Psychedelia

Almost 50 years later, the seismic rumbles from America’s West Coast 60s renaissance have yet to subside. It was a revolution, a cultural tsunami that had a deep and profound effect upon the rock music of that period, and continues its presence, for better or worse, in music to this day. But for the astute listener, the real magic remains in that mythical five-year span between the arrival of the British on American shores, and the implosion of the counter-cultural dream at the dawn of the cynical 1970s. A considerable tranche of the Big Beat catalogue is devoted to late 1960s “left coast” rock, thanks to both its historical import, and the fact that the era remains an endlessly fascinating and entertaining subject. Oh, and the music is pretty spiffy too. We lean a little more towards the Haight-Ashbury than the Sunset Strip, but all the hues of California’s multi-coloured rock’n’roll rainbow are represented.

The majority of Big Beat releases devoted to chronicling vintage West Coast sunshine fall under a series we began nearly 20 years ago, Nuggets From The Golden State, and it is still going strong. Many are various artist volumes that celebrate different tributaries of the era, whether they be the grass roots rock scenes surveyed in discs such as “The Sound Of Young Sacramento” and “You Got Yours: East Bay Garage 1965-67”, or illuminating and instructive excavations of the alchemical transition from folk-rock to psychedelia heard on “A Pot Of Flowers” and “Someone To Love: Birth Of The San Francisco Sound”. The Nuggets mandate is to shine a light both upon the early movers, shakers and instigators, as much as the cult acts that continue to intrigue. We’ve prised open many a previously locked vault to gather together the historical and the entertaining, for a comprehensive and ongoing overview of this important chapter in popular music history. Whatever your psychedelic predilection, there is plenty to explore. Here are a few highlights.