“Contact High” appeared on the album Come Together. I happen to have this on vinyl (thanks Willie!) and so I get the full experience of the trippy album cover design to complement the track.
As you may have guessed, this song was written by Ike, whose drug habit was still hip in 1970. It starts out with a “Secret Agent Man”-ish guitar part and gallops off on a fast beat. In fact, this song is rockin’. Tina sings in a fast, storytelling song style:
I was at this party, they had the doors all closed / All this funny smoke kept goin’ up my nose / They had this joint that they was passin’ around / But when they got to me, I turned it down / I was already contact high / Felt like I wanted to fly! / Everybody was going [inhaling sounds, on the beat] / I really didn’t know how much time had passed / But everybody got tired of blowin’ that grass / I told ’em at first that I didn’t want to smoke / But they reached in a sack, and pulled out some coke. . .
People who bought this album probably wanted a joint after listening to the track that immediately precedes “Contact High.” That song was “Why Can’t We Be Happy,” a very lame attempt at a civil rights let’s-all-get-along theme. Suffice to say that Ike is much, much more inspired when he’s writing about drugs.
In case you are interested: According to her autobiography, Tina smoked pot exactly once–she got really high with the Ikettes and decided to never do it again.
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