Hindustan Times
In Search of Hippie Music
Psst…were you a hippy in the nineteen-sixties and seventies? Er, okay, you don’t want to answer that question, right? Or, perhaps you were too young or not even around those days. So here’s another. Did you ever like hippie music? You know what I mean, music from the psychedelic sixties, tunes that reek of incense, patchouli and, of course, other unmentionable substances.
Scotland’s 'Incredible String' band were the pioneers in British psychedelic rock.
Music, that is, from the “turn on, tune in, drop out” generation. That phrase, coined by counterculture guru Timothy Leary, became a catchall descriptor for the hippie generation.
Leary himself claimed that the phrase came to him in the shower one day in the mid-sixties after Marshall McLuhan had suggested to him that he come up with a snappy way to promote the ‘benefits’ of LSD.
Now, it’s not known whether the medium was indeed the message in the sense of whether Leary was tripping in the shower in that McLuhan moment when he thought of that brilliant phrase but there is no doubt that those six words became a mantra du jour for hippies across the world.
Hippies have been a much-maligned lot, not the least because of the movement’s pretty widespread adoption of drugs as a way of life, but one thing is for sure, some of the best popular music was born during those decades.
Genres like folk rock, for example, which attempted to marry folk styles with rock music. Among the earliest folk rockers in the US were the Byrds, Crosby, Stills and Nash and even Bob Dylan who fused country and folk styles with rock.
In Britain, folk rock musicians blended elements from traditional genres, like Celtic and Old English music, with rock. Fairport Convention, a British band, who began in 1967 and are still around despite countless line-up changes, fused electric sounds to old English folk styles.
Watch 'Lindsfarne' perform 'Fog on the Tyne'
Lindisfarne, another British band of the late sixties, were another example of folk rockers. Besides folk rock, another example of hippie-ish music was psychedelic rock, which emerged in the same decade in both the US and Britain.
Among the earliest psych rockers were the 13th Floor Elevators, a band from Texas that barely existed for four years. Drug abuse is reported to have caused their early demise in 1969 (the year Woodstock brought hippie music to the mainstream) but the 13th Floor Elevators have been acknowledged by many musicians of that time to be a huge influence on many bands.
Even today, the long-gone band have a cult of fans and, incidentally, one such is the actor Johnny Depp. From those early years, psychedelic rock grew into a behemoth of a music movement.
Some consider San Francisco to be its epicenter from where big and better-known bands such as the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane emerged. Although the Dead were the most enduring of such bands, playing and touring relentlessly with thousands of ‘tuned-in, turned-on and dropped-out’ followers in tow, some of the nearly forgotten bands of that era produced great music too.
The Quicksilver Messenger Service (at one time, the Dead’s arch rivals), Moby Grape, The Great Society (Grace Slick of Jefferson Airplane began her career with them), Fifty Foot Hose, Shiva’s Headband and the Electric Prunes are some of them.
Likewise, Britain’s Pink Floyd may be the first name that comes to mind when you think of psychedelia-infused music and the Beatles’ Revolver is cited by some as the early mainstream debut of the psychedelic sound (later full blown in Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band) but the genre was taking root before that among small bands in small clubs that had a few loyal fans.
Till British DJs like John Peel began giving them exposure, first on a pirate radio channel and then on the mainstream BBC. Scotland’s Incredible String Band and East London’s The Small Faces (whose Ogdens’ Nut Gone Flake is considered one of rock’s first concept albums) were among the pioneers in British psychedelic rock. These and many other bands of that era produced music that is very, very good but the problem is how do you get to discover them nearly forty years later? I discovered a podcast that helps you do that.
The Hippy’s Graveyard is a two-hour radio programme aired weekly by an independent non-profit FM channel run on donations at a small college in California. The programme is streamed on the Internet besides making its podcasts available anywhere in the world. The DJ, simply described as Uncle Al, digs deep into the past and comes up with tracks from bands that may have been unknown to you till now but are sure to satisfy your yearning for music of the hippie era.
To subscribe free, just go to the website and you’ll be assured of a weekly dose of hippie stuff. The music, I mean.
Listen to some ‘virtual’ tracks:
- 13th Floor Elevators Slip Inside This House
- Incredible String Band
- Moby Grape’ Mike Douglas show
- Great Society & Grace Slick
- 10 coolest psychedelic tracks from late 60s
- Lindisfarne’ Fog on the Tyne
(1 votes, average: 5 out of 5)
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… N ya Advanced Happy Diwali!!!
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Anonymous Reply:
December 19th, 2011 at 3:23 am
Shan,
Bang on target..I in fact see Arab world going back in 7th century where non-muslims will be hounded out by Islamists. There have been numerous attacks on christians in Egypt post so called Islamic renaissance.
[Reply]
Sibghat Khan2 Reply:
December 19th, 2011 at 5:52 am
This is not the renaissance of Christian who started crusade against Islam and Muslims all over the world and grabbed their nations ,continuously fought for two hundred years ,brutally killed looted their propirty. Islam taught to their Militia not to cut trees which bears fruits , not to kill old, disable ,infants and to those who does not wish to fight with you .Not to destroy worship places,that is why you will find Christian and Jews living peacefully in almost all the Midle East countries .All these three religion are monotheist and are branches of Ibrahimi religion who forbade to worship none except one God .A muslim is allowed to marry with Christian and Jewish girl . If you turn the pages of ancient history of India then you learn how Budhas Monestary were destroyed and entire population was chased away to other neighboring countries .Auregzeb has been called anti Hindu but he could not convert any but Sufi Hazrat chisti of Ajmer is revered by Hindus also . The Salook , common table and brotherhood brought lower strata Hindus in thousand in the fold of Islam .
[Reply]
Anonymous Reply:
December 19th, 2011 at 7:59 am
Dear Sibghat Khan,
can you enlighten us Why there is no Christian and Jew in Arabian Peninsula, It was full of them at the time of Mohammed.All other Arab areas outside Arabian Penisula were populated entirely by Christians and Jews . There are some very small no. of them who have somehow survived.Mohammed had exhorted to his followers to clear whole Arab Peninsula of Jews and Christians, and they did it very faithfully.
Destroying of places of worship started with Mohammed himself. Was Mecca muslim worship place?.Mohammed could have built another place of worship for himself.
Please also enlighten us with reference where it is mentioned that Hindus destroyed Buddhist monasteries and chased away Buddhist people.No Buddhist has ever complained on this.
Can you find any Hindu,Jain and Buddhist places of worship which is more than 400 years old (period upto which Muslims were in full power in above areas)from Afghanistan to Bengal, from Kashmir to Vindhyas.Any temple which would have survived would be either because of remote location or because of being very small/insignificant .
You are totally brainwashed with this deranged cult philosphy which is called Islam.
engrich Reply:
December 23rd, 2011 at 9:13 pm
can you enlighten us Why there is no Christian and Jew in Arabian Peninsula
THERE ARE 1.5 CRORES CHRISTIANS IN ARAB WORLD.
engrich Reply:
December 23rd, 2011 at 9:15 pm
Destroying of places of worship started with Mohammed himself
PLACES OF WORSHIP ARE DESTROYED BY BRHMNS.NOT BY MUSLIMS.mecca is same so jerusalam.jews are destroying this.
engrich Reply:
December 23rd, 2011 at 9:18 pm
Please also enlighten us with reference where it is mentioned that Hindus destroyed Buddhist monasteries and chased away Buddhist people.No Buddhist has ever complained on this
aloke prayag kashi mathura and ayodhya were buhdhdist places of worship.brhmns never builted nything
they decimated and exterminated budhhdists and jainese nd occupied their places of worship.
Anonymous Reply:
December 19th, 2011 at 9:00 am
iGNORANCE IS THE HALLMARK OF MUSLIMS, and this geezer Khan is a living proof. Renaissance is only 500 yrs old , Crusade took place 1000 yrs ago BECAUSE MUSLIMS HAD OCCUPIED THE HOLY LAND THAT IS JERUSALEM.
As for Muslim kindness , DOES THE NAME TAIMUR LUNG RING A BELL. How even a MULLAH TOOK PART IN SLAUGHTERING 100000 HINDUS IN DELHI.
iSLAM IS GETTING ITS JUST DESERT FOR ALL THE SINS OF THE PAST CENTURIES
engrich Reply:
December 22nd, 2011 at 12:02 pm
How even a MULLAH TOOK PART IN SLAUGHTERING 100000 HINDUS IN DELHI
rubbish and shows ur ignorance about the subject.taimur killed most of the inhabitants of delhi which consisted mainly of muslims.
engrich Reply:
December 22nd, 2011 at 11:34 pm
taimur was godless athiest though born in muslim family and hafiz quran.he conquered 68 countries in his life.he was great man.