Turn On Your Mind (2003)

All fans of psychedelic music (whatever “psychedelic music” means exactly) will want to look into this wide-ranging and eccentric survey by Chicago rock critic Jim DeRogatis. It’s actually a second edition of his first effort on the topic, Kaleidoscope Eyes from 1996, expanded not just to account for the intervening years but also to continue casting the net wide. He has ideas that don’t comport with mine, for example naming Pet Sounds by the Beach Boys as the #2 greatest psychedelic album of all time (or at least his #2 favorite). I love Pet Sounds but have never heard it as psychedelic at all. It’s hard to imagine Terence McKenna grooving in the jungle to “Wouldn’t It Be Nice.” DeRogatis also gives short shrift to the Doors and Sonic Youth, artists with an obvious (to me) foot in psychedelics. But he also broke things open for me about whole new fields of psychedelic potential by giving Brian Eno his own chapter. And I would have said punk-rock has so little in common with psychedelic as to be practically anti-psychedelic, but then he names Pere Ubu, Wire, and the Feelies and I can see the point. Then he raises Julian Cope (of the Teardrop Explodes), Robyn Hitchcock (of the Soft Boys), and XTC, and, again, I can see the point. When it gets down to cases I diverge from his takes fairly often, but I appreciate the touchpoints. Once you expand psychedelic music beyond the time period generally agreed on, approximately 1966 to 1970, you start to see the sky is the limit. You spend more time thinking about the sky too. DeRogatis, in 2003, was plainly a rockist in the poptimist scheme of things. His focus is not psychedelic music but more specifically psychedelic rock, and he indulges a lot of righteousness on the point. He might grant some psychedelic music as mind-expanding, but it must also rock to win his approval. Whether something rocks is an eye-of-the-beholder thing if anything is (or ear-), but again I take his point. I like my psychedelics to rock too. Turn On Your Mind is also one of those sweeping views of rock and rock ‘n’ roll history that spurs a lot of list-making. I came away with something close to 200 albums I wanted to hear immediately, or hear again—in the latter case, sometimes for pleasure and sometimes for reassessment. So far I’m having a blast and I’m barely out of the classic period. Read the book, turn on your mind, and have a fun time.

In case the library is closed due to pandemic, which is over.