User:PianoUpMyNose/Psychotic Reaction

"Psychotic Reaction" is a song by the American garage rock band Count Five. It was released as a single in June 1966 and served as the title track for their sole studio album later that year. The single became the band's only hit, reaching number 5 in the US and number 3 in Canada.

Composition
The song's musical key is F♯. It begins with a pentatonic fuzz guitar riff that has been compared to the Rolling Stones' "Susie Q" and Johnny Rivers' "The Seventh Son"; however, scholar Steve Waksman writes that the tone itself is more like the Stones' "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" and the Electric Prunes' "I Had Too Much to Dream (Last Night)". Accompanying the riff is a "rhythmic monad" played on the bass drum, and Ellner's "warbling" harmonica. Byrne's less aggressive rhythm guitar then comes in playing a I–♭VII chord progression.

The lyrics of the song describe a state of psychosis triggered by romantic frustration:

At the end of the verse, Byrne shouts, "And it feels like this", leading into an instrumental passage that serves as a "musical analogy" for the singer's mental state. The episode has been called a "rave-up" or "freak-out", a technique that musicologist Michael Hicks describes as "a pseudo-double time section with a corresponding intensification of dynamics". The style was pioneered by the English group the Yardbirds, and as such the song has frequently been compared to them, in particular their 1965 rendition of Bo Diddley's "I'm a Man". The section lasts 45 seconds before a drum fill brings the band back for a second and final verse. At the end of the song, the lead riff briefly returns before a copy of the rave-up, spliced onto the end of the track, plays as the song fades out.

Retrospective assessment and legacy
"Psychotic Reaction" is one of the most popular garage rock songs, with critic Bruce Eder deeming it "a standard of the genre".