Better Homes & Gardens — 5ive Best Psychedelic Rock Albums
Illuminati Ganga being a vast-ranging organization consisting of writers, artists, musicians, philosophers, criminals, antique toy-collectors, snake charmers, programmers, time travelers, literary critics, memeticists, and fashionistas, often has projects that are done under the auspices of other organizations, one such is this famous article of The 5ive Best Psychedelic Rock Albums published in Better Homes & Gardens some years back by IG Agent 77.
We have graciously been permitted to republish it here.
The 5ive Best Psychedelic Rock Albums
These psychedelic Rock albums really changed the way we think about spatial design and color.
We are tickled pink to introduce our list of the best psychedelic rock albums that can help you if you need to decorate a special room of your house for degenerate drug addict relatives, or if you are just throwing a party that needs that extra bit of !ZING! to it. Just think about these albums.
5. The First Edition
Studio album by Kenny Rogers and The First Edition
With their innovative sense of style and incorporating elements from many musical genres this band managed to evoke a sense of timeless mental breakdown, and looked good while doing it!
Their first big song off the album “Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)” posed an interesting conundrum lyrically, what condition is your condition in!? This is the question for anyone who has ever used any sort of psychoactive substance, like several tall glasses of pink champagne as I did recently. I don’t recall that there was an answer in the song as to what condition Kenny Rogers’ condition was in at the time, but it did evoke a strong sense of place — 8 miles high in Tulsa with an impressive hard rock edge!
Wow, look at that red background, the way it moves through several shades of red, reminding one of the guitar solo played by Glen Campbell on the song, which was heavily compressed with an interesting tremolo effect to give it its distinctive psychedelicious sound! That red would be an interesting color choice for an entry hallway for your next dinner party.
The song “Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)” would be a great song to play on an endless loop in that hallway, a long red hallway with different shades of red blending harmoniously together and that song playing — it’s easy to see why some people think this album should be even higher on the list.
True, we are basically ranking this album based on the one song, but this song has been a strong visual inspiration in other media — for example the famously psychedelic dream sequence from The Big Lebowski
If you are interested in purchasing this fine #5 Psychedelic album of all time as rated by the team here at Better Homes & Gardens please follow our high quality affiliate link to Amazon below
4. The Piper At The Gates Of Dawn
Debut album by Pink Floyd
I know everybody thinks the best Pink Floyd psychedelic album is The Dark Side of The Moon, but one interesting thing that you should take into consideration is that there is no dark side of the moon really, as a matter of fact it’s all dark, which as a color scheme can be rather depressing and un-psychedelic, perhaps it will be on our list of top Goth albums coming out for our special Christmas edition.
So this is the album to beat. Notice the enticing and yummy polychromatic color scheme of the cover! That photo was taken by young (at the time) society photographer Vic Singh who has a lot of eye-catching photography that might look very nice gracing the modern living room of a well to do power-couple.
The album title itself is in reference to the Great God Pan, from this illustration from the Wind In The Willows,
which would make a great poster for a precocious child’s bedroom.
The album features an unusually heavy use of echo and reverb to create a unique sound which was very influential for other stylish young members of the psychedelic movement.
Syd Barrett, the brilliant leader of the group, later went mad due to heavy usage of LSD, many geniuses have gone mad so you can see that this album is really very good.
Amusingly enough when I started writing this review I was under the impression that this was the album with the great Maxfield Parrish cover
but my memory was playing tricks on me (overuse of pink champagne has taken its toll!)
If you want to buy this album, and why wouldn’t you, it’s #4 on our list, you can do so through the following affiliate link
3. The Present
The Moody Blues final studio album
This is the one with the Maxfield Parrish cover I was thinking of! Oh my, it’s actually a pastiche.
Anyway if you want to buy a poster of the actual Maxfield Parrish painting you can get it through our lovely affiliate link below
You can tell this was a real psychedelic rock album because it spawned three minor hits in the U.S market, two of which, “Blue World” and “Running Water” can provide interesting design motifs to consider.
Blue world especially imagines a world in which the psychedelic philosopher kings rule among a landscape of columns and big stylish vases
The complete, awe-inspiring highly psychedelic video can be found here
And you can get the whole album through another high quality affiliate link below:
2 — Pink Floyd Live At Pompei
The album of the documentary film — Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii
The documentary of course is one of the most interesting concert films ever made, set in the amphitheater of Pompeii in Naples, Italy and performed without an audience.
Reviews at the time of the release were highly positive — Audience regarded the film as “a handsome visual production.” The Hollywood Reporter called it a “fully structured concept which stands on its own quite beyond its function of recording a live rock concert.”
And Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune gave the film three stars out of four and noted that the music was extremely fine.
The visual iconography of the film and album are top-notch
And of course any album of a live show played in Pompeii is just wonderful to play if you are having an Italian themed summer party — for example some of the Wine tasting party ideas in this article would definitely benefit from playing Careful with That Axe, Eugene or Mademoiselle Nobs in the background!
There is a sense of Naples that seeps through the music if you are experiencing synesthesia due to overuse of pink champagne or other highly suggestive products.
The film can be purchased through Amazon by following our wonderful affiliate link as presented below
A portion of the concert can be seen here
1 — 25 O’Clock
the debut record by the Dukes of Stratosphear
Supposedly the eighth studio album by XTC, released on April Fools Day 1985 through Virgin Records. It was publicized as a long-lost collection of recordings by a late 1960s group, but actually consisted of new tracks recorded by Andy Partridge, Colin Moulding, and Dave Gregory of XTC with Gregory’s brother Ian.
However there is also some evidence from the iconography from the album cover — with the antique watch and the color scheme — that this may actually be a hoax from the well-known design collective Illuminati Ganga — examples of similar motifs below
But I think we can all agree that the most important thing here is the music, as is indeed the case with all the albums we review.
The clockwork gears that figure prominently in the album’s design is of course reminescent of many fine design ideas featured in Better Homes & Gardens during the late 60s and early 70s, such as this design from 1974
At any rate — super-hip folks such as the staff at Better Homes & Gardens have always been eager to know what time it was
Hey! What’s that hippie smoking in his pipe!?
If you are interested in drawing some colorful inspiration from this album, you could do worse than purchase it through this totally non-intrusive, non-pandering affiliate link provided below!
And if you would like to see an official video here is a link to the wonderfully British Mole from The Ministry, set in Chittingfold House, home of the Frobisher-Harrises since 1667.
So there you have it — A really cool list of Psychedelic rock albums that can keep you cool and groovy and up to date in the hard rocking world of psychedelia and able to drop interesting observations about the genre if it should come up as the topic of conversation at a dinner party.
If during the reading of this article you thought it would be great to sample some high quality pink champagne we would like to provide a high quality Amazon Affiliate link to allow you to get slightly tipsy while listening to these great albums, but Amazon no longer sends you alcohol and as a consequence if you want some you need to go to the store wearing your ermine fringed exotic bathrobe and comfy slippers like a common peasant!
The preceding article was written by IG Agent 77.
