Comparing mid-to-late 60s American music to its uk counterpart shows some differences. Like even psychedelia meant a different thing in the us than the uk.
In the U.S. psychedelia meant something like this:
In the U.K. it meant this:
So if you take these two examples as representative of American vs UK psychedelia - you notice a lot of differences. American psychedelia was more upbeat and with maybe some naivete about the future of the world. Very jangly sounding. In the UK, I felt that it was more brooding, less about universal brotherhood, and more about wizardry type stuff. Also, notice the organ vs the lack thereof. A lot of the biggest organ players in rock were english (Lord, Wright, Wakeman).
I also feel that these two emerging styles had to do with the american vs the english experience. America was historically a "prole" country without a sense of nobility going back to its founding. There was also not a sense of permanence since if you fu**ed up you could always flee to a few towns over. Fast forward to the postwar years, I feel that this mentality was magnified even more. The american frontier persona sort of shifted to things like the automobile, the suburb and the space race. So the optimism of the 1960s I feel was sort of ingrained in the DNA of american psychedelia.
In Britain the situation was different. A lot of rock and roll had previous roots in americana but english psychedelia (minus the ones who infused it with a blues sound) was the first subset of rock that I feel was completely divorced from americana. I think it has to do with the difference in the english experience. When Jefferson Airplane got started - they were only a few years removed from "hot rod rock" being a thing - which was a uniquely american type of music. If you were an englishman born in 1943 or 1944 - while you probably listened to the same music as your american counterpart - you didn't have the "Rydell High School" experience. If anything you probably went to art school and learned how to play classical music.
Does anyone here agree or understand my viewpoint. It's sort of a hunch I've had for awhile.
In the U.S. psychedelia meant something like this:
In the U.K. it meant this:
So if you take these two examples as representative of American vs UK psychedelia - you notice a lot of differences. American psychedelia was more upbeat and with maybe some naivete about the future of the world. Very jangly sounding. In the UK, I felt that it was more brooding, less about universal brotherhood, and more about wizardry type stuff. Also, notice the organ vs the lack thereof. A lot of the biggest organ players in rock were english (Lord, Wright, Wakeman).
I also feel that these two emerging styles had to do with the american vs the english experience. America was historically a "prole" country without a sense of nobility going back to its founding. There was also not a sense of permanence since if you fu**ed up you could always flee to a few towns over. Fast forward to the postwar years, I feel that this mentality was magnified even more. The american frontier persona sort of shifted to things like the automobile, the suburb and the space race. So the optimism of the 1960s I feel was sort of ingrained in the DNA of american psychedelia.
In Britain the situation was different. A lot of rock and roll had previous roots in americana but english psychedelia (minus the ones who infused it with a blues sound) was the first subset of rock that I feel was completely divorced from americana. I think it has to do with the difference in the english experience. When Jefferson Airplane got started - they were only a few years removed from "hot rod rock" being a thing - which was a uniquely american type of music. If you were an englishman born in 1943 or 1944 - while you probably listened to the same music as your american counterpart - you didn't have the "Rydell High School" experience. If anything you probably went to art school and learned how to play classical music.
Does anyone here agree or understand my viewpoint. It's sort of a hunch I've had for awhile.
