"Cokane in My Brain"

Dillinger - "Cokane in My Brain" (1976)

I don't know who Jim is. The producer's name was Joseph, but he apparently went by Jo Jo. I can only hope that somewhere, Jim has learned how to spell New York.



I gotta be honest, I think this might be one of those songs that became popular because it mentioned drugs a lot, and so in the time, it sounded cool. Much like Afroman's "Because I Got High" it doesn't really hold up years later. The music is The People's Choice's "Do It Any Way You Wanna" but played by in house Jamaican studio musicians. The don't play it the same, but it's the same tune nevertheless. They've got some good funk going on, but the original is funkier.

There's really only two lyrics worth talking about. The first is the answer to the question that Dillinger asks over and over again. "/A knife, a fork, a bottle, and a cork/ That's the way we spell New York" (Bullock). The line is a sort of Cockney rhyming slang that dates back until at least the 1910s. A article in the Syracuse Herald from 1915 mentions the phrase in relation to an address on a letter. Other artists, including Siouxsie and the Banshees, and Information Society have used the phrase in songs. The other lyric is the common complaint of people who throw house parties. "/No matter where I treat my guest/ They always like my kitchen best/" of course Dillinger follows it up with a reason. "/ Because I've got a whole lot of Cocaine.../".