“Sit With The Guru” is the first song on Side 2 of Strawberry Alarm Clock’s 1968 album Wake Up… It’s Tomorrow. It was also released as a single. “Sit With The Guru” is jaunty and poppy, with an aggressive guitar vying for supremacy with the lovely, melodic vocal work.
The relative placidness of “Sit With The Guru” comes as something of a relief after the one-two punch to the soul delivered by the preceding two downer songs, “They Saw The Fat One Coming” and “Curse Of The Witches”. A garage psych classic in its own right, “Sit With The Guru” is vintage SAC.
In fact, if you want to introduce a neophyte to the Strawberry Alarm Clock oeuvre, this song pretty much has it all: blistering electric guitar, lush vocals (with la-la-laaa backing harmonies), ringing keyboards, enjoyable slapdash drumming, and hippie lyrics. There’s even a sudden, sitar-led freakout section towards the end. All this in a perfect three minutes.
Speaking of those hippie lyrics — here’s a representative taste:
“Yesterday’s invalidated
Hip mankind on, turn your mind on
Sit with the guru
Meditation, ooh!
High, high, where eagles fly
Leave today untouched in the sky”
Yeah baby!
Lyrically, “Sit With The Guru” is a jumble of such new-agey descriptions of an evening with some all-important ‘guru’. Who is it exactly? Well it may be an actual person, or LSD or some similar drug, or the experience itself. Maybe it’s something else entirely. Ultiamtely it doesn’t really matter.
There’s even a rhetorical connection with the album’s title and biggest hit, “Tomorrow”:
“Stretch out your mind to humanity
How many tomorrows can you see?”
In this song, the lyrics are actually more psychedelic than the music, at least until the trip really starts and the atonal, arrhythmic sitar takes over for a few brief seconds.
“Sit With The Guru” appears on…
Wake Up… It’s Tomorrow (1968)
“Sit With The Guru” b/w “Pretty Song From Psych-Out” (1968)
The Best Of Strawberry Alarm Clock (1970)
Incense & Peppermints (1990)
Strawberries Mean Love (1992)
The Strawberry Alarm Clock Anthology (1993)
I used to think it may be a reference to Allan Watts. I mean, he was all over the hippie scene, and also known as “party giver”. But probably it was not One guru in specific
Maybe I’m wrong, but I find a lot of winking humor in “Sit With the Guru”. The light and playful lyrics are almost a parody of a commercial. The chorus-line kick music at the end seals it for me. I cannot believe this was done in dead earnest. I love this and every track on Wake Up.
One of the sac strangest songs and one of the most memorable, particularly the bizarre ending.