12/11/2023 0 Comments Strawberry alarm clock best songs![]() In this it’s similar to the lesson-free bummer “Nightmare Of Percussion” that opens the album.Groovy & Farout is probably not a law firm, but perhaps an apt description from out of the time warp for the Summer of Love. By the end of “They Saw The Fat One Coming”, no answers have been offered, and the song’s intangible horror is underscored by this lack of resolution. The overwhelmingly elegiac tone of the singing, the woeful but resigned nature of the voices themselves, and the weird, organically psychedelic instrumental touches all add up to one of Strawberry Alarm Clock’s best and most engrossing songs. The song’s chilling final lines:Īnd turned the house of God into a place of violenceĪnd swore before the day was done there would be silence” The townspeople, or at least certain ones of them, meet and vow to kill someone, probably the ‘fat one’. (But, “lighthearted”…? Doesn’t quite sound like that to me!) Tipping into violenceĪt any rate, matters come to a head (or threaten to) in the final verse. He was a nice guy but the band had not welcomed the intrusion.” “The ‘fat one’ was just a lighthearted band joke about Roy Freeman (not related to Lee Freeman) who was brought in as a lyricist. But an email from bassist George Bunnell to clears up the actual meaning of “They Saw The Fat One Coming”: ![]() In fact, some sources claim King himself is the Fat One. A low-key sitar and a prominent lead guitar, in which you can just hear the future ghost of Lynyrd Skynyrd in Ed King’s playing, contribute to the maturity and compelling sound of the track. those singing, while the identity of the lyrics’ ‘they’ remains the big mystery of the song., This is especially evident when the melody and story veer off on a different path:įrom whom he was spared and what kind of deal he might have made are all tantalizingly open to interpretation. The ‘they’ of the title evidently refers to the townspeople, i.e. He shows up in a town and greatly confuses its worried citizens. Ultimately, “They Saw The Fat One Coming” is about someone. But then other details take a religious bent and seem to allude to an ill-conceived lynch mob and a mysterious and possibly supernatural outsider. In the song’s references to dying (and killing) it would be easy to define it as a song about the Vietnam war. Each new detail only raises more questions. Who are ‘they’? Who is this guy crying? With each line following the same simple melody, the song becomes a slow-moving chant. ![]() This guessing game is established by the song’s opening lines:īut they just couldn’t understand why he was crying” Imagine finding an ancient scrap of paper with an Old English poem fragment on it, and having to guess at the motivations and situations of the characters. It’s presented out of context and with few expository clues. A story is being told, but only an obscure middle portion of it. A psychedelic tone poem with shimmering guitar and a ghostly chorus, it’s full of unusual poetry and features an acoustic guitar and a meditative, funereal pace.Īs on several other Strawberry Alarm Clock songs, “They Saw The Fat One Coming” sports lyrics with a sickly, negative bent that remain disquietingly unspecific. “They Saw The Fat One Coming” is a standout track from the Strawberry Alarm Clock album Wake Up… It’s Tomorrow from 1968. ![]()
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