Psychedelia and Other Colours

by Rob Chapman

Overview

In Psychedelia and Other Colours, acclaimed author Rob Chapman explores in crystalline detail the history, precedents and cultural impact of LSD, from the earliest experiments in painting with light and immersive environments to the thriving avant-garde scene that existed in San Francisco even before the Grateful Dead and the Fillmore Auditorium. In the UK, he documents an entirely different history, and one that has never been told before. It has its roots in fairy tales and fairgrounds, the music hall and the dead of Flanders fields, in the Festival of Britain and that peculiarly British strand of surrealism that culminated in the Magical Mystery Tour.

Sitars and Sergeant Pepper, surfadelica and the Soft Machine, light shows and love-ins - the mind-expanding effects of acid were to redefine popular culture as we know it. Psychedelia and Other Colours documents these utopian reverberations - and the dark side of their moon - in a perfect portrait.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780571282753
Publisher:	Faber and Faber
Publication date:	09/01/2015
Sold by:	Bookwire
Format:	eBook
Pages:	512
File size:	2 MB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Rob Chapman is the author of perhaps the most acclaimed biography of Syd Barrett: An Irregular Head. He has written three other books and was a member of the Bristol based group, The Glaxo Babies.
Mojo , The Times, The Guardian, Independent on Sunday, Uncut, Word and Jockey Slut. He is the author of Selling the Sixties: The Pirates and Pop Music Radio (1992), The Vinyl Junkyard (1996) and the acclaimed biography Syd Barrett: A Very Irregular Head (2010). His first novel Dusk Music was published in 2008. He lives in Todmorden, Lancashire.

Table of Contents

Foreword Andrew Weatherall ix

All Dressed Up and Laughing Loud: An Introduction 1

1 To Make This Trivial World Sublime 9

Psychedelia USA

2 Painting with Light 39

3 The Greta Garbo Home for Wayward Boys and Girls 81

4 The Savant-Garde: Surfadelica, Girl Groups and Garage Land 111

5 California Dreaming 139

6 Utopians and Utopiates 175

7 I Am the Black Gold of the Sun 191

8 Concentration Moon: The Dark Side of Psych 229

Psychedelia UK

9 You Get a Tan from Standing in the English Rain 260

10 The Soft Machine: Unfunky Cerebral Caterwauling, the Romilar Army and All the Wood that Doesn't Look Like Fish 311

11 The Pink Floyd: The Art-School Dance and, the Hexagram Shuffle 329

12 Smashed Blocked: Art-Pop Renegades and the R&B Mutations 351

13 He's Been Travelling Everywhere': Innuendo, Euphemism and the Lucy Effect 385

14 The Psychedelic Music Hall 413

15 The Penny Arcadia 457

16 Infantasia: Kinder Psych and Toytown Pop 499

17 Sitar Pop, Raga Rock and the Exotic Others 521

Afterglow (Which Dreamed It?)

18 Gauche Riders in the Sky: Kitsch Psych, Part-Time Paradise People and the Ersatz of Suchness 541

19 Paint America Love 567

Notes 593

Bibliography 603

Index 609

Editorial Reviews

"Brilliantly written, crammed full of original ideas and, dare I say it, a little educational too. It is a marvellous read." - Shindig Ashley Norris

"Psychedelia and Other Colours, a work of rare scholarship and insight, opens a window onto a much misunderstood multicoloured era." - Spectator Ian Thomson

"As an account of psychedelia's glorious highs and preposterous charms, Chapman's exhaustive exploration of this Arcadian age with take its rightful place as the standard text" - The New Statesman Rob Young

From the Publisher