Song of the Day – “Too Cool” by David Wilcox

Okay, I can’t find this song on YouTube, so as a consolation, the less quirky but catchier “Hypnotizin’ Boogie“.

I bet most people have never heard of David Wilcox.  There’s an American folk singer named David Wilcox, but he’s his own man.  I’m talking here about the wacky, off-beat, talented Canadian blues-rock guitarist.


He is apparently surfing.


Back to the song.  I don’t want you people to think I’m dead because my eyes roll back in my head.  Lyrics, those.  Not to the song you’re listening to now.  Maybe I should talk about that song instead.

Nah.  I’ll talk about this weird kid I worked with now and then several years ago.

You see, I worked for this company that sold things.  Big things.  And we would have movers come and pick these things up and deliver them.  One of the movers was a regular where I worked, and he had hired help.

His help for one stretch of time was this weird sort of feller who fancied himself “cool” because he listened to the Limp Bizkit.  He dressed like that character Fred Durst too, but anyway…

I had my custom-made (and Mikeified) David Wilcox CD playing in the stereo in the back of the warehouse.  “Too Cool” just happened to be playing when the movers arrived.  The “cool” guy asked (in some sort of street lingo, no doubt) what manner of music I was subjecting him to and whether the loudness of said music could be hastily adjusted downward.

I said… well… shouted (it was LOUD) “Are you kidding man?  This is David Wilcox!”

Now, if you’ve heard more of David Wilcox’s early stuff, then you know that he had a knack for taking some musical ideas that others would discard due to their being not any good, and tweak them just a tad to make them into his own quirky, offbeat melodies.

Okay, you might say they suck, but I say he’s in on the joke.

Anyway, I appeared composed and dignified when I told this “cool” feller that what he had stumbled upon hearing was called “Goober Rock”. It is a term that I have not once used to describe anything before or since.

He was stunned.

Later on, or possibly before, the same “cool” guy (he had bleached blonde hair, by the way, and was short and chubby) told me that he was a drummer, and that he had played drums for several local bands on their albums.

I picked up two almost-perfectly-drumstick-shaped sticks and handed them to him, saying “Play me something.”

He took them, and looking incredulous, said “I can’t play anything with these… they’re not drumsticks!”

I took them back and proceeded to pound and tap out a funkified rhythm on some nearby boxes and the bay door.  I am not a drummer.

Me = 1, “Cool” Guy = 0

Later still, I heard from the regular mover that the “Cool” Guy was scoping out the ground for discarded cigarette butts and smoking them on the spot when he found them.  Yuk.

The next and last time I saw the “Cool” Guy, he was pale, and he had several scabs all over his lips and his chin.

Yuk.

And that’s why no one should listen to Limp Bizkit.