The kind of queens they use don’t excite me.
I know the song very well (and can sign it by heart). The singer is Freddie, one of the main characters (the American chess master), and it’s all about how he is so focused on chess that he pays little attention to (and has little care for) the exotic locales where the chess championships are held; it also reflects his cynicism, and bitterness that his lover has left him for his Russian rival.
There’s Iceland, or Hastings, or the Phillipines, or… this place
Or whether you grew up in the 1980s.
That’s strange, I’ve always known that “One Night In Bangkok” was written by Björn and Benny of ABBA, and that it was part of a play. Maybe German radio casters in 1984 just were better informed.
Mrs, Martian and I had tickets to see it on Broadway, but it closed before we saw it. We loved the London cast recording, but when we heard the Broadway cast recording we realized that they had completely rewritten (and in our opinion ruined) the story. In retrospect we were happier with the refunded tickets.
Jesus Christ Superstar was similarly a concept album before it was staged as a musical. Coincidentally also featuring Murray Head in a starring role.
And, also coincidentally (or not), also co-written by Tim Rice.
That’s likely. It’s just another KROQ induced ear worm to me. Richard Blade failed to educate me about the song’s origins. Heck, we thought “Red Red Wine” was a UB40 original.
Peter Gunn is available on Amazon Prime, and quite worth watching if you’re into detective shows.
I’d suggest most of the references in Alice, even if they’re not actually music. You need a copy of The Annotated Alice to have any idea what the morality poems are that she’s mangling. Except for Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.
Perhaps some of the more quotable bits of Ennio Morricone’s work? While Sergio Leone’s movies aren’t exactly unknown, probably more people have heard the theme from The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly than have seen the movie.
That’s not the way I remember the 80s - “Bangkok” was a huge hit (#3 on the US charts), while no one other than me (and one or two friends of mine) seemed to know it was part of an intended musical (and I had the concept album). But you and I no doubt traveled in different crowds (I was in college, and “Bangkok” was all over the radio stations I heard).
I lent my older car to my daughter to take to college for a year. I joked that her Millennial friends couldn’t borrow it because it had a stick shift.*
Not only did her friends agree that “no way could they drive that”, but one of them asked how to put the window up, and when told she had to rotate the handle on the door, squeaked “Oh my GAH… that must be why they say ‘Crank up the window’!”
.
*side note: just got a new used car, and I had a heck of a time finding a manual! (only 3 in our state, of the year I wanted, had a stick)
I’m going to buy/make a sticker that says “Boomer Car with Anti-Theft Device”, with a 6-speed manual pattern.
It’s already been done:
Thanks! That’ll be my plan B.
I just thought it’d be more fun to make fun of myself than the kids. There are smart millennials out there…
oh, and they’ve aged out of the main age group (14-21) of “car thieves who might smash a window before they look to see if they can drive the car.”
I get my kicks above the waistline, sunshine!
Used by the Pythons because it was a favorite of Queen Elizabeth’s. Or something like that.
God help me for knowing this but Lawrence Welk had Larry Hooper sing a great version of this song. I still enjoy listening to it now and then.
Allan Sherman’s version:
My grandfather’s watch was the best ever made,
By the Timex company,
Just like the one John Cameron Swayze displayed
Last night on the old TV.
Oh, it works underwater so perfectly,
And still makes a ticking sound,
Which my grandfather tried only this afternoon,
And that’s how the old man drowned.
I must be the oddball. When I listen to that movement, I think of Neil Diamond’s Song Sung Blue. I even gave that movement the title of “Neil Diamond” on the copy I have on my computer 
.
And the “Lone Ranger” part is only the overture’s finale. (The earlier “Call to the Cows” section was also made famous as the standard “morning” music in Looney Tunes shorts when they weren’t using Grieg’s “Morning Mood.”)
Honestly I just assumed One Night in Bangkok was just about a crazy night in a foreign country and the video was just some weird 80s artsy imagery and never really listened to or paid much attention to the lyrics until I heard about the Chess connection this year.
Not unlike Down Under by Men At Work, Rio by Duran Duran or Africa by Toto I suppose.