This is the way it is, baby. I Dig Safety, and it’s about time you paid attention to it. Don’t let the title fool you; this could save your life, and it’s got a cool hip soundtrack with bongos, courtesy of Xerox [1969].
The Utoobage description sums it up: “A great clip from the 1958 teen B movie High School Confidential. This clip features Phillipa Fallon as a beat poetess. That’s Uncle Fester, AKA Jackie Coogan on piano behind her. Turn your eyes inside and dig the vacuum.” Here’s the whole awesome [via]:
High School Drag
My old man was a bread stasher all his life.
He never got fat. He wound up with a used car,
a 17 inch screen and arthritis.
Tomorrow is a drag, man.
Tomorrow is a king sized bust.
They cried ‘put down pot,’ ‘don’t think a lot,’ for what?
Time, how much? And what to do with it.
Sleep, man, and you might wake up digging the whole
human race giving itself three days to get out.
Tomorrow is a drag, pops, the future is a flake.
I had a canary who couldn’t sing.
I had a cat who let me share my pad with her.
I bought a dog that killed the cat who ate the canary.
What is truth?
I had an uncle with an ivy league card.
He had a life with a belt in the back.
He had a button-down brain.
Wind up a belt in the mouth with a button-down lip.
We cough blood on this earth.
Now there’s a race for space.
We can cough blood on the moon soon.
Tomorrow’s dragsville, cats.
Tomorrow is a king size drag.
Tool a fast shore, swing with a gassy chick.
Turn on to a thousand joys.
Smile on what happened, or check what’s going to happen,
You’ll miss what’s happening.
Turn your eyes inside and dig the vacuum.
Swing For A Crime is a great compilation of hep cat music interspersed with audio snippets from B-movie suspense thrillers (including the distinctive voice of Lee Marvin hollering “Oh you pig! You lyin’ pig!” from the 1953 movie The Big Heat). I have it on vinyl.
The only performer I know of that was able to recreate the hep cat beatnik persona successfully is Tom Waits.
Have a great Labor Day Weekend, folks.
[Yeah, I fixed it, and I know it’s not Memorial Day Weekend. That’s what happens when you realize it’s almost midnight and you’ve been messing around too much on Twitter to post anything coherently. –Bunk]