Dead Songs in Depth

    
West L.A. Fadeaway
w: Hunter m: Garcia
AGDL: http://arts.ucsc.edu/gdead/agdl/wla.html
LASF: http://www.whitegum.com/songfile/WESTLA.HTM
  

    
West L.A. Fadeaway 
Lyrics: Robert Hunter
Music: Jerry Garcia

Copyright Ice Nine Publishing; used by permission.

Looking for a chateau
Twenty one rooms but one will do
Looking for a chateau
Twenty one rooms but one will do
I don't want to buy it
I just want to rent it for an hour or two

Met an old mistake
Walking down the street today
Met an old mistake
Walking down the street today
I didn't want to be mean about it
But I, I didn't have one good word to say

Chorus
West L.A. fadeaway
West L.A. fadeaway
Little red light on the highway
Big green light on the speedway, hey, hey, hey

I had a steady job
Hauling items for the mob
I had a steady job
Hauling items for the mob

You know the pay was pathetic
It's a shame those boys couldn't be more copacetic

I met a west L.A. girl
Already know what I need to know
I met a west L.A. girl
Already know what I need to know
Name, address and phone number, Lord
And just how far to go

[chorus]

Looking for a chateau
Twenty one rooms but one will do
Looking for a chateau
Twenty one rooms but one will do
I don't want to rent it
I just what to use it for a minute or two

[chorus]

Little red light on the highway
Big green light on the speedway, hey, hey, hey
Little red light on the highway
Big green light on the speedway, hey, hey, hey


Additional lyrics:

Here's what Ginger says
She walks right, she ain't nobody's fool
Here's what Ginger says
She always tries to play by the golden rule
She says if you treat other people all right
Other folks probably treat you right too
  

    
One of the few songs (in fact, I can't think of another off hand) bold
enough to include "copacetic" and, with a flourish of daredevil
panache, to rhyme it as well. Reminds me of the "dubious" and
"salubrious" rhyme in the Mary Jane Hot-Cha.
  

    
A quick web search finds a band called Local H using copacetic and also
rhyming it with pathetic.

Also, can't quite figure this out, a song called "She Was My Girl,"
supposedly from the Spiderman 2 soundtrack, rhymes copacetic with frenetic.
  

    
has anyone traced the word copasetic to a definite source before Mr.
Bojangles? There are a number of odd / interesting possible folk
etymologies, with one theory relating to yiddish.
  

    

Is that the "kol b'seder" one? That's common Israeli slang for "everything's
cool" or "it's all good."
  

    
From the Oxford English Dictionary, the earliest reference is:

1919 I. BACHELLER Man for Ages iv. 69 ‘As to looks I'd call him, as ye
might say, real copasetic.’ Mrs. Lukins expressed this opinion
solemnly... Its last word stood for nothing more than an indefinite
depth of meaning.

The origin of the word seems to be a mystery. From the American
Heritage Dictionary of the English Language:

Word History: We know very little about the origin of the word
copacetic, meaning "excellent, first-rate." Is its origin to be found
in Italian, in the speech of southern Black people, in the Creole
French dialect of Louisiana, or in Hebrew? John O'Hara, who used the
word in Appointment in Samarra, later wrote that copacetic was "a
Harlem and gangster corruption of an Italian word." O'Hara went on to
say, "I don't know how to spell the Italian, but it's something like
copacetti." His uncertainty about how to spell the Italian is
paralleled by uncertainty about how to spell copacetic itself.
Copacetic has been recorded with the spellings copasetic, copasetty,
copesetic, copisettic, and kopasettee. The spelling is now more or less
fixed, however, as copacetic or copasetic, even though the origin of
the word has not been determined. The Harlem connection mentioned by
O'Hara would seem more likely than the Italian, since copacetic was
used by Black jazz musicians and is said to have been Southern slang in
the late 19th century. If copacetic is Creole French in origin, it
would also have a Southern homeland. According to this explanation,
copacetic came from the Creole French word coupersètique, which meant
"able to be coped with," "able to cope with anything and everything,"
"in good form," and also "having a healthy appetite or passion for life
or love." Those who support the Hebrew or Yiddish origin of copacetic
do not necessarily deny the Southern connections of the word. One
explanation has it that Jewish storekeepers used the Hebrew phrase kol
bèsedeq, "all with justice," when asked if things were O.K. Black
children who were in the store as customers or employees heard this
phrase as copacetic. No explanation of the origin of copacetic,
including the ones discussed here, has won the approval of scholars, as
is clearly shown by the etymology of copacetic in the first volume of
the Dictionary of American Regional English, published in 1985: "Etym
unknown." 

While the Creole origin seems the most compelling to me, if I look
into the components of the word more closely, perhaps it has something
to do with a police officer with a particularly unpleasant (vinegary)
disposition.
  

    
Wow. I only knew about the Hebrew, or more preciely Yiddish, supposed
origin of the word. My Grandmother said it was a nonsense word used to
disguise the meaning of something like "just exactly perfect" amongst
the Jewish gangs in NYC back in the 1910's.

As she and I were never rubbed out, this information may have been
false.

In any case, the mob/Italian/Jewish origin could well be true.

Paging Drs. Lansky & Siegle...
  

    
FWIW, one would say ha'kol...., not kol. At least, that's what i
learned in public school and from my parents.