Cube Your Enthusiasm
Like most fitness clubs, my gym has music pouring out of the sound system nonstop.
For years I worked out in the early morning, when the club played a solid hour of Frank Sinatra — probably to please me and my fellow dawn‑patrol geezers.
Unfortunately, I made the mistake of mentioning how much I liked it to the staff, and it seemed like a short time later Old Blue Eyes went silent.
The last time I heard Frank at my gym, the sound system abruptly cut him off midway through “You Make Me Feel So Young.”
That made me feel so old.
But my Stairmaster flashback concerns another Sinatra — his daughter Nancy — whose voice suddenly filled the gym in the midst of my stationary ascent.
I strained to hear the lyrics over the clang of barbells, the gym chatter, the pounding on the heavy bags, and my own tortured breathing.
“Wait…” I thought. “Is that… Sugar Town?”
Yes, indeed it was. I was listening — quite unwillingly — to the 1966 song that hit a sour note with me the very first time I heard it all those years ago.
“I'm gonna lay right down here in the grass, And pretty soon all my troubles will pass, ’Cause I'm in shoo‑shoo‑shoo, shoo‑shoo‑shoo, shoo‑shoo, shoo‑shoo, shoo‑shoo Sugar Town…”
Epic stuff, right?
“Sugar Town” peaked at number five on the Billboard Hot 100 and reached number one on the Easy Listening chart in January 1967, although I don’t find anything easy about listening to this train wreck.
I can’t imagine how this dog got on my gym’s playlist. Working out is hard enough without having your ears assailed by 60‑year‑old pop clunkers. Shoo, shoo!
The song was written by songwriter‑producer Lee Hazlewood, the genius behind another Nancy nightmare, “These Boots Are Made for Walkin’.”
Now here’s something I didn’t know back in the mid‑sixties: the song is an allusion to sugar cubes laced with LSD.
Since a standard active dose of LSD is microscopic, it required an “inert carrier” to be transported and ingested.
Sugar, Honey, Ice and Tea
Liquid LSD was easily dropped onto sugar cubes, which made the drug simple to carry or conceal.
Acid is primarily consumed recreationally for its profound hallucinogenic effects, and many people liked the idea that the drug was “sugar for the mind.”
John Lennon told Rolling Stone in 1971 that the powerful synthetic psychedelic kicked in when he and his friends were on an elevator.
“We all thought there was a fire in the lift,” Lennon said. “It was just a little red light, and we were all screaming, all hot and hysterical.”
George Harrison had a much different experience.
“I had such an overwhelming feeling of well‑being, that there was a God, and I could see him in every blade of grass,” he said.
“Sugar Town” was vague — speaking to a young audience able to recognize its allusion, yet outwardly tame enough to receive radio play. Hazlewood denied that he had ever used LSD or regularly partaken in drugs in general.
Maybe he should’ve started.
“You had to make the lyric dingy enough where the kids knew what you were talking about — and they did,” he said.
“But not much more if you wanted to get it played on the radio. We used to have lotsa trouble with lyrics, but I think it’s fun to keep it hidden a little bit.”
That trouble extended to such recordings as The Beatles’ “A Day in the Life” and “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”; “Eight Miles High” by The Byrds; and “White Rabbit” by Jefferson Airplane — all of which were yanked from one playlist or another over alleged drug references.
Personally, I don’t give a damn about the lyrics. My loathing of “Sugar Town” is about quality, not content.
Finally, after two minutes and 21 agonizing seconds, the song came to an end, and I finished my cardio routine without further incident.
I hope this doesn’t become a regular hit at my gym. Otherwise, I might start dropping a few sugar cubes of my own.
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