Yesterday I recieved a phone call. It was Diana. She said, "Jeff, hold on. Monz wants to talk to you." When did he get a secretary? In an instant she patched me through. Secretly I think she handed him the phone. "Hey man," he said, "do you remember that band from the early 80s that did the song Black Coffee in Bed?" There's something you have to understand. On top of a recent promotion to Chief Executive, Monz is the Tome of All Musical Knowledge. Before he got a personal secretary, Monz used to work with commoners. One day at work a couple young kids tried to stump him with old heavy metal trivia. Who sang 'Balls to the Wall?' "Accept." Who released the album 'The Nightcomers?' "Holocaust." In time they grew frustated and gave up. Like I said, he's the Tome of all Musical Knowledge.
When the Tome calls because he's stumped, you expect the kind of question that keeps you awake at night. Who sang, 'I Love A Man In A Uniform' or 'Black-Eyed Suzy?' While 'Black Coffee In Bed' comes off the beaten path, it's hardly obscure. Anybody who attended college in the 1980s had it drilled into their skull. When you entered the university system during that decade, you were handed 'The Singles' along with albums by Echo and the Bunnymen, Guadalcanal Diary, Hüsker Dü and the Violent Femmes.
Today similar bands are labeled "alternative." The term was coined in the 1980s to describe shit that made you feel hip because it wasn't mainstream. The only radio stations that played it were funded by the university system. They were staffed by students and guided by faculty advisers. College stations provided music for those little parties you had in the room before you went to the big parties on campus. We called those parties "primers." For this reason, "alternative" music was often known as "college rock."
At the time, Spin magazine used to track the Top Ten College albums. In the 1980s, music still came on black discs known as albums. We put a needle on an album and stood around in a drunken circle and sang college tunes. In the 1990s, kids did the same thing with CDs. They were small metalic discs loaded with songs from the 1960s. The music of the generation after mine was filled with Vietnam protest songs. Unless you were a prude, Bill Clinton didn't provide much fuel for college unrest. Why not protest the war again?
"Are you kidding me?" I asked the Tome of All Musical Knowledge. "It was Squeeze."
"Yaarrgh!" he shouted back in a release of frustration.
black coffee in bed
(Difford/Tilbrook)
There's a stain on my notebook
where your coffee cup was
And there's ash in the pages
now I've got myself lost
I was writing to tell you
that my feelings tonight
Are a stain on my notebook
that rings your goodbye
With the way that you left me
I can hardly contain
The hurt and the anger
and the joy of the pain
Now knowing I am single
they'll be fire in my eyes
And a stain on my notebook
for a new love tonight
From the lips without passion
to the lips with a kiss
There's nothing of your love
that I'll ever miss
The stain on my notebook
remain all that's left
Of the memory of late nights
and coffee in bed
Now she's gone
and I'm back on the beat
A stain on my notebook
says nothing to me
Now she's gone
and I'm out with a friend
With lips full of passion
and coffee in bed
