3. Chambers Brothers, The Time Has Come (1967) – “Time Has Come Today”

The Chambers Brothers were four brothers from Carthage, Mississippi, an unlikely pinpoint source of psychedelia. George, Joseph, Lester, and Willie Chambers started out singing in the choir and eventually ended up in Los Angeles. The brothers were augmented by drummer and cowbell administrator Brian Keenan, an important element of “Time Has Come Today.” The song comes in many versions, most of them edits. The 1966 original, 2:37, is rather different from the more familiar hit but already shows inclinations toward the weird and trippy. The one we know best from 1967 or 1968 comes in three sizes: 3:05, 4:45, and 11:07. The first two were single versions. One of them (or both?) made it to #11 for a few weeks in 1968. The one you really want, of course, is the 11:07, which closes out the second side of The Time Has Come, an album, full disclosure, I don’t otherwise have much need for.

The bonanza of “Time Has Come Today” is all I’m here for and it is exactly what I’m here for. From its double-cowbell cuckoo clock opening it is a wholly disorienting gem: the fuzzed electric guitar crushes, the unfuzzed electric guitar wheedles out simple figures, Keenan hits everything hard, and the song roars into shape with the clarion call, “Time has come today!” The ’60s were full of moments like it, charged with apocalyptic howling at the moon, but don’t let this one get lost in the shuffle. There is also something slyly funny about it, as if it somehow distances itself from the youth generation it otherwise formally exalts in an amiably generic way, eating its cake and having it too—“Young hearts can go their way,” “The rules have changed today (Hey),” “There’s no place to run (Time),” so on so forth—until it finally fully climaxes with all the weight it can muster: “I've been loved and put aside (Time) / I've been crushed by the tumbling tide (Time) / And my soul has been psychedelicized (Time).” It feels like something Foghorn Leghorn would say, erupting into the frame in close-up.

Then, at about 2:37, the time of the 1966 original, the song shifts into its freak-out. Time slows to a crawl (time). The heavy effects come up. Producer David Rubinson also worked with Moby Grape, the United States of America, Skip Spence, and Herbie Hancock, among others, so he knew his way around a psychedelic soundboard even if “Time” was relatively early in his career. As the tempo starts from a near dead stop and gradually builds, the echoing, phasing effects set in like bats swarming a cave. The fuzz guitar man, either Joseph or Willie, soars in with a workmanlike solo buoyed by a band in ecstatic unity. At 5:40, somewhat famously, he breaks into the tune of “Little Drummer Boy.” All bets now seem to be off as the groove locks in. At 6:50 someone can’t stand it anymore and starts screaming. This jumbo jet is banking in for a landing. Maniacal laughter and a chaotic scene follow. It very possibly inspired the Crazy World of Arthur Brown and Eric Burdon & the Animals even as it was perhaps inspired itself by the Royal Guardsmen. It descends upon us like a storm. Crazy sounds like small mammals and what you might imagine plants making if we could hear them creep into the underside. Are we in some Satanic Garden of Eden? Howling and sirens. At 9:05 the main theme returns. They like the line “my soul has been psychedelicized” so much they do it again. And I like it so much I don’t mind either. The ending may be about one minute too long, but hey, they might get burned up by the sun, but they had their fun. In sum: A masterpiece.