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Originally Posted by Unknown Soldier
I think on deciding which was superior in the 1960s British or American psychedelia its really case of apples or oranges, or tea or coffee. Personally I feel the American bands that did psychedelia Jefferson Airplane, Country Joe and the Fish and Moby Grape etc really embraced that 1960s west coast hippy culture that went hand in hand with psychedelia and the Byrds Fifth Dimension probably kicked off the whole psychedelic genre anyway. I think Byrd's David Crosby summed it up nicely and said it was music for "cool cats"
Now whilst the British bands matched the American ones in terms of quality, they really jumped onto a music fad in psychedelia and I think they saw it as an exciting genre to explore.
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Personally, I think the British bands, in general, did more with the genre. They made music that actually sounds psychedelic to me, unlike so many American bands which just sound like they're playing long, meandering folk music. The funny thing is that there
was great trippy American music coming out at the time, it's just that it was jazz and as such wasn't really part of the psychedelic scene.