Drop All Your Troubles by the Riverside

You have to understand, right up front, that I’ve always hated this song.

You’ll have to imagine the various unpleasant bodily excretions I substituted for blood, sweat, and tears when I mentioned the name of the originators of Spinning Wheel. It’s a fat slice of 1968 flower power horsehockey in the lyric department. That was stapled onto jazz/rock/fusion sturm and drang that always gave me the hives.

It was plenty popular when it came out, but Henry Mancini kept Spinning Wheel out of the Number One slot on the charts for a while by the supposedly romantic but mostly depressing Love Theme from Romeo and Juliet. Considering the subject, it wasn’t depressing enough to convince people that Romeo and Juliet isn’t a romance, it’s a tragedy, but Henry tried. That was followed by another musical obstruction, the red-hot knitting needle for earwax removal and instant channel changing In the Year 2525 by Zager and Evans. So Spinning Wheel never made it to the top, but it hung around on the musical Hillary Step for a good long while.

Egads. Blattering horns. Bellowing vocals. Overwrought organ. Spinning Wheel.

And then Capiozzo and Mecco come into my life and fix the whole megillah for me. Why drop acid when benzedrine and grappa is available?