Dr. Octagon - Blue Flowers

Moving right along through the stack by the stereo, the next record is a remix of Dr. Octagon's Blue Flowers, given to me by Eric Beaumont, a musician, librarian at the county jail, and record collector. Thanks, Eric! I love this song, and played the hell out of Dr. Octagonecologyst, the album it was on.

Kool Keith AKA Dr. Octagon AKA Dr. Dooom is probably one of the more eccentric hip hop stars and also seemed to have a following with the alternative music crowd. His imagination really runs wild and the result is somewhere between cheesy horror stories and surrealist poetry.

Blue Flowers on the album starts with a low, rumbling synth. A loop of spooky violins comes in over it, followed by a jangling tambourine beat and a background chorus, "Let me show you something." Dr. Octagon announces his entrance: "Dr. Octagon, paramedic fetus of the east..." Already, it's hard to know what he's talking about, but it's far out and he says it so well. He continues on with lines like, "Your insurance is high but my price is cheap," and at the chorus, "Blue flowers growing by the pond, screaming yellow, and "As I go into the park, I see... blue flowers. It's raining green, by the pond."

On the Automator remix, the violins are out, replaced by opera singer flourishes and a whispering Björk. Dr. Octagon breaks it down at one point singing, "Sailing, takes me away..." and inserts a "Here's George Jetson." He free associates, "I lay myself down to sleep, let my soldiers keep as I look at Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer riding through the sky, smoking weed..." It all makes no sense, it's funny, it's disturbing, sometimes in bad taste, and it's some of the most creative hip hop, or music, of the '90s. Fittingly, the record right after it is Sun Ra.