It’s generally agreed that the late ’60s/early ’70s was an especially fertile period in rock music history, and perhaps the most provocative genre at the time was progressive rock (or “prog” among devotees), the dense, complex, lengthy, ambitious, lyrically puzzling music produced by a handful of British bands who strove to bring rock a degree of sophistication and critical respect.

I say prog rock was provocative because it truly provoked reaction.  It was a proud and radical departure from the three-minute mainstream rock, soul and pop songs that dominated the musical scene in the 1965-1977 period.  A huge, largely male demographic embraced it fully, spending hours under the headphones absorbing every nuance of these song suites and extended opuses, and religiously attended their concerts.  Others, though, turned up their noses, dismissing it as excessive and pretentious, and counter to the prevailing wisdom that “rock was and should remain tied to adolescence and youthful rebellion, not some medieval fairy tale,” as one writer put it.

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It’s funny, isn’t it, how songs we’ve heard a thousand times, songs we’ve sung along to, songs we’ve heard performed in concert, have lyrics that include words we don’t fully understand, but we sing along with them anyway.

There are plenty of examples of songs with lyrics we “mis-hear” — we think they’re singing A when in fact they’re singing B — but I’m talking about lyrics that include words we simply don’t know.  They’re unusual, esoteric, rare, maybe even made-up.  But they’re right there in the chorus of a #1 song, so we just go along with them. Not until the late ’60s did artists start including lyrics on the album sleeve, and many bands simply couldn’t be bothered, or wouldn’t pay the fee required to reprint them.  So we simply weren’t sure what we were hearing.  And there was no Google or Internet to check to find out exactly what the words were.

Today, students, we’re going to delve into the etymology — the origin — of some of the more recognizable examples of words that appear in hugely popular songs, but we have no idea what they mean.  Until now.

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