Drugs are bad, or so South Park’s Mr Mackey says. But as anyone who really remembers the sixties will tell you, drugs make the music go weirder and In Search of the Lost Chord pretty much demonstrates this.
The third Moody Blues album. A mix of proto-prog and fully-fledged prog laced generously with that British pop sound synonymous with the late 1960s as heard on contemporaneous bands like the Kinks and The Lemon Tree. Though many will deny they did, young, up and coming youth influencing popsters at this time were experimenting with LSD and other psychedelics, indeed, the music these artists produced was much more multidimensional than the offerings we receive from present-day artists. Moreover, music from the time often made reference to historical and literary characters, furthermore, contemporary popular ideologists and figureheads like Timothy Leary featured prominently and, indeed, hidden, within the lyrics and art produced at the time.
These days the most we can expect from popular music artists is a reference to whichever corporation they’re sponsored by and the mere mention of anything semi-political will just kill your career. Indeed, expecting a teenager these days to have a teaspoon of cultural knowledge is often as ridiculous as expecting a bus full of clowns to pull up outside your house on a rainy day in July.
Despite dying in 1970, Hendrix has this reputation for being an innovation if not the best guitarist in history. I’ve asked several respected musicians the “Who would you invite for dinner?” question and most of them say Jimi Hendrix.
Stegzy's Music Project 