Background
Just one year after +100 000 hippies gathered in San Fransisco to introduce new ideological ideas, society began to push back. The confrontational reality of working for political change struck down hard on the hippies escapism, and the drugs began to reep their victims. The bloodline of the hippies ''something more.''-ideals got drained, and though 1968 was the year with most psychedelic rock released (which I'm assuming is a sign of LSD popularity), the growth had already stagnated by 1969 and quickly dropped off the radar after that. The hippies had to look for ''something more'' in other ways. One such way was to replace druggy hallucinations with hallucinations about being ''level-headed earthy simple country folks'' (see the Grateful Dead, The Yardbirds, The Band, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, Creedence Clearwater, Joni Mitchell..), a tendency that none other than the The Byrds spearheaded, i.e those who more or less created psychedelic rock in the first place.
The Byrds - Sweet Heart Of The Rodeo - The Christian Life
Though it might sound like a flat-out country album now when rock-instrumentation is common in the genre, it was pretty much a new concept during it's time. And likewise with the entire post-hippie movement, bands hardly ever made exact copies of other music genres as much as combined them with an own sound. If you pay attention to the loose playing and unpredictable background texture, you'll see the bands trippy roots shine through. Lyrically, the eastern-influenced spirituality and drug hallucinations are replaced by country-life and christianity, though I honestly don't know if lines such as ''Others find pleasure in what I despise, I like the christian life'' are entirely serious or not. Their attraction to something polar to hippiedom is nonetheless apparent throughout the album.
Despite the police-clashes and drug-casualties, it's a common notion the final nail in the coffin for the hippie appeal was the Manson family.
The ''weary yet still searching'' post-hippie-depression began to get treated more seriously.
James Taylor - Sweet Baby James - Country Road
James Taylors ''Country Road'' from 1970 reeks of a zeitgeist in which hundreds of thousands of hippies accepted both an ideological and sonic turn from 60s counter culture culture.
''Sail on home to Jesus, won't you good girls and boys?
I'm all in pieces, you can have your own choice.
But I can hear a heavenly band full of angels
and they're coming to set me free.
I don't know nothing 'bout the why or when
but I can tell you that it's bound to be,
because I could feel it, child, yeah, on a country road.''
Though trippiness would linger around for a few more years, it's noticeably absent here compared to most folk-inspired bands at the time. Instead it's an early example of a type of smooth, straight-forward 70s radio pop/rock that would dominate the charts for a few years to come, and pretty much the entirety of the early christian (Jesus Music) scene. Though country road is a perfect lyrics-music match in its simple comfort for worn-out hippies, it's still undeniably plain sounding, so you can imagine why the second-rate versions and the Jesus Movement in general are largely forgotten today.
A lot of direction-seeking hippies settled with a relatively harmless faith, but some took it to the next level and became followers of people claiming to be reincarnations of Jesus. Let's look at some of the traits associated with joining cults to see where the shoe fits.
V A desire to belong (The hippie movement was always collectivist in nature)
V Gullibility
V Low tolerance for ambiguity
V Cultural disillusionment
V Idealism
V Susceptibility to trance-like states
V A desire for spiritual meaning
V Ignorance of how groups can manipulate individuals (they didn't seem to notice the spread of their culture was a product of the pro-consumption forces they were against)
If the above applies to you then look deeply into my eyes...
Children of God - Special Love - Special Love (Late 70s?)
There is a special love in a pedo-sex cult led by a raped-as-a-child-and-liked-it guy who thought he was a cosmic lion who said ''BE FRUITFUL, MULTIPLY'' over and over while attracting new members with the help of prostitutes (long story), but it makes the music all the more disappointing. While none of it is bad, it's just basic, mostly acoustic smooth-guitar ballads with pretty predictable melodies and meek, hippie-autopilot vocals. There's not much about the ''standout'' track except that it fits squarely into this formula. I did notice it starts on a more musically positive note but gets more urgent-sounding at the end, maybe to give the impression of ''don't miss this opportunity''. It didn't seem to work, since the membership rate began to drop once they started to promote themselves through music rather than prostitution.
Ya Ho Wa 13 - Savage Songs Of Ya Ho Wa - Fire In The Sky (1974)
Father Yod formed The Source Family on the principle of one-man one-woman. He had sex with every woman in the cult a few years on. What separates this from every other cult is that they produced at least slightly weird music. All the albums of Yahowa 13 (all 65 of them) are a band of hobby musicians having a sloppy repetitive jam with Father Yod grunting out Captain Beefheart-like vocals. The effect they're going for seems to be more concerned about creating a trance-like experience for themselves than to produce easily accessible self-promotion. Their lack of creativity and technical skill makes sure whatever ambitions they have falls flat, but if you just want some jam-noise in the background it will do.
