Good Trip or Bummer? U.S. Psych Bands Doing "Old-Timey" Songs on Their Albums

it seems to me though that most SF bands were rocking the jumbled costume trunk look... strange amulets, long beads, dusty sports jackets over an electric pink shirt. wolfe does a good job of describing the development of this whole ethos in the electric kool-aid acid test.

my guess at the musical aspect? most psych heads came out of the folk scene. "take this hammer" became "take this pill and float down stream..." with the success of the beatles music hall style on songs like "when i'm sixty four", and every U.S. band trying to get hep to some british angle on the rock scene, a veritable eye for an eye was met - we can do Old Timey! and then you've got the trickle down effect to every joe and schmoe and his floating eyeball clobberers. it is often a wrench in the gears on otherwise great psych albums, but sometimes it lends a nice sunny day "butch cassidy and the sundance kid"=bicicyle riding vibe... IF they can pull it off... the american Kaleidoscope comes to mind, as does Chrysalis!!! who actually perfect some kind of amalgam in this haze...

try the worst/best: harper's bizarre - anything goes, which is ALL old-timey garbage, in the worst twee sense. yet i do like the follow-up album "4" a good bit which gets a lot better. their cover of "witchi-tai-to" is fuckin' great.

Worse: Peter Gabriel does it in nineteen seventy-seven on "Excuse Me."

lol at "Magnolia Simms" actually having the record muffle, scratch and "skip back" for a last repeat of the chorus. Mike Nesmith's yodel attempt is cute too.

dunno where else to put this
http://bittersoutherner.com/from-the-southern-perspective/southern-music/when-the-hippies-came-to-nashville

Awesome, thanks for posting. Bought it when it came out, still one of my alltime favorite records.

one of its major virtues (idk if this gets talked about at all) is the beautiful sound they got on this record. It's a happy coincidence that they were able to get so many old school country giants in the same room *and* take advantage of the peak of analog recording technology. Don't get me wrong I love the Carter Family and Flatt & Scruggs etc. but a lot of their classic recordings sound like what they were: rough, primitive, made with one microphone, that kind of thing. But here you get this fantastic, detailed, crystalline recording, you can really hear what everyone is doing.

Yeah, it's beautifully done. I love how they left the little bits of conversation in there too.

Never heard that record, must rectify that.

the chatting is great, doc watson b.s.ing about autoharps with maybelle carter, can't beat that

not US but UK psych. Bill Wyman-produced The End doing "She Said Yeah" with psych barbershop vocals and a nice New Orlean jazz style sax solo.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nt2Zm-I5Hss

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PwVu54JKgHY

Tommy James & The Shondells - Papa Rolled His Own

The Mamas and the Papas win this, too, with "Words of Love!"

some of the "old-timey" songs are fucking awful, some of them are quite good (just like the songs they're calling back to!). it depends on the song. "on with the show" by the stones is fucking great. "anything goes" by harper's bizarre is quite good. "granny takes a trip" is winking bullshit.

I wonder how much the Old-Timey vibe (which I think also partially stemmed from folknik interest in the same - hence your Jim Kweskin Jug Bands and so on) went on to inform hippie-derived beardy kids' performers in the 70s and beyond. Thinking of the vo-vodie-oh type quality to "Skinnamarinky Dinky Dink" or whatever, as performed to close out Sharon Lois & Bram's Elephant Show, or IIRC some Sesame Street/Schoolhouse Rock stuff. Did Raffi ever do this?

The Mothers, "Bow Tie Daddy" (all 36 seconds worth)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHWdlN9d35M

Romance Is on the Rise by Genevieve Waite sort of fits here. More of John Phillips (her husband and songwriter) channeling Tin Pan Alley than jug bands, but it sticks to gentle old melodies while maintaining a 1974 glam of satin hot pants and tinsel boas.