Coffee Break #4: Smoking!

Before we start this week's Coffee Break... I need your help.

Louise was telling me last week about a record her dad used to play when she was a kid. Apparently, towards the end of the track, you can hear the sounds of police knocking on the door and the band quickly flushing away the illicit drugs they were smoking before the rozzers knocked. Despite extensive google searching, I've been unable to work out what this song might be... so I'm throwing it out to you guys. Any ideas?

I've never been a smoker. I never saw the appeal of cigarettes, even when all the other kids at school were hanging around outside the local newsagents, trying to persuade older kids to go inside and buy them a pack of Benson and Hedges. I tried smoking once, when I was in my 20s and I was very drunk. And I only did it to impress a girl. Fortunately, it was too late for it to take hold, so that was my first and last cigarette. She didn't seem that impressed anyway.

Jimmy Eat World - Coffee And Cigarettes

Mischief Brew - Coffee, God, And Cigarettes

I'm glad smoking cigarettes went out of fashion - for everyone's sake... but I kind of miss it too. I don't want to go back to people smoking in pubs and on buses, in restaurants and the cinema... even though that was the world we grew up in. The stale stench of cigarettes that was associated with so many of the places we grew up in, not to mention the fresh fug that often greeted you in such places... how is it possible to miss something you wouldn't ever want to come back?

Glen Glenn - One Cup of Coffee and a Cigarette

Michelle Featherstone - Coffee & Cigarettes

Lefty Frizell - Cigarettes and Coffee Blues

It's surprising how many songs there are which link coffee with cigarettes. They used to go together like bacon and eggs, fish and chips, apple pie and custard... well, there are more songs about coffee and cigarettes than any of the above. Caffeine and nicotine are both stimulants, but many people smoked as a relaxant... so were the two drugs teaming up, counteracting each other or having a big scrap in a smoker's system? I found one study online that suggested a morning coffee helped beat nicotine cravings while another suggested that being both a smoker and a coffee drinker made you 8 times more likely to have a heart attack.

Curtis Gordon - Caffeine And Nicotine

Bill Royal - Caffeine, Nicotine and Gasoline

You rarely see anyone smoking a real cigarettes anymore. It's all bloody e-cigs nowadays, which some idiot decided were better for us... though clearly they're not. We already know they're bad, but we don't know the half of it, I reckon. 

I'm reminded of adverts like these any time somebody tries to defend their vaping habit.

I don't yet know of any songs about drinking coffee and vaping at the same time, but vaping on its own is already starting to creep into the songwriter's lexicon. Ernie mentioned a tune just last week about Kids Vaping on the Double Decker Bus. And here's a couple more, firstly a great tune from Dougie Poole about the dangers of vaping in the workplace...

...and secondly, a cautionary tale from the hilarious* Wolves of Glendale, one of my favourite musical discoveries of 2024. 

(*Yeah, they write funny songs. Deal with it.)