It's 420. Another chance for a songlist. This one I think should be kinda special, since there's been 420 songlists since the dawn of mankind. Or since people started making lists and smoking pot and using "420" as code for pot-smoking. Ironic that by the time I get this thing up, it will actually be right around 4:20 p.m.

For those who are curious, the origins of the number 420 are smoke-shrouded in urban legend. I found a few things today in honor of the unofficial holiday, but my fave is the thoughtful piece by the Huffington Post on the meaning of 420. Not so surprising that the Grateful Dead were at least partially responsible for 420's propagation into pot culture. Here's an excerpt:

It was Christmas week in Oakland, 1990. Steven Bloom was wandering through The Lot – that timeless gathering of hippies that springs up in the parking lot before every Grateful Dead concert – when a Deadhead handed him a yellow flyer.

"We are going to meet at 4:20 on 4/20 for 420-ing in Marin County at the Bolinas Ridge sunset spot on Mt. Tamalpais," reads the message, which Bloom dug up and forwarded to the Huffington Post. Bloom, then a reporter for High Times magazine and now the publisher of CelebStoner.com and co-author of Pot Culture, had never heard of "420-ing" before.

The flyer came complete with a 420 back story: "420 started somewhere in San Rafael, California in the late '70s. It started as the police code for Marijuana Smoking in Progress. After local heads heard of the police call, they started using the expression 420 when referring to herb – Let's Go 420, dude!"

Bloom reported his find in the May 1991 issue of High Times, which the magazine found in its archives and provided to the Huffington Post. The story, though, was only partially right.

It had nothing to do with a police code — though the San Rafael part was dead on. Indeed, a group of five San Rafael High School friends known as the Waldos – by virtue of their chosen hang-out spot, a wall outside the school – coined the term in 1971. The Huffington Post spoke with Waldo Steve, Waldo Dave and Dave's older brother, Patrick, and confirmed their full names and identities, which they asked to keep secret for professional reasons. (Pot is still, after all, illegal.)

Check out the rest of that here.

Now, onto the real reason for this post — music about smoking pot.

This article appears in Apr 15-21, 2009.