The Happening
Pink Floyd ‘Wish’ comes true on SACD
January 20, 2012 · Leave a Comment
Pink Floyd appears to have a hit on SACD — or what passes for a hit in that low-profile audiophile format. The specialty label Analogue Productions released the Pink Floyd album “Wish You Were Here” on a 5.1 SACD late last year, and now reports that it’s “easily the biggest SACD title in the catalog.” First a bit of history: Super Audio CD (SACD) was introduced in 1999 but failed to catch on with the public, despite quality that’s sometimes billed as four times as good... [Read more]
Bands
Major Grateful Dead exhibit at Rock Hall
January 22, 2012 · Leave a Comment
The exhibition “Grateful Dead: The Long, Strange Trip” opens April 12 at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, in time for the 2012 artist inductions. Highlights are to include five Jerry Garcia guitars, “finished and working manuscripts” for classic Dead songs, gear from the Owsley “Wall of Sound” PA system, and artworks such as Fillmore posters and album graphics. The Grateful Dead Archive at the University of California-Santa Cruz “loaned a significant number of items” from its... [Read the full story]
Radio
‘Last DJ’ Jim Ladd in Deep with SiriusXM
December 2, 2011 · Leave a Comment
Veteran rock DJ Jim Ladd is going underground — via satellite. Ladd, recently fired by longtime employer KLOS in Los Angeles, has found a home at Deep Tracks, the satellite radio channel reminiscent of the free-form FM stations of the 1960s and ’70s. He celebrated the news by blasting the “stagnant, preprogrammed fodder that passes for radio today.” Ladd, dubbed the “last DJ” by Tom Petty, was one of the few major-market rock radio hosts allowed to work without a playlist. He launches... [Read the full story]
Concerts
Concert review: The Yardbirds in L.A.
October 10, 2011 · Leave a Comment
Playing fast and loose, the Yardbirds rolled into L.A. with their latest crop of talented young musicians. An audience that started out waiting to be impressed ended up cheering and howling its approval of the still potent U.K. band. No mere oldies act, the group sometimes bill themselves as the Most Blueswailing Yardbirds. For good reason: After almost a half century, they remain terrific (rock) interpreters of the U.S. blues masters. The set list from the Canyon Club (in L.A.’s west Valley) included Bob Diddley’s... [Read the full story]
Movies
Jerry Garcia documentary film on way
January 6, 2012 · Leave a Comment
Another Jerry Garcia feature film is in the wings as documentary maker Malcolm Leo (“This Is Elvis”) confirmed plans to release what’s dubbed “Jerry: The Movie.” Update: The filmmakers are “currently in talks” with several distributors, a spokeswoman for the project told PsychedelicSight.com. “Jerry: The Movie” is aiming for a spring 2012 release. The 42,000 in attendance at the San Francisco Giants’ Jerry Garcia Day last summer got a sneak peek of the docu while... [Read the full story]
The dead
Sean Bonniwell of Music Machine dies
January 5, 2012 · Leave a Comment
Sean Bonniwell, leader of the dark-edged 1960s band the Music Machine, has died. He was 71. The Music Machine had one hit single — 1966′s blazing “Talk Talk” — and produced only one album with its classic lineup. Still, the fuzz-and-Farfisa band is remembered as a vanguard act — an important link from garage rock to moody psychedelic rock and then the proto-punk bands. Bonniwell wrote most of the Music Machine’s songs and fronted the L.A. band, which was known for wearing all black... [Read the full story]
Psychedelic art galleries
100 Greatest Psychedelic Songs
No. 79: ‘San Francisco Girls’
Fever Tree was another in the long line of Texas bands that migrated to California in the psychedelic era. Before the Houston group made its move, however, it celebrated the charms of the Bay Area ladies with “San Francisco Girls (Return of the Native),” an intriguing single that (barely) cracked the Billboard singles chart in 1968. “San... [Read more]
50 Greatest Psychedelic Albums
No. 29: ‘Spirit’ (debut album)
The great and criminally underappreciated L.A. band Spirit rarely makes the list of the ’60s psychedelic groups. These days Spirit mostly is remembered for “Nature’s Way,” an FM radio classic. It’s a wistful midtempo plea for ecological sanity that appeared on the original band’s fourth and final album. Two years... [Read more]
Sixties sights & sounds
