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What’s the ‘Coolest’ Song Ever?
A cool song needs a groove. Check. The singer needs to sound cool and the musicianship effortless. The lyrics tell a story with no judgement and we are encouraged to see it as we wish. This is the kind of song that works perfectly as background for a party. Not too serious, grandiose, or complicated.
You get a shiver in the dark
It’s raining in the park, but meantime
South of the river you stop and you hold everything
A band is blowin’ dixie double-four time
You feel alright when you hear that music ring
Setting the time and the mood, and the theme “you feel alright”
And now you step inside, but you don’t see too many faces (good music but small audience?)
Comin’ in out of the rain, you hear the jazz go down
Competition in other places (question or answer?)
Oh, but the horns, they blowin that sound (but it’s good stuff..)
Way on down south, way on down south, London town
A joke, because we are expecting New Orleans. But the fact that it’s south London makes it more interesting. Of course, a hot Creole band plays in London whether they hail from NOLA or are indigenous Brits.
The narrator is a fan of music. We can tell he’s got his own band (which is playing the song) He is reporting his observations.
You check out guitar, George
He knows all the chords
Mind he’s strictly rhythm
He doesn’t wanna make it cry or sing
Yes, and an old guitar is all he can afford
When he gets up under the lights to play his thing
The lyrics make a fine use of the second person. “You” are experiencing these things as they happen. You can see it and feel it. ‘You’ become the narrator with the cool voice. Okay, I’m there…
And Harry doesn’t mind if he doesn’t make the scene
He’s got a daytime job, he’s doin’ alright
He can play the “Honk Tonk” like anything
Savin’ it up for friday night
With the “Sultans”
With the “Sultans of Swing”
Filling out the scene there are some who are underwhelmed…
And a crowd of young boys, they’re fooling around in the corner
Drunk and dressed in their best brown baggies and their platform soles
They don’t give a damn about any trumpet playing band
It ain’t what they call rock and roll
And the “Sultans”
Yeah, the ‘Sultans’ played Creole, Creole
This is a perennial problem with playing live music. Genre. If people don’t like or accept the genre, they will not be taken with musicianship. This is even worse if the genre is considered “uncool”.
And then the man, he steps right up to the microphone
And says, “At last”, just as the time bell rings
“Goodnight, now it’s time to go home”
And he makes it fast with one more thing
We are the “Sultans”, we are the “Sultans of Swing”
The players know they are making good music, but it’s hard to remember when you’re playing in front of a small audience, some of whom are ignoring you.
Regardless, he’s saying we are proud of our music and playing, in the humility that musicians are relentlessly guided into with public performance. The ‘man’, the singer and bandleader, is acknowledging his bandmates just by announcing the name and allowing the musicianship to play out.
Every professional musician has encountered these types: ‘Guitar George’ who’s adept at finding tasty chords (we here a couple right after that line) and he’s uninterested in being a wailing lead-player, Harry who’s got a day-job, “doin’ alright”, playing out for fun. Almost every band in the world has these types, and any seasoned musician can recognize the band dynamics instantly.
This song is timeless.
What are your “cool songs” and why?
Published in General
here goes with my “cool” set:
2120 South Michigan Ave. by the Rolling Stones
The Main Thing by Roxy Music
Give me the night by George Benson
Street Life by Randy Crawford
break for these words from our sponsor…
Be cool. If you forget the words, just start whistlin’.
Here’s a cool one: “Spinning Wheel” by Blood Sweat & Tears
How could I forget?
Hippie sh–.
This is why we need a thumbs-down button. Why not Good Morning Starshine, while you’re at it!
My ears are bleeding here!
It’s called “taste” Drew. You may want to look into it. ;)
I cannot argue with your selection but I prefer the groove of a good album to a solitary song. But it’s your game here…
Normally, my answer could change from day to day, week to week, etc. and might come from all over the map. But for almost three months now I have been stuck on one song. The back story:
Around the end of March I was on my first ever work trip to Cincinnati. As we were headed back to the airport we stopped for lunch at a downtown restaurant. It was a bit crowded and noisy but I could hear the music coming through. I scanned the room and saw that the sound system was being driven by a reel to reel that was proudly displayed behind the bar. Awesome. And for eleven glorious minutes while waiting for my order, I was focused intently on the Creedence Clearwater Revival version of I Heard It Through The Grapevine:
Since then I have re-acquired Chronicle and listen to the “best of” album over and over again.
They covered everybody from Billie Holiday to Erik Satie. Damn good band.
100 comments in and no Elvis?
Equally surprising is no Righteous Brothers. I get a kick out of youtube videos of black people reacting to You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling. The video starts out with them backlit so you can’t tell their race. There is always a shocked expression when the spotlight hits Bill Medley’s face. Odd thing is that I’m old enough to have heard them first time around. I never thought they were black. I thought they were damn fine singers. Listen to Bobby Hatfield sing Unchained Melody live on the Andy Williams tv show. Purest male vocal I’ve ever heard.
Pity party. One of the lowest forms of self-indulgence.
Good choice but if you’re going to talk about Booker T & the M G’s don’t forget Time is Tight; one of my favorites.
Seems to me the point of that song was the sadness/tragedy of seeing it pass from generation to generation without realizing it at the time, and when it might have been correctable.
How could I have forgotten:
Another favorite:
I think these guys nailed it.
There was a sequel, or maybe just a new stanza, from his daughter (?) that played with that sort of idea. I saw it performed on TV decades ago.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNFzfwLM72c
Unless you’re hearing a version edited for radio play or something, seems to me it’s all in the original song. It starts out singing about being too busy for his own father, then his son being too busy for him. “My boy is just like me!”
Or maybe that’s a different/longer version from someone else, I see one from “Ugly Kid Joe” or something that’s like 8 minutes, haven’t listened to it yet.
I have a love/hate relationship with posts that precipitate the chance I’ll be lost in a sea of playlists in my head. I wandered from Cool Change to One Particular Harbor and through countless songs past Hound Dog, The Ghetto and The Load Out/Stay, someone mentioned American Pie, Good VIbrations yes but don’t forget Kokomo and all the car songs of the Beach Boys, The Boxer, Turn the Page and so on forever and a day. I kept thinking we were missing something and then I heard four words in my head.
James Dean, James Dean
A song about a cool dude, written by a handful of cool songwriters* and sung by one cool band.
* Don Henley, Glenn Frey, Jackson Browne, and J. D. Souther.
The song that started it all and then some.
Speaking of J.D. Souther, I remember this being pretty cool:
I was five years old, almost six, when I heard Heartbreak Hotel coming from an old Crosley vacuum tube radio. One with a bakelite cabinet. Even then, I knew I was hearing something special.
“Relaxin’ with the Miles Davis Quintet” is also high on the cool scale. In fact, so is every album in that series (“Steamin'”, “Cookin'”, etc.).
But in the rock mode, nothing beats “Roundabout” by Yes! for me. The opening bass part alone is leagues cooler than many entire albums.
And, yes “Sultans” is great, but my vote for coolest Dire Straits song goes to …
I scoured the record stores of Fort Wayne, Muncie and West Lafayette looking for that one back in the day, and finally had to have the store in Muncie special order it for me. It was worth the effort.
If you disqualified all of jazz, you would have disqualified all of cool.
It doesn’t get any cooler than this.
If this song fails to garner the most votes, then “send lawyers, guns, and money/the s*** has hit the fan.”
It’s not the collest, but one of the quirkiest. It’s “Tony The Beat” by The Sounds, and it was used in a party scene in the movie Music and Lyrics (it’s somewhat risque, listener discretion advised):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oftsVpjrc5c
If you can find the uncensored music video (no pixelation of nudity or drug use), it’s pretty cool . . .
And then of course.