jon_chaisson | #atozchallenge #wis G is for Green Haze

Elvis Hitler was a punk band from Detroit that didn't have a big following (they were more a cult band, given their goofy mix of rockabilly music and lowbrow humor), but they did have a minor hit on college radio in late 1988 with the above track. It's one of those "why didn't I think of that?" parody songs where you sing the lyrics of one song on top of another. In this case, Jimi Hendrix's "Purple Haze" sets the perfect stage for the lyrics to the theme song to the TV show Green Acres.

Chris and Nathan and I pulled out this trick every now and again on our Flying Bohemians recordings, most memorably when we'd sing the words to The Beatles' "A Day in the Life" to U2's "Sunday Bloody Sunday". The variant was the "Mr. Cleanhands" medley, in which we'd shoehorn as many songs with the repetitive I-V-VI melody line (think The English Beat's "Save It for Later") as we could and mix it up in our own song. I'm pretty sure "Green Haze" was partly the inspiration for us to do that.

Unlike a lot of kids in the 70s and 80s, I didn't get into punk via the scenes. When you live in a small town in central Massachusetts and you're under 18 for most of that era, you can't really go to any of those shows, let alone get to any of them unless you had an older sibling or older friend who could get you there and in the door. I was okay with that, really, because I've always been more of a listener than a scenester anyway. In fact, I really didn't get into punk rock until 1988 or so. Mind you, I was familiar with it--I recognized a lot of the band names from my forays into the record bins at Al Bum's and Main Street Music, as well as the songs they'd play on WMUA and WAMH back then--but I never got around to picking any of it up until I was in junior and senior year. I was just more into the moody sounds of post-punk.

I think that distancing made me appreciate the genre a little more, as I was able to take it for what it was--a musical (and often political and social) response to what was going on at the time. Reaganism and Thatcherism, living in economically weak cities and towns, extreme right wing craziness...that feeling of being stuck in a place you've grown to hate. I wasn't caught up in that, but I could understand it. I didn't experience that to such a degree that, say, DC, New York, LA and London did, but I understood where it was coming from. I'd outgrown my hometown and could not wait to get the hell out. That was the difference--I didn't hate living there and I didn't want to rebel...I'd just grown bored by it and wanted to expand my horizons, do my own thing without fear. Again, music was there as a way out, especially when I had one last year of high school to go. I knew I'd be stuck at home for a few more months, but I had the music (and my writing) to take me elsewhere for awhile.