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There is now a CONTENT FREEZE for Mercury while we switch to a new platform. It began on Friday, March 10 at 6pm and will end on Wednesday, March 15 at noon. No new content can be created during this time, but all material in the system as of the beginning of the freeze will be migrated to the new platform, including users and groups. Functionally the new site is identical to the old one. webteam@gatech.edu
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Phil AuslanderWhen we think of psychedelics and music, visions of the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane's tie-dyed "Volunteers" and the 13th Floor Elevators' mind-bending beats, dance in our heads. These bands lived and died by their trips, however, none of these bands truly consecrated the long and fruitful relationship between hallucinogens and music, which has utterly transformed the art form as we know it. Acid absolutely has, but it wouldn't have done so if it hadn't been for two bands few think of as explicitly psychedelic projects: The Beatles and the Beach Boys, whose inaugural psychedelic masterpiece Pet Sounds turned 50 on Monday.
The thing about psychedelic rock is you don't necessarily associate the Beach Boys with it," Philip Auslander, a professor in the school of literature, media and communication at the Georgia Institute of Technology, said in a phone conversation in early April. "A group like the Beach Boys — such a popular group, so successful — to start experimenting and moving in odd directions and doing things that sounded very different, I think those were what put it all on the map. I think basically that sort of opened the door — not for groups to be formed or to start to make music, but certainly to become as visible as say Jefferson Airplane or somebody like that.
Read more of what Auslander had to say in full article: https://mic.com/articles/143256/had-lsd-never-been-discovered-over-75-years-ago-music-history-would-be-entirely-different#.ucutGwDR9
