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| Sid relaxes between seminars whilst comely intern Rholonne Déodoranté serves refreshments! |
You'll know T.V.'s Sid Slaw as Fred MacMurray's loveable stunt double, but did you know he teaches Pop Culture Studies for prestigious Hunts Point (NY) University On-Line College Of Learning? In today's piece, th' Prof gives free sample of in-depth tuition successful applicant will receive!
Psychedelia somehow missed mainland Europe. Yes, there were exceptions (Holland, weirdly), but it bypassed Spain, Italy, Germany (Krautrock doesn't count - prove me wrong), and France. The 'sixties didn't catch on in France until the 'seventies, by which time it was too late, and they got everything totally wrong anyway. Belgium, Austria, and Switzerland have never had any young people. There may be other nations out there - I'm not looking too hard - but it's safe to assume that the guiding principles of psychedelia never spread across their borders.
Yet, on the other side of the world - totally isolated from civilisation's advances (plumbing, moveable type, the yo-yo ...) psychedelia not only took root but flourished in the hostile climate. The Antipodes exploded in a hallucinogenic haze, affecting global weather systems to this day. The evolution of the music, from its roots in surf and garage, through pop-psych and wyrd folk to heavy rock, coincided with developments in the U.S.. Science cannot account for this synchronicity - perhaps it was the Daturene© Formula [Jimson Weed - Ed.] given to suckling babes?
Today's study materials - provided free! - are but a corner of the acid-soaked blotter that was the Antipodean underground scene - a scene which continues to this very day!
Hunts Point U.C.L. is now accepting applications for next year's course in Pop Culture Studies - visit our website contact@huntspointuni.aol for details! Enrol now and benefit from special rates for Four Or Five Guys©!
Study Materials Module One
Datura Dream Time and Forest Of Goldtops - two head-creasing comps of the downest and underest.
Study Materials Module Two
Tully - Four albums of mind-folding multi-instrumental virtuosity, including the wyrd-folk masterpiece Hush by offshoot band Extradition.
Study Materials Module Three
Taman Shud - Two skull-trepanning albums from Australia's answer to Blue Cheer. Or somebody.
Study Materials Module Four
The Music Convention - A consciousness-fluffing comp from this improbably brilliant band, with a new cover.
Additional Materials
This here video of The Music Convention reminding us what it was to be young and daft in the head.
This post made manifest by the combined will of the cute chicks in yoga pants at the Manifesting & Mindfulness Workshop For Womyns, Laurel Canyon, L.A.
Until Babs focusses our tiny minds, let's talk random crap.
ReplyDeleteThat's my specialist subject.
DeleteI cut my toenails and my fingernails today. That's kind of unusual. Normally, they require trimming at different times, on account which different growth rates. But today - like cosmic conjunctions of the planets - I cut both, and feel better for it.
ReplyDeleteI used to bite my nails until we had children. I realised it was no use telling them not to do it if I did. So I stopped. Over 40 years later I still don't bite them and I get an inordinate amount of pleasure out of cutting and filing them.
DeleteI had to read that first sentence twice.
DeleteWhy do toenails double in thickness when you get old? I almost put an angle grinder to mine the other day.
DeleteWhen I'm rich I'm going to employ a nailtician to give me daily manicures and pedicures. Actually I was hoping Babs would have offered by now.
DeleteThe process of nails thickening as we age is called Onychoctes.
DeleteAn anagram of "conchy toes".
DeleteThis is the kind of conversation you just don't get down at the poolroom.
DeleteThe best anagram I can come up with is cosy techno.
DeleteFor Babs you can get NYC SOHO ETC
DeleteA couple I know visited Australia in the early 90's, and spent a day in Nimbin, saying it was a hippy town, that really smelt of weed. I've just done a intinet image search 'Nimbin Australia', and it looks just like the sort of place that may explain their excellence in all things psychedelic. King Gizzard and The Wizard Lizard are one of the latest Oz groups to get popular worldwide.
ReplyDeleteKGATWL are also very prolific, so lots to collect.
DeleteAll slightly before my time, I'm afraid - but can I recommend the very wonderful Tyrnaround from Melbourne, a mid-eighties outfit of passing psychedelic pstupendousness.
ReplyDeleteColour Your Mind - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-icTAM2ilHQ
Hello Or Goodbye - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lr86idORpuw
I am familiar with this combo. Also The Moffs from around the same period I think.
DeleteFERCRISSAKES BABS WAKE UP WE'RE DYING OUT HERE!
ReplyDeleteALL RIGHT ALREADY!
DeleteWhat fictional character is amazing in their book / show / movie, but would be insufferable if you had to deal with them in mundane everyday situations?
First thought: Ignatius J. Reilly.
DeleteGary Wilder - He'd fly away from everyday situations.
DeleteHolden Caulfield came immediately to mind so I'm just going to roll with that. Stupid blogger isn't working again for me anyway
DeleteJames Bond.
DeleteThat's some echo!
DeleteI'm going with Bukowski's alter ego, Henry Chinaski. Or Sherlock Holmes.
DeleteFarquhar Throckmorton the third.
DeleteI'm kicking myself for not thinking of that, Mr. Pune.
DeleteValentine Michael Smith
DeleteKeith Richards. :)
DeleteBugs
Delete"Krautrock doesn't count - prove me wrong." Julian Cope would like a word or two thousand.
ReplyDeletehttps://archive.org/details/Krautrocksampler
https://rateyourmusic.com/list/groonrikk/krautrock-sampler-top-50-albums-compiled-by-writer-julian-cope/
Which brings up Japrocksampler and all the psych nuggets from Cambodia, Vietnam, Thailand, and all other the lovely places where we imported soldiers and exported drugs during the heyday of psychedelia.
ReplyDeleteThere's a resistance in many people from English-speaking Western cultures to music that uses "foreign" languages. Even if it's only in the titles of the music.
DeleteSome of that probably comes from the USA, as the vast distances kept "the country" from hearing the limited cross-border radio broadcasts. I'd guess you can pick up radio from the Continent in England if you're interested. These days there are many local Spanish language radio stations but that's a very recent development.
DeleteLooking at a globe, I suspect Australia and New Zealand had even fewer opportunities for cross-border AM or FM reception.
And of course, parochialism: If English was good enough for Jesus, it ought to be good enough for a pop group from one o' them little dinky countries where they use toilet paper for money.
Of course, with the internet, this is all ancient history. I can just as easily listen to a radio station in Chile as I can to one here in France.
DeleteI think your last paragraph nailed it. People stick with things with which they're familiar.
Yes, and it's easier to explore foreign musics. I don't know about how it was in the U.K., but in the Bay Area, there was usually a single rack with world music. INDIA would be a large part of that (thanks to the Beatles use of sitar...)...but it wasn't current pop, it was Ravi Shankar or Ali Akbar Khan. Same for the other countries; it was "ethnic" music. Traditional Bulgarian Songs by a government sponsored folk collective, German oom-bands, the Sounds of Brazilian Carnival, etc. These days I can actually find CURRENT music that people are actually listening to all over the world.
DeleteFolk rock played a large part in the eventual appreciation of "world music". Not the US variety, but the UK's. Traditional songs and melodies were given the electric treatment (notably Fairport Convention) - not something that really happened in the US, where genres like bluegrass employed trad material acoustically.
DeleteFolk rock (UK style) was taken up quite eagerly in Europe in the early 1970s, particularly in France, with bands like Malicorne and artists like Alan Stivell.
Did anyone of any note in the US play traditional music electrically? I can't think of anyone.
I suppose blues is US folk music and that certainly went electric.
DeleteBob Dylan...
DeleteDylan played quite a bit of trad material before he went electric. There might have been the odd trad cover after that, but they're few and far between.
DeleteSnagglepuss
ReplyDeleteMr. Ed
ReplyDelete
DeleteThe sad story of Mr. Ed He wrote, he directed, he desinged and made his own jewelry, yet his dark side would erupt from time to time and hurt the one's he loved most.
john
He certainly knew how to wound with words.
DeleteDoes Donald Trump count? (only to 3...)
ReplyDeleteDr Strangelove, that alien hand syndrome of his would cause havoc with my collection of Hummel figurines. I've heard that Jeff won't have him in the house either.
ReplyDeleteTubby.
ReplyDeleteI'd say Australia went psychedelic at least partly because they too went to Vietnam.
ReplyDeleteOh and Myrthis Lathrop.
ReplyDeleteHe went to Vietnam?
DeleteBoop the koala bear's snoot:
ReplyDeleteʕ•ᴥ•ʔ