Every so often, when someone asks for your opinion, like, "Do you like peanut butter sandwiches?" You should respond with, "I get my kicks ABOVE the waistline, sunshine!" and then sneer at them and turn away.
This song rocks.Not heard it for a good few years now,but it's still as fresh and vibrant as ever.It hasn't dated one bit.Benny,Bjorn and Tim Rice's offering is a song for the ages.So vibrant.Never get tired of it. It's a superb arrangement and production
This was my dad's favorite song. He loved Thailand when he lived there. Out of the 60 countries he lived in as a CIA agent, it was his favorite along with Spain. My dad passed away 5 years ago November 7th. We played this at his funeral. RIP DAD. I know you lived your life to the fullest
@Snake Griffin I have a half brother somewhere in Asia(Japan or Korea) name was tattooed on my dad. After my dad's death, I read letters and was sad. Only because he had to grow up without my dad's love that I miss so much. He may never have had a "father" to provide and love him.
I would totally prepare myself for full physical hand to hand combat if I waled into a strange room with this song playing. This music and song is a complete challenge
Emily B my uncle sings good night papa it’s hard to die to the tune of seasons of the sun when he’s about to checkmate my father. I always think about chess when i hear that song lol
Actually references the Thai Martial Art of Muay Thai, where a large portion of the kicks are literally below the belt. Above the belt techniques are primarily elbow and hand techniques with liberal use of knees as well.
The fading moments of American exceptionalism, political correctness wouldn't be born until the morning. Tonight we ran the city streets free and young. The last of the guilty free
Right? Every dam video. WE GET IT. People wonder how Nazi Germany or cults get started. Well it's because no one has any original thoughts and take pride in the fact they think and say the same thing a million other people say over and over and over.
Thank god for the 80's music, where we can always go back to escape from the crap we have to listen to these days "hey yo, hoe, madafaka" For duck's sake, what have we done???
For those who don't know, it's from the musical Chess which is about an American and a Russian in an international chess tournament. The Murray Head character is the American who is snobby and condescending about the tournament's location; hence, the lyrics.
You're welcome. I thought the same thing the first time I heard it. There's another song from Chess called "Pity the Child" and that kind of fills in the reasons: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-88LMCbke6lw.html
Jean D I take it your replying to Christdragons comment But you say 80's were all synthesizer + Hairspray that isn't true is it examples you had bands + solo artists that were not all synthesizer like: Big Country, The Cure, Suzanne Vega, Billy Idol, U2, Dire Straits, The Police, Iron Maiden, Tracy Chapman, The Bangles, Prince, Bruce Springsteen, etc etc And as for Hairspray hell some people did and dome people didn't-I also grew up in the 80's and people also sometimes used Hair Gel, Or Mousse, Hair Wax,........or sometimes did nothing to it
I wonder if it was meant to be "Knight" but early on people mistakenly called it "Night" and nobody thought it was worth it to correct them? (It would make it even more clever if it was "Knight".)
I know several dudes that gave up working on cars in the early 2000's. The fun went out of it. Remember just changing the alternator? The whole car was like that. No bullshit.
I can remember getting stoned and discussing the merits of this becoming a movie. It's been 21 years and I *still* think we were right, this song would make a cool movie.
+Resty Mervin Ponio +Alberta RoseActually this has already been made into a movie... well, as close to a movie as it will ever get. The soundtrack was recently updated and produced as a stage movie with Edina Menzel as Florence, Josh Grobin as Sergievski, and several other musical superstars. I have this on DVD and, with the exception of a few lyric changes that I deeply hate, the whole thing was pretty spectacular and worth every penny.
Bangkok, Oriental setting And the city don't know that the city is getting The creme de la creme of the chess world In a show with everything but Yul Brynner Time flies doesn't seem a minute Since the Tirolean spa had the chess boys in it All change don't you know that when you Play at this level there's no ordinary venue It's Iceland or the Philippines or Hastings or Or this place! One night in Bangkok and the world's your oyster The bars are temples but the pearls ain't free You'll find a god in every golden cloister And if you're lucky then the god's a she I can feel an angel sliding up to me One town's very like another When your head's down over your pieces, brother It's a drag, it's a bore, it's really such a pity To be looking at the board, not looking at the city Whaddya mean? Ya seen one crowded, polluted, stinking town Tea, girls, warm, sweet Some are set up in the Somerset Maugham suite Get thai'd, you're talking to a tourist Whose every move's among the purest I get my kicks above the waistline, sunshine One night in Bangkok makes a hard man humble Not much between despair and ecstasy One night in Bangkok and the tough guys tumble Can't be too careful with your company I can feel the devil walking next to me Siam's gonna be the witness To the ultimate test of cerebral fitness This grips me more than would a Muddy old river or reclining Buddha And thank God I'm only watching the game controlling it I don't see you guys rating The kind of mate I'm contemplating I'd let you watch, I would invite you But the queens we use would not excite you So you better go back to your bars, your temples Your massage parlours One night in Bangkok and the world's your oyster The bars are temples but the pearls ain't free You'll find a god in every golden cloister A little flesh, a little history I can feel an angel sliding up to me One night in Bangkok makes a hard man humble Not much between despair and ecstasy One night in Bangkok and the tough guys tumble Can't be too careful with your company I can feel the devil walking next to me
The song is about this guy rejecting the city's culture for the sake of his chess game. He's way more interested in chess than everything the city has to offer.
And I believe the main character was supposed to be a parody of Bobby Fischer, American Chess Grandmaster who had a similar condescending attitude towards non-chess players.
Today it would be the opposite. He’s actually in a way mocking the hedonism of Bangkok. Interesting how morality has declined so much it’s especially evident in music.
It's so exotic. And Bangkok is a very exotic destination I found out years later for myself sometimes actually going for, 'one night in Bangkok,' listening to this song before heading out on a bus or flight. All the knowledge we had of anything was a world globe with place names on it which was for our geography classes. Times have completely changed.
This song is soo special, it speaks for itself! I have loved , And. ( understood it), the song is about Chess. Wow! Soo smart. Thank you ,Mr Murray Head!
i was in bangkok a month ago - i was at the reclining buddha - and when he says the bars are temples but the pearls aint free hes refferring to the girls ( hookers)
There was one night when i was in Bangkok....suddenley, some bar played this song....while i was listening in awe, a guy came by clapped me on my back saying:"man, this is Bangkok" , smiled an disapeared in the night...i will never forget this
"I get my kicks above the waistline, Sunshine" is on my list of Favorite Song Lyrics Ever Written. Figures Benny and Bjorn would have been behind that. And all about chess, no less.
Specifically remember this song as a young man before I started my family....now its all gone and time moves on and so much has happened...and one day...this song plays again to bring back memories of days gone by...n...
Gotcha covered there boss. Shoot man when I was a youngin *Black and White TV was BRAND SPANKING NEW.* Before TV it was *just RADIO. Hot tubes WIRES metal that MIGHT CUT YOU!!!* Weren't no safety helmets when I WAS A BOY... And alla us ended up *tougher than ANY of y'all... Put that in your hooka & blaze it....*
I just learned "The King and I" is banned in Thailand, which is why they have "a show with everything but Yul Brynner." I heard this song for the first time twenty years ago and that line finally makes sense.
I remember jamming to this song in the 80s. And I'm just now realizing the meaning of "you'll find a god in every golden cloister. And if you're lucky then the God's a she".
I got saved in 85, I'm thinking this song and video came out around that time, when I first heard it on a night that I was delivering pizzas, I was thinking about the Book of Revelation and the End Times, and when I heard the song after turning on the radio, I was thinking the very same thing. The Cosmic Chess match between Heaven and Hell, this was the first time I heard it in 35 years, bringing back those very thoughts. I believe there are a lot of symbolism in the song and video, Shiva the Destroyer, Emblem of CERN, the LHC in Geneva Switzerland. That has made it their secret mission to create Nimrods Tower of Babel, in which they were summoning this Ancient angel of Death Apolllyon, or Destroyer in Greek. Shiva is synonymous with Apolllyon which is in the Book of Revelation 9:11 as the King of the locusts that follow him out of the Abyss
How can you beat the 80s so funky so strange and weird need that in our time now , it created my life and I’ll never forget the 80s shame I can’t say that now .
As young teenager in the 80s watching my beloved days of MTV, VH1, I enjoyed this song and video. I thought to myself, I am eventually going to go to Bangkok. I did as an adult. Phuket, Chang Mai, Chang Rai and Bangkok to be exact.
"I don't see you guys rating The kind of mate I'm contemplating I'd let you watch, I would invite you But the queens we use would not excite you So you better go back to your bars, your temples Your massage parlours"
Well, I lived through it, and although it wasn't a great time for me I agree that the music was good. My hair refused to grow long enough to make big hair, and I think I would have looked ridiculous that way, but I had naturally red hair so at least I had that as a compensation.
that really depends on how old you are does it not. Having been around in the sixties and the seventies i thought the eighties was nothing in comparison to the previous two decades especially musically but as they say each to his own
A dynamic time. Vietnam was over, oil embargoes gone, economy finally humming, pot was cheap, MTV was a hit, a multi-media renaissance (at one point 10,000 artists per week arriving in LA), no cell phones, race relations were a LOT better. The only thing that scared me was VD and Nukes!
people with good taste in music , music then had a meaning behind it not like today where every second word is fuck or shit or bitch or nigga or so forth wake up and see whats happing , so you are probably 12 years old
The full intro (1 minute and 47 seconds on the soundtrack) is horribly underrated (not to mention totally underplayed). Not having it played is like listening to "Crazy on You" without the acoustic intro, or "Eye in the Sky" without it preceded by "Sirius".
"One night in Bangkok and the world's your oyster The bars are temples but the pearls ain't free You'll find a god in every golden cloister **And if you're lucky then the god's a she** I can feel an angel sliding up to me" Hmmm... I wonder what he meant by that
Krissie T - Here’s my guess: Man is a chess player going to Bangkok for a chess tournament. While he’s there he encounters the temptation of the nightlife. The chorus represents that. But this guy is not interested in that at all. He’s even annoyed by it. The verses are very dismissive and mocking. But he does love chess and uses it as imagery to compare the two. That’s it. He’s there for chess and isn’t interested in the nightlife People here are saying chess is a metaphor for sex, but I think it’s the other way around. Kind of. More like a comparison point
@@krissiet4718 kaybee isn't far wrong. The song is taken from act 2 of the musical called Chess which was written by Benny and Bjorn out of ABBA. It was written in the 80's against the backdrop of the Cold War, so no great surprise the main protagonists are American and Russian chess masters competing against each other in a chess tournament, But behind it all there is of course political intrigue as the Russian chess master wants to defect to the american side and also ends up having an affair with the American chess master's beautiful assistant. This song is taken from act 2, where the american chess master is now the arbiter of the next chess world championship some years later and he is indeed singing about all of the temptations on offer in this strange and exotic city, but he is making the statement that he's only interested in the chess. This act is also the one where the well known "I know him so well" comes from, sung by the russian's mistress and wife. There is a full video of Chess in Concert on here somewhere with idina menzel and Josh groban and some other big names, its worth a listen as there is some really beautiful music in it but much of it isn't well known, unless you're really into musical theatre, and what is well known isn't always associated with the show, like this song. Hope that helps x
Kerrie Thompson But do you know why Yul Brynner was referenced? He stared in a movie “The King and I”, released in 1956, about the King of Thailand. Yul’s character was King Mongkut of Siam, the old name for Thailand.
