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Rating: 
Summary: great book
Review: "Belmo" has assembled a book flawed by many wildly inaccurate statements and elsewhere marred by bland and meaningless exaggeration. For example, Timothy Leary was NOT a Berkeley professor; his heyday of psychedelic experimentation was during his career at Harvard. Also, Janis Joplin hated psychedelics and remarked something to the effect that seeing all those squiggly lines was not for her. She was a boozer through and through.Belmo places himself at the cutting edge of psychedelic fandom, but, when push comes to shove, his categories and his lists are banal and predictable. Why would some of the albums he rates highly in the "Top 100 Psychedelic Albums" appendix list have no discussion in his book? Does anyone really think that the Strawberry Alarm Clock was a serious psychedelic group? Frank Zappa loathed drugs, especially LSD, but Belmo includes him, pretty much without real qualifications, in the list of psychedelic artists. Isn't this an insult to Zappa as a creative genius and cultural spokesperson? Belmo gives no indication that he can distinguish between the genuine article and some record mogul's fraudulent marketing scheme to put some mop-topped guys in wild bell bottoms and call them psychedelic. While Belmo does make some interesting observations, they are few and far between, and he's more likely to say over and over again that Song X or Album X or Group X embodies the greatest achievement of the psychedelic era. Perhaps Belmo was there (somewhere in South Dakota), but this book, its standards, and its lists could have been written by anyone who spent an hour or two on the internet or listening to Rhino Records' great "Nuggets" collection. If you want a more reliable (and much better written) perspective on the era and its music, go to old issues of Crawdaddy or Rolling Stone, when both of those rags were genuinely counter-cultural touchstones for whatever was cutting edge psychedelia.
Rating: 
Summary: Introduction to Psychedelic Music for 10 year olds!!
Review: As an introductory book to psychedelic music this is a less than satisfactory book and it is definitely not the tome it pretends to be. The book focuses on fifty of the most important psychedelic groups, has some colour reprints of some classic albums and includes a list of the best psychedelic albums and singles. However, it is written in a very poor way, its overall presentation is shoddy and, very often, merely states the obvious without adding anything new. The writer's tendency to refer to his own record collection is, to say the least, annoying. For a really in depth analysis of psychedelia, I would recommend THE ACID TRIP (V.Joynson), FUZZ ACID & FLOWERS (V.Joynson) or even UNKNOWN LEGENDS OF ROCK AND ROLL (R.Unterberger).
Rating:
Summary: Introduction to Psychedelic Music for 10 year olds!!
Review: As an introductory book to psychedelic music this is a less than satisfactory book and it is definitely not the tome it pretends to be. The book focuses on fifty of the most important psychedelic groups, has some colour reprints of some classic albums and includes a list of the best psychedelic albums and singles. However, it is written in a very poor way, its overall presentation is shoddy and, very often, merely states the obvious without adding anything new. The writer's tendency to refer to his own record collection is, to say the least, annoying. For a really in depth analysis of psychedelia, I would recommend THE ACID TRIP (V.Joynson), FUZZ ACID & FLOWERS (V.Joynson) or even UNKNOWN LEGENDS OF ROCK AND ROLL (R.Unterberger).
Rating: 
Summary: Belmo's Books
Review: I already have all of Bemo's other books and I think they're all great. My fave is THE BEATLES-NOT FOR SALE. Very detailed. PSYCHEDELIA is a great look at an era/genre of music created when the world was changing and one of the main reasons for this change was the music.
Rating:
Summary: Belmo's Books
Review: I already have all of Bemo's other books and I think they're all great. My fave is THE BEATLES-NOT FOR SALE. Very detailed. PSYCHEDELIA is a great look at an era/genre of music created when the world was changing and one of the main reasons for this change was the music.
Rating:
Summary: 20th Century Rock and Roll: Psychedelia
Review: I enjoyed this overview of great Psychedelic artists and recordings of the 20th Century. It is clear from Belmo's introduction, that this is a survey meant to introduce these great tunes to the neXt generation. For me, the book brought back many wonderful musical memories, pulled together in one handy paperback volume. After reading this fun survey of psychedelic tunes (including even the one-hit wonders, which play an important role) the reader's challenge will be to go out and locate all of these treasures on CD. Recommended for those who want to play catch-up on this great era and for those who can't remember it very well :)
Rating:
Summary: A terrific book
Review: I really enjoyed this book. It brought back a lot of memories about songs I had forgotten about and some I never even knew about. It makes me want to go out and find as much of this music as I can. I recommend this book to anyone interested in Psychedelic music of the 60's. If you were back then you may have forgotten about a lot of this stuff. I know I did.
Rating:
Summary: This one goes in my reference library
Review: This book has set a new standard for those who lived in the age of psychedelia. It is well written and full of facts which few people are aware. It's obvious that Belmo has spent a great deal of time researching the subject and talking to those who actually made that era what it has become - an original American cultural experience which continues to have a global impact. Without a doubt, this one goes in the reference library.
Rating:
Summary: Very Informative
Review: This is an informative and fun read for any fan of the music from the Psychedelic Sixties. The book opens with a history of psychedelics and the roots of the music and what it was like to be alive in the late Sixties. Belmo then gives a history of the top 50 groups of the era and includes lots of little known facts and a helpful discography for each group. Very cool. There are 12 pages of color photos of the psychedelic album art work. At the end of the book are lists for the top 100 albums, top 200 songs and the most collectable psychedelic albums. Thanks to this book I have now begun my search in earnest for some of the far out albums Belmo writes about. A must have book!
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