Question on the music of the sixties...

[patrick t. cakes]

Where the hell did it come from?

What were the influences that spawned such a radical, creative explosion of expression?

You can track the progression of jazz and blues and other forms of music, but rock and psychedelic rock especially seems to just come out of nowhere.

How do you go from "16 Candles" by the Crests in 1959 to Pink Floyd about five years later?

What influences did the Grateful Dead have on their music? Their sound is so refined and well crafted yet it seems to have no history leading up to it. I know the Dead was influenced by many genres (bluegrass, blues, classical) but what bands would have influenced them to put their music together the way they did?

Silver Apples blow my mind with their early electronica...<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8nOCFAvZVk>
That song is from 1968??

There's so many great bands (psychedelic or other wise) from the sixties and it fascinates me that there was really nothing really like it before - or after for that matter.

Can some DU hippies lay it out for me??

:hippie: :smoke: :toast:

[Common Sense Party]

1. Acid.

[Tobin S.]

2. Acid and flower power.

[patrick t. cakes]

3. Seriously, just acid. i can understand that but seems such a quick

transformation.

[Tobin S.]

7. Psychedelic drugs started becoming widely available

at about the time all that trippy music started coming out. Probably not a coincidence.

[RandomThoughts]

4. I sometimes think that many things are part of systematic approaches.

If you think in terms of doing the same thing over again as being insane.

You start at best choice then keep trying everything else, eventually you run out of best choices.

Crank it up.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FnSbpPXlmvo

[patrick t. cakes]

5. That was horrible, thanks.

[RandomThoughts]

10. Maybe its about having a deep bench.

The Good The Bad And The Ugly
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awskKWzjlhk

[patrick t. cakes]

12. Thats better. thanks

[patrick t. cakes]

13. Deep thoughts....

<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ax96iVmTCI&feature=related>

[RandomThoughts]

17. That is contridictory,

An earlier post directly said, no shit.

[HopeHoops]

6. Drugs, man. Drugs.

:hippie: :smoke:

[patrick t. cakes]

8. Ok but why drugs then? Kerouac?

[Bennyboy]

9. Kerouak took drugs too..

Speed mostly but he too explored the other side..... Then there is the Link between JK and The Grateful Dead/Kesey/Leary...Dean Moriarty otherwise known as Neal Cassidy.

[patrick t. cakes]

11. Ok. But it seems like drugs were always around the music scene

going back to who knows when. Why weren't a bigger influence on music before the sixties?

Or were they? Music does get faster in the twentieth century. Psychedelics were the next step?

[Bennyboy]

16. Ellis Dee and the wipe outs!

Nothing had a greater impact than LSD. And it was not around forever. Only once guys like Robert Hunter (Garcia's lyricist) and Ken Kesey took the gov't tests (ealy 60's), did it become the thing to do. Once that cat got out of the bag EVERYTHING CHANGED.

Some people were in it for the long run and others fell off of it rather quickly, but it's impact is still felt...

And that thing is still going on. Tons of great psychedelic bands are out there now, all rooted in the acid ethos.....String Cheese Incident, Phish, Gov't Mule, Galactic, Leftover salmon, Yonder Mountain string Band (yes a psychedelic string band) etc... Now it has included mushrooms and ecstacy and DMT (lately)... the psychedelic music scene is actually larger than it ever has been when you think about it.

[patrick t. cakes]

45. ive seen most of these bands,

(String Cheese Incident, Phish, Gov't Mule, Galactic, Leftover salmon, Yonder Mountain string Band) always on shrooms, and definitely enjoyed myself; i don't think this generation of music comes close to 60s psychedelia though.

[hippywife]

19. Drugs were of some influence before the 60's.

Louis Armstrong loved him some toke. Smack was around and drug of choice it seems for early jazz. blues, and bebop musicians such as Charlie "Bird" Parker and Billie Holiday. But heroin destroyed lives pretty quickly.

I think it wasn't so much the drugs as the type of drugs. The sixties were dominated by psychedelics. Timothy Leary encouraged folks to "turn on, tune in and drop out" as one of the leading figures in the counterculture of the day. Acid and shrooms gave people a whole different experience, one that they found useful in the creation of their art.

:hi:

[mitchum]

34. I have always found it hilarious that Kerouac hated rock music

same for James Dean
"But...but...but!!!"

[mix]

14. Repression and the inevitable rebellion against it.

we're due

[patrick t. cakes]

15. amen to that.

[rurallib]

27. yeppers - music wasn't the only thing

it is probably most remembered, but the whole rebellion thing which led to more repression and more rebellion......
Art,fashion,literature all explored new trails. With a little help from some tools like acid....

[XemaSab]

18. I'm not from that era at all

but it wouldn't surprise me to hear that a fascination with India and Eastern culture fed into it.

This song by the Seagreen Serenades (which is quite aight, BTW), sounds more like Indian music than American rock of the day.

Also, witness the Beatles:

I Wanna Hold Your Hand (1963):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKHFUKZ-IXE

Within You, Without You (1967):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAADkgJBxhY

[carlyhippy]

21. Within you without you is one of my favorite Beatles songs

beautiful!

[patrick t. cakes]

28. sea green serenade is actually a song by silver apples

check them out, amazing album. precedes electronica by 25/30 years.

but i see what you mean by the eastern influence. the velvet underground definitely has that vibe


silver apples still preform...

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver_Apples>

[carlyhippy]

20. because 16 candles was a different era, a different phase

teenagers and young adults loved 16 candles, and for the time this type of music was perfect. All of a sudden, seeming like overnight, vietnam, draft resistence, drugs, civil rights, college protests, and people like Kerouac, Abbie Hoffman, Timothy Leary became popular, drugs exploded on the culture, people wanted change, and they showed their feelings and rebellion thru music. Easten religion also had some influence, the young people even wanted spiritual change, away from their traditional upbringings. Even the Beatles and Beach boys changed their music style.

I love this era. Sides were being chosen, music was one way the young people (and quite a few older, liberated free minds) showed their displeasure in the strigent post-war idealism.

This era, in my opinion, produced some of the best music, the best muscians in modern music history.

[abq e streeter]

22. Slight tangent, but glad to see someone include the Beachboys

They did some wonderfully creative music during this era too and are too often dismissed as lightweights. They gave one of the first hints, while still in their surfing and hot rods phase, of the change that was about to and/or beginning happen to millions of young people on the west coast, and all over, who were getting bored with their staid, white bread existences and were searching for something different and more meaningful...."I'm gettin' bugged driving up and down the same old strip; I gotta find a new place where the kids are hip." (I Get Around,of course)
And by a couple of years after that :

Surf's Up-- written by Brian Wilson and Van Dyke Parks

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hYIlH4nOEo

[carlyhippy]

24. Surf's Up=work of art , just beautiful.......

I liked the BB's cars/surfing/school songs, but the 67 thru 71 Smiley Smile thru Sunflower/Surf's Up era is in my opinon the most beautiful music they created.

I saw the BB's a few years ago, actually while I was in NM on vacation. Mike and Bruce can still put on a good show, but it's just not the same for me without Brian, Al, Denny and especially Carl, but it still was a really good show.

[patrick t. cakes]

26. i agree with all you said

16 candles is a great song. i just think its fascinating how quickly culture changed. i think the arts have benefited tremendously because of it.

[fishwax]

23. drugs, technology, the british invasion, and bob dylan

It's actually more legible than it might look at first glance. The jump from 16 candles to something like Dark Side of the Moon is pretty substantial, but it takes place over 14 years rather than about 5. A few key turning points:

The British Invasion in 1964-1966 -- The Beatles were on Ed Sullivan in early '64 and the Rolling Stones toured the U.S. later that year. By the end of 1964 British bands were dominating the charts. These bands were largely influenced by American blues--blues, of course, were essential to the development of rock and roll in the 50s, but the influence wasn't as strong in the vocalists and vocal groups popular in the early 60s. So in exploring the blues roots of rock music, the British Invasion bands brought a new energy to the genre.

Though vocal bands dominated the charts in the early 60s, there was a lot of energy in the folk music scene, and Bob Dylan had honed his songwriting (as well as his exploration of folk and blues roots) on that circuit for several years. But after the British Invasion, he began to move towards rock and roll. He went electric in '65 and released a holy trinity of albums in '65 and '66--"Bringing It All Back Home, "Highway 61 Revisited," and "Blonde on Blonde" are each classics, and the latter two could each make a strong case for the greatest album of all time. Dylan's lyrics set a new standard of possibility for rock music as an artistic form, and these three albums cumulatively point rock music in a new direction.

Just as the British Invasion had pushed Dylan to explore new directions, Dylan's artistry pushed The Beatles to explore new directions with their sound and their lyrics. Dylan also introduced The Beatles to LSD. It's a pretty huge leap from "I Wanna Hold Your Hand" in 1964 to "Eleanor Rigby" or "Strawberry Fields Forever" in '66 and '67. And that culminated in Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" in 1967. Sgt. Pepper's also made use of eastern influences as well as technological advancements in the studio, employing various effects not only to make recording easier and audio clearer, but also for artistic purposes.

It wasn't just Dylan and the Beatles, of course, but those are kind of the high water marks, and there were plenty of other great artists that were inspired by such developments and that inspired reactions in their own right. From Sgt. Pepper's (1967) it's not such a huge leap to Dark Side of the Moon (1973).

It would be hard to overstate the influence of psychedelic drugs--they provided a new way of looking at the world, and music was the primary means by which this new way of looking at the world found artistic expression. (There were also psychedelic novels and poetry and movies, of course, but they weren't as successful or as widespread, perhaps b/c music affords the opportunity both for a community experience as well as an individual experience in a way that other media don't.)

The technology is also important. There were innovations in recording equipment (magnetic tape hadn't been around that long, and multi-track recording was still relatively new) and in the production of sound (instruments like the mellotron, effects like the wah wah pedal, and so on). So artists and engineers not only had all these new musical directions to explore and new corners of the mind to represent, they also had plenty of new toys with which to do so.

[Tobin S.]

25. Interesting. Nice post.

:thumbsup:

[XemaSab]

29. Thanks for this post

:hi:

[elleng]

31. Namaste

:thumbsup:

[Dr Morbius]

51. You've hit upon it.

Look at the music of 1963 and of 1965. There are only two years of difference there but a world of difference in style. I think the British invasion was the biggest change in American musical history. The difference between songs of 1963 and 1961 are far less marked, as is the change from 1959 to 1961. There are always periods of change in music; in the forties, popularity quickly shifted from swing to "jump" music to "boogie-woogie" during the war. But these were essentially rhythmic changes within a style. The Beatles and the Animals and the Stones brought a new paradigm: two or three guitars, drums, and vocals (occasionally some organ) in a 4/4 beat laden with hooks. It sold like crazy and the record companies jumped on it.

From that point, change became commonplace. The difference between 1965 and 1967 is noteworthy, and different kinds of music grew in different areas. The Beatles grew as a band and remained incredibly influential. Bob Dylan led a folk-based movement. Blues was quite popular in England and grew into metal and "acid rock" best exemplified by Pink Floyd. Experimental music grew (encouraged by the success of giants like the Beatles, the Stones, and Dylan), new technology had some impact, and so on, as you wrote. Drugs were a part of this experimentation, but not a causal factor in my view. Recall these were tough times in England; the economy was awful in Europe in the 60's and suffering always promotes experimentation in art.

But when it started, the point at which music seemingly changed, was February of 1964, when a marketing wizard presented America with the Beatles, and they sold like hotcakes. So the industry checked out other English bands, which included the Animals and the Rolling Stones and the Kinks and the Who. Some of this was extraordinarily good and it sold, too. The ultimate lesson for the record companies was learned: people liked different stuff. The times, they were indeed a-changin', and companies that kept up made money. A remarkable thing happened: capitalism started encouraging creativity. This lasted for about a couple decades, until I'd say the mid-eighties.

[Amerigo Vespucci]

30. Drug-fueled experimentation with no rules, no boundaries, by musicians with actual talent

That's basically it...you had musicians with varying levels of creativity who were explorers...crossing genres, crossing culture lines, restricted by nothing and fascinated by everything, driven by a hunger to know the unknown.

And lots and lots and lots of mind-expanding drugs.

It was a time in which a black musician could play "white" rock and roll in a way that had his contemporaries...Townshend, Clapton, ALL of them...standing on the sidelines shitting bricks. He'd set his guitar on fire, he'd hump it, he'd take you way down by the methane sea, where he had a hummingbird that would hum so loud, you'd think you were losing your mind. The funny thing is that he had to go to England first, in order to create that initial buzz, and then come home and claim what was his own (as he documented in "Hear My Train A Comin")...

Gonna leave this town, yeah
Gotta leave this town
Gonna make a whole lotta money
Gonna be big, yeah
Gonna be big yeah
I’m gonna buy this town
I’m gonna buy this town, an’ put it all in my shoe (might even give a piece to you)
That’s what I’m gonna do, what I’m gonna do, what I’m gonna do

And that only scratches the surface.

:toast:

[GReedDiamond]

35. A good summary of the (seemingly) rapid development of that period...

...however, add to that the developments in the technology of music, i.e., electronics (theremin>moog synthsizer), crossing over into effecting all instrumentation on a recording/performance, such as Jimi's ability to torture an electric guitar into doing his bidding, whether or not he was using effects! The effects were later invented to simulate stuff he wrung from his guitars.

But, seriously, a large amount of credit for the rapid acceleration of music in the 1960s was thanks to Les Paul, (co)inventor of the electric guitar, and inventor of multi-track recording, which made so many of our fave 60s hits possible, and therefore, what they were.

[Amerigo Vespucci]

37. You want to read some interesting stuff, Google Teo Macero...

...Miles Davis' producer for many of his classic albums.



A few years ago Columbia released a series of box sets that, in part, focused on some of Miles' seminal fusion-era (and beyond) albums such as In A Silent Way, Jack Johnson, Bitches Brew, and On The Corner. Prior to "electric Miles," he produced the legendary "Kind of Blue."

On each of these box sets you can hear the unedited studio tracks that Macero used to literally piece together the final albums. In his day, before ProTools and all of the other computer-based editing aids, Macero's tools of the trade were X-acto knives and tape, which he used to make tight edits and loops from the studio master reels. Unbelievably basic and primitive tools, used to shape the electric career of one of the undisputed kings of jazz.

In many ways, he should be acknowledged as a co-composer for many of the classic Miles tracks. Miles played the music, to be sure. But he entrusted it to Macero, who shaped and assembled the final product.

I've heard people who knew Miles go on record to say that he would never have approved of those box sets. The albums that were issued were the albums he wanted issued.

Macero's studio innovations were similar to what Les Paul did...the things he wanted didn't exist so he made them. That's usually the first step of greatness.

:toast:

[GReedDiamond]

39. Right you are Amerigo!

Analog tape loops...and I wish I still had an Echoplex, like I did 20 years ago (just what happened to that echoplex?!)

I'm totally digital now...Roland TD-20X electronic drums to motu828 to computer.

I'm going to try playing with a real live band again this coming weekend.

[HEyHEY]

32. The Beatles had a lot to do with it. They popularized that three chord sound

Try to get a copy of the 40th anniversary of rolling stone magazine. It actually gets into what you're talking about.

[patrick t. cakes]

40. will do thanks

[patrick t. cakes]

41. dup

[mitchum]

33. Do you mean popular music for white middle-class youth?

Because jazz and the avant garde music scenes were both freaking out long before the 60s

[patrick t. cakes]

43. No, your right, jazz was def. out there early

ornrette coleman comes to mind,

i was thinking more along the lines of 50s rock and roll into 60s psychedelics.

[RagAss]

36. Brian Wilson...Pet Sounds - 1966

It changed everything....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_Z-6p7Hag4&feature=related

[The Midway Rebel]

38. Technological and studio innovations of Joe Meek

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Meek

His compressors are legendary.

[patrick t. cakes]

42. thanks for that link

never heard Telstar before. very cool.

[Lindsey]

44. IMHO, The Beatles had an impact that may never be replicated.

I'm a Beatles fanatic and what they did w/music is legendary. They combined rock w/classical, every album just got better and better, they started so many trends. I could go on and on but there's just too much.

[MilesColtrane]

46. Old influences filtered through drugs and new fangled electric instruments

Throw into the mix the effects of globalization.

A kid could finally get his hands on music being made an ocean away.

It's not a stretch to imagine the 13th Floor Elevators listening to Ravi Shankar while tripping.

[cemaphonic]

47. There was also a fair bit of cross-fertilization from the classical avant-garde too

Phil Lesch of the Dead was part of the Bay Area avant garde scene that Terry Riley (speaking of Riley, pretty much everyone who was into delay effects and programmable sequenced synthesizers cribbed tons of stuff from him whether directly or indirectly) and Steve Reich were working in. Zappa was famously a huge fan of Modernist composers like Stravinsky and Varese. Yoko Ono and John Cale were both associates of La Monte Young and John Cage. Stockhausen was pretty popular, and even shows up on the Sgt. Peppers Montage.

And as for Silver Apples, they took their name and some elements of their style from a great little piece by Morton Subotnik.

[Spider Jerusalem]

48. You're looking at it wrong, really?

You don't go from "16 Candles" to Pink Floyd; you go from Elvis/Chuck Berry/Little Richard/Gene Vincent/Johnny Cash/Roy Orbison and southern/Mississippi Delta and Chicago blues like Robert Johnson, Son House, Leadbelly, Buddy Guy, and Muddy Waters, also jazz (especially Miles Davis) to the Beatles to Pink Floyd--a lot of what came out of the 'rock scene' in the Sixties was American blues and early rock and roll plus jazz and the British folk music tradition; you see that in the Beatles, the Stones, the Who, etc etc.

And then those melded influences that the British Invasion bands broght back across the Atlantic saved American popular music and made rock cool again; by '64 it was considered passe, and quaint, and a dying trend; the British mania over the Beatles was noted with bemusement in the States. "Oh, rock and roll! That's so 1959!" was kind of the attitude. It was all pop and surf music in the States at the time. So what made rock what it is? The fact that it crossed the Atlantic to Britain and became something new and fresh and different. And then, yeah, drugs (but the effect of psychedelics is probably overrated when compared to the effect of rock and roll going from a provincial and mainly Southern American musical style to developing an international musical vocabulary).

[old mark]

49. Really, it was a lot of things that camt together, man - from the re-birth of the

Les Paul guitar in 1964 or so, to better recording techniques to the wide spread of top 40 radio. Go back a little farther to the Beach Boys.Listen to what Brian Wilson was putting into the sound mix...go back to the Wall of Sound and Phil Specter, where bands like The Who and The Ramones got their inspiration.

It just all happened at one time as the generation became of age...I was a college freshman in late 1965, and had NO money, but played and sang in a blues band, and heard an incredible variety of music. It really just erupted out of the consciousness of youth...and the dseire of the middle aged to get rich quick off the kid's music.


mark

[CBGLuthier]

50. Marijuana and LSD

Also the shrinking world led to exposure to more world music and historical works. Technology played no small part either. Recording going from simple one track to 16 tracks or more by the end of the 60's.

The roots of some of this is in more academic music than popular. Musique Concrete, the works of Edgar Varese, La Monte Young, Terry Riley, Steve Reich etc.....

But mostly it was the acid and the pot. :-)

[Xithras]

52. Release of the alder Fender Stratocaster. 1956

If you listen to music from the 1950's, and compare it to music of the 1960's, one of the biggest differences is the move away from the vocally driven "bubblegum rock" of the 1950's to the more instrumentally driven "band rock" of the 1960's. This move followed the release of the alder Fender Stratocaster, the worlds first "affordable" electric guitar, and one that introduced a new shape that encouraged a variety of playing styles (earlier electrics, like the more expensive Les Paul, had designs that made fret playing difficult).

You had a new kind of instrument, designed to encourage a variety of playing styles, available at a price point that made it accessible to the "garage bands" of its day. It took many of these bands a few years to experiment with it, master it, and rise to prominence, but that was the foundation.

Of course, the drugs that fueled some of the creative things people did with it, and the social upheaval that gave many bands something to sing about, might have also contributed...a little ;)

[tinymontgomery]

53. Technology in the studio and what

every one else said.

[valerief]

54. In my head, the last good pop music of the 60s was Motown.

Pop music came back with disco. Everything in between was dirgy. But that's just me.

[Odin2005]

55. My guess is that the Civil Rights movement got white people interested in African-American music.

Rock originated out of the same African American musical tradition as Jazz and R&B

[TrogL]

56. The utterly awful music of the 50's.

(except for the jazz).