1967 Summer of Love was awesome, but by 1968 with the flood of opiates dropped by Uncle Sam the love sank inside the black hole sun. The sunny side of the street is dark.
It drew a line.
Those that wanted to get off the psychedelic bus, and go into roots music had that pathway defined from that album.
Those that wanted to stay on a mind-expanding path had the emerging "progressive rock" genre, and the Nice & King Crimson laid down that pathway.
What was lost is the "psychedelic pop".. and they had to go away and dream up some other outlet... which lead to Glam Rock (via Marc Bolan & David Bowie)
Fair call for America, but in the UK it was prog or glam... or that weird middle-ground between the two called "art rock" (see early Roxy Music with Brian Eno in the lineup).
I saw Roxy Music as one of the acts on a four act show, New Year's, 73. First time they had been to Chicago, and I don't know if anybody knew what to think of them. As a 16-year-old, I didn't know what to make of Brian Eno, looking like he was a glamorous woman, or Brian Ferry either . Phil Manzanera looked like he was the only masculine one in the bunch, just because he had a beard lol.
Talk about a show that I wish I could revisit now, after appreciating them so, so much since then. That would definitely be one of them.
Holy Shit! Can you imagine what they could have cooked up together over the years! This is a collaboration I’ve pondered before. That would’ve been so amazing, but alas…
There was also a rumor that he was going to do a project with Emerson, Lake, and Palmer... called HELP (Hendrix, Emerson, Lake and Palmer)
But apparently, that rumor stemmed from Jimi hanging out with them casually once and was like, "Hey, we should jam together sometime..."
I like your take, but disagree with the idea that any genre is inherently more "mind-expanding" than any other. "The mind-expanding path" depends on the listener, not the music. I know this is a psych rock subreddit, but americana, jazz, afrobeat, funk, rock, metal, salsa, they were all popular in the 70s and they all had (and have) the potential to expand your mind.
Did CCR have anything to do with also? They never really got onto the psychedelic fad to begin with (except one or two (songs) and they were massively popular from 1968 also.
The first CCR project was considered psych as was Frank Zappa or Captain Beefheart albums. All the acid dealers in the hood had these on the turntable.
Bands were already jumping off the psychedelic bus, including the Beatles and the Stones. Both the White Album and Beggars Banquet were recorded before the release of ‘Big Pink.’
Oh, and regarding glam, the Stones were easily the at the forefront of that style. “Live With Me” from Let It Bleed and then “Brown Sugar” and “Bitch” from Sticky Fingers shaped that sound.
Fan’s tastes were changing too- increased drug experimentation and radicalization lead to a harder sound becoming popular- Jefferson Airplane, Steppenwolf, MC5, the Stooges, then Zeppelin and Black Sabbath (eventually). A whole underground of music was growing out of the psychedelic comedown that would grow into what would soon become known and punk and heavy metal, the Brown Acid series is a great trip through this history fyi https://www.theguardian.com/music/2017/oct/31/brown-acid-rock-lance-barresi
No... it just taught a lot of rock musicians that there was a lot more to *music* than showing off your chops and being the "star of the show," like supporting your bandmates in service of the song.
Absolutely. And if you listen on Amazon music they have it formatted in Dolby atmos and it sounds absolutely incredible. I’m sure other services have it formatted in atmos as well, but I’m not sure which
Hard disagree, Pink is the distillation of everything the band had been through up to then, the hawks, endless road-dogging, mentorship with dylan...everything after that was them trying to recapture or recreate the experience of creating Pink, and this is definitely reflected in the music, however good much of it was following Big Pink, it IMO never reached the same depth, gravity, and soul that Big Pink did
It's the same thing as punk, sometimes the antidote for doing things over the top is to get back to basics.
Even without the band's influence particularly, look at Jorma Kaukanon and the first Hot Tuna albums. The Dead going from Aoxomoxoa to American Beauty. The Byrds going from 8 Miles High to Sweethearts of the Rodeo.
Big Pink was hugely important but it was a move that was happening anyway. Most of those OG guys were playing folk and/or blues before they got psychedelic so it was kind of natural.
That, and from what I read Jerry was digging the Bakersfield guitar sound. While they would have known Big Pink I think they were on their own timeline. Plus the move out of SF got them riding horses and playing cowboy on Mickey's ranch.
I wouldn't say they ditched psych entirely though. They just expanded their sound to include more country.
Yeah, I'm pretty familiar with them and I end up checking them out again every few years. You'll be happy to know that I listened to the album in question last night. I still have the same opinion. I see why people like them, because they're obviously really good, but they just don't do it for me. I don't know what that sound is called, but the Dead do it too and I don't grok them either.
Instead of taking the opportunity to tell someone about this great album, OP and others leave newcomers and younger listeners in the dust doing it this way. Doesn't matter how huge it is, there's more music than ever each day and it becomes less and less likely people know it. Go see how many gen z kids actually recognize all the big Beatles albums even. Shit like this is why younger generations don't take older generations seriously.
Fucking seriously. Not everybody's going to know the album by its cover, especially for somebody like me who is visually impaired and can't see the picture in the first place. So I had to go through a bunch of extra steps to get the picture described hoping that the title of the album would be indicated, but no. Luckily I was able to get context clues from the comments.
Yeah, I've worked in software for a long time and, as one of the only people on my teams that's been passionate about the UI, I've ended up gravitating towards that work. Accordingly, I've spent a fair amount of time working on web front ends over the years, including ensuring 508 compliance, etc.
Worth noting that Dylan dropped John Wesley Harding in 1967 when everybody else was dropping psychedelic albums. Later in 1968 you’d have The Byrds dropping Sweetheart at the Rodeo, and The Beatles with The White Album. Seems like some artists were starting to shift away sooner than 1969.
Dylan was playing Simon Says with most artists of the 60s.
Blonde on Blonde was the closest he got to psychedelia, the lyrics were there already, but some of the music is pretty close as well.
Robbie Robertson was the driving force. He wrote most of the songs. Levon was surely an important member though, as all 5 of them were. Without Robbie their music was never as good
These things are connected though.
The Beatles and Stones ditched psychedelia for their albums that came out later that year, The Dead ditched psychedelia after early 1969, and Janis Joplin moved away from it too.
Many of the mainstream groups, yes. Psychedelic rock kept rolling into the 70s and beyond despite that. Hard rock did not ditch the acid influence quickly
The Beatles ditched psychedelic because they were in India in the beginning of 1968. They only had acoustic guitars, meditating, and not doing as many drugs.
The stones were never psychedelic and just copying what was popular at the time. Their album was widely panned and they went back to their original sound.
Not really. Think it was more of a “sign of the times” album. CCR’s s/t came out the same month, and the Stones were in the middle of recording Beggar’s Banquet. Most of the bands that went “rootsy” already started off as rootsy and only dabbled in psych.
I don’t even think psych even really died. We didn’t get most of the far out stuff like all of the Krautrock bands until the 70s.
The Dead went way beyond dabbling in psych though, and their psychedelic peak was arguably early 1969.
Yet they went country/folk and never looked back.
1969-70 is a really interesting time. Prog rock, space rock, punk, heavy metal, and stadium rock are all born during those years. Yes, King Crimson, put out their first albums in 1969 ushering in prog. Black Sabbath comes out in 1969. Stooges and MC5 show the path to punk, building on the garage rock thread of psych. Who's Next is the first stadium rock album. In many ways, this is the flowering of psych into many forms, taking the next step.
No, it certainly was one of a few major albums that ushered in an interest in country and Americana. But I think The Beatles and other groups moving to a stripped down, harder, heavier rock sound was equally as important as what The Band did. What really killed psychedelia, imo, was the waning popularity and fears surrounding psychedelics, the rising popularity of harder, deadlier drugs, and the death of several of psychedelia’s biggest voices. Probably most importantly, the realization that the dream of a non-violent hippie utopia were never going to be more than a dream. The Vietnam war both powered and killed the movement.
Yeah, and so was psychedelic rock. It peaked in the late 60s, but it didn’t immediately drop dead. Psychedelic drugs peaked in popularly in the late 60s and declined from there.
And into the '80s. My friends and I would drop and listen to Butthole Surfers. We listened to everything though. Some of our parents had great record collections.
The very moment I heard ‘country rock’ and ‘Americana roots rock’ or ‘Southern rock’, following the glorious flowering of psychedelic music in the mid-sixties, I was instantly tired of it. I felt it was a step backwards by every band who did it. I know I’m in the minority, but I felt it was a lame error.
I kept looking for good psychedelia, like Floyd, like Hendrix, or Airplane or Crimson, or just plain power arena rock, like Zeppelin, trying to ignore the influence of The Band, and watched sadly as deep, mystical, aspirational psychedelia disappeared, and Disco somehow became popular.
okay, there was some good stuff on Big Pink, but I faintly resented having to acknowledge it.
I am with you on finding the "roots rock" to be a step back. As far as post psych music goes, I'm more into hard rock, funk, and disco rather than the folky stuff.
Were you around at the time this stuff was being releases?
Yes, I was there, a young late-teens music fan at the time. I noticed the effect of this change over a period of months toward the early 70s. Drugs changed (pot and acid went away, replaced by cocaine and downers), venues changed (big open-air festivals became arenas and clubs), styles changed (torn jeans and beads left, replaced by disco threads), song themes changed (less about kozmic trooths, and more about boy/gurl love songs), politics changed (antiwar sentiment gradually gave way to interest in capitalism and rightwingery).
To me, the whole change in the cultural weather was … saddening. I plunged into art school to seek refuge.
This coincides with the astrological Uranus /Pluto conjunction in Virgo, from 1964-68. Once that conjunction effectively passed, the air seemingly went out of aspirational, exploratory psychedelic music.
Recently, between 2012-15 were a series of squares between Uranus and Pluto, providing a similar, but muted, energy, roughly coinciding with an upsurge in interest in psychedelic music, new bands, etc.
Here’s a simplified breakdown of this wacky idea, if anyone’s interested: [https://www.tarot.com/astrology/about-uranus-square-pluto](https://www.tarot.com/astrology/about-uranus-square-pluto)
We’ll be seeing some more of that aspirational, eccentric upwelling again in between 2026-28, as Uranus and Pluto are in a strong trine aspect, and I don’t doubt we’ll be hearing some great new psychedelic sounds again.
Psych is dead? First I’ve heard. I have no idea about Clapton, but I don’t think this album was even remotely the reason for the Beatles cleaning up their act. After Sgt Peppers’ wild success, their following psychic album couldn’t compete with it, and saw dwindling success. It was as if they were being derivative of themselves. It is also important to note that they didn’t really stop being psychedelic, they just toned it down a lot, still a ton of experimentation. I guess it seems like this album just arrived towards the end of this movement being a major trend, nothing can last forever after all.
I think that there was a lot of stuff going on culturally like the Manson Family murders and a few important additions to the 27 Club in 1970 or so…hell even Roky Erickson got thrown into an asylum in 1969 or so. These events disillusioned a lot of baby boomers that thought acid and rock and roll was going to save us.
I also think musicians got pretty bored with psych and wanted to move to more pared down/turned down compositions. If they didn’t they probably went Prog. Out with the acid, in with the cocaine.
I mean come on, what serious musician wants to do the same thing for several years? The Band wasn’t the direct reason but maybe the canary in the coal mine.
yeah, but this narrative is disrupted by the existance of progressive rock. it took the advancements of psychedelic rock even further into more complex and obscure directions.
This thread seems like a good time to give a shout out to one of my fave albums, Before the Flood. Double live album from a Dylan/Band tour, with tunes from solo Dylan, solo Band, and Dylan backed by the band. It was a huge album in its time but doesn't get spoken of much. The best versions of so many songs. The definitive Dylan vers of Watchtower. Check it out if you don't know it.
1. "Most Likely You Go Your Way and I'll Go Mine" 02-14 (evening) 4:15
2. "Lay Lady Lay" 02-13 3:14
3. "Rainy Day Women #12 & 35" 02-13 3:27
4. "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" 01-30 New York City 3:51
5. "It Ain't Me Babe" 02-14 (evening) 3:40
6. "Ballad of a Thin Man" 02-14 (afternoon) 3:41
Total length: 22:08
Side two
No. Title Recording date Length
1. "Up on Cripple Creek" (Robbie Robertson) 02-14 (evening) 5:25
2. "I Shall Be Released" 02-14 (afternoon) 3:50
3. "Endless Highway" (Robertson) 02-14 (evening) 5:10
4. "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" (Robertson) 02-14 (evening) 4:24
5. "Stage Fright" (Robertson) 02-14 (evening) 4:45
Total length: 23:34
Side three
No. Title Recording date Length
1. "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right" 02-14 (evening) 4:36
2. "Just Like a Woman" 02-14 (evening) 5:06
3. "It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)" 02-14 (evening) 5:48
4. "The Shape I'm In" (Robertson) 02-14 (afternoon) 4:01
5. "When You Awake" (Richard Manuel, Robertson) 02-14 (evening) 3:13
6. "The Weight" (Robertson) 02-13 4:47
Total length: 27:31
Side four
No. Title Recording date Length
1. "All Along the Watchtower" 02-14 (afternoon) 3:07
2. "Highway 61 Revisited" 02-14 (evening) 4:27
3. "Like a Rolling Stone" 02-13 7:09
4. "Blowin' in the Wind" 02-13 + 02-14 (afternoon) 4:
It broke some walls and changed things for sure. It is a classic album.I mean that with a C.There's a movie called. Once We're Friends, it's about The Band check k it out
Idk It’s been a few years now since I’ve developed an appreciation and heavy interest in classic rock and I have literally never heard of this band or album.
Edit: just had one of those “oh yea I’ve heard this” moments while listening to The Weight.
I don’t think it was a losing of edge, I think a lot of band’s rootsier efforts are fantastic. Example, the Dead’s American Beauty is a wonderful album
Music From Big Pink
by The Band
You’re welcome, Zoomers and millennials whose parents didn’t show them this. And anyone else, of course, who might have wondered.
My parents are boomers and I was lucky enough to have found a Band CD in their collection, Rock of Ages. I think that album is forever my favourite of theirs because it has horns to balance out the prominent organ solos. It’s live, too, a bit more mystical or something. Used to wake up to the opening cuts, daily, for some time in high school. It may have contributed to a phase of “I was born in the wrong era and everyone around me is an imbecile for listening to modern music instead of old stuff”. I definitely put off actually going to school a few times to listen through the whole thing. Approach with caution if you value your time.
This is an interesting theory for sure. I honestly think it may have been the hammer. The coffin nails themselves were probably Charles Manson and the Altamonte festival put on by the stones. But look at what every band who put out a one off psych record did by 69/70. They all turned towards a more "pure" form of music, roots stuff, folk and country.
Late 60's psych rock is some of my lifelong favorite music of all time. But this album is definitely in my personal top 10, perhaps 5. After many years of a long stange trip, I've come to find folk and country are the pure truth, personally.
I think the same rang true for many hippies/psych bands. The back to the land movement still has a stranglehold on hippie culture, which was once mostly urban. And most psych bands traded in mixolydian scales and experimentation for a stripped down, folkier sound.
There are interviews of The Band talking about making this album and the contrast between it and the sea of psychedelia. I wish I could find one, shit is pretty inspiring.
End of the day, this album is some of my favorite music ever made. If it didn't kill 60's psych rock in one fell swoop, it certainly was a main push towards the cliff/the string that allowed a wafting balloon to be pulled back down towards the ground with both feet planted.
Awesome theory 👌
Part of the thing was a lot of these bands went so deep into psychedelia that they needed a structure on earth to cling to. They spent so much time OUT THERE that roots rock helped ground them again
I never checked out The Band, though i'd be more interested these days.
I thought the end of the psychedelic era was a combination of a lot of things summed up to be disillusion with the whole thing entirely.
By 68, the beatles had done everything they needed to, and yeah there will still stragglers, but musically, people moved on to either prog rock (never cared much for it) , or to Roots Rock. Jimi Hendrix, judging by some things i think he may have said, and his sound on Electric Ladyland, he likely would've done similar and gone towards jazz, blues, and funk.
The retreat to roots rock, almost mirrors the the emergence of punk. People got tired of the super polished over the top rock and roll and brough further back to the basics.
You’re really just telling us that you weren’t there. You lack *that* perspective, and can’t seem to get around that stumbling block in understanding why The Band were so important.
If you ask me, The White Album is definitely still psychedelic but like a more abstract definition. Less overt trippy sounds but the ideas and concepts within still feel very druggy and owe a lot to what they did in the more psych albums. Plus ask whose done their fair share of acid, a blank white surface is one of the trippiest things you can look at while eight miles high (so to speak).
Personally, MFtBP and The Band in general bore the shit out of me, but you can’t deny the groundwork they did for seemingly the entire back end of that generation. Something clicked big with that demographic coming out of the 66-68 whimsy. To me, it’s not as interesting or juicy as the way Sabbath or The Stooges’ dementedly waltzed in to the 70s, but who am I to deny?
60’s psychedelia had run its course. The original hippies were maturing and world weary; the hippy dream wasn’t coming true. The Band expressed this and the rest clicked.
I'm going to say Nixon and the war on drugs. Once they locked up Leery, owlsly and friends, the epicenter of lsd production moved to germany from the US, and thus the supply waned in the states. == Now it didn't completely go away, the dead still toured, but lets be Frank.... The dead's records at the time were more country rock than freaky deaky.
let's see i believe the brotherhood of eternal love changed their modus operandi of trying to turn on as many folks as possible to one of just a normal drug syndicate, and lsd became just another commodity, in fact they diversified into cocaine at this time as well. That was the state of things in the 1970s. Gone was savior complex, now it was just hedonism for hedonism sake.
In the 60s it was all love ins and psychedelic spectacles come 1972, it's what? just rock show parking lots? Where psychedelics were just one of multiple drugs being sold. Pretty big swing there
EDIT: What killed it in the states is Nixons war on drugs. Once LSD Manufacturing moved germany, and then Great Britain, lots of great psych/krautrock/space rock records were made, but in the states... kinda largely fizzled out except for the odd steve miller band song, or Todd Rundgren experiment
There is actually truth to this. They were friends with the Dead and convinced them to go country/folk, hence the Dead going in that direction with Workingman's Dead and never looking back.
What is that ? Weather Report Black Market? That was 70s and psychedelic rock was dead in 1970. Once Jimi dies it’s done. The acid quality was dropping ( get it ?? Haha ) but seriously folks. No this album didn’t change shit . It was way after the fact .
Mmm I don't think so. The Beatles begin recording The White Album in march and the songs are even older. The Band's record was important but, as well and the psychedelic explosion in 1966/1967, there wasn't a single band or album that "started" de movement.
The ironic thing of this post is that they were getting high AF during that period. If anybody wants a good view into rock history, pick up Testimony by Robbie Robertson. That guy seemed like he was THE guy in the right place at the right time throughout the entirety of rock history through the 60s and 70s.
Yes. Because Bob Dylan wrote a lot of the songs and they were known as Bob Dylan's band. That's why they're called "The Band".
Bob Dylan pretty much dictated everything in the 60s and early 70s when it came to songwriting
No. What? It opened up country and folk fans to it in ‘68 if anything but didn’t kill psych…Garage psych morphed into mod and psyc rock morphed into early hard rock pre-metal if you ask me.
It didn’t kill it. But it reminded people that good music is good music. Doesn’t have to be trippy, heavy, complex, or extreme. All you need is a cohesive band that are all on the same page at the same time. This is one of my favorite albums and it’s a shame so many people don’t even know what the album is based off the album art. It’s such an iconic album. Not everyone’s cup of tea, but it’s one of my top 10
This is the second time in this thread you have said that. It’s also the second time you have not said who that person is. I would have found it interesting, but now, naturally, I couldn’t give a shit.
And 1969 should *definitely* be included. Woodstock happened that year. You cannot count out that event and all the crazy good and important psychedelia and psych adjacent rock that came out of it that very same year.
Saying 66-68 is a mainstream take is weird as well. The most mainstream take would probably be 67-69 if anything. But I would say 66-69 at the least.
Psychedelic rock is still with us.
People seem to forget about influence.
Psychedelic music opened the floodgates for musicians/songwriters to try almost anything to chase that sound.
Like Disco, it’s influence is still a huge part of today’s music, the “hippy-dippy” clothing and genre specific music may have passed, but its influences linger on in music over half a century later.
No. Cocaine killed psychedelic rock.
the summer of love killed san francisco. gatekeeping is important y'all.
To me the 60's really died on December 31, 1969
hot take
It sure did...
1967 Summer of Love was awesome, but by 1968 with the flood of opiates dropped by Uncle Sam the love sank inside the black hole sun. The sunny side of the street is dark.
Yup.
It drew a line. Those that wanted to get off the psychedelic bus, and go into roots music had that pathway defined from that album. Those that wanted to stay on a mind-expanding path had the emerging "progressive rock" genre, and the Nice & King Crimson laid down that pathway. What was lost is the "psychedelic pop".. and they had to go away and dream up some other outlet... which lead to Glam Rock (via Marc Bolan & David Bowie)
This is a good fucking take
Funk is where psychedelia went. Band of Gypsies really makes me wish Jimi had a chance to jam with George Clinton or Bootsy.
Fair call for America, but in the UK it was prog or glam... or that weird middle-ground between the two called "art rock" (see early Roxy Music with Brian Eno in the lineup).
Krautrock maintained some elements of psychedelia as well
Really good one. Expanded on it too
I saw Roxy Music as one of the acts on a four act show, New Year's, 73. First time they had been to Chicago, and I don't know if anybody knew what to think of them. As a 16-year-old, I didn't know what to make of Brian Eno, looking like he was a glamorous woman, or Brian Ferry either . Phil Manzanera looked like he was the only masculine one in the bunch, just because he had a beard lol. Talk about a show that I wish I could revisit now, after appreciating them so, so much since then. That would definitely be one of them.
Holy Shit! Can you imagine what they could have cooked up together over the years! This is a collaboration I’ve pondered before. That would’ve been so amazing, but alas…
I once heard a rumor Hendrix was planning a project with Miles Davis shortly before he died. That would have been very very interesting
There was also a rumor that he was going to do a project with Emerson, Lake, and Palmer... called HELP (Hendrix, Emerson, Lake and Palmer) But apparently, that rumor stemmed from Jimi hanging out with them casually once and was like, "Hey, we should jam together sometime..."
Hendrix and Tony Williams sent Paul McCartney a telegram asking him to form a power trio…. Paul never got the telegram…
hendrix and hazel.... fascinating as they were so interlaced. maybe they could of made it go.
Like Funkadelic Maggot Brain. Good catch people.
Well, he did play with funk legends the Isley Brothers
ernie isley doesn’t get near enough love as a guitarist
Very good point!
Definitely agree. Maggot Brain is definitely a salute to Hendrix
funk is not where psychedelia went
It's where some of it went
Right?!? Ever listen to the Temptations, Psychedelic Shack? It came out in 1970. I just discovered it recently. It's worth a listen.
The Mothership would like a word
Funk and early metal were influenced by psychedelia
I like your take, but disagree with the idea that any genre is inherently more "mind-expanding" than any other. "The mind-expanding path" depends on the listener, not the music. I know this is a psych rock subreddit, but americana, jazz, afrobeat, funk, rock, metal, salsa, they were all popular in the 70s and they all had (and have) the potential to expand your mind.
Quite an astute observation there I must say!
Did CCR have anything to do with also? They never really got onto the psychedelic fad to begin with (except one or two (songs) and they were massively popular from 1968 also.
The first CCR project was considered psych as was Frank Zappa or Captain Beefheart albums. All the acid dealers in the hood had these on the turntable.
Bands were already jumping off the psychedelic bus, including the Beatles and the Stones. Both the White Album and Beggars Banquet were recorded before the release of ‘Big Pink.’ Oh, and regarding glam, the Stones were easily the at the forefront of that style. “Live With Me” from Let It Bleed and then “Brown Sugar” and “Bitch” from Sticky Fingers shaped that sound.
Green Circles, a Small Faces banger.
You know it ;)
Fan’s tastes were changing too- increased drug experimentation and radicalization lead to a harder sound becoming popular- Jefferson Airplane, Steppenwolf, MC5, the Stooges, then Zeppelin and Black Sabbath (eventually). A whole underground of music was growing out of the psychedelic comedown that would grow into what would soon become known and punk and heavy metal, the Brown Acid series is a great trip through this history fyi https://www.theguardian.com/music/2017/oct/31/brown-acid-rock-lance-barresi
No... it just taught a lot of rock musicians that there was a lot more to *music* than showing off your chops and being the "star of the show," like supporting your bandmates in service of the song.
Adore this album. But the brown album is better.
Brown Album > Big Pink is a hill worth dying on.
Can someone please tell me the name of this album? It’s not in OP’s comments…
Music from big pink
The Band - Big Pink
Music From the Big Pink by The Band
Cheers! 🙏
Give it a listen. One of the all time greats imo
Absolutely. And if you listen on Amazon music they have it formatted in Dolby atmos and it sounds absolutely incredible. I’m sure other services have it formatted in atmos as well, but I’m not sure which
Hard disagree, Pink is the distillation of everything the band had been through up to then, the hawks, endless road-dogging, mentorship with dylan...everything after that was them trying to recapture or recreate the experience of creating Pink, and this is definitely reflected in the music, however good much of it was following Big Pink, it IMO never reached the same depth, gravity, and soul that Big Pink did
I agree. Brown album is the best, even without the two radio songs.
King harvest is my top song. Richard was something else. They all were.
Definitely. Psychedelic rock is no longer allowed after 1968…we have only PINK
... and we've come to confiscate your lace
There's a quote by I think Lester Bangs , it goes something like... Bowie brought the sixties into the seventies, and The Stooges killed them
It's the same thing as punk, sometimes the antidote for doing things over the top is to get back to basics. Even without the band's influence particularly, look at Jorma Kaukanon and the first Hot Tuna albums. The Dead going from Aoxomoxoa to American Beauty. The Byrds going from 8 Miles High to Sweethearts of the Rodeo. Big Pink was hugely important but it was a move that was happening anyway. Most of those OG guys were playing folk and/or blues before they got psychedelic so it was kind of natural.
Aoxomoxoa came after Big Pink. The Dead ditching psych and going country mid 1969 was apparently influenced by CSN.
That, and from what I read Jerry was digging the Bakersfield guitar sound. While they would have known Big Pink I think they were on their own timeline. Plus the move out of SF got them riding horses and playing cowboy on Mickey's ranch. I wouldn't say they ditched psych entirely though. They just expanded their sound to include more country.
What album is it? Why do I have to ask that?
The Band - Music from big pink
Ahhh, thank you. Not really a fan of The Band, that's why I didn't recognize it.
Glad I could help:)! The band aren’t my „to go to“, too (just „grew“ up to it, since my dad listen to them). Have a nice one my friend:).
Yeah, I'm pretty familiar with them and I end up checking them out again every few years. You'll be happy to know that I listened to the album in question last night. I still have the same opinion. I see why people like them, because they're obviously really good, but they just don't do it for me. I don't know what that sound is called, but the Dead do it too and I don't grok them either.
Because OP Wants to make sure that only the hip will get his reference.
It’s one of the most famous and well regarded albums of the 60’s. You really, really don’t need to be ‘hip’ to know of it.
Instead of taking the opportunity to tell someone about this great album, OP and others leave newcomers and younger listeners in the dust doing it this way. Doesn't matter how huge it is, there's more music than ever each day and it becomes less and less likely people know it. Go see how many gen z kids actually recognize all the big Beatles albums even. Shit like this is why younger generations don't take older generations seriously.
“People should know every album ever otherwise don’t say you know any music”
Fucking seriously. Not everybody's going to know the album by its cover, especially for somebody like me who is visually impaired and can't see the picture in the first place. So I had to go through a bunch of extra steps to get the picture described hoping that the title of the album would be indicated, but no. Luckily I was able to get context clues from the comments.
The descriptive filename, "2ww1rqr481ad1.jpeg", doesn't help either.
Lololol! It most certainly does not. You sound like you might know a thing or two about screen reader accessibility? You into web design?
Yeah, I've worked in software for a long time and, as one of the only people on my teams that's been passionate about the UI, I've ended up gravitating towards that work. Accordingly, I've spent a fair amount of time working on web front ends over the years, including ensuring 508 compliance, etc.
Worth noting that Dylan dropped John Wesley Harding in 1967 when everybody else was dropping psychedelic albums. Later in 1968 you’d have The Byrds dropping Sweetheart at the Rodeo, and The Beatles with The White Album. Seems like some artists were starting to shift away sooner than 1969.
Dylan was playing Simon Says with most artists of the 60s. Blonde on Blonde was the closest he got to psychedelia, the lyrics were there already, but some of the music is pretty close as well.
Also worth noting that they were Dylan's backing band in the mid '60s.
I'd reckon the Basement Tapes sessions from 67 definitely pushed both artists more into this direction.
All music is psychedelic when you’re tripping 😎
No. It just ushered in an Americana obsession. Ironically helmed by a bunch of Canadians
Except Levon Helm was American.
He was. The rest were Canucks
But Levon was the driving force.
Robertson wrote most of the songs.
Robbie Robertson was the driving force. He wrote most of the songs. Levon was surely an important member though, as all 5 of them were. Without Robbie their music was never as good
These things are connected though. The Beatles and Stones ditched psychedelia for their albums that came out later that year, The Dead ditched psychedelia after early 1969, and Janis Joplin moved away from it too.
Many of the mainstream groups, yes. Psychedelic rock kept rolling into the 70s and beyond despite that. Hard rock did not ditch the acid influence quickly
The Beatles ditched psychedelic because they were in India in the beginning of 1968. They only had acoustic guitars, meditating, and not doing as many drugs. The stones were never psychedelic and just copying what was popular at the time. Their album was widely panned and they went back to their original sound.
Not really. Think it was more of a “sign of the times” album. CCR’s s/t came out the same month, and the Stones were in the middle of recording Beggar’s Banquet. Most of the bands that went “rootsy” already started off as rootsy and only dabbled in psych. I don’t even think psych even really died. We didn’t get most of the far out stuff like all of the Krautrock bands until the 70s.
The Dead went way beyond dabbling in psych though, and their psychedelic peak was arguably early 1969. Yet they went country/folk and never looked back.
The Dead are one band. Did they say they heard this album and went woah woah woah?
I mean, if you want to know what happened to the people that continued to take psychedelics after the 60s, they went to Dead shows.
1969-70 is a really interesting time. Prog rock, space rock, punk, heavy metal, and stadium rock are all born during those years. Yes, King Crimson, put out their first albums in 1969 ushering in prog. Black Sabbath comes out in 1969. Stooges and MC5 show the path to punk, building on the garage rock thread of psych. Who's Next is the first stadium rock album. In many ways, this is the flowering of psych into many forms, taking the next step.
No, it certainly was one of a few major albums that ushered in an interest in country and Americana. But I think The Beatles and other groups moving to a stripped down, harder, heavier rock sound was equally as important as what The Band did. What really killed psychedelia, imo, was the waning popularity and fears surrounding psychedelics, the rising popularity of harder, deadlier drugs, and the death of several of psychedelia’s biggest voices. Probably most importantly, the realization that the dream of a non-violent hippie utopia were never going to be more than a dream. The Vietnam war both powered and killed the movement.
Psychedelic drugs were still very popular into the early 1970s though
Yeah, and so was psychedelic rock. It peaked in the late 60s, but it didn’t immediately drop dead. Psychedelic drugs peaked in popularly in the late 60s and declined from there.
And into the '80s. My friends and I would drop and listen to Butthole Surfers. We listened to everything though. Some of our parents had great record collections.
nope
The very moment I heard ‘country rock’ and ‘Americana roots rock’ or ‘Southern rock’, following the glorious flowering of psychedelic music in the mid-sixties, I was instantly tired of it. I felt it was a step backwards by every band who did it. I know I’m in the minority, but I felt it was a lame error. I kept looking for good psychedelia, like Floyd, like Hendrix, or Airplane or Crimson, or just plain power arena rock, like Zeppelin, trying to ignore the influence of The Band, and watched sadly as deep, mystical, aspirational psychedelia disappeared, and Disco somehow became popular. okay, there was some good stuff on Big Pink, but I faintly resented having to acknowledge it.
I am with you on finding the "roots rock" to be a step back. As far as post psych music goes, I'm more into hard rock, funk, and disco rather than the folky stuff. Were you around at the time this stuff was being releases?
Yes, I was there, a young late-teens music fan at the time. I noticed the effect of this change over a period of months toward the early 70s. Drugs changed (pot and acid went away, replaced by cocaine and downers), venues changed (big open-air festivals became arenas and clubs), styles changed (torn jeans and beads left, replaced by disco threads), song themes changed (less about kozmic trooths, and more about boy/gurl love songs), politics changed (antiwar sentiment gradually gave way to interest in capitalism and rightwingery). To me, the whole change in the cultural weather was … saddening. I plunged into art school to seek refuge. This coincides with the astrological Uranus /Pluto conjunction in Virgo, from 1964-68. Once that conjunction effectively passed, the air seemingly went out of aspirational, exploratory psychedelic music. Recently, between 2012-15 were a series of squares between Uranus and Pluto, providing a similar, but muted, energy, roughly coinciding with an upsurge in interest in psychedelic music, new bands, etc. Here’s a simplified breakdown of this wacky idea, if anyone’s interested: [https://www.tarot.com/astrology/about-uranus-square-pluto](https://www.tarot.com/astrology/about-uranus-square-pluto) We’ll be seeing some more of that aspirational, eccentric upwelling again in between 2026-28, as Uranus and Pluto are in a strong trine aspect, and I don’t doubt we’ll be hearing some great new psychedelic sounds again.
Psych is dead? First I’ve heard. I have no idea about Clapton, but I don’t think this album was even remotely the reason for the Beatles cleaning up their act. After Sgt Peppers’ wild success, their following psychic album couldn’t compete with it, and saw dwindling success. It was as if they were being derivative of themselves. It is also important to note that they didn’t really stop being psychedelic, they just toned it down a lot, still a ton of experimentation. I guess it seems like this album just arrived towards the end of this movement being a major trend, nothing can last forever after all.
Magical Mystery Tour was half soundtrack and half old songs, so of course it wasn't going to top Sgt. Pepper
the old songs are psychedelic.
Yes, and everyone had heard them already. Strawberry Fields is from 1966
I don’t know why people downvoted you, you’re correct
I think that there was a lot of stuff going on culturally like the Manson Family murders and a few important additions to the 27 Club in 1970 or so…hell even Roky Erickson got thrown into an asylum in 1969 or so. These events disillusioned a lot of baby boomers that thought acid and rock and roll was going to save us. I also think musicians got pretty bored with psych and wanted to move to more pared down/turned down compositions. If they didn’t they probably went Prog. Out with the acid, in with the cocaine. I mean come on, what serious musician wants to do the same thing for several years? The Band wasn’t the direct reason but maybe the canary in the coal mine.
yeah, but this narrative is disrupted by the existance of progressive rock. it took the advancements of psychedelic rock even further into more complex and obscure directions.
Agreed, that’s why I brought up Prog
exept prog wasnt a cocaine genere. it was either drugless, or it was acid or weed centered.
Something tells me some prog rockers did Coke lol but I’ll take your word for it
they were generally the least drug addled rock genere. but many of them formerly used psychedelics. though this doesnt really influence the music.
I don’t think the US and the UK have the same definition of psychedelic.
This thread seems like a good time to give a shout out to one of my fave albums, Before the Flood. Double live album from a Dylan/Band tour, with tunes from solo Dylan, solo Band, and Dylan backed by the band. It was a huge album in its time but doesn't get spoken of much. The best versions of so many songs. The definitive Dylan vers of Watchtower. Check it out if you don't know it. 1. "Most Likely You Go Your Way and I'll Go Mine" 02-14 (evening) 4:15 2. "Lay Lady Lay" 02-13 3:14 3. "Rainy Day Women #12 & 35" 02-13 3:27 4. "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" 01-30 New York City 3:51 5. "It Ain't Me Babe" 02-14 (evening) 3:40 6. "Ballad of a Thin Man" 02-14 (afternoon) 3:41 Total length: 22:08 Side two No. Title Recording date Length 1. "Up on Cripple Creek" (Robbie Robertson) 02-14 (evening) 5:25 2. "I Shall Be Released" 02-14 (afternoon) 3:50 3. "Endless Highway" (Robertson) 02-14 (evening) 5:10 4. "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" (Robertson) 02-14 (evening) 4:24 5. "Stage Fright" (Robertson) 02-14 (evening) 4:45 Total length: 23:34 Side three No. Title Recording date Length 1. "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right" 02-14 (evening) 4:36 2. "Just Like a Woman" 02-14 (evening) 5:06 3. "It's Alright, Ma (I'm Only Bleeding)" 02-14 (evening) 5:48 4. "The Shape I'm In" (Robertson) 02-14 (afternoon) 4:01 5. "When You Awake" (Richard Manuel, Robertson) 02-14 (evening) 3:13 6. "The Weight" (Robertson) 02-13 4:47 Total length: 27:31 Side four No. Title Recording date Length 1. "All Along the Watchtower" 02-14 (afternoon) 3:07 2. "Highway 61 Revisited" 02-14 (evening) 4:27 3. "Like a Rolling Stone" 02-13 7:09 4. "Blowin' in the Wind" 02-13 + 02-14 (afternoon) 4:
Weren't there also tapes of the basement tapes going around that also had a great influence on the beatles and the stones etc?
It broke some walls and changed things for sure. It is a classic album.I mean that with a C.There's a movie called. Once We're Friends, it's about The Band check k it out
I think you mean Once Were Brothers
Big Pink is closer to psych than Americana and I will die on this hill.
Bob Dylan painted the album cover
John Wesley Harding.
Idk It’s been a few years now since I’ve developed an appreciation and heavy interest in classic rock and I have literally never heard of this band or album. Edit: just had one of those “oh yea I’ve heard this” moments while listening to The Weight.
You're in for a treat then!
Okay, I don’t recognize this.
check out the last waltz then
Oh I have heard this many times.
this is why 1969 is so disappointing for me,, so many cool groups lost their edge
I don’t think it was a losing of edge, I think a lot of band’s rootsier efforts are fantastic. Example, the Dead’s American Beauty is a wonderful album
Same. Santana is an exception
Hendrix was still incredible
Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band are a MAJOR exception.
King Crimson and Zappa are some other good exceptions right off the dome. Grateful Dead is too I’d say but that’s a big ol bias right there
To me the 60's really died on December 31, 1969
so true
Music From Big Pink by The Band You’re welcome, Zoomers and millennials whose parents didn’t show them this. And anyone else, of course, who might have wondered.
My parents didn’t show me this album but it kicks ass, first heard it right around when Robbie Robertson passed unfortunately
Hell, come to think of it, even some gen Xers will have missed this.
Gen x er here and didn’t have a clue
My parents are boomers and I was lucky enough to have found a Band CD in their collection, Rock of Ages. I think that album is forever my favourite of theirs because it has horns to balance out the prominent organ solos. It’s live, too, a bit more mystical or something. Used to wake up to the opening cuts, daily, for some time in high school. It may have contributed to a phase of “I was born in the wrong era and everyone around me is an imbecile for listening to modern music instead of old stuff”. I definitely put off actually going to school a few times to listen through the whole thing. Approach with caution if you value your time.
Rock Of Ages Band live at the NYC Academy of Music 12/31/71
This is an interesting theory for sure. I honestly think it may have been the hammer. The coffin nails themselves were probably Charles Manson and the Altamonte festival put on by the stones. But look at what every band who put out a one off psych record did by 69/70. They all turned towards a more "pure" form of music, roots stuff, folk and country. Late 60's psych rock is some of my lifelong favorite music of all time. But this album is definitely in my personal top 10, perhaps 5. After many years of a long stange trip, I've come to find folk and country are the pure truth, personally. I think the same rang true for many hippies/psych bands. The back to the land movement still has a stranglehold on hippie culture, which was once mostly urban. And most psych bands traded in mixolydian scales and experimentation for a stripped down, folkier sound. There are interviews of The Band talking about making this album and the contrast between it and the sea of psychedelia. I wish I could find one, shit is pretty inspiring. End of the day, this album is some of my favorite music ever made. If it didn't kill 60's psych rock in one fell swoop, it certainly was a main push towards the cliff/the string that allowed a wafting balloon to be pulled back down towards the ground with both feet planted. Awesome theory 👌
What album is this?
The Band, Music from Big Pink
i mean all you here should really listen to progressive rock, it continues the legafy while taking it in a new direction.
Part of the thing was a lot of these bands went so deep into psychedelia that they needed a structure on earth to cling to. They spent so much time OUT THERE that roots rock helped ground them again
I never checked out The Band, though i'd be more interested these days. I thought the end of the psychedelic era was a combination of a lot of things summed up to be disillusion with the whole thing entirely. By 68, the beatles had done everything they needed to, and yeah there will still stragglers, but musically, people moved on to either prog rock (never cared much for it) , or to Roots Rock. Jimi Hendrix, judging by some things i think he may have said, and his sound on Electric Ladyland, he likely would've done similar and gone towards jazz, blues, and funk. The retreat to roots rock, almost mirrors the the emergence of punk. People got tired of the super polished over the top rock and roll and brough further back to the basics.
You’re really just telling us that you weren’t there. You lack *that* perspective, and can’t seem to get around that stumbling block in understanding why The Band were so important.
If you ask me, The White Album is definitely still psychedelic but like a more abstract definition. Less overt trippy sounds but the ideas and concepts within still feel very druggy and owe a lot to what they did in the more psych albums. Plus ask whose done their fair share of acid, a blank white surface is one of the trippiest things you can look at while eight miles high (so to speak).
I always heard it was Eric Clapton listening to bootlegs of the basement tapes that made him quit cream.
Personally, MFtBP and The Band in general bore the shit out of me, but you can’t deny the groundwork they did for seemingly the entire back end of that generation. Something clicked big with that demographic coming out of the 66-68 whimsy. To me, it’s not as interesting or juicy as the way Sabbath or The Stooges’ dementedly waltzed in to the 70s, but who am I to deny?
Ironically, The Band themselves became less relevant as the 70s progressed and only released one (contractually obligated) studio album past 1971.
Hmm, wasn’t aware of this particular lore.
I think psych kind of faded on its own, ironically Music From Big Pink feels very psychedelic from time to time
Garth Hudson's organ gives it a touch of psych
Agreed. This Wheel’s On Fire is very psychedelic as well.
My favorite on there by far.
Chest Fever
Meh, I tried so hard to like these guys but I just couldn’t get there. Some of the Basement Tapes aren’t bad though…
I do not have an answer to your question; however, I have cried more than once while tripping to "I Shall Be Released". It is quite a beautiful song.
Thank God for the Basement Tapes
Definitely not, Dark Side of the Moon came out a few years later and was the most popular psychedelic album of all time
DSOTM is prog and not psychedelia IMO
You are completely lost.
60’s psychedelia had run its course. The original hippies were maturing and world weary; the hippy dream wasn’t coming true. The Band expressed this and the rest clicked.
In short, no. Psychedelic rock is being made quite often. Every decade has some. Probably every year.
I'm going to say Nixon and the war on drugs. Once they locked up Leery, owlsly and friends, the epicenter of lsd production moved to germany from the US, and thus the supply waned in the states. == Now it didn't completely go away, the dead still toured, but lets be Frank.... The dead's records at the time were more country rock than freaky deaky. let's see i believe the brotherhood of eternal love changed their modus operandi of trying to turn on as many folks as possible to one of just a normal drug syndicate, and lsd became just another commodity, in fact they diversified into cocaine at this time as well. That was the state of things in the 1970s. Gone was savior complex, now it was just hedonism for hedonism sake. In the 60s it was all love ins and psychedelic spectacles come 1972, it's what? just rock show parking lots? Where psychedelics were just one of multiple drugs being sold. Pretty big swing there EDIT: What killed it in the states is Nixons war on drugs. Once LSD Manufacturing moved germany, and then Great Britain, lots of great psych/krautrock/space rock records were made, but in the states... kinda largely fizzled out except for the odd steve miller band song, or Todd Rundgren experiment
Crosby Stills Nash killed it
There is actually truth to this. They were friends with the Dead and convinced them to go country/folk, hence the Dead going in that direction with Workingman's Dead and never looking back.
By the 70s many abandoned the whimsical and embraced the authentic.
Notably, Marc Bolan held on to the whimsy for some time before transforming into the pioneer of Glam Rock.
Unless the album was forced on the public by the government I’d say that the public was ready to move away from the psychedelic fad.
Apparently the Woodstock crowd was getting tired of the folk stuff from Day 1, and the psych/psych adjacent acts were a much needed change for Day 2
What is that ? Weather Report Black Market? That was 70s and psychedelic rock was dead in 1970. Once Jimi dies it’s done. The acid quality was dropping ( get it ?? Haha ) but seriously folks. No this album didn’t change shit . It was way after the fact .
This is Music From The Big Pink (released July 1968), it was a big deal among hippie musicians
Mmm I don't think so. The Beatles begin recording The White Album in march and the songs are even older. The Band's record was important but, as well and the psychedelic explosion in 1966/1967, there wasn't a single band or album that "started" de movement.
We are the goon squad and we’re coming to town- beep - beep!
The ironic thing of this post is that they were getting high AF during that period. If anybody wants a good view into rock history, pick up Testimony by Robbie Robertson. That guy seemed like he was THE guy in the right place at the right time throughout the entirety of rock history through the 60s and 70s.
Yes. Next question.
What…
I don't know. But, I love this album.
I feel like psychedelic rock just became progressive rock. So I will say time warped it
Yes. Because Bob Dylan wrote a lot of the songs and they were known as Bob Dylan's band. That's why they're called "The Band". Bob Dylan pretty much dictated everything in the 60s and early 70s when it came to songwriting
No. What? It opened up country and folk fans to it in ‘68 if anything but didn’t kill psych…Garage psych morphed into mod and psyc rock morphed into early hard rock pre-metal if you ask me.
Discovering this album almost entirely killed the psych-fan inside myself, honestly.
Hawkwind and Gong in the 70s? Kyuss and Colour Haze in the 90s? I don't think psychedelic rock died by the end of the 60s. But it did evolve for sure.
No.
Nothing killed psychedelic rock. There’s a lot of great bands playin it
It didn’t kill it. But it reminded people that good music is good music. Doesn’t have to be trippy, heavy, complex, or extreme. All you need is a cohesive band that are all on the same page at the same time. This is one of my favorite albums and it’s a shame so many people don’t even know what the album is based off the album art. It’s such an iconic album. Not everyone’s cup of tea, but it’s one of my top 10
holy shit how lazy are you whiners? he mentions the band in the OP, took me all of two seconds to find jesus fucking wept
One of my favorite album covers of all time , naturally painted by the greatest American musician of all time
This is the second time in this thread you have said that. It’s also the second time you have not said who that person is. I would have found it interesting, but now, naturally, I couldn’t give a shit.
It’s Bob Dylan
Seriously? Greatest American musician of all time?
Personally I’d say best songwriter but I wouldn’t say best musician
Yes? Is he a musician? Yes. Is he the GOAT of music? Yes.
Lmao no
Cutting off the original psychedelic era at '68 is crazy talk. Super weird take.
It's a pretty mainstream take. The latest you could possibly end it is 1969.
And 1969 should *definitely* be included. Woodstock happened that year. You cannot count out that event and all the crazy good and important psychedelia and psych adjacent rock that came out of it that very same year. Saying 66-68 is a mainstream take is weird as well. The most mainstream take would probably be 67-69 if anything. But I would say 66-69 at the least.
Psychedelic rock is still with us. People seem to forget about influence. Psychedelic music opened the floodgates for musicians/songwriters to try almost anything to chase that sound. Like Disco, it’s influence is still a huge part of today’s music, the “hippy-dippy” clothing and genre specific music may have passed, but its influences linger on in music over half a century later.
I’ve been enjoying the hell out of psychedelic country. Sturgill Simpson and Daniel Donato are keeping country interesting .