Tim Blair

84-85

What are the odds? Yesterday James Morrow drops by to hide his sullen cat from the landlord and sees our fancy new cuboid chess set, which launches him into "One Night in Bangkok" from the musical Chess, except the hybrid Morrow version somehow includes lyrics from The Lovin’ Spoonful’s "Summer in the City":

Bangkok, Oriental city
Back of my neck getting dirty and gritty!

And then James Lileks posts this:

“One Night in Bangkok” just came on the internet radio. Perhaps the only song ever devoted entirely to itinerant globe-trotting chess players. (Has one of my favorite lines: “Siam, gonna be the witness / to the ultimate test of cerebral fitness.” Try working that into a conversation.) I know exactly where I was when I heard this song nightly: standing behind the counter at Ralph and Jerry’s Corner Store and Culture Center, waiting for the next customer or the first bullet. Every night, “One Night.” And every night, sometimes twice, another song that presumed were all wanted to know the state of, and location of, the Heat. So Glenn Frey would come on to inform us that the Heat was on, and that the heat was on the street.

I know exactly where I was when the Chess/Heat duopoly ruled the airwaves: sucking down fumes in an aluminium foundry and casting plant west of Melbourne, where the heat was often on or near my feet, due to periodic spillages. Ever worked in a casting plant? I hear these songs and instantly recall the scent of scorched sand. And my co-worker Mondo’s effortless lyrical restylings of the era’s music; a favourite was his one-word alteration to Bruce Springsteen’s "I’m On Fire", which gave the song a frightening deviant perspective:

Hey little boy is your daddy home?