20th Century Rock and Roll: Psychedelia [ILLUSTRATED] (Paperback)

by Belmo (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
The Psychedelic 60's — It was an era of musical innovation that introduced the styles which influenced Rock and Roll music for the next quarter century.

Every bit as exciting as the music, were the people who made it — dynamic, expressive, socially conscious and talented — artists who injected human passions into their music unlike any others before them in this century.

This book chronicles the 50 most influential artists of Psychedelia and their music, complete with pictures, stories, biographies and discographies. Also included are lists of the top Psychedelic songs and albums of all time, and genré collectibles.

You'll find The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, Jefferson Airplane, Grateful Dead, Pink Floyd, Thirteenth Floor Elevators, The Doors, Moby Grape, Cream, Iron Butterfly, and many more between these covers.

If you lived through the 60's, then you'll remember this music. If you're alive today, buy the book — it'll bring back great memories. And as you read the song titles and start humming to yourself, you'll be pleasantly surprised to realize how many of these great tunes you can still hear being played today.

From the Publisher
The 20th CENTURY ROCK AND ROLL Series from COLLECTOR’S GUIDE PUBLISHING presents the top artists of the last half century in an informative and entertaining format that will keep you iinterested from cover to cover.

The series features books on PSYCHEDELIA, ALTERNATIVE MUSIC, PROGRESSIVE ROCK, HEAVY METAL, POP, GLAM, PUNK and WOMEN IN ROCK, each with details about its top artists, their music, their records and their effects on music and society.

Prepared by authors recognized in their fields and illustrated throughout, this is the collection you’ve been waiting for.

Product Details

• Paperback: 160 pages
• Publisher: Collectors Guide Publishing Inc; illustrated edition edition (December 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1896522408
• ISBN-13: 978-1896522401
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 5.9 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #110,586 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Introduction to Psychedelic Music for 10 year olds!!, August 22, 2002

By	Clyde J. Borg (Attard Malta) - See all my reviews

As an introductory book to psychedelic music this is a less than satisfactory book and it is definitely not the tome it pretends to be. The book focuses on fifty of the most important psychedelic groups, has some colour reprints of some classic albums and includes a list of the best psychedelic albums and singles. However, it is written in a very poor way, its overall presentation is shoddy and, very often, merely states the obvious without adding anything new. The writer's tendency to refer to his own record collection is, to say the least, annoying. For a really in depth analysis of psychedelia, I would recommend THE ACID TRIP (V.Joynson), FUZZ ACID & FLOWERS (V.Joynson) or even UNKNOWN LEGENDS OF ROCK AND ROLL (R.Unterberger).

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Details should count!, April 26, 2000

By	Russ Reising "russedelic" (Putting the High in Ohio) - See all my reviews

"Belmo" has assembled a book flawed by many wildly inaccurate statements and elsewhere marred by bland and meaningless exaggeration. For example, Timothy Leary was NOT a Berkeley professor; his heyday of psychedelic experimentation was during his career at Harvard. Also, Janis Joplin hated psychedelics and remarked something to the effect that seeing all those squiggly lines was not for her. She was a boozer through and through.

Belmo places himself at the cutting edge of psychedelic fandom, but, when push comes to shove, his categories and his lists are banal and predictable. Why would some of the albums he rates highly in the "Top 100 Psychedelic Albums" appendix list have no discussion in his book? Does anyone really think that the Strawberry Alarm Clock was a serious psychedelic group? Frank Zappa loathed drugs, especially LSD, but Belmo includes him, pretty much without real qualifications, in the list of psychedelic artists. Isn't this an insult to Zappa as a creative genius and cultural spokesperson? Belmo gives no indication that he can distinguish between the genuine article and some record mogul's fraudulent marketing scheme to put some mop-topped guys in wild bell bottoms and call them psychedelic.

While Belmo does make some interesting observations, they are few and far between, and he's more likely to say over and over again that Song X or Album X or Group X embodies the greatest achievement of the psychedelic era.

Perhaps Belmo was there (somewhere in South Dakota), but this book, its standards, and its lists could have been written by anyone who spent an hour or two on the internet or listening to Rhino Records' great "Nuggets" collection.

If you want a more reliable (and much better written) perspective on the era and its music, go to old issues of Crawdaddy or Rolling Stone, when both of those rags were genuinely counter-cultural touchstones for whatever was cutting edge psychedelia.

4.0 out of 5 stars Belmo's Books, October 26, 2000

By	Bob Walker (Canada) - See all my reviews

I already have all of Bemo's other books and I think they're all great. My fave is THE BEATLES-NOT FOR SALE. Very detailed. PSYCHEDELIA is a great look at an era/genre of music created when the world was changing and one of the main reasons for this change was the music.