MOG

Pink Floyd needs no introduction. This, however, is something you may not have heard: a pre-Piper recording (when they were still known as The Pink Floyd Sound) of "Interstellar Overdrive" that appeared on the soundtrack for the 1967 film Tonite Let's All Make Love in London. This is a longer and rawer version than what appeared on the album later that year. I had to cut off the end of it due to size restrictions, which kind of sucks.

Ozric Tentacles is one of the more "modern" bands on the space rock scene, although they've been around for a while now. They've released countless albums, all with interesting names and a relatively similar sound. I have a few, which are pretty good. They have some tracks like this, "Eternal Wheel" off of Erpland, but they also do some middle-eastern tinged and reggae tinged songs as well, as well as more ambient styles fair. All instrumental, and a good bit of it is pretty good listening. The rumor is that these guys all hang out in a castle in England and use untold amounts of psychadelic drugs, but they may just be a rumor.

Unfortunately, I don't have much else in the way of Space Rock, yet, but I'm working on it! Anyone out there have more to add?

nice post.

Thanks! Are you much into the "prog" side of music?

i used to be. not an ozrik tentacles fan but was much into YES, ELP and others. liking MARS VOLTA and TOOL these days, both of which i'd put into the prog rock camp.

I'd agree with you on that. I like both of them a lot as well, and it's nice to see bands that would basically be considered prog have such a huge following, because what they are doing is GREAT music that just happens to be, you know, a little on the progressive side.

good stuff. pink floyd became just a little bit popular

Yeah, just a little bit!

Hawkwind is still around and play a rather well known Space rock festival (I think in upstate New York). They are usually best known for being Lemmy Killmeister's ( Motorhead) first band - in which he was a speed freak and got the nick name "Motorhead".

Don't forget more current progressive bands such as The Bevis Frond (prob. not Space rock, but definitely progressive), Spaceman 3, Monster Magnet, and Mercury Rev too! And then you have a lot of the California Stoner Metal like Fu Manchu, Kyuss, Sleep, Nebula, (and possibly, since they came out of that scene) Queens of the Stone Age, which take a lot of cues from that genre.

Another aside - wouldn't The Pink Fairies fit somewhere in here? Listen to "Uncle Harry's Last Freakout" and you be the judge.

Here's a great video of Hawkwind from YouTube: And Lemmy talking about "leaving" Hawkwind:

I would recommend albums like "Doremi Fasol Latido" and "In Search of Space"

Love these posts by the way, keep them coming!

"Silver Machine" is definitely more interesting than the Hawkwind song I posted, and the Lemmy story was pretty interesting, too. As I said, that's a band I know very little about, but I know they have some stuff that I need to get. A lot of the bands listed as space rock I know very little about. I saw Monster Magnet years ago, and at the time I didn't know much about prog at all, I was still a relative newbie. What I recall, though, sounded very little like the space rock I've come to know, so I'm always surprised when I hear them mentioned in the same breath as some of these other guys. I don't know the Pink Fairies. Can you post that song?

The California Stoner Metal scene, while I wouldn't characterize it as space rock, definitely tips its hat in that direction. You got the longer, more drawn out music inclined to just sit on a groove and slowly change, rather than focus on "sections", you have a drug element, at least implied in not actually realized, and you have noise, which seems to be a must for true space rock.

Thanks for the Hawkwind recommendations. I've been looking for a good place to start, but with a band with as huge a discography as they have, it makes it almost harder to pick the right ones! I've also heard "Hall of the Mountain Grill" is really good.

Thanks for the extra info and posts!

For Hawkwind,I have listened to much after Lemmy left. I believe Nick Turner has been the one consistent member to the best of my knowledge. But I really don't know anything about their recent releases.

Monster Magnet was pretty spacey/sleazy early on. When they got on MTV they were kind of pulling a Glam/Slade type of thing. but early albums like Super Judge are pretty rocking. Here's an extra track for good measure "Cyclops Revolution off of Superjudge

I think I may have posted on Pink Fairies before, but here's the track "Uncle Harry's Last Freakout" from the Never Never Land album. This band is sort of legendary in their obscurity. Supposedly they played outside of The Isle of Wight festival (they were anarchists and refused to play for money) and encouraged the gate crashing that ensued. Hendrix says something about a "silver guy" and dedicated a song to Twink the drummer of the Pink Fairies (former drummer of The Pretty Things).

The Police had some roots in the Gong thing as in one of the members had some sort of Gong reunion thing going and had started a band called Strontium 90. I can hear the influence on the Gong track to The Police sound, even more so on Stink... er, I mean Sting's earlier solo stuff.

Here is a track from The Police that you can hear the Gong influence on.

It's Demolition Man off of Ghost In The Machine.

I do like the Orzic Tentacles a lot! Very smooth track!

Speaking of Monster Magnet, not a huge fan, I have seen them a couple of times. Great shows both of them. Here is my favorite track by them.

It's called Longhair off a 3 songer called 25 Tab.

The first track is around 32 minutes long, this is the second track and the last one is about 4 minutes long.

Contra and Doom--thanks for the posts. I'm not able to listen to them right now, but at some point over the weekend I'm going to carve out some time to sit down and check 'em out, check back!

doom: I had heard of Strontium 90, but didn't know about the Gong connection. Checking out the wikipedia article, it seems that before Copeland joined the band, they almost had Chris Cutler on drums, the man who started the Rock in Opposition movement! Small world . . . I do know "demolition man" but had never thought of it ins space rock terms. When I sit down to listen to the new tracks, I will listen with a new ear.

Your wish is my command. These guys started life as a Pink Floyd cover band. You can hear the resemblance.

RPWL

It's interesting what bands have actually been classified in the prog genre. Jethro Tull will be found there. Ambrosia, from the 70's is there. Gentle Giant, a band I've never been able to appreciate, usually gets high marks. It's a genre that almost died on the vine when the glut of new wave punk and its compadres hit the scene.

But it lives. I think this band, Amplifier, fits as one of those moving Prog Rock forwadr. Different for sure.

That Amplifier track is pretty sweet. Had never heard of the, but this makes me definitely interested to hear more. The first track (RPWL) didn't quite grab me, but like you said I can definitely hear the Pink Floyd connection. It was kind of like PF meets one of the "neo" prog bands, in a way.

Okay, finally was able to spare some time and listen to those other tracks. Contra, that Pink Fairies is definitely Space Rock, and definitely Space Rockin'! They're a good example of the questin of when something ceases to be psychadilec based rock and becomes "space rock.". A lot of that stuff in the 60's was psychadelic, but not necessarily "space." So when does it happen? Take Jimi, for example. A lot of his stuff is on the psychadelic side, but wouldn't classify as space rock. But take the music a step or two further, add some more solos and a couple minutes of jamming, and you could start to make the argument. Some songs, like "1983 . . . A Merman I should Turn to Be" or whatever it's called, would I think fall more under the space side of things. The PinK Fairies seem to be a psychadelic outfit that jsut inject enough otherworldliness in their music to fit the bill quite nicely.

To both CBE and Doom, thanks for the Monster Magnet posts. Definitely not the band I remember, and I quite enjoyed both of them. I might have to go back and revisit their catalogue and pick up some discs.

Doom--the Police track takes on more meaning, I think, in light of the Gong connection. Thinking about it more, the whole Ghost in the Machine album, which is my favorite by them, has this sound to it. Most of the tracks are very repetitious and have that influence of just jamming, without worrying so much about structure. For me, I think, the best example might be "One World (Not Three)" which injects a good bit of a dub feel to it, and sounds the spaciest of the bunch.

Thanks, guys!

Wow a new little world for me to plug into. Hawkwind starting point, w/out question should be _In Search of Space_ I love this album...post Lemmy to be sure..but awesome. Have you heard much Budgie?

Not familiar with them . . . space rock?