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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
One of the chicks from Brazil 66 lives in Minnetonka or something. lol
But my favorite Elvis Costello still wouldn’t qualify. Or at least it’s the first one I heard back in the mid-70s and really liked. Love and angst. Allison. And brings back memories of someone. Her name wasn’t Allison though.
One of his that might qualify and I do like, is Watching the Detectives. But not as much as Allison. Maybe it’s that I like love and angst. Probably.
I forgot about this one. Veronica. Probably doesn’t qualify as cool either. It’s different from the others.
Glad you brought up Veronica. I thought of it yesterday, but decided it was not a “cool” song (despite its being one of my all-time favorite songs).
As a teen, I was greatly impressed by the song’s pathos in describing a woman fading away with dementia/Alzheimer’s. I found it very moving.
Similar phrasing as Billie Holliday’s.
I saw them and Jose Feliciano at the Carter Barron Amphitheater in ’68. True story.
Yes. I thought it was a great song to write when it was new, and when my mom …was destroyed by Alzheimer’s, it became more deeply poignant.
This is the coolest song that springs to my mind. If it doesn’t make you want to swagger down the sidewalk while listening to it, then I’m afraid there’s no helping you.
The song is named in the upper left corner. “Two Young Lovers”. Here’s one with video:
The song really starts about 3:55. There’s a lot of guitar vamping up that point.
I’ll try this. Don’t take me alive by Steely Dan.
If you have a big stereo, the pet shop boys album with the vertical stripes is an insane production.
The Sara Bareilles live album is awesome, I think in this sense.
The live Thelonious Monk album.
Since Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds has been mentioned, how about “Red Right Hand”?
What I saw in the first post was this. I can click the YouTube button and it goes to the home page. I did later think to left-click and copy the URL which took me to the video page where I could see the song title but even on YouTube it had the Video Unavailable message. It seems to be a YouTube thing and I don’t know why it does it on some videos.
I was more about “songs that tell a story.”
Sorry, but that song- which was inescapable for years- is in my list of worst songs ever. It’s so bad it deserves to be spoken of in the same terms as Imagine.
My best shot at cool is Sinatra’s Summer Wind.
Maybe Bobby Darin and Beyond the Sea?
Specifically, stories about someone living life on their own terms, without placating or worrying about authorities or group think. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be ‘cool’.
I’m glad I saved this one:
Oh, and how about “Indiana Wants Me?”
The Girl from Ipanema.
I think it was Martin Mull who said that he tried to get in on the jogging craze, but the ice kept bouncing out of his drink.
Check this out.
Added: It’s a bit long and detailed, feel free to skip through the theory like I did!
Yeah, it did this with one of my Jazz Break of the Day videos last week.
Life’s been Good by Joe Walsh.
I associate this song with elevator music (*). And elevator music is never cool.
(*: This is probably because of the movie The Blues Brothers, specifically the scene where they’re taking the elevator to the Cook County Assessor’s office. The music is the elevator is a Muzak version of “The Girl From Ipanema.”)
By this standard, Dylan’s “Too Much of Nothing”, which I have always viewed as a condemnation of empty, banal culture, is rendered meaningless because some hack produced a Muzak version. I stopped in at the College Park, MD, Jerry’s Subs (before Jerry sold out and corporations substituted cardboard and paste for fresh ingredients) and there was “Too Much of Nothing” on the Muzak. People thought I had completely lost it, I was laughing so hard.
Sorry, Chrissy wins. Probably the Coolest Woman in Rock:
Harry’s last album before he died, “Sequel”, had a followup song to his first hit, “Taxi”.
[partial lyrics]
So here she’s actin’ happy inside her handsome home
And me, I’m flyin’ in my taxi, takin’ tips and gettin’ stoned I got into town a little early
Had eight hours to kill before the show
First I thought about heading up north of the bay
Then I knew where I had to go
I thought about taking a limousine
Or at least a fancy car
But I ended up taking a taxi
‘Cause that’s how I got this farYou see, ten years ago it was the front seat
Drivin’ stoned and feelin’ no pain
Now here I am straight and sittin’ in the back
Hitting 16 Parkside Lane The driveway was the same as I remembered
And a butler came and answered the door
He just shook his head when I asked for her
And said, “She doesn’t live here anymore”
But he offered to give me the address
That they were forwarding her letters to
I just took it and returned to the cabbie and said
“I got one more fare for you”
If we’re going to go with personal-life cool more than in music, I’d put Deborah Harry above Chrissie Hynde too. She dropped out of fame and fortune for years to care for her ill husband.
Was just about to post that – It’s right in the title. LRB is grossly underrated.
But one of the greatest/coolest songs ever recorded.
If you ever get a chance to see The Glenn Miller Orchestra live (the “Ghost Orchestra” is still touring, playing off what appears to be the original charts), they’re fantastic.
There are times when that is the only song to play.