Acid Punk

Over centuries, different genres of music have marked humanity&;s history: from pop and jazz in the 1940s to the hip hop and alternative rock in the 2000s. Music has always had the ability to tell other generations of how things were in the past, how was a period of time&;s culture and society, and how it slowly help form what is common nowadays. Acid punk is not an exception, and it played an important part during the end of the 1960s and the start of the 1970s.

As with many genres, acid punk came to be as a combination of other genres, specifically psychedelic rock and punk rock. A parallel sound to psychedelic rock, this genre is described as “background music” for LSD (acid) users back in the 70s, a popular practice during this decade. LSD is considered to be one of strongest mood-affecting drugs of all times. This drug gave its used a feeling of well-being, harmony and love. Users considered that using acid while listening to the right music could significantly enhance this drug&;s trip. Inspired on LSD effects, psychedelic rock bands started to appear, such as Pink Floyd, The Jimi Hendrix Experience, The Doors, the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane. This type of bands started to appear inspired by psychedelic drugs, like acid, while at the same time they served as background music for those acid trips.

Acid punk bands were not known as such, rather they were simply known as punk bands, and as part of the punk movement, that started to take place since 1974. Some well-known bands in punk music history are The Clash, Sex Pistols, Ramones, The Who and The Stooges, to name a few. Acid rock itself started to lose momentum at the end of the 1970s, when LSD was finally make illegal and the entire acid rock music scene was surrounded by “acid fatalities”, such as the death of Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys, Syd Barrett of Pink Floyd and Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones. This brought negative attention to acid punk and psychedelic, to the point that different bands started to slowly shift their sound from the once popular psychedelic rock to roots rock, country rock and folk rock.

It can&;t be denied that sounds from the acid punk and rock eras were quite influential to other genres common nowadays, like progressive rock, especially with bands like Pink Floyd, Soft Machine, and King Crimson. Likewise, acid punk and rock&;s guitar sounds helped make way to heavy metal and famous bands likes Led Zeppeling, Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, Judas Priest and UFO. Without doubt, acid punk and psychedelic rock played and important and influential role in history at their time, forming the following decade&;s sounds.