Gong

These are the guys your mom would have warned you about circa 1970. Hippy-dippy long-hairs with some weird ideas and lots of drugs. But they could really play. The only bigger circus was the Grateful Dead; but, I'm willing to bet that these guys still win any head-to-head silliness contest.

Canterbury

In the late sixties and the seventies - and, to some extent, even today - there was interconnected collection of musicians centered in Canterbury, England, who produced a unique body of work. These guys, Kevin Ayers in the foreground, and Daevid Allen (playing the "gliss" guitar") were founding members of The Soft Machine, the band at the center of this swirl. Kevin had an interesting solo career, and throughout the seventies was making great eclectic pop music. Daevid's band, Gong, was awesome spectacle, a psychedelic band with jazz level chops; wildly hallucinogenic, and deeply musical at once.