You know the feeling when one of your favorite artists puts out a song and you feel like they’re saying something very, very specific just to you?
That happened to me when I bought The Reverend Horton Heat’s Spend A Night In The Box album in 2000.
And on the first song. The title cut.
I didn’t know what the album was titled about. I didn’t know what the titular song was going to explore. It hit me like - what’s a good quasi redneck-ish, but you’re into psychobilly thing to get hit with - it hit me like stepping on a rake? I don’t know. I’ll get back to you on that one.
Bottom line is it hit me hard.
For several years leading up to that point, I’d be up way too late for various reasons, and AMC (or some equivalent station) would be playing the Paul Newman classic, Cool Hand Luke. I did write about this the other day if you’re curious (click here). It’s one of my favorite movies ever.
In the movie, after escaping prison and causing all sorts of trouble to the guards, the Luke character has to spend… a night in the box.
The box is a standing coffin of sorts. Kind of like an outhouse. It’s solitary confinement, basically, for a public service prison in the American south in the early 50s. It’s a punishing type of punishment, wrapped inside of a manual labor, rural prison sentence.
Now, in Gretsch ‘59 holding hands of the good Reverend himself, it’s a metaphor for lady trouble.
In the most tongue in cheek way possible, our song-hero is rattling off all the things he’s gotten in trouble for and how it leads him to having to spend many nights “in the box.” Kind of hysterical, if I’m being honest, but also - were we watching the same stuff on TV in the mid to late 90s?!
That was the thought that wrecked me when I heard it. I started laughing. I started Cool Hand Luke smiling. There’s only one reason this song got written and this album got titled the way it did, this artist, much like me, was up at 3 and 4 in the morning and he was telling me so.
I mean, he even put it in the lyrics of the song - here’s a snippet of the poetry on display,
Stayed up all night and watched Cool Hand Luke
He ate fifty eggs and didn't even puke
My flappin' tongue has sealed my fate
What we got is a failure to communicate
Say her friend is cute (spend a night in the box)
That was beaut' (spend a night in the box)
Forget Valentines day (spend a night in the box)
Have eyes that stray (spend a night in the box)
Where sanity comes and ticks and tocks
Spend a night in the box (a night in the box)
That was a beaut’ - always kills me. Oh, to be in trouble and know you’re in trouble as soon as you put yourself there. I’m glad we’re all our own worst enemies sometimes.
So maybe that’s what it hits me like, actually. I told you I’d be back with something. Here it is:
It hits me like the thought of 50 eggs to my stomach, and then not even getting the relief of puking them up, because relief comes in the form of winning an unwinnable bet. That’s somehow more valuable. It’s magic. Silly and chaotic and a touch masochistic, but - magic. I always marveled (and groaned) at that scene too. The coolest.
I may not know The Reverend Horton Heat personally, but I’ve always loved that once (or 50x), in the mid to late 90s, we were watching the same ‘60s flick on TV, and that turned into a song I felt was almost written just for me.
