In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida
Mar.01, 2006, filed under Miscellany
We were watching some piece of crap on the telly the other night and the well-known guitar riff that we know and love from the final dénouement in the original Manhunter comes on.
“What was that called? Did we ever find out?” I ask the Frood.
“I’m sure we did but I can’t remember what it was,” he replies with a shrug. He’s still stuck on Where’s My Cow? bless him. I think he’s fascinated by the “Hruuugh!” noise the hippopotamus makes.
Some googling later and I finally turn up the information that the soundtrack was released in limited quantities only and you’ll be bloody lucky to find one. After some more digging I managed to confidently identify the track in question as a piece by Iron Butterfly called In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida.
Only it’s not available for download from any non-dodgy sites. So off I went to Amazon and ordered a copy of the deluxe edition. I needed to find out where the damn cow was anyway.
The reviews are universally pants. Other than the eponymous title piece (is that a redundancy?) the album is generally considered to be utter shite. I figured it had to be worth a go though.
Oh my lords. You can’t tell from the picture but the cover is that weird double-image plastic – they used to make rulers out of it with dinosaurs on for kids. The butterfly flaps, man. And the colours. My gods, the colours. I haven’t seen anything like this since foilovision.
Sadly most of the album is execrable. Flowers and Beads in particular makes me want to vomit and stick leeches in my ears while pouring tabasco sauce-smeared raw garlic into paper cuts I have made in the fleshy fold at the base of my thumbs.
However, this does not detract from the “Holy freaking shit” feeling produced by the full 17 minutes and 10 seconds of the album version of In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida. It’s like Hawkwind meets Hendrix meets Elvis in some bizarre transporter accident that has the King trapped in a psychedelic heavy guitar prog rock opera with set designs by Rodney Matthews. While it may not have Ginger Baker chopping up the beat, nor the strangely evocative lyrics of Michael Moorcock and chums, listening to the full thing has the same spine-tingling effect as watching those last twenty minutes of Manhunter did.
The music’s not that good. It’s not pretty. It’s certainly not clever. But it does reach in and grab you by the gut.
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Singularity
~something that is singular as (a) a separate unit, or (b) unusual or distinctive manner or behavior; PECULIARITY;
~the quality or state of being singular;
~a point at which the derivative of a given function of a complex variable does not exist but every neighborhood of which contains points for which the derivative exists;
~a point or region of infinite mass density at which space and time are infinitely distorted by gravitational forces and which is held to be the final state of matter falling into a black hole. Sight
