Ina Gadda da Vida

In A Gadda Da Vida (drunk for "In the Garden of Eden") is an early heavy metal tune that became a classic solely through its sheer, mind-numbing length and incomprehensability. At the time, this was confused for mysticism. The lyrics are but a few mere lines of sticky sweet romanticism, totally at odds with constipated metal vocals -- the latter of which were appropriate for the time and genre, the former of which would not be appropriate under any circumstances. A baseline and accompanying rhythm guitar that was probably funky to white boys back in those days starts the tune. For added zip the organist helps the drummer out jazzcat style. After singing the first repetition of the lyrics, which, it must be noted, are themselves repetitive, the lead singer improvises a little with a flourished "Please take my hand!" followed by a feeling-the-moment exclamation of "guitar!" This is of course followed by an organ solo. What evolves from there can only be described these days as a bad horror movie incidental score, punctuated by a one man drum circle and an interperative two-finger organ recital of "We Three Kings of Orient Are." The song wraps up with a nearly identical iteration of the lyrics. This is an important feature of the song, because, although numerous parodies have spawned over the days, perhaps the funniest thing you can do with it is carefully dub a second copy seamlessly onto the end of the first, and then a third, and so on to the length of the longest recording media you can possibly find. The end product has the effect of driving aged stoners (the only kind you can persuade to listen to it) stark raving mad. They cannot figure out whether the song is just dragging on like they remembered it from years ago, or whether they are just really, really baked. After about a half hour (which is well under twice the length of the original song) tension levels in the room will start to rise, and you can have fun placing bets on which of them will decide they have had enough first.