Semi-Crowdsourced Song Of The Day 9/7/2013: Buckner & Garcia - "Ode To A Centipede"

After an exhausting week of writing about music and other heated topics, on top of preparing for a motivational speech I'm making later today, I was out of ideas for what today's Song Of The Day would be. So I asked my Facebook friends to pick something, and immediately Stanbery started lobbying for Buckner & Garcia's "Pac-Man Fever." He even organized a voting bloc and threatened a filibuster. After negotiations, I agreed to do a Buckner & Garcia song, but not "Pac-Man Fever" since everyone's already heard it.

After sampling some other tracks from the Pac-Man Fever album I settled on this ode to Centipede called "Ode To a Centipede." It's got the most poignant narrative, with an insistent undercurrent of paranoia and self-preservation. I also appreciate the symbolism of the spiders, a masterfully subtle use of infernal imagery which I'm sure Buckner & Garcia borrowed from William Blake's "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell." In using the motion-suggesting musical template most notably employed by old masters like Journey and Michael Sembello, Mssrs. Buckner & Garcia evoke the troubling conflict and concurrence of man's unseen battle with nature, especially against enemies not previously perceived. Does our penchant for constant movement in this newly gilded age mean that we move horizontally, when we mean to be ascendent? Are we not constructing our own gaols of remorse and second-guessing from which no bound roll of quarters will release us?

Also considered: "Froggy's Lament."