Drugs - a theme

Of the many themes touched upon by Bob Dylan in his Theme Time Radio Hour, he spent time on three specific, socially-acceptable chemical dependencies – whiskey, coffee, and cigarettes. But he didn't touch on the underbelly, the illicit side of things.  Why do songwriters touch on such things?  My smart-ass answer is "because they can."  But seriously folks, these kinds of things are more available to them once they become "successful."  Musicians, for better or worse, are seen as people who have made it financially and live the high life [no pun intended].  Unsavory characters who want to get close to musicians use drugs as a tool to get themselves closer to the high life they want for themselves.  Some musicians are depressed, some have suicidal thoughts, some have some kind of chemical imbalance, and some are just bored with their own existence.  Stories about addiction and drug abuse have been part of our culture in music, books, and theater for centuries. As long as people are in some sort of pain and there’s something to let people get away from that pain, drugs will be a topic for "the arts."

The rules – 1) only one song/artist [because some have quite a few drug songs]; 2) the song is in my collection.

Marijuana
Don't Step on the Grass, Sam [Gov't Mule]
Rainy Day Women ♯12 & 35 [Bob Dylan]
Legalize It [Peter Tosh]
Kaya [Bob Marley]
Willin’ [Little Feat]
 
Cocaine
Cocaine [Eric Clapton]
Don't You Think This Outlaw Bit's Done Got Out Of Hand [Waylon Jennings]
Gold Dust Woman [Fleetwood Mac]
Snowblind [Black Sabbath]
Cocaine Blues [Johnny Cash]
For Your Life [Led Zeppelin]
Truckin’ [Grateful Dead]
 
Heroin and other opiates
Heroin [The Velvet Underground]
Super Stupid [Funkadelic]
The Needle and the Damage Done [Neil Young]
Sister Morphine [The Rolling Stones]
The Needle and the Spoon [Lynyrd Skynyrd]
Bad [U2]
All Night Train [The Allman Brothers Band]
Hurt [Nine Inch Nails]
Under the Bridge [Red Hot Chili Peppers]
Happiness is a Warm Gun [The Beatles]
Mr. Brownstone [Guns N' Roses]
Junkhead [Alice in Chains]
Cold Turkey [John Lennon]
Sam Stone [John Prine]
 
LSD & other hallucinogens
White Rabbit [Jefferson Airplane]
Legend of a Mind [The Moody Blues]
And She Was [Talking Heads]
Purple Haze [The Jimi Hendrix Experience]
Kid Charlemagne [Steely Dan]
The Acid Queen [The Who]
Soft-Hearted Hana [George Harrison]
Roller Coaster [13^th Floor Elevators]
 
Others
Motorhead [Motörhead]- speed
Artificial Energy [The Byrds] - speed
Waiting Around to Die [Townes Van Zandt] – codeine
Detox Mansion [Warren Zevon] – therapy
Pink Turns to Blue [Hüsker Dü] – overdose
Feel Good Hit of the Summer [Queens of the Stone Age] – drugs in general - "Nicotine, Valium, Vicodin, marijuana, ecstasy, alcohol...cccccocaine!"
Master of Puppets [Metallica] – drugs in general

Midnight - a theme

Between 2006 and 2009, Bob Dylan hosted his own weekly program on satellite radio called the Theme Time Radio Hour. According to the website that serves as a repository for these one-hour programs, the programs were a thematical journey through musical history.  The themes could be a single word – “divorce,” “father,” “hello,” “weather,” “baseball,” “money,” and about 100 other themes.  The archive site reads like this – “Covering topics from smoking to presidents, Bob served as curator, educator, philosopher and comedian in our journey through his vast collection of recordings, including some secret gems that had been all-but-lost to us.”  I want to try a theme he hadn’t covered. 

My first choice was the word “Moon,” but to my chagrin he already covered that.  Having searched the archive, I finally came up with a theme Dylan didn’t cover – “Midnight.”  Why “midnight”? Midnight is the time on the Doomsday Clock when the world will succumb to some man-made catastrophe, like a nuclear war.  The New Zealand Oxford Dictionary identifies midnight as the time when witches are supposedly active. Traditionally referred to as the witching hour and the darkest part of night--midnight is more than a number on the clock, more than just the end of one day and the beginning of another. In blues parlance, it’s a time of intense sadness.  Cinderella had to be home before midnight, lest her carriage turn back into a pumpkin. You get the idea. Good things don’t happen at midnight.

I made only two rules for myself: 1) the songs have to be in my collection; 2) one song per artist.  Here’s my hour [roughly] of “midnight” songs:

Midnight Rider – The Allman Brothers Band

2 Minutes to Midnight – Iron Maiden

Living After Midnight – Judas Priest

After Midnight – Eric Clapton

Midnight Train to Georgia – Gladys Knight and the Pips

In the Midnight Hour – Wilson Pickett

Midnight Rambler – The Rolling Stones

Isn’t It Midnight – Fleetwood Mac

The Midnight Special – Creedence Clearwater Revival

South City Midnight Lady – The Doobie Brothers

Midnight Sun – Asia

Midnight – Red Hot Chili Peppers

Midnight at the Movies – Justin Townes Earle

Midnight Blues – Gary Moore

Moanin’ at Midnight – Howlin’ Wolf