Originally published at: Easy-Listening Acid Trip: An Elevator Ride through Sixties Psychedelic Pop | Boing Boing
…
5 Likes
Woah. Nitrous Oxide flashback to being in the dentist’s chair in the late 70s.
8 Likes
wow. that’s quite the write up for what basically amounts to “air pudding with cinnamon”.
pass.
2 Likes
I like it, though. This is going on my bucket list of things to do on LSD or shrooms.
4 Likes
6 Likes
Needs more Odyssey and Oracle.
In 2019 I saw The Zombies perform this album in its entirety - with no overdubs - and it was amazing. Lead singer Colin Blunstone has clearly taken very good care of his voice because he can still belt it out even in his 70s.
9 Likes
My dentist was playing this on repeat, I hate to say it, we played at my wedding, everybody danced.
6 Likes
4 Likes
Hey, it could have been A Fifth of Beethoven. 
3 Likes
I remember hearing a Muzak version of Light My Fire in an elevator once and thinking the Lizard King is rolling over at a very high RPM at Pere Lachaise right now.
5 Likes
As I recall this was the era when Big Business latched onto “youth culture” like it never had before. Something would catch on in the hip world and in the wink of an eye a sanitized version was hitting the middle of the road. To me the peak of this sort of thing was the “Dodge Rebellion” automobile advertising campaign during a period of considerable civil unrest. Nowadays the two worlds have more or less merged. i don’t see much of an elevator music contingent even among right-wingers.
Worth a look. And a listen.
2 Likes
I’d choose James Last for my easy-listening acid trip:
3 Likes
You beat me to it! The James Last Orchestra doing Hawkwind. Remember a rumour they also did a version of The Hawks’ “Psychedelic Warlords (Disappear In Smoke)”. Which is an idea.
2 Likes
4 Likes
Someone oughta sample that Andrew Oldham Orchestra version of “The Last Time”. Great stuff.
2 Likes
Which is fucking great, I might add
There are some things that I like, but which are a bit too heavy for some situations. Like, maybe I wouldn’t put on Pendulum to relax by a fire. So I sort of understand the motive for easy listening covers. I even quite like some of those lullaby covers, like the Basket Case one that was in Mr Robot that one time.
What I struggle with is the idea that someone heard San Francisco or Light My Fire and thought “I can’t cope with this harsh wall of noise, if only there were a heavily sedated version”.
The company began customizing the pace and style of the music provided throughout the workday in an effort to maintain productivity.[16] The music was programmed in 15-minute blocks, gradually getting faster in tempo and louder and brassier in instrumentation, to encourage workers to speed up their pace. Following the completion of a 15-minute segment, the music would fall silent for 15 minutes. This was partly done for technical reasons, but company-funded research also showed that alternating music with silence limited listener fatigue, and made the “stimulus” effect of Stimulus Progression more effective.
Not exactly full on easy listening, but have you heard Hawkwind’s fairly recent reinterpretation of their songs? Strings and mariachi songs galore. https://youtu.be/CCpHwB-xYaE
