Lawrence Welk - oh how I love him!

For those of you that know me, you know that I love the Lawrence Welk Show. It started innocently enough, watching it with my grandmother. I reasoned that I could choose to either really hate it or really completely get into it. As I opted for the latter, I became quite a fan of the show, mainly for its overly upbeat American ideal being played out during the Vietnam War, civil rights, and the hippie movement during the 1960s and 1970s. With this in mind, it is amazing to see a song such as this played on the show, especially given the double-meaning of the song lyrics to all the heads who might have tuned in to the show in the Seventies. As a historian, this is an example of how the establishment can take something from the underground and sanitize it for its own purposes, whatever those may be. Unlike other videos of the Welk Show on YouTube, this is real and actually happened:

It begs the question of whether or not the singers actually knew what they were singing. Or, maybe they had just ingested a heapin' helpin' of Thai Stick to help them through their performance! Either way, enjoy!