These things need a catalyst, something certainly as convincingly moist as The Wicker Man which seeps its sticky mess in such a way as to be almost convincing. Also, it doesn't ask a lot of you either, unlike The Golden Bough upon which a lot of such pagan / folkloric thinking is based. Even so, there are no Green Men in Golden Bough (he says, waiting to be told otherwise!). I have a greater affection for The White Goddess, which is altogether less didactic. Times it my life I found it both a comfort and an inspiration; it has also furnished me with at least two great songs - The Allansford Pursuit & The Woodcutter's Song, both of which occur as footnotes, the former being written by Graves himself, based on one of the shape-shifting incantations of Isobel Gowdie, and often finding itself in an is-it-traditional? crisis, along with Kipling's A Tree Song etc.

Worthy of a PhD? Maybe so, but I'd like an examination of the whole pagan / magic / fascist thing anyway, being dismayed by the persistence of the Frazerian notion of folklore unwittingly perpetuating paganism, which is not only absolute bollocks, but evidence of a darker mindset which always assumes a hidden, or codified, meaning of such things, an approach which certainly comes out in The Wicker Man.

As for One Size Fits All, the Zappa album immediately before Bongo Fury, made earlier that same year in fact, it too features Beefheart, on harmonica, albeit pseudonymously as Bloodshot Rollin' Red. He's right there in the classic San Ber'dino.

Meanwhile, I'm sure the Gently Johnny & Song 32 mp3 is still up there, just click Here to download.