The Psychedelic Sight philosophy

When asked what his favorite music was, Duke Ellington said: “There are only two kinds of music. The good and the bad. I like the good.” That pretty much covers it. So when I started up a pair of online “radio stations” for psychedelic music, I included the Duke’s “Caravan.” Huh?

Yeah, and I didn’t include the so-called psychedelic classic “My Green Tambourine.” Or “If You’re Going to San Francisco.” Or any other of the nehru-jacket songs that cashed in on the hippie-music craze. Sun Ra sits next to Pink Floyd on this magic bus.

To me, psychedelic music at its best transports listeners to another place, another state of mind. Alternate states, via sounds. “Discorporate and come with me,” Frank Zappa invited us in a song. (”Discorporate means to leave your body.”) Zappa wasn’t a drug guy, but he made his share of psychedelic music.

Psychedelic Sight revolves around two works in progress: A list of the 100 greatest psychedelic albums, and one of the top 50 psychedelic songs.

Of course, “best psychedelic albums” would seem to be working a limited field, since psychedelia as a genre lasted for so short a time, basically 1967-1970. But using the criteria for this project, psychedelic music actually stretches backward and forwards for decades. Today, a new generation of artists are adopting the label — we’ll see how they do.

If the music blows your mind and fries the circuits of commercial radio, the door is open.

While the album list will cast a wide net, the top songs category will focus more on psychedelic nuggets from the hippie era.

This site has nothing to do with drugs, outside of the mind-altering stuff’s influence on much of the music. And dashes of that good dope humor that’s almost mainstream these days.

Psychedelic Sight’s writers have long graduated from dope and booze, preferring to get high on acid rock, not acid. “Music is your only friend … until the end,” as the man sang.

The home page’s right-side “Sounds and Moving Pictures” presents primo vintage videos. The front section tab “The Happening” is the place to read news from the world of psychedelia.

In addition to music and concert reviews, the site also covers movies from the psychedelic era, hippie art, books — all the alternative-media paraphernalia that fits. The concerts section will keep up with which bands of interest are on the road.

This is very much a work in progress, with work beginning on the site in August 2008 under the name of Porpoise Mouth. As of this writing, the albums list has exactly one title, appropriately the most famous psychedelic album, “Sgt. Pepper’s” — coming in at No. 4 on our list. The site’s Last.fm Internet radio station, Porpoise_Mouth, has been live since 2007. The lala.com station Psychedelic S. came to life in March 2009.

Ideas, freakouts and memories always are welcome on this site. If the demand’s there (I have no idea), a forum could evolve.

This site also can be reached by calling up Psychedelic Site as well, a nod to the old ying and yang — and the fact that people will get it confused anyway.

I had something else to say, it seems, but it’s clearly time to discorporate.