"Incense and Peppermints" is one of the best songs to come out of the psychedelic sixties music scene. It's a damn fine song! Just take a listen (and a look) and you'll find that it's a finely crafted song.
It's got a groovy organ, jamming guitar, and even a quick little hint of cowbell. (At 1:04 of the video.) Some great lyrics. ("Who cares what games we choose? Little to win but nothing to lose." "Beatniks and politics, nothing is new. A yardstick for lunatics, one point of view.") And then there's the "sha-la-la" wind-down outro. Surely with a song this great, the Strawberry Alarm Clock would be around for a long time, making hit after hit!
Nope. Just the one hit.
When I did some digging, the reason the Strawberry Alarm Clock remained just a one hit wonder seemed pretty obvious: they didn't sing their own hit! "Incense and Peppermints" was sung by a 16 year-old named Greg Munford, who happened to be in the studio when the band was recording the song. Why did Greg sing it instead of someone from the band? Either because the band hated the lyrics, or because "the song wasn't fitting any of" the band members.
Anyway, the fact that nobody from Strawberry Alarm Clock sang the one hit by the group is a pretty obvious reason why they only had one hit, right? Subsequent releases leaned into the psychedelia a little too much, like the single "Sit With the Guru," which is about as pretentious as you might guess from looking at the title. And then there's "The Birdman of Alkatrash," the song that "Incense and Peppermints" was supposed to be the b-side for. It's slightly amusing, and has a good organ solo, but the rest of the music is so repetitive that its 2:10 running time seems like a prison sentence.
So, that was it--Strawberry Alarm Clock most definitely deserved their one hit wonder status. No doubt about it.
But then, I listened to one more song, "Tomorrow," which managed to get as high as #23 on the charts in early 1968. And I changed my mind.
Why wasn't this a bigger hit? The drums alone should have carried it into the top ten! And the there's the organ/guitar/drum instrumental break, and the echo "wow" ending. It's a fine little example of psychedeliciousness.
VERDICT: Should have had at least one more hit. (Maybe even more if they could have found more random teenagers to sing all their songs.)
