Favorite Psychedelic LP from the 1st era (1966-1975)...

This is the best $7.50 that I ever spent the past 2 years. The NYC rooftop performance when House at Pooneil Corners shut down the streets of Manhattan and NYPD broke up the party was awesome!

 

Another vote for Piper.

 

Is that the start of what is labelled now as Acid Folk? I like that album a lot, but have never been able to quite position it, except vaguely among Fairport, Traffic and Davy Graham. The Hedgehog Song is sort of overtly toytown psyche, and Paintbox reminds me a little of Barrett and Wright early Floyd anyway. There is a sort of groggy drugginess underlying the whole thing too. The art by the Fool is suitably kaleidoscopic. It's probably the last of their albums I'd part with.

 

Comus has to be in there too if we're talking "acid folk"

 

The crown of their live performances for me-on the rooftop in NYC -where I'm from. Love the Marty and Grace moment of laughter. Epic.

 

Groggy drugginess is a pretty apt description. "Chinese White" is my favorite ISB track. Some purists might argue that ground zero for "Acid Folk" goes back a few more years, in 1964, with the Holy Modal Rounders' use of the term "psychedelic" in the song "Hesitation Blues" (from their debut self-titled album). But I don't think the HMR "inspired" the genre....they were so freaky it would not be inaccurate to place them as a genre unto themselves.

 

"Chinese White" is like a strung-out Lou Reed reincarnated as a National Health-maintained Hobbit. It gets my 'nod' of approval.

 

Ha ha, yeah!

 

This only kinda counts but... probably Renaissance - Prologue. Rajah Khan is one of THE best psych rock songs ever.

 

Well because Jefferson Airplane, Baxters has been already mentioned, I'll go with The Holy Modal Rounders 1 & 2.

 

HP Lovecraft II

 

Live Dead. Meddle. Forever Changes.

 

Personally, I think '66-75 is too wide a period to be considered '1st' era. I would go '66-70. Certainly I would never consider albums like True Star, to be true 1st era psychedelia. I think the world and the technology had changed too much by then.

Having got that out of the way – the best, most inventive, lyrically articulate, poetic, most musically developed album and listenable album of the p-era (for me) is The Soft Machine Volume 2.



Of course The Soft Machine (Volume 1) would come close second (or first, depending on whether it was an odd or even-numbered day.

 

No actually aficianados of 1st era psychedelia like myself who lived it cut it off around late 1968,but for the sake of neophytes I extended it to 1975.Peace.

 

Acid Folk was first recorded by the Fugs in 1965 in early 66 you had the Godz from NY&Love from L.A. both are very early innovators of Acid Folk.The Fugs are the very first underground band of the 1960s.Donovan was also early Acid Folk on his Sunshine Superman LP of 1966.And of course Dylan's Its All Over Now,Baby Blue another very early piece of Acid Folk.Around late 66 you had the L A group Kaleidoscope who did combined middle Eastern Jams &Acid Folk on there very fine debut LP "Side Trips" & their sophomore effort "Beacon From Mars". These are all the absolute cream of 1960s Psychedelia dont be misled.I grew up in that era and edited the highly regarded book " Psychedelia " Bantam 1983.Peace.

 

The hardest question ever asked.

 

I think that The Fugs and maybe even very early Grateful Dead (Warlocks) are more Acid Jug Music than Acid Folk.

 

Does that make early Incredible String Band "acid skiffle"?
The Thirteenth Floor Elevators had a full-time jug player,
but managed to rock harder than any of these other outfits.

 

The Doors first album "The Doors" released in is my pick hands down.

This was a raw, hard hitting, powerful album that came out swinging and opened the eyes of many who were already married to
"rock and roll". The band had the material down pat and was very comfortable with it which can be heard when listening to the album. Rothchild helped tame some of the rawness but left enough of the feeling there to give the album an amazing punch. Botnick used many of the techniques he used on the Love recordings to bring the recording to life using all of 4 tracks (3 for recording and 1 for overdubs - of which there were very few).

Overall, this helped blow the doors open for the "psychedelic" genre of music.

 

These guys were a bit of a surprise.

 

O

One of my fav musically & groovy gatefold.Thanks for post.Peace.

 

I think the first few quintessence albums could be viewed as pretty psychedelic.

 

Good album. I just realized how apt it is that this was on the Philips label! I file them with the Maxfield Parrish album (something about cinching eggs) for some reason, no doubt logical in a different dimension..

 

I borrowed a friend's Village Fugs LP in a really heavy-duty sleeve to transfer the contents to CD-R. I'm still trying to process what it all means. I absolutely loved It Crawled Into My Hands, Honest though. And yes, I will always remember the bread crusts of Paris! Thanks for the help on figuring out what fits into the Acid Folk files. Like the Freakbeat label it is becoming less nebulous for me.