Strange Brew

“Strange Brew” is the title of a 1967 hit song from Cream’s album Disraeli Gears, which featured the most psychedelic cover art ever. The song is what postmodern scholars, influenced by Fredric Jameson, would call a pastiche: its lyrics combine images of love, witchcraft, and getting stoned with a note-for-note rendition of Albert King’s traditional blues song “Oh Pretty Woman.” The song’s title is a metaphor suggesting that words and music can mix to become a kind of magic potion. Strange Brew: Metaphors of Magic and Science in Rock Music traces the evolution of psychedelic music from its roots in rock and roll and the blues to its influence on popular music today, shows how metaphor is used to create the effects of songs and their lyrics, and explores how words and music came together as both a cause and effect of the cultural revolution of the nineteen-sixties.