Being in the middle of a severe content drought here at the Big Bikes, I was going to resort to posting a piece I did for NEMBA Singletracks in the spring that would have been accessible only to card-carrying NEMBA "membahs," but that can wait 'til tomorrow. Instead I am cutting and pasting a comment Zen left on Friday's post (very ambitious of me, I know). He re-worked the lyrics of the 1985 Murray Head song, "One Night In Bangkok" into "One Night In Starbucks." It's more clever than anything I was planning on writing today.
I remember the release of the song "One Night In Bangkok," but it was really just one of those background noise sort of songs in the eighties (from my perspective anyway). I never listened to the lyrics until Zen drew my attention to them, and I was like "What the hell? It was a pop song about chess? Lady Gaga couldn't even pull off a song about chess." Murray makes all these comparisons between the seedy underbelly of Bangkok and the secret world of high-level chess...it makes no sense as content for a pop song. Of course, back in 1985, there was no Googling of things, so if I had happened to tune into the lyrics of Murray Head's song I would have been left scratching my (I guess I have to say) head (even though it sounds stupid coming so soon after the name "Murray Head" in a sentence). Now, in 2010, my head-scratching only lasted...wait, that just reminded me of another horrible, pun-related writing mistake I made in my review last week of the Trek Scratch Air 9 on Bike Rumor, I said:
"finally I nabbed a bike I had been itching to ride for a while: the Scratch Air 9."
When I re-read that post I found all sorts of stupid typos, but the thing that elicited the biggest audible UGH! was that unintentional pun. The little comments battle over the naming of the bike and how Trek is ripping off Niner by calling their bike a "Scratch Air 9" when Niner has model called an "Air 9" is pretty funny too. Classic angry, anonymous internet snarkiness at its best.
As I was saying before I so rudely interrupted myself...
Now, in 2010, my head-scratching only lasted a few seconds before I Googled "One Night In Bangkok" and found out that it was actually a song written for a play called Chess, that was written by ex-members of ABBA about chess. Which makes Murray's choice of lyrical content slightly less bizarre and more just lame.
One Night In Starbucks
by Zen of Cycling
Starbucks, Davis Square Cambridge
And the city don't know what the city is getting
The creme de la creme of the Tufts world in a
Show with everything but Thom Parsons
Time flies -- doesn't seem a minute
Since the Diesel Cafe had all the Thom Fans in it
All change -- don't you know that when you
Play at this level there's no ordinary venue
It's Porter -- or the Inman Square -- or Medford -- or -- or this place!
One night in Starbucks and the world's your oyster
The bums are angry but the wifi's free
You'll find a tufts kid typing in oblivion
And if you're lucky the barrista's clean
I can feel the mad bum sliding up to me
One town's very like another
When your head's down over your pieces, brother
It's a drag, it's a bore, it's really such a pity
To be typing at the board, not riding thru the city
Whaddya mean? Ya seen one crowded, polluted, stinking town --
latte, light, warm and sweet
Some are brewed as a as a vanilla treat
Get Chai'd! You're talking to a student
Whose every move's among the purest
I get my kicks above the waistline, sunshine
One night in Starbucks makes a hard man humble
Not much between despair and ecstasy
One night with Big Bikes and the tough guys tumble
Can't be too careful with your company
I can feel the mad bum walking next to me
Dicky, gonna be the witness
To the ultimate test of cerebral fitness
This grips me more than would a
custom 29r or parties with IMBA
And thank God I'm only watching the bum -- recording him --
I don't see you guys rating
The kind of post I'm contemplating
I'd let you watch, I would invite you
But the text we use would not excite you
So you better go back to your bikes, your helmets, your Single Track Trails --
One night in Starbucks and the world's your oyster
The bums are angry but the wifi's free
You'll find a tufts kid typing in oblivion
A little flesh, a little road rash, please
I can feel a mad bum sliding up to me
One night in Starbucks makes a hard man humble
Not much between despair and ecstasy
One night with Big Bikes and the tough guys tumble
Can't be too careful with your company
I can feel the mad bum walking next to me
