Song Origins
Coconut
03/7/95 - AOL CHATROOM INTERVIEW WITH DAVE SCHOOLS
Hartke410 : Dave... what inspired "Cocanut"? DASchools : Hartke...GIRLS GIRLS GIRLS
12/15/94 INTERVIEW WITH JOHN BELL AT GRADY'S RESTAURANT, ATLANTA GA
R&R:
A couple people asked me to ask why you aren't playing "Coconut Song" anymore.
JB: It's kinda like the same reason we chose to stop playing the Grateful Dead songs.
It was the first song we wrote... kinda silly, kinda cool. The song was never at fault, nobody hates the song or anything like that.
R&R:
It was the first song you wrote as a band?
JB: Yeah.
But because of its catchiness, it seemed like while we were writing other tunes, which we thought were taking "Coconut" and going a step beyond, we'd go places where the attention was focused on this song. And we could actually watch people only click on for that song, and that's what they came to expect for the evening.
R&R:
It sort of became like your "She Loves You"...
JB: Yeah.
It wasn't doing justice to the rest of the songs that we knew were coming, and had to grow.
And for us it affected the way we played it, the way we thought about it. [Laughs]
And we'd sit there and we'd play the song, and some of these boneheads would still be asking for it.
You'd say, "I just played it!" and they'd go, ""Ohhh..."
[Shows a blank expression.]
They were that much clouded about it. So the song was never at fault, you know.
There seemed to be an overwhelming attention paid to it at one point that was making it...
We thought that it'd be easy [to say], "Hey, we don't have to play it!
If we just decide not to play it, we don't have to decide whether we're gonna play it or not, and we just get to move on with these songs."
Shoot, if everybody quits coming, maybe we'll start to play that song again!
I don't know! Now we play it every Halloween.
We throw it in there with the rest of the...
you know, we play a lot of covers on Halloween, 'cause it's a kind of costume thing.
We play a lot more covers than we usually do, as opposed to one, two or three a night.
Half the show'll be covers [on Halloween]. A few songs have become traditional, like "Sweet Leaf" and "Coconuts".
We played that the last three years.
R&R:
So if someone out there is just dying to hear "Coconuts" they'll have to wait until next October 31st.
JB: Yeah, to be pretty sure about it.
R&R:
Or get a tape of it...
JB: Or get a tape of it.
And you know, Christ, you know what a song sounds like when you haven't played it in three years?
HA!
Nobody remembered *nothing*!
It was great!
But we rolled through it.
R&R:
A true improvisational jam...
JB: Oh, it was just a train wreck.
[Laughs]
We weren't proud.
People were going, "Yaaah, that was awful!"
But we love the song...
# of times played: 301
First time played: 02/24/85
Frequency: 8.74 shows
Longest drought: 372 shows (06/22/90 to 10/31/92)
Most common lead in: Porch Song (11 times)
Most common lead out: Proving Ground (13 times)
Most common set position: Set 2, song 9 (20 times)
Notes: Appears as "Coconut Image" on the first official Widespread Panic release: 'Coconut Image' 45 rpm (1986)
Burnthday's Picks: (10/31/01) 'Coconut*, Joe's Garage* > Wild Thing* > Joe's Garage*, Ball of Confusion* * with Dirty Dozen Brass Band'; (12/31/98) All Time Low > Wondering > Coconut
