Yes, You Really Do Want to Get High and Listen to the Moody Blues

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Listen to this while high: Days of Future Passed by The Moody Blues.

Behind the buzz: One of the more durable pieces of weapons-grade bullshit in the media these days is the one about how today's THC-weed is somehow different from the gage Grampaw huffed down. Anyone bright enough to pound sand can pose about a half-dozen objections to this sophistry, beginning with pointing out any drug that forgetfulness-inducing tends to set its own limits on consumption. Still, the idea of how the premier doper albums of paisley yesteryear fare with the today's Strontium weight crunk is good enough to Bogart awhile. Since my bare tolerance of The Moody Blues is a fairly recent thing, I'd never before subjected this much-ballyhooed founding document of prog-rock to the toke test. Released a few weeks before, Something Else by the Kinks roughly follows the same morning-to-sunset story arc as Days of Future Passed, but The Moodies really run with the Joycean idea that every day is an entire universe.

Today's weed: A lethal strain of Master Kush, dope so unusually potent the dispensary posted a warning about side effects like uncontrollable giggling.

"The Day Begins": After a hefty pull with my morning coffee, the opening orchestral flourish of this 1967 art rock masterpiece waltzes me into powdered-sugar wonderamaland. At about 1:39 in, my door rattles with knocking, and an odd-looking middle-aged couple is standing on my stoop, Bibles in hand and looking like they're selling door-to-door swampland. I hiss smoke at them and they fade as the whirligig of an overture carries on, with keyboardist Mike Pinder intoning the "Breathe deep, the gathering gloom," poem, its yob profundities tracing pretty circles in the air. I decide to go easy on this stuff after all.

"Dawn is a Feeling": The line "the grass making you pass into a dream" takes on a fine jolly ring under the circs, as the one about the day lasting a thousand years. The album's runtime of 41:37 no longer seems like much of a threat.

"Another Morning": Limp Carnaby Street pop that makes me wish I'd put on Emmitt Rhodes, if not Iggy Stooge. I reflexively take a near-fatal extra hit.

"Peak Hour": Rather better, with the intro's Copeland-like invocation of a cheerily busy big city that artfully slides into one of The Moodies' better up-tempo numbers, up there with "Ride My See-Saw" for sheer infectious fun.



"Tuesday Afternoon": The wistful glories of this classic rock oldie are too many to relate here. At this point of an early Tuesday morning, I can feel the outside world a beckoning, if remote, possibility.

"The Sun Set/Twilight Time": Dark psychedelic pop in the vein of The Pretty Things, this one wouldn't have been out of place on the Pretties' own gloom-psych S.F. Sorrow, recorded about the same time. Late in the track, the London Festival Orchestral -- a loose agglomeration of classical players who were, like the Moodies, under contract to Deram Records -- leads us into the this album's second Summer of Love masterpiece.

"Nights in White Satin": If you ever gave a fuck about rock 'n' roll radio, you've spent a few zoneout moments to this classic rock hymn to existential loneliness. The orchestra really lets go on this one, and Pinder takes up the strings of his opening lament. He curses the moon; that "cold-hearted orb" that removes light and distorts color before slapping the Krayola box into our hands, bidding us paint it any way we like. The LFO shivers down the curtain and J. Arthur Rank gongs us out.

Psychoactive verdict: A sustained and reverent giggle.

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