Whatever you want to call this weather we're having -- snowpocalypse, snowmageddon, blizzard of Oz, etc. -- it really boils down to the fact that it's bone-achingly cold. To warm up your insides, might we suggest a hot cup of coffee? Perhaps one spiked with some whiskey, Irish cream, cinnamon liqueur, or peppermint schnapps?
OK, we know that it doesn't actually warm you and, in fact, has the opposite effect of making your extremities freeze more quickly -- bummer -- but it's not like you're going out in this unless you have to, right? To warm you up, and maybe get the blood flowing, here are five songs about that most precious of beverages: coffee.
Descendents know coffee. Their 1997 tour was the "Caffeine Nation Tour." "Kids" is the best summation of how I'm feeling right now. After about half a pot of Just Coffee's Arriba! Breakfast Blend, I'm about ready to bounce off the damned walls. I'd like to go back to bed and curl up with the cats, but it's like Milo says: Thanks to modern chemistry, sleep is now optional. (Although, in my case, it's more like damned impossible.)
"Java Junkie" is a catchy little ska number to dance to after you've had a couple espresso shots. In the song (a harrowing tale of java addiction), Dance Hall Crashers sing, At least he's not smoking crack. Truth. While I've considered defenestrating several people who've made the poor choice to pester me before my caffeine, neither I nor anyone I know has ever boosted a DVD player to buy a latte.
The one thing I miss most about smoking is the way coffee and cigarettes go together. They're such a perfect pairing -- in fact, Jim Jarmusch made an entire movie about the two. There's something about liquid and gaseous stimulants coming together to make your heart beat irregularly that makes it easy for folks to pontificate on the subject. Glen Glenn's rockabilly lament "One Cup of Coffee and a Cigarette" has the song's protagonist marking the passage of time with a smoke and a cuppa joe.
Frank Sinatra's "The Coffee Song" certainly implies that the folks down in Brazil like their coffee. You date a girl and find out later/She smells just like a percolator seems a bit harsh. However, that lyric note-perfectly encapsulates the way your coat absorbs the odors if you spend more time in a coffee shop than it takes to grab a mocha and vamoose. Any student who's ever used free WiFi to get a paper written knows that you might as well have bathed in organic Sumatran when you consider how you're gonna smell when you leave the place.
The Ink Spots' "Java Jive" is a love song. True -- it's a love song written to a bean, from which comes the beverage we all need to get upright in the morning. Still, the song is simultaneously about the joys of the java, as well as that energy you get when you've had a cup too many. The funny thing about "Java Jive" is that, for a song about coffee and the jitters it gives you, it's a pretty laid-back number. It's like the Ink Spots drank so much, they went through the coffee buzz all the way to a sort of caffeinated Zen.
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