Psychobabble's Psychedelic 500: #500 - #476

Here at Psychobabble, we love many genres, from punk to soul to new wave to jazz to alt rock to prog to goth. But no genre is dearer to your host's heart than psychedelia. The fanciful lyrics! The cacophonous yet dreamy music! The sitars! The Mellotrons! The unfettered Lewis Carroll references!

And so today begins a new series intended to be the mind-melting equivalent of licking a sheet of acid the size of the Sgt Pepper's gatefold. You will be counting along with me downward toward my personal choice for the single greatest psychedelic song of all time. Along the way, you will drift pass my 500th favorite psychedelic song, my 499th favorite, my 498th, my...well you get the picture. 

Each new installment will go live every Monday from now until it all wraps up in September or whenever (whoa, man, I'm way too high to do calendar math!).

I have limited my selections to the original wave of psychedelia, which means there will be nothing by very worthy later-day trip makers, such as Dukes of Stratosphear and The Flaming Lips, and much by those who did their doings between the years of 1965 and 1971. 

Although the years are limited, the artists will not be, though some are more favored than others because, to reiterate, these are my personal fave raves. So while you will encounter artists from NYC to LA, from Shepherd's Bush to Liverpool, from Brazil to Lebanon, you will not encounter The Grateful Dead. They're bullshit.

So slip into your cleanest Nehru jacket, flick on that lava lamp, fire up a joss stick, repeat "Namu Myōhō Renge Kyō" until you reach nirvana, turn to page 100 of The Wind in the Willows, and we will begin with our first batch of 25 lysergic anthems...

#500. Status Quo- "Pictures of Matchstick Men" (1968), in which a bunch of future pub rockers jump the psychedelic bandwagon with warped wah-wah guitars, a piercing yet infectious riff, and some nonsense about men made out of the sticks you use to light up smokes, though the average Status Quo fan is probably more inclined to light a Chesterfield than an herbal jazz cigarette.

#499. The United States of America- "Where Is Yesterday?" (1968), in which an academic experiment in psychedelic music yields Gregorian chanting, enchanted harmonies, and a very easily answered question.

#498. JK & Co.- "Fly" (1969), in which a 15-year old singer from Vegas kicks off his bizarrely mature song cycle about life and death with an ethereal piece of backwards-tape drenched psych.

#497. David Bowie- "After All" (1970), in which Bowie goes full-creepy by quoting Aleister Crowley and resurrecting that proto-Smurf voice from "The Laughing Gnome".

#496. The Electric Banana (aka: The Pretty Things)- "Eagle's Son" (1969), in which Britain's most underrated psychedelic/R&B group gets around their lack of international name-recognition by hiding behind a ridiculous name worthy of The Electric Prunes or The Electric Shoes (Kevin Arnold's garage band, FYI) and still sound 100% like The Pretty Things.

#495. The Crazy World of Arthur Brown- "Fire" (1968), in which Arthur Brown lights his helmet aflame and declares himself our Satanic Majesty. "Oh no!

#494. The Hollies- "Try It" (1967), in which those nice blokes who brought you "Bus Stop" and "On a Carousel" pressure you into sampling mind-altering drugs.

#493. Jethro Tull- "Look Into the Sun (1969)", in which Ian Anderson lays down his flute, slips out of his cod piece, and gently invites you to engage in activities that will result in your permanent blindness.

#492. Tommy James and the Shondells- "Kathleen McArthur" (1968), in which Tommy James takes a break from consuming mass quantities of amphetamines to explore class differences against a pastoral backdrop of recorders and gently thumped percussion.

#491. Simon & Garfunkel- "Patterns" (1966), in which Paul Simon does that thing where you don't know if he's examining his personal pretensions or pretentiously condemning a made-up character for being pretentious.

#490. Pink Floyd- "Cirrus Minor" (1969), in which Pink Floyd make their first, but hardly their last, appearance in Psychobabble's Psychedelic 500 by doing that spacey shit that made them so popular with unambitious young people and their dads.

#489. The Doors- "The Unknown Soldier" (1968), in which The Doors explore the musical possibilities of recreating the sounds of a firing squad.

#488. The Pretty Things- "Death" (1968), in which the unfortunate S.F. Sorrow mourns his girlfriend to some appropriately gloomy shudders and swoops.

#487. The Byrds- "Artificial Energy" (1968), in which The Byrds reference a three-year-old Beatles hit and draw a correlation between amphetamine usage and regicide all within the confines of a snappy, horn-peppered, two-minute-and-nineteen-second pop tune.

#486. The Velvet Underground- "The Black Angel's Death Song" (1967), in which a gang of black-clad New Yorkers with nothing but disdain for hippies and their psychedelic mumbo-jumbo shriek out a totally psychedelic gumbo of blustery viola and Poe-style Goth gibberish.

#485. The 13th Floor Elevators- "You're Gonna Miss Me" (1966), in which the term "electric jug" makes its debut in the English language.

#484. The Idle Race- "Days of Broken Arrows" (1969), in which Jeff Lynn tries to get his career going while still two bands removed from ELO, yet makes a record that thoroughly sounds like ELO.

#483. Brigitte Bardot- "Contact" (1967), in which we forget all about Brigitte Bardot's ultra right-wing viewpoints so we can just enjoy her trippy yet robust pop stylings.

#482. The Nice- "The Thoughts of Emerlist Davjack" (1967), in which The Nice name a middle-aged everyman who rues his middle-class complacency by combining their own names into a name that could never exist outside of a twee psychedelic pop song.

#481. The Rascals- "Easy Rollin'" (1968), in which The Rascals sings about the thing they love to sing about the most: groovin' on a beautiful morning because people gotta be free.

#480. Donovan- "Ferris Wheel" (1966), in which Donovan gets all blissed out and groovy at an amusement park.

#479. Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band- "Autumn's Child" (1967), in which a guy with a voice like your grandad hocking up three ounces of tar at 5 AM croons a poetic ode to an ethereal nymph.

#478. Ramases and Selket- "Crazy One" (1968), in which you look at the name of today's band and you're all like,"Oh, come on! You totally made that one up!" even though I totally didn't.

#477. The Electric Banana (aka: The Pretty Things)- "Alexander" (1969), in which The Pretty Things once again pretend to be a band called "The Electric Banana" to bash out a freaky psych rocker better than most of the songs bands have released under their own names.

#476. Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band- "Electricity" (1967), in which Captain Beefheart does the kinds of things to a theremin that you'd expect a man named "Captain Beefheart" to do.

Trip on to #475-451... (COMING SOON)