Here’s what happens when you let the
needle drop on the 7" of "Hash Pipe." You hear a guitar
riff that bears shocking resemblance to the Peter Gunn theme, all
distorted and ominous-like. It’s wicked in both the proverbial
and the moral senses of the word. After it’s established itself,
a guy says "Ooh," using the universally understood rock
shorthand for "There is something strange and evil coursing through
my veins and I can no longer stand by and passively bear its force."
The riff runs over a few more times, repetitive in all the right ways,
and then Cuomo lets loose with the falsetto. Good falsettos are hard
to come by, but Cuomo’s got one, and he knows that using it for
a descending-melodic-figure opening shot like "Hash Pipe"’s
first line -- "I can’t help my feelings, I go out of my
mind" -- is a one-way ticket to all the good dark places where
great rock singles get all their ugly power. Slow down for a moment
and meditate on it; if you’re older than seventeen, try to remember
being seventeen for a minute, and if you haven’t turned eighteen
yet, just let the line’s righteousness wash over you. "I
can’t help my feelings, I go out of my mind." Loaded with
all sorts of suppositions about Being and Free Will and the relation
between Urge and Action, this is the kind of line that sets us up
for trouble and then seals up all the exits: the person singing it
must necessarily be right on the edge of something large and dangerous.
I don’t know what he says next--I can’t make it out, and
I don’t have a lyric sheet--and really, who cares? The three
elements in place have set the table so flawlessly that, short of
a total reversal, anything following from here must inherit the groove
that gave it birth.
|