shock rock, one-hit wonder, psychedelicatessen (1966)

[Benjamin Zimmer]

Three cites from one article:

    The Frenzied Frontier of Pop Music, by Tom Nolan.
    Los Angeles Times, Nov 27, 1966. p. W36

* "shock rock" (28,800 Google hits, not yet in OED):

    Now the Mothers and the Fugs and their confreres from San
    Francisco -- the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane and the
    Sopwith Camel to name a few -- all participate in creating
    what has been called "Shock-Rock," a combination of far-out
    music with Theater of the Absurd.

* "one-hit wonder" (OED3 draft entry has 1977):

    Not that everything that makes the charts is new and
    exciting, of course; one of the nation's most recent
    Number 1's was a monotonous little ditty that went "Ma
    ba-haby duz de Hanky-Panky," and another classic
    tastelessly proclaimed: "They're coming to take me away,
    ha-haaa!" in a parody of mental illness. But such
    "one-hit-wonders" have no sustaining power.

(Did "one-hit wonder" come out of baseball?  Newspaperarchive has an AP
article from May 1, 1956 referring to New York Giants pitcher Ramon
Monzant as a "one-hit wonder" after he pitched a one-hit game against the
Phillies.)

* "psychedelicatessen" (OED2 has 1967):

    A sign of the extent of this madness came just before the
    Beatles' visit to Los Angeles, when the aforementioned
    publicist Derek Taylor sat sipping a beer in a Sunset
    Strip psyche-delicatessen and mused about the fate of the
    Beatles in America.


--Ben Zimmer