When all is said and done, and we're all dead, and all the history's written, I suspect the people who are now called Gen X will be known as the lucky, unscarred-childhooded few who were too young for Tiny Tim and too old for Pee-Wee Herman.
This insane song Tiny Tim is singing to these hapless children, "The Other Side," was on his 1968 debut album, God Bless Tiny Tim. It doesn't look like it's from the Australian TV special he did, so I can only guess that this performance is from Rowan & Martin's Laugh-in. If not, the most surreal, psychedelapocalyptic children's TV program I've never heard of is on an archive shelf somewhere, crying out for a DVD box set release.
Bonus: "The Other Side" is mentioned in Inherent Vice, the latest novel from that other famous children's television personality, Thomas Pynchon . [pynchonwiki.com pynchonwiki.com? Holy smokes, people, we're living in the future and the past at the same time. via boingboing]
WTF is right... holy shit. It's bizarre, but there are parts of that song, which if played with an afro-new wave beat, could be stolen directly from a Talking Heads song. The rest of it though, along with the presentation and the fact that it's sung to children and sung, quite obviously, under the influence of some serious pharmaceuticals, is just ape-shit crazy.
the superficial perception is that Tiny Tim was a joke, but then you read around, and he had a really serious side, and a lot of artists and musicians who knew him had a tremendous respect for him. Plus, that album sold like crazy. I wouldn't be surprised to see it on David Byrne's shelf.