PSYCHEDELICS
Todd Rundgren, A Wizard, A True Star
The upside of psychedelics for artists is the idea of exploring the inner workings of your mind and the universe and other impenetrable hippie nonsense; the downside, of course, is that psychedelics literally exist to render the people who take them utterly incoherent. As a result, even a lot of the best music made under the influence of psychedelics tends to be rather tiring as you struggle to keep up with these deranged lunatics; Sly & the Family Stone’s PCP-fueled There’s a Riot Goin’ On, for instance, is unquestionably one of the greatest records in the history of music, but it’s certainly not something you casually throw on every now and again. Then there’s all the psychedelic-derived stuff which is most emphatically not the best, a category which includes Dave Matthews Band and Phish and I’m just going to stop typing now.
A Wizard, A True Star, however, is the antithesis of tiring; it is 55:56 (a length which bumped up against the maximum amount of music a record could hold) of musical stream-of-consciousness, rocketing back and forth between genres ranging from heavy metal to doo-wop to children’s music. The entire first side of the record is one contiguous slab of psychedelic studio tricks and resolute genre nonconformity; it sounds like the same kind of sonic patchwork quilt as the Avalanches’ Since I Left You. As for whether Rundgren was on anything or not, well:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cEVsKvsMuko '70s video