Bubble Puppy -- "Hot Smoke and Sassafras" (1969)

If you've found your place at last
Then you need not use the looking glass

(I disagree. I don't care whether you've found your place at last or you haven't, a looking glass can sure come in handy.  Sometimes you need to check out how your hair looks – make sure you are looking fine.  How you gonna do that without a looking glass?)

Bubble Puppy was just a one-hit wonder, but it was one hell of a hit. The song made it to number 14 on the Billboard "Hot 100," which I find surprising – it's a very radical song.

'62 Chevy Biscayne station wagon

I remember hearing this song on AM radio while I was driving my family's 1962 Chevy Biscayne station wagon (6-cylinder engine, three on the tree, no a/c, and a vacuum tube radio that took about a minute to warm up) to high school.  

I almost drove into the damn ditch.  This song is hot, hot, hot!  I've never heard anything quite like it since, and I trust I never will.

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Bubble Puppy was formed in San Antonio, but moved to Austin before "Hot Smoke and Sassafras" was released. 

Texas was a psychedelic music hot spot in those days, believe it or not.  The most famous Texas psychedelic band was the 13th Floor Elevators (I'll get around to them eventually) and the astonishingly weird The Red Crayola.  

Bubble Puppy put out one album (it flopped – except for this song), changed labels, changed names (they renamed themselves Demian after the Herman Hesse novel), put out another album (it flopped), and then broke up.

Bubble Puppy's "A Gathering of Promises" album

The first time Bubble Puppy played live before a big audience was as the opening act for The Who in San Antonio. They must have been pretty good – their official website proclaims them to be the "most feared opening act in rock & roll history."  (Don't break your arm patting yourself on the back, Bubble Puppy.)  

The most famous story about an opening act upstaging the main attraction involves Jerry Lee Lewis and Chuck Berry.  Unfortunately, it's almost certainly apocryphal, which is a real shame.

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Click here to listen to "Hot Smoke and Sassafras."

Click here for an absolutely insane animation video of the song by an art collective named Paper Rad.

Click on the link below to buy the song from Amazon: