Song · Pablo Honey era (1992–93)
Coke Babies
A 1993 B-side whose words are a chain of short phrases, nearly all of them starting with “easy”.
feb 1993
the b-side
“Coke Babies” closed the “Anyone Can Play Guitar” single on 1 February 1993, on the 12-inch, the cassette and the CD, after “Faithless, the Wonder Boy”. The band told Curfew, the Oxford magazine, that both B-sides were very new songs they had written on tour. It is dreamy and unhurried, more interested in atmosphere than in a riff, which sets it apart from nearly everything else the band put out that year, and Dave Jennings, making the single his Single of the Week in Melody Maker, liked this B-side as well. The words are hardly more than a chain of short phrases, nearly every one of them starting with “easy”.
2009
the reissue
It came back on the second disc of the Pablo Honey collector's edition in 2009, and Scott Plagenhoef, reviewing the reissues for Pitchfork, found the Pablo Honey extras mostly weaker versions of album songs, with two exceptions, an acoustic “Banana Co.” and this.
the tape
colin's humming
Towards the end of the recording Colin Greenwood can be heard humming along. He did not know the tape was still running, and it was left in.
the video
The recording.· ExoArchivewatch on youtube →
the record(2)
Tabs (1)
sources7
- Wikipedia, “Anyone Can Play Guitar”, for the single's track listing.
- The site's own catalogue note, based on fan archives.
- The 2003 treefingers.com lyric page (
_legacy/lyrics/songs/coke_babies.txt), for the phrases built on “easy” and Colin Greenwood not knowing the tape was running. - Curfew, issue 24, February 1993, scan on the Internet Archive, for the band on writing them on tour.
- Dave Jennings, singles review, Melody Maker, 23 January 1993.
- This site's news story on the band's January 1993 mailing, for the single's formats.
- This site's news stories on the 2009 reissues, for the collector's edition track listing and Scott Plagenhoef's Pitchfork review of 16 April 2009.