Spiritualized

Quick 2-part opinion survey of boardies:

1. What is the BEST Spiritualized song about drug use?

2. Top 3 non-SPZ songs about drug use?

Don't like this topic....feels like glamorising....

Unless people want to wheel out all the ones about pain.

blipvurt wrote: 1. What is the BEST Spiritualized song about drug use?

There are absolutely no best songs about drug use.

Step 5: Get a life, etc.

LOCKED

If you would like to talk about drugs or past experiences of drugs while listing to music, please go to the OTHER section.


THE MODS...

Blipvurt will re-phrase his queries for his project.

Best,

Mark

see, no big deal, good work mark, it's nice that you care

good move..

not that I had anything to say..

..but if I must choose an antismack song then this one is the bestest!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XqyGoE2Q4Y

Gotta love 'The Pusher'...I have a very early recording from '67 when Steppenwolf had just changed their name from The Sparrows and became Steppenwolf. They whig-out for about 10 minutes before gliding effortlessly into a gloriously sweet early version of 'The Pusher'.

BUT...for me...the greatest and saddest anti-drug song of them all: 'Signed DC' by Love. It reads as a suicide note for all others to heed the warning and stay away from smack. Both versions (acoustic and electric) are tremendously powerful. It's hard not to be moved by this song.

And, it would be closely followed by Buffy St. Marie's version of 'Codine', which is equally full of sorrow and pain.

redcloud wrote:

BUT...for me...the greatest and saddest anti-drug song of them all: 'Signed DC' by Love. It reads as a suicide note for all others to heed the warning and stay away from smack. Both versions (acoustic and electric) are tremendously powerful. It's hard not to be moved by this song.

You beat me to it redcloud and you put it better than I would have. I only know the version from the 1st record though, great song but pretty harrowing.

Drugs.

That is all.

nickh wrote: I only know the version from the 1st record though, great song but pretty harrowing.

Here is the electric version (from their 5th LP, "Out Here" released late '69/early '70):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8H0LCsOrpRw

redcloud wrote:

nickh wrote: I only know the version from the 1st record though, great song but pretty harrowing.

Here is the electric version (from their 5th LP, "Out Here" released late '69/early '70):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8H0LCsOrpRw

Thanks! Incredibly can’t find the 1st album version on Youtube, I didn’t know the White Stripes had covered it. Or Spirea X!

Would also say that Call the Doctor and If I Should Die follow a similar thread too.

Curtis Mayfield - Stone Junkie

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJ2w-IFInmI

Nat Adderly - Quit It

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8oCMH7rRFY

The Dramatics - The Devil Is Dope

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jy2_zwvMFa4

The Mighty Hannibal - The Truth Shall Make You Free

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uTPz0NCsAQ4

Curtis Mayfield - Stone Junkie

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJ2w-IFInmI

here's a pretty good list

http://gloriousnoise.com/post/the_100_g ... g_songs_ev

nickh wrote:
Thanks! Incredibly can’t find the 1st album version on Youtube,.

I thought exactly the same thing last night when I was posting the electric version. It seems somebody has posted almost the entire 1st LP on youtube except 'Signed DC'!!

Oh well, we know how harrowing it is!

I'll throw in The Ruts for anti-smack songs which is ironic as singer Malcolm Owen died of a heroin overdose.
H Eyes (punk stylee):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGcRq2eLsqE
Love In Vain (reggae stylee - the Ruts are about the only white men I know who can actually play reggae):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGcRq2eLsqE

And as an all-out mega lysergic wild card what about a highly unexpected tripster by Talking Heads - 'Drugs':
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGpE2oXf0aE
Talking Heads have a major altered-states side. 'Drugs' might be obvious but 'Seen And Not Seen' is genuinely psychedelic. Get fucked up and listen to the lyrics here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACpJELkIbH0

Finally, returning to raw psych I've always thought Factory's 'Path Through The Forest' is one of the ultimate acid tracks, possibly the greatest of the legendary English underground psych songs:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xMGH1Ue8UA

marmalade wrote:here's a pretty good list

http://gloriousnoise.com/post/the_100_g ... g_songs_ev

Ummmm....is it just me or did they omit 'Slip Inside This House' by the 13th Floor Elevators?

That is totally inexcusable!

Following runcible's list...here are my choices for greatest LSD tracks by American bands (please not I am not glorifying nor promoting its use...I am merely pointing out some great songs written about it!):

1. 'Slip Inside This House'-13th Floor Elevators (Tommy Hall's spiritual guidance through chemistry).
2. 'Bass Strings'-Country Joe & The Fish (the ultimate hippie acid crash pad tune).
3. 'Section 43'-Country Joe & The Fish (an acid trip condensed into 7.5 minute instrumental).
4. 'RA-MA'-Cold Sun (probably more inspired by peyote than acid...but still the hallucinations ooze from this tune).
5. 'Mind Flowers'-Ultimate Spinach (quite possibly the scariest acid trip ever committed to music!).

Gee whiz, you guys, you got me there; I can't think of any good aspirin commercials; SPEEDY, the alka seltzer kid can sing; [Baeyer Pharmaceuticals now practically DENY Heroin even EXISTS. That was a stupid acetylation; the parent compound should have left alone]. I have Timmy singing on demo discs, but Dr, Leary sang worse than I do, so, no; Gosh, I guess I'll go to the Malt Shop, and ask old man Higgins, the Pharmacist about Drug Songs, be right back!



Gee, Mr. Higgins sure slurs his words about closing time, but I asked him, politely, and he was singing


Sammy Davis Jr. et al "The Candyman"

At least I THINK that's what he was saying!

Cab Calloway "Reefer Man" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D44pyeEvhcQ

Coincidentally with all this drug talk going on, tomorrow is the 73rd anniversary of Albert Hoffmann's discovery of acid.

Primal Scream: “Loaded”
The Fall: “Totally Wired”
Ella Fitzgerald w/Chick Webb & His Orchestra: “Wacky Dust”
Grandmaster Flash: “White Lines”
Rolling Stones: “Sister Morphine”
Sly & The Revolutionaries: "Marijuana"

could go on and on and on.... <------- DRUGS!

runcible wrote: And as an all-out mega lysergic wild card what about a highly unexpected tripster by Talking Heads - 'Drugs':
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bGpE2oXf0aE
Talking Heads have a major altered-states side.

Little creatures is not one of their best records and it´s probably because I was 12 when I bought it, but took me more than a quarter of a century to find out that "and she was" is about dropping acid..

as a kid I had these nice hallucinations of drifting around in space and heavens before falling asleep and used to think the song was about that..
so for me it´s pretty sad that it just is yet another song about an acid trip

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cZAyxUMfBvA&ob=av2e

Another brilliant, swirly, floating tune about LSD...these songs could only have been written in the 1960's. This tune is off their second record (H.P. Lovecraft-II). These guys were from Chicago but after their first record they relocated to California and picked up that chilled out, west coast vibe and made their second record, which I highly recommend.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-O15IfICAy8

The acid/tripping songs are endless and the good ones are pretty amazing. These are all blatantly about the subject:
Beatles - Tomorrow Never Knows, She Said She Said, Lucy In The Sky...
Kim Fowley - The Trip
Hendrix - Purple Haze, Are You Experienced?
The Open Mind - Magic Potion
Jefferson Airplane - White Rabbit

Another track by Factory, 'Try A Little Sunshine', is absolutely glorious.

redcloud wrote:'Mind Flowers'-Ultimate Spinach (quite possibly the scariest acid trip ever committed to music!).

This song has one of the most worrying and proposterous psychedelic lyrics in psychedelic history. If I remember rightly 'I am falling into the quicksand of my troubled mind'. Paved the way for the brown acid at Woodstock I reckon.

bing crosby- white christmas

runcible wrote: Hendrix - Purple Haze

not so sure that one was about drugs originally..
Hendrix was a major sci-fi nerd and took the term and part of the imagery from a novel.. inspiring him to write this weird lovesong that the public later decided was all about LSD.

It also seems like Jimi never had dropped acid when he wrote it..

I don´t know.. but it seems a bit too easy to claim that every confusing and dreamy pop song is about drugs... although a lot of them are of course
..and purple haze has certainly been regarded a drug song by most listeners - and in history that counts more than the original intention, whatever that was.
He called it a lovesong inspired by his dreams and it might have been just that.

RE: 'Purple Haze':

scratch wrote: not so sure that one was about drugs originally..
Hendrix was a major sci-fi nerd and took the term and part of the imagery from a novel.. inspiring him to write this weird lovesong that the public later decided was all about LSD.

It also seems like Jimi never had dropped acid when he wrote it..

I don´t know.. but it seems a bit too easy to claim that every confusing and dreamy pop song is about drugs... although a lot of them are of course
..and purple haze has certainly been regarded a drug song by most listeners - and in history that counts more than the original intention, whatever that was.
He called it a lovesong inspired by his dreams and it might have been just that.

I too have read this...although I read that it was inspired by a dream he had about walking under the sea. We get that aquamarine imagery a lot from Hendrix, most notably on '1983'.

At a time when LSD was receiving much negative attention it may have been professional suicide for Hendrix to admit he wrote a short pop song about being blasted on acid! Thus, his roundabout explanation of it.

I have also read that he may never have taken LSD prior to Monterey. Hmmmm....again...who knows? Those who talk about these things will have sketchy memories and were no doubt experimenting too. How they can pinpoint a date so accurately is beyond me. But then again, having read Phil Lesh's autobiography '"Searching For The Sound" I was astounded by the crystal clear details he described of several of his acid trips that took place many, many years ago! There are certainly moments I would expect him to remember but he seems to recall time, place and all points in between his trips with perfect memory. Considering how many trips he took makes it even more impressive!

runcible wrote:

redcloud wrote:'Mind Flowers'-Ultimate Spinach (quite possibly the scariest acid trip ever committed to music!).

This song has one of the most worrying and proposterous psychedelic lyrics in psychedelic history. If I remember rightly 'I am falling into the quicksand of my troubled mind'. Paved the way for the brown acid at Woodstock I reckon.

That's the one! It is pretty fucking scary but acid could be both things to people (euphoric-life changing-spiritual door opener or a fucking nightmare!).

redcloud wrote:RE: 'Purple Haze':



At a time when LSD was receiving much negative attention it may have been professional suicide for Hendrix to admit he wrote a short pop song about being blasted on acid! Thus, his roundabout explanation of it.

Also known as the 8 Miles High Syndrome.




M

sorry... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qh2sWSVRrmo

Not a drug song per se but a song where the person clearly got swept up while under the influence and just sort of let it go.
Amazing I think.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T75YklbU ... re=related

Maggot Brain.

a bit salacious, but anyway - http://blogs.sfweekly.com/shookdown/201 ... _lyric.php

clewsr wrote:a bit salacious, but anyway - http://blogs.sfweekly.com/shookdown/201 ... _lyric.php

“You gave me drugs / You said would cure my ills / They may cure yours / But mine were with me still"

I could never quite work out what he was singing on that song…to think they used that song for a popular chocolate bar ad

nickh wrote:“You gave me drugs / You said would cure my ills / They may cure yours / But mine were with me still"
I could never quite work out what he was singing on that song…to think they used that song for a popular chocolate bar ad

I always wondered if that was a pop at Pete K...

A bit blatant, but surpirsed nobody has mentioned Heroin (vu) yet. Just in terms of form reflecting content alone that song is pretty great.

Keep it down

Scotland´s finest... on heroin while singing an anti-drug song.. pete brown - jack´s lyricist - wrote the words as a desperate attempt to make him cut down on the smack.. so jack is singing things to himself that he wouldn´t allow people say to him.
It didn´t work of course

but the song works..

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLHm-kEn-vQ <-- steve hunter on gtr

here in a version with a rolling stone dropout:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OG9J-1zIn34 <--- mick taylor on gtr

So many great covers of this song...but there is no denying the original version is easily the best and one of the most haunting and harrowing songs about addiction ever recorded.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3bfqlTC ... re=related

this thread made me laugh - http://drownedinsound.com/community/boa ... ic/4357970

nickh wrote:

clewsr wrote:a bit salacious, but anyway - http://blogs.sfweekly.com/shookdown/201 ... _lyric.php

“You gave me drugs / You said would cure my ills / They may cure yours / But mine were with me still"

I could never quite work out what he was singing on that song…to think they used that song for a popular chocolate bar ad

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JRvTbG3abk

All your two-bit friends
They're shootin' you up with pills
They said that it was good for you
That it would cure your ills

clewsr wrote:this thread made me laugh - http://drownedinsound.com/community/boa ... ic/4357970

yeah, the hawley song- i thought it was a beautiful slightly twisted love song- then i saw him live and he introduced it as a song about addiction

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7EYk83xz3dQ

great song mind you

The Cramps - Drug Train!