Turn On Your Mind: Four Decades of Great Psychedelic Rock [Paperback]

Jim DeRogatis (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 1, 2003

Turn On Your Mind: Four Decades of Great Psychedelic Rock is a history and critical examination of rock's most inventive genre. Whether or not psychedelic drugs played a role (and as many musicians say they've used them as not), psychedelic rock has consistently charted brave new worlds that exist only in the space between the headphones. The history books tell us the music's high point was the Haight-Ashbury scene of 1967, but the genre didn't start in San Francisco, and its evolution didn't end with the Summer of Love. A line can be drawn from the hypnotic drones of the Velvet Underground to the disorienting swirl of My Bloody Valentine; from the artful experiments of the Beatles' Revolver to the flowing, otherworldly samples of rappers P.M. Dawn; from the dementia of the 13th Floor Elevators to the grungy lunacy of the Flaming Lips; and from the sounds and sights at Ken Kesey's '60s Acid Tests to those at present-day raves. Turn On Your Mind is an attempt to connect the dots from the very first groups who turned on, tuned in, and dropped out, to such new-millennial practitioners as Wilco, the Elephant 6 bands, Moby, the Super Furry Animals, and the so-called "stoner-rock" and "ork-pop" scenes.

Product Details

• Paperback: 638 pages
• Publisher: Hal Leonard (December 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0634055488
• ISBN-13: 978-0634055485
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #556,612 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Outstanding psych (and neo-psych) history, August 23, 2008

By 

Peter Sykes (Airlie Beach, Australia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Turn On Your Mind: Four Decades of Great Psychedelic Rock (Paperback)

Top music critic Jim DeRogatis does an outstanding job with a very difficult topic. As the manager of the Psychedelic 100 website I can attest to the fact that trying to identify what exactly makes a piece of music 'psychedelic' is not always an easy thing. But DeRogatis does not claim to write definitively -- he simply states a very well-informed point of view that is as open-ended and subject to healthy debate as the music about which he writes.

The "Ultimate Psychedelic Rock Library" appendix is a handy reference to the 189 albums DeRogatis considers to be the cream of the crop. Those with an eye on the Amazon stars should note that most negative reviews listed here focus on the fact that the book is simply an update of an earlier edition published under another title. In short, if you have Kaleidoscope Eyes you probably don't need this unless you are a rabid completist. With that in mind, this book certainly deserves much better than the three stars it was averaging at the time of writing this review.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Informative, yet very opinionated., February 23, 2004

By 

Brett Lemke (www.maximumink.com) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Turn On Your Mind: Four Decades of Great Psychedelic Rock (Paperback)

Jim DeRogatis presents to the public his exhaustively researched book on the roots of psychedelic rock, and his ensuing opinions and considerations on the most influential psychedelic records of all time. The book's title takes it's moniker from the omnipresent catch-phrase, setting the tone for a drug-induced rollercoaster of musicians centering around The Beach Boys, The Beatles, Brian Eno, Pink Floyd, and The Rolling Stones. "Turn On Your Mind" focuses on Psychedelia's inception the 60's, and shows the bridges and seeping transitions into the Indy rock, Emo, and the roots of the Rave scene. Despite spending time covering the British influence and the inner workings of many smaller bands, the tome is effectively a 600-page CD review laden with top ten "most psychedelic" lists. DeRogatis kaleidoscopically jumps from artist to artist doing a thorough job of following up on all of his tangents; explaining why everything happened, who dropped who's acid, and what band both Lemmy of Mötörhead and Sci-Fi writer Michael Moorcock both fronted. DeRogatis is a writer for the Chicago Sun-Times, and is also is the author of the meticulously researched and Romilar-laden "Let It Blurt: The Life and Times of Lester Bangs, America's Greatest Rock Journalist."

5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great read., January 17, 2006

By 

Garrett Armstrong (Annapolis, MD, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Turn On Your Mind: Four Decades of Great Psychedelic Rock (Paperback)

This is a must read for all interested in psychedelic rock. It is a solid book for reference and is a very interesting read, with Deragotis' style easy to digest. He does shy away from the Grateful Deads and Jimi Hendrixs in favor of the 13th floor Elevators and the Flaming Lips, which is a good thing. This is, by no means, defintive, but how could a book about a genre so hell-bent on origionality and obscurity be definitive? It is still a very solid pick-up for beginners to the genre.