs to open the mind and push the beliefs of the hippie culture of their predecessors. Rather than psychedelics this new culture used amphetamines such as MDMA and brought together every different kind of person. Either way, drugs have played part in counterculture for a very long time, and it didn 't end at with the hippies.

This answers the complicated question, but broken down it is somewhat simple. The “altered perception and thought” side means that the psychedelic drug changes what you are seeing and mangles up what is real and what is not. These types of drugs can cause you to see things that are not there, colors or shapes, make you hear things, like songs or people and overall distorts what is actually happening. The “mind expanding” part mean that the psychedelic broadens your perspective on the world and what you are perceiving at that moment, many people say you are “re-learning” everything you see. When on a psychedelic drug you may feel as if you are able to answer anything, and everything makes sense, but at the same time nothing makes sense at all; every secret in the world has been exposed and only you know the answer but it’s in a foreign language you do not understand. Finally, the “heightened awareness but diminished control” side means that you are extremely aware of what is going on, but you have no control over what is actually happening. There is no specific purpose that a psychedelic drug is meant to fill, they were previously used in therapy sessions for extreme cases of PTSD and MDMA was used in

The Beatles were a very well-known and popular band in the sixties. The use of LSD and other drugs heavily influenced two of their albums, Revolver and Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. Their first experience with the drug within the band was when John Lennon and George Harrison accidentally took acid in 1965. After their eye opening incident, Lennon and Harrison decided that Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr needed to try it as well because they found that “[they] couldn't relate to them any more. Not just on the one

Another era in popular music that illustrates the tie that draws drugs and pop music together is in the modern day hip-hop subcultures. Historically, the main drug that has commonly been associated with hip-hop is marijuana. Today, however, hip-hop has been changed as well as the drugs that are being rapped about in hip-hop songs. There have been movements, such as the Bay Area centered “hyphy” movement and the Los Angeles centered jerk movement, within the genre of hip hop that are influenced by the drug MDMA, known on the streets as ecstasy. With lyrics that reference the drug and describe the actions of those that are under the influence it, these

They also used audio tricks involving steam organs, orchestras, sitars, and even a pack of foxhounds in full cry at the end of “Good Morning, Good Morning.” The use of animal sounds were actually first used in the Beach Boys album Pet Sounds that the Beatles admired. When asked the Beach Boys where they got their innovation for Pet Sounds, the Beatles Rubber Soul album was what inspired them. “A Day In The Life,” the last song on the album, featured “what Lennon described as ‘a sound building up from nothing to the end of the world’” (Lazarescu). The song “Strawberry Fields Forever” fused two different versions of the same song and used reverse-tape cellos for an eerie effect. After George Harrison used sitar on the song “Norwegian Wood,” other bands like the Byrds, Yardbirds, and the Rolling Stones, soon followed incorporating Eastern-influence sounds into their work.

In the early 1970s, musical pioneer Chuck Brown started to lie down the foundations of what is now called go-go music. The music was “driven by teenage musicians and audience members, the music was heavily inspired by funk, blues, soul, and salsa” (Reynolds, 2015). Go-go is typically identifiable because of its syncopated polyrhythms and the use of multiple percussion instruments. Initially, “"go-go" was the term used to identify the place where young people were partying” (Reynolds, 2015). Eventually, the music itself took on the name and

“Hippies were called Flower Children because they gave flowers to communicate gentleness and love” (Salge). The Hippie Movement was a popular counter culture during the 60’s-70’s. Hippies are best known for their practice of psychedelic drug use, interesting political views, where they took up living quarters, and their unique fashion sense.

“Always do what you are afraid to do," Ralph Waldo Emerson once said this. This means that even though something is scary you should still attempt it even if it means that it is hard to do and this was an idea that transcendentalist agreed on. Transcendentalism was this philosophical an idea, that came from the 19th century, in New England. The people in this group thought that you could find a knowledgeable intuitive awareness that is conditional upon the individual if you had believed in transcendentalism and its beliefs. It was also, basically a protest against the state of culture and society in the 1800’s. These Transcendentalist had new forms of principles that they followed (like like the ideas of nature, individualism, and self reliance) and they based their live off of these ideas. The Beatles had connected to these same ideas through their many songs and albums for over a decade. This band formed in the 1960’s in Liverpool England, they built their fame by starting out playing at clubs and bars around Liverpool. There were four people in band which included: Ringo Starr, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and John Lennon they had studied transcendental meditation in India for a whole summer, they listened to many lectures. Transcendentalist had believed in nature, religion, and self reliance which you can find in many Beatles songs like: “Strawberry Fields Forever”, “Mother Nature's Son”, “Blackbird,” and “Tomorrow Never Knows”.

Psychedelics, and drugs in general became such an important part of life during the 60’s that it’s influence was inescapable. Nowhere can this fact be seen more clearly than in the music of the time. The most obvious influence drugs had on music can bee seen in the lyrics. Drug references abound, be it Jimi Hendrix’s “Purple Haze” of marijuana smoke, or the Beatles’ “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”, obviously referring to LSD. Even the names of the bands were drug inspired, as Garofalo points out in reference to the Doors: “The group took it’s name from Aldous Huxley’s The Doors of Perception, a book about the liberating aspects of drug use.” Even the music itself was influenced by drugs. Take for example much of the music by the Doors. Their song “the End” is a psychedelic journey in to the world of LSD. The slow beat and “trippy” music in the song was probably created with the use of drugs and hence is better appreciated when heard while on drugs. This is also true of the music of the Grateful Dead, although this can be much more clearly seen in their live performances as opposed to their studio work. Much of their music is geared specifically toward those in the audience who are on drugs. Hearing one of their 30 minute jams is a much different experience on drugs, and that is the experience that they intended the audience to have. While drugs were very much connected to the music of the sixties,

When hear the name Merry Pranksters what comes to your mind? Let me guess a group of young individuals dressed in a joker costume running around throwing water balloons from roof tops or shaking hands with strangers to taze them. Merry Pranksters were not exactly known for doing that, but they were group of young adults who did pranks with LSD. For instance, they mixed LSD in a bowl of Kool-Aid in their parties to get their guests high and this was known as Electric Kool-Aid Test. “In the 1960s, heroes of the counterculture -- Timothy Leary, Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters, the Beatles and the Grateful Dead -- embraced the practice of dropping acid, viewing it as a great way to party and as the path to a higher consciousness” (Ross). At the same time, in the sixties violence was prevalent from Vietnam War, to protesters rebelling against the government and U.S. was at a brink of starting World War 3 with the Soviet Union. As a result, this made the American people pessimistic about their future, so they began to take LSD and drugs. We can see things in today’s culture that were partially inspired by the Merry Pranksters, such as using LSD in order to be connect with the self, two distinct groups of LSD users and the revival of psychedelic movement.

In 1967 the Beatles were in Abbey Road Studios putting the finishing touches on their album Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. At one point Paul McCartney wandered down the corridor and heard what was then a new young band called Pink Floyd working on their hypnotic debut, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn. He listened for a moment, then came rushing back. "Hey guys," he reputedly said, "There's a new band in there and they're gonna steal our thunder." With their mix of blues, music hall influences, Lewis Carroll references, and dissonant experimentation, Pink Floyd was one of the key bands of the 1960s psychedelic revolution, a pop culture movement that emerged with American and British rock,

Drugs played a role in the recording of Sgt. Pepper's. The group was notoriously known to experiment with the drugs LSD and Marijuana. The entire album has debatable drug references, but the one thing that can not be argued is that the entire group was high on these drugs throughout the recording process. The record has many sounds that will be used later in the psychedelic

In an interview hosted by CNN, author Ken Johnson stated: “I think any work of art encourages you to imagine your way into a state of consciousness that may not be your normal state, so you kind of suspend disbelief and allow yourself to be imaginatively seduced into a different way of relating to the world so that you study things more carefully, you think about how things are affecting you.” Johnson also stated, “but they start thinking about how our perceptions work and how interesting it is the way we think about the world, so we think about our thinking.” This proves that in the 60’s many people discovered that drugs, such as LSD, were a way to see the deeper meaning behind things because it rearranged the whole way your brain may have thought. Another reason that psychedelic art was so popular in the 60’s was because all of the art pieces, more specifically rock concert posters, they “tried to visually express the feeling of tripping out.” (visualartsdepartment.wordpress.com) An article on arthistory.net titled “Psychedelic Art,” says that many of these art pieces were also popular because of their “visually captivating styles.” Obviously, many people enjoyed these feelings because they could avoid mainstream thinking without having to actually use said drugs. The 60’s were a period of experimenting, not only with art, but with things like fashion to music

For thousands of years, music has been influencing people in extraordinary ways. The Beatles Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band should not be mistaken as an ordinary album. Without a doubt, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, an incredibly innovative album, stands as the most influential album of all time; it stands as a true masterpiece. People all around, especially artists, were influenced greatly by the innovations the album brought to the world of music. Many people have said that from the moment they heard the first track of the album, it was life changing. Like the first falling domino tile of a domino show, June 1, 1967, would mark the start of the influence of many generations of music to come. The album helped popularize concept albums, in which songs are connected to a theme, which would inspire many musicians to do the same. Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band was a psychedelic rock album; a manifestation of life in the 1960’s. This genre of rock is home to the work of numerous artists who were influenced by the album’s use of this style of rock. The hours of work put into by the Beatles to create this album surpassed those of any of their albums. Not only that, it altered the way music was recorded by creating their own recording techniques. Surely, these recording techniques and tactics were used by future artists in their work which then led to the creation of legendary music. Sgt. Pepper’s opened the gate to innovation; an album whose impact on

The hippie subculture was originally a youth movement beginning in the United States around the early 1960s and consisted of a group of people who opposed political and social orthodoxy, choosing an ideology that favored peace, love, and personal freedom. The hippies rejected established institutions, criticized middle class values, opposed nuclear weapons and the Vietnam War, were usually eco-friendly and vegetarians, and promoted the use of psychedelic drugs. They created their own communities, listened to psychedelic rock, embraced the sexual revolution, and used drugs to explore alternative states of consciousness. They strived to liberate themselves from societal restrictions, choose their own way, and find new meaning in life.