9/4/08: Blue Things “One Hour Cleaners” (1967)

In the wake of this week’s entry on Deathmaster—and with things very busy around here—we’ll knock out a quick entry about all the hippie kids who weren’t stupid enough to fall for assorted brainwashing. Just about this time last year, we had an entry that saluted The William Penn Fyve’s “Swami.” The incredible lads of The Blue Things were a more suburban experience, so they took on psychiatry with “One Hour Cleaners.”

This legendary Kansas band recorded plenty of lost classics. “One Hour Cleaners” was the b-side of 1967’s “The Orange Rooftop Of Your Mind” 45. It’s certainly one of the greatest 45’s of the decade, and was recorded by The Blue Things as they emerged from folksiness and became a proper psychedelic act.

Both songs are heavily influenced by everyone from The Kinks to the Monkees. Sadly, “The Orange Rooftop Of Your Mind” kind of plays along as an ode to peer pressure. But then there’s “One Hour Cleaners,” which reflects the smart skepticism found in some of the band's earlier songs. Here are the lyrics in all their addled glory:

    There’s a One Hour Cleaners that I went to yesterday
    Was a man sits you down, and starts removing spots of gray
    And his voice makes me sleepy, but it helps me to confess
    And I’ll leave clean, neatly pressed

    Oh, he sounded very smart, telling me about my mind
    How he studied Freudian methods and concluded me insane
    Then released the world upon me, saying, “Don’t you let it sag”
    With my mind wrapped in a cellophane bag

    He said, “Come back tomorrow, bring some money in the jar
    Don’t be going to the moon, I’m afraid it’s much too far”
    Then he painted me a picture of an elevator door
    And I rode down to Bleecker Street floor

    Yes, I’ve seen the One Hour Cleaners, and my story must be told
    His fingernails are painted, and his pockets lined with gold
    He’s got 300 amulets working on his mind
    And he tells me people are blind

Then the song ends with a “Pleasant Valley Sunday” freakout, as these things tend to do. Sadly, the same can be said about the life of the Blue Thing’s Val Stecklein, who co-wrote “The Orange Rooftop Of Your Mind” and “One Hour Cleaners” with Mike Chapman. Stecklein wrote a lot of great Blues Things songs on his own, and eventually drifted off to weirder visions—culminating in a Biblical rock opera with Jim Backus as God. Stecklein ended up as a Kansas hermit who’d die in 1993 at the age of 52. Nobody really looked into the cause of death.

We thought about adding that “One Hour Cleaners” may be taking on psychiatry, but the song includes plenty of sitar-like touches to goof on the more fashionable fakirs of the day. On the other hand, the Blue Things are blatantly ripping off George Harrison’s “Taxman” here. That’s probably the real reason for all that.

Make it your own: The fine folks at Cicadelic Records recently put out an impressive 65-track compilation of The Blue Things. It’s not everything you need by the band, but Let the Blue Things Blow Your Mind is plenty of great music that used to be prohibitively out-of-print and expensive.

 

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