Traffic -- "The Low Spark of High-Heeled Boys"
I won't bother trying to describe the improbable chain of circumstances that led me back to this song after having gone a couple of decades without it. Let's just say it was fate.
What we have here is more than eleven minutes' worth of material that doesn't wear out its welcome. The song rounds up along the border of jazz but doesn't give in to the pretensions that could have easily wrecked it. There's a jazzy sensibility to the drums that makes the song work. The piano, organ, and guitar (all, I think, played by Steve Winwood) divide up the lead duties very effectively. The lyrics have just a dash of wit, enough to keep the song from grasping too ineffectively at profundity, and, after all, there is a considerable truism here: that the mechanism that keeps the rock and roll machinery in order is, in the end, nothing more than the desire to turn a profit on some poor kid's dreams. For whatever reason, I can hear in my mind a cover of this song -- all Neil Young-style guitars, loud and crackly. Think about it. It just might work.
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