“They Say That I Am Mad, But I Am Not Mad…”

     I have a mountain of chores and obligations before me today, so this will be brief. I was thinking about bygone fads and trends: the sort of thing Charles Mackay wrote about in Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. In our time, characterized by mass communication technologies that didn’t exist when Mackay wrote, one of the more charming fads was the hallucinatory-nonsense lyric.

     The music of the Sixties occasionally brought us “novelty songs” that were intended – I hope — to be funny. Some of them were memorable, such as “Love Potion #9,” “The Witch Doctor,” and “They’re Coming To Take Me Away, Haha!” But they’re largely gone now, except for fleeting manifestations such as the Dixie Chicks’ “White Trash Wedding.”

     But the novelty songs had companions that lurked behind the drapes: the hallucination songs. Some lyric writers specialized in them: Pete Brown, who wrote for Cream; Robert Hunter, who wrote for the Grateful Dead; and the incredible Keith Reid, the lyricist for Procol Harum.

     Where are their inheritors? Who writes such stuff today? My acquaintance with 21st Century pop music is slight, so I can’t say. But surely someone is still pursuing that art form! Or has the national supply of LSD dwindled too far to support such endeavors?

     Well, anyway. If you want a taste of the very best Sixties music has to offer, you can’t go wrong with Procol Harum’s first, eponymous album. It’s both lyrically and musically brilliant, one mesmerizing hallucination after another from beginning to end. Below is my favorite track from that album, with Keith Reid’s lyrics.

Outside the gates of Cerdes sits the two-pronged unicorn
Who plays at relaxation time a rhinestone flugelhorn
Whilst mermaids lace carnations into wreaths for ailing whales
And Neptune dances hornpipes while Salome sheds her veils

Phallus Phil tries peddling his pewter painted pot
But Sousa Sam can only hear the screams of Peep the sot
Who only sips his creme de menthe from terra cotta cups
And exhales menthol scented breath whilst spewing verbiage up

Down technical blind alleys live the wraiths of former dreams
And Greeps who often crossed them are no longer what they seem
And even Christian Scientists can but display marble plaques
Which only retell legends whilst my eyes reach out for facts
Yeah, my eyes reach out for facts