List of Possible Resources

So... I've been browsing Amazon.com for a few print books that I could use for my research on psychedelic rock, and I think these might prove to be helpful to me:

• Tomorrow Never Knows: Rock and Psychedelics in the 1960s by Nicholas Knowles Bromell (How psychedelic rock affected the 1960s period)
• Turn On Your Mind: Four Decades of Great Psychedelic Rock by Jim DeRogatis (How psychedelic rock progressed and evolved. Has it ended?)
• Comfortably Numb by Mark Blake (Follows the journey of Pink Floyd from the "psychedelic nights" of the 1960s to the '80s and '90s)
• Pink Floyd and Philosophy by George A. Reisch (Discusses specific themes and issues the group explored through music, and shows how the group's history affects our culture today)

Although I'm still in the process of finding academic articles, I think these books are a great start. I'll definitely be listening to some Pink Floyd albums to see if there are any common threads that are worth exploring. In addition, I will be making use of the group's official website: http://www.pinkfloyd.co.uk/. I'll also use MySpace to listen to Pink Floyd songs from different albums in order to get an idea about how the group evolved musically. Hopefully my research will shed some new light on both Pink Floyd and the genre of psychedelic rock in general.

Progressive/Psychedelic Rock

Over the fall semester, I plan to study progressive rock, also known as prog rock. The genre of progressive rock is also commonly linked to the term “psychedelic,” which can be applied to a wide variety of musical genres. Yes -- There is such a thing as psychedelic folk, psychedelic pop and even psychedelic trance. I think the genre of psychedelic rock would be a particularly rich topic to study, because the concept of psychedelic music can carry several different meanings and shed light on many different cultural issues. For instance, psychedelic rock is often associated with psychedelic, mind-altering drugs such as acid or LSD. There's no surprise that the rise of psychedelic rock had a lot to do with the developing drug scene and the new wave of consciousness that swept over the nation during the 1960s. In addition, psychedelic rock is characterized by strong, loaded lyrical content that is often philosophical. Personally speaking, the light, dreamlike sound is what really drew me to psychedelic music. An example of this dreamlike sound can be heard on Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon. (Great album, btw.) In short, I would really like to follow the progression of psychedelic rock and discuss the numerous ways in which it affected the period of the mid ‘60s. I'll probably be focusing my research on Pink Floyd.