News & Updates — psych

Born today: July 15 mega-post

Born today: July 15 mega-post

There are so many interesting artists born on July 15 that it is impossible in my schedule to write pieces about them. So here are some shorties, along with a video or two for each. --Francis Bebey / July 15, 1929 - May 28, 2001 This unique Cameroonian composer and his interesting DIY synth-pop crossed with traditional music has been justly making new fans in recent years. --James Jacson / July 15, 1932 - Aug 10, 1997 Happy cosmic birthday to James Jacson, one of my favorite characters from Sun Ra's Arkestra. Jacson is the one who was instructed to...

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R.D. Burman / June 27, 1939 - Jan 4, 1994

R.D. Burman / June 27, 1939 - Jan 4, 1994

Shout-out to the Bollywood film composer extraordinaire Rahul Dev Burman, born today in 1939. As someone who didn't grow up with Bollywood movies, my big ears found some of the wacky, funky, psychedelic soundtracks that seemed to annoy my Hindi friends. Often times the craziest tunes to my ears would be from R.D. Burman. His wife was the great singer Asha Bhosle, who often worked with him. He has been a popular presence in Hindi film music since the mid-'60s and continues to be popular long after his passing. Often a trendsetter in the industry, his soundtracks included Indian folk...

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Jim Pepper / June 18, 1941 - Feb 10, 1992

Jim Pepper / June 18, 1941 - Feb 10, 1992

The great Kaw/Creek saxophonist Jim Pepper was born today in 1941. His career covered jazz, pop, R&B, psychedelic rock and indigenous music and he is best known to '60s pop music fans as the composer of "Witchi-Tai-To". He also played clarinet, flute, sang and tap-danced. Pepper grew up in Portland OR and his first band of note was the Free Spirits, a mid-'60s NYC-based group that was one of the very earliest to explicitly fuse rock and jazz. The group also had Larry Coryell, Bob Moses & Chris Hills as members. They made a killer album in 1967 for ABC...

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Ahmad Zahir / June 14, 1946 - June 14, 1979

Ahmad Zahir / June 14, 1946 - June 14, 1979

The west is just recently starting to hear the popular Afghan singer Ahmad Zahir, bringing rock influence to Afghanistan. Born in Kabul on Jauza 24, 1325 (according to Jalili calendar) to a Pashtun family, he came from an educated lot and was training to be a teacher before taking the road to music. He recorded Persian poems, set to folk-pop music with heavy reverb and wah-wah guitar (some of which current reviewers are calling "psychedelic"), as well as songs deeply critical of the Marxist government in the '70s. Despite his popularity, many of his recordings were censored or destroyed. His...

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Edgar Froese / June 6, 1944 - Jan 20, 2015

Edgar Froese / June 6, 1944 - Jan 20, 2015

The influential ambient/electronic/new age composer Edgar Froese, the figurehead for experimental krautrock band Tangerine Dream, was born on this day (D-Day in '44). He lost his father to the Nazis, but his mother and he ended up in West Berlin after the war. When Froese started Tangerine Dream in '67, he was interested in surrealism, dada, old poetry and free-form rock. Over the course of several decades (and line-up changes) the band would help to define krautrock, new age, ambient, electronica, going from Jimi Hendrix & Pink Floyd-inspired psychedelia to environmental music, classical passages to space rock, soundtracks for film...

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