Welcome to our “Psychedelic Lunch” series, “Spooktober Edition” where we find out how deep the rabbit hole really goes and explore music from the 60’s to today. Weekdays At Noon EST. Enjoy the trip!
THE SONICS: The Witch 1965
“The Witch” is a song by the American garage rock band The Sonics, written by vocalist Gerry Roslie, and first released as the group’s debut single in November 1964 (see 1964 in music). It also appears on the Sonics’ debut album Here Are the Sonics!!!. Arguably among the most frantic and heaviest recordings of the era, “The Witch” is regarded as being a quintessential stepping stone in the development of punk rock.
This may be blasphemy, but if not for this one song, The Sonics would probably be considered a fairly tame, forgettable early-’60s garage band. So thank god for this primitive, staccato wonderment which predated all those witch songs that would come along a decade later with it’s cautionary tale of the new girl in town, the one with the long black hair and long black car who may or may not be a witch or.
Welcome to our “Psychedelic Lunch” series, “Spooktober Edition” where we find out how deep the rabbit hole really goes and explore music from the 60’s to today. Weekdays At Noon EST. Enjoy the trip!
Jizzlobber” is the 12th track on Faith No More’s fourth studio album Angel Dust. Its one of the bands most frightening and disturbing pieces.
From a literary perspective, the song is ambiguous. Beneath the cultural allusions and apparent themes within the song (shame, anger, violence, sexual compulsion) there is some faint story about someone with an aggressive and unhealthy sexual nature who is supremely disgusted with himself but remains incontinent and powerless against his ravaging addiction (“I am what I’ve done, I’m sorry, I’m sorry”). A sexual deviant or rapist perhaps would be apt roles for this character. The song’s title combines the word “jizz” (a crude word for semen), and the verb “lob” (to propel in a high arc). “Jizzlobber”, therefore, can be understood as “Ejaculator”.
The track begins with the sounds of a swamp, and segues into a metered minor chord played on keyboards in an extremely discordant and creepy fashion. This is coupled with a complex drum part, arranged in a form that’s quite conducive to syncopation. Heavily distorted guitars and vocals kick in and at once the song acquires traction. The main body of “Jizzlobber” is raucous and boiling with rage, bloated and over the top. It eventually reaches an unlikely climax with an epic organ and choir ensemble.
According to vocalist Mike Patton, the song is about his fear of going to jail. “I know it’s gonna happen someday,” he told Hot Metal. “I’ve been there once, but I have a feeling I’m gonna go some day for a very long time.”
Welcome to our “Psychedelic Lunch” series, “Spooktober Edition” where we find out how deep the rabbit hole really goes and explore music from the 60’s to today. Weekdays At Noon EST. Enjoy the trip!
The Doors – “Not to Touch the Earth”
“We should see the gates by mornin’/ We should be inside the evenin’,” Jim Morrison croons, dizzying any listener into his spell. It doesn’t take much with this one. Off The Doors’ underrated third studio album, 1968’s Waiting for the Sun, “Not to Touch the Earth” is a technicolor hell in audio and a supernatural catastrophe that captures Morrison at his strongest and most deranged lyrically. Inspired by the writings of Scottish social anthropologist James Frazer, the song shifts in a multitude of directions, lamenting the dichotomy between heaven and hell with allusions to the occult and even ’60s politics. Terror aside, “Not to Touch the Earth” glues each member together in an assembly of strengths that really exude the warped psychedelic jazz rock The Doors would keep as their own forever. Love ’em, hate ’em, they were on another plane of existence.
Moment the Spine Tingles: Right out the gates, thanks to Krieger’s damning repetition, but here’s when the spine shatters: At 1:35, when Morrison warns: “Dead president’s corpse in the driver’s car/ The engine runs on glue and tar.” How angry, violent, and damning he sounds. I’ve always imagined Hell’s finest shuffling between this and “Sympathy for the Devil”.
Welcome to our “Psychedelic Lunch” series, “Spooktober Edition” where we find out how deep the rabbit hole really goes and explore music from the 60’s to today. Weekdays At Noon EST. Enjoy the trip!
Sonic Youth – “Death Valley ’69”
The strangely tuned clanging of Lee Ranaldo and Thurston Moore’s guitars sometimes qualified as eerie, but this Bad Moon Rising single is downright scary. Seemingly drawing inspiration from the Manson murders (he and his family lived out in California’s Death Valley, and their murder spree occurred in ’69), Moore moans out lines from the perspective of a man out in the desert, angrily compelled to “hit it” when a girl screams, blurring the lines of violence and sex. Add in some pained backing howls from guest vocalist Lydia Lunch and Kim Gordon’s propulsive bass, and you’ve got a dark ride through an isolated gulch under a burning sky.
Moment the Spine Tingles: When Lunch and Moore flat line the words “Deep in the valley/ In the trunk of an old car.”
Welcome to our “Psychedelic Lunch” series, “Spooktober Edition” where we find out how deep the rabbit hole really goes and explore music from the 60’s to today. Weekdays At Noon EST. Enjoy the trip!
The Beatles, “Run for Your Life”
Early Beatles set the standard for guitar-based pop rock for the following 50 years. But not everything was bubblegum like “I Want to Hold Your Hand” or “Love Me Do.” By 1965’s Rubber Soul, the Fab Four were incorporating different styles of voice in their songwriting. And the voice in “Run for Your Life” is that of a man who’ll kill his significant other if he finds she’s been with someone else. That unforgettable line — “I’d rather see you dead, little girl / Than to be with another man” — was lifted from Elvis Presley’s “Baby Let’s Play House.” But John Lennon took it and ran with it, adding atop The Beatles’ gleaming guitar jangle that he meant everything he said. “Baby, I’m determined / And I’d rather see you dead.” Now that’s creepy. For all the peace and love Lennon was about, maybe he wouldn’t have been so down with smashing the patriarchy.
Welcome to our “Psychedelic Lunch” series, “Spooktober Edition” where we find out how deep the rabbit hole really goes and explore music from the 60’s to today. Weekdays At Noon EST. Enjoy the trip!
The Cramps, ‘Goo Goo Muck’
Lux Interior sets the scene on this swaggering cover of a Ronnie Cook song with “Oh when the sun goes down and the moon comes up / I turn into a teenage goo-goo muck / Yeah I cruise through the city and I roam the streets / Lookin for something that is nice to eat / You better duck, when I show up / The Goo Goo Muck.” This track is on the album Psychedelic Jungle 1981. What is a Goo Goo Muck? A double entendre meaning a vampire or a muff diver according to the urban dictionary. The only thing we know for sure is it will eat your head.
Welcome to our “Psychedelic Lunch” series, “Spooktober Edition” where we find out how deep the rabbit hole really goes and explore music from the 60’s to today. Weekdays At Noon EST. Enjoy the trip!
David Bowie, ‘Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps)’
The title track to David Bowie’s 1980 classic “Scary Monsters” finds the former Ziggy Stardust observing a woman’s descent into madness (“When I looked in her eyes they were blue but nobody home … Now she’s stupid in the street and she can’t socialise”). and, as such, those super creeps and scary monsters may be nothing more than figments of a mind gone mad. Or are they?
Welcome to our “Psychedelic Lunch” series, “Spooktober Edition” where we find out how deep the rabbit hole really goes and explore music from the 60’s to today. Weekdays At Noon EST. Enjoy the trip!
The Who, ‘Boris the Spider’
John Entwistle’s demented genius fueled a number of the Who’s most offbeat early tracks, including this — a creepy, creepy, crawly, crawly ode to a spider named Boris ofc the album A Quick One 1966. The dark, descending bass line makes it sound like horror-movie soundtrack fare, and Entwistle’s voice on the chorus is particularly creepy. By the final verse, he’s gone from merely observing the spider to fearing the spider to beating the spider to death with a book. As the late, great bassist puts it, “He’s come to a sticky end.”
Entwistle was afraid of spiders as a kid. He wrote this about seeing a spider crawling from the ceiling and squishing it. Entwistle wrote this as a joke, but it became a concert favorite. After he wrote this, Entwistle started wearing a spider medallion at concerts. It is a fun song that offset many of the more serious Who songs.
This was the only song from the album that they continued to play live.
Welcome to our “Psychedelic Lunch” series, “Spooktober Edition” where we find out how deep the rabbit hole really goes and explore music from the 60’s to today. Weekdays At Noon EST. Enjoy the trip!
Alice Cooper, ‘I Love the Dead’
I could have filled the spooktober list with Alice Cooper songs. It seemed more fair for the sake of this list to limit each artist to a single track. And this one is a ghoul-tide gem, from the opening verse, “I love the dead before they’re cold from the album Billion Dollar Babies 1971. Their bluing flesh for me to hold. Cadaver eyes upon me see … ” Pause. “Nothing.” Other lines that make this song the greatest Halloween track ever? “I never even knew your now-rotting face.” “While friends and lovers mourn your silly grave, I have other uses for you, darling.” And the sing-along chorus is genius.
Alice Cooper lived up to his shock-rocker rep with this a darkly humorous track about necrophilia. With tongue planted firmly in cheek, Cooper expresses his fascination and sexual attraction for fresh corpses – a pretty risky and taboo subject to take on in song, even by today’s standards. And as disturbing as the subject matter is, the track boasts some great playing by the Alice Cooper band. All of the members acquit themselves here, displaying their considerable chops as musicians.
During his Billion Dollar Babies tour, Cooper would simulate sex with a mannequin while performing this song. He would also stage a mock beheading of himself during the song.
Welcome to our “Psychedelic Lunch” series, “Spooktober Edition” where we find out how deep the rabbit hole really goes and explore music from the 60’s to today. Weekdays At Noon EST. Enjoy the trip!
EAGLES, Witchy Woman, Album: Eagles (1972)
Eagles guitarist Bernie Leadon started writing this song when he was a member of The Flying Burrito Brothers. Once he joined the Eagles, he and Don Henley finished the song in Eagles fashion. It was one of the first songs Henley wrote.
Leadon and Henley wrote this about a number of women they had met. It is not meant to portray the woman as devilish, but as more of a seductress.
“Witchy Woman” was the group’s second single, following “Take It Easy.” It was part of their first album, which was produced by Glyn Johns, an Englishman who had previously worked with The Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin. They recorded it at Olympic Studios in London in just three weeks; the group became far less efficient over time – their 1979 album The Long Run took more than two years to make.
According to the liner notes for The Very Best of the Eagles, the song originated with guitarist Bernie Leadon playing a “strange, minor-key riff that sounded sort of like a Hollywood movie version of Indian music.” The song’s lyrics didn’t develop until Henley went down with a flu and high fever while he was reading a book about Zelda Fitzgerald, wife of the author F. Scott Fitzgerald. Zelda had to deal with her husband’s alcoholism and her own mental health issues; she ended up spending a lot of time in psychiatric hospitals. “I think that figured into the mix somehow – along with amorphous images of girls I had met at the Whisky [a Go Go] and the Troubadour,” he recalled.
One of the girls who formed the “Witchy Woman” composite was the roommate of a girl Don Henley was dating in the early ’70s. She practiced “white witchcraft,” dabbling in the paranormal with good intentions. “I thought it was charming and seductive,” Henley told Rolling Stone, “but I never took any of it seriously.”A few years later, Henley dated perhaps the most famous white witch of the era: Stevie Nicks.
Yet another influence Don Henley cites for the lyric is the author Carlos Castaneda, who at the time was studying at UCLA. Castaneda often wrote about enchantment and altered states of consciousness.
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