SONG TITLE: GET MY ROCKS OFF

PERFORMER: DR. HOOK AND THE MEDICINE SHOW

SONGWRITER: SHEL SILVERSTEIN

YEAR OF RELEASE:  1972

COMMENTS: What we’ve got here is an outstanding slow grinding country funk, grooving like a bitch and funny as hell. Again I am drawn to praising the instrumental pallete. The funk groove of the bass guitar and the hysterical (yet subtly) satisfying depravity of the bass vocal harmonies dominate the record. The bursts of horns punch up through the sound, nicely invoking the sudden rushes of pleasure.

The song is presented as basically a simple (but well crafted) country blues tune. It describes in music and lyrics a kind of laid-back stoner’s macho. The chorus is a pure mack daddy gesture; the killer hook of cool command is in that authoritative bass pronunciation “Get my rocks off a mountain and roll ‘em on do-own the hill.”

I’m not entirely sure why, but this band really comes off (in their more personable moments) as way down-home, like some perverted cousins of Robbie Robertson or Garth Hudson. This is despite what kind of r&b guitars or weird horn or string sections were in the record. It seems to just be something in the very fiber of their beings. I mean, you can take them out of the barnyard, but they still smell like goats.

Of course, the lyrics really top this off. They are basically a brag about a real man getting what he needs. Kind of country mackin’.

“Sometimes I dream of chicks to bring me everlasting joy. Sometimes I dream of animals. Sometimes I dream of boys. Sometimes I kill the living, sometimes I raise the dead. Sometimes I just say ‘Screw it all’ and crawl back into bed and get my rocks off.”

Holla Back!

Shel Silverstein

Music Sustains the Soul

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