#1378: They Might Be Giants – Till My Head Falls Off

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‘Till My Head Falls Off’ is the second song on They Might Be Giants’ 1996 album, Factory Showroom. That album’s most known for being the band’s last on major label Elektra Records before they left quite acrimoniously and went on to make their own record label to release their material on. I got ’round to listening to the album myself in late 2010 or so, when I decided to properly get into They Might Be Giants’ big, big discography. Back then, ‘Till My Head Falls Off’ was another TMBG song that was high in the song ratings list on the band’s Wiki website. I heard it probably the once and understood why. Album opener, ‘S-E-X-X-Y’, was the only track to be released as a single. And it’s not like a song’s designation as a single is meant to signify its greatness or anything, but ‘…Head Falls Off’ seems like the very obvious single choice if you were to compare the two. Though maybe the band knew this and went with the more unconventional option, anyway.

After ‘S-E-X-X-Y’ begins things on a funky, ’70s-spy sitcom kind of deal, ‘Till My Head Falls Off’ arrives as the faster power-pop number. Emphasis on the word ‘power’. The track’s essentially a live take, with the two Johns and the band behind them going at full blast, and what we got was the last recording of the band going the fastest they could until the recording equipment couldn’t stands no more. The track concerns a neurotic narrator who, in the first verse, has a bit of a freak-out about some missing Advil tablets, and then wonders about their misplaced notes in the second. Despite their tendency to succumb to anxiety at times, look at themselves in the mirror and think about what they see, they seem to take great pride in the person that they are. The person’s gonna keep on going until the day they die, or till [their] head falls off, as John Linnell sings in the massive choruses. A song of self-assurance for the worriers out there. Sometimes I think Linnell may be singing about himself subliminally on how he’ll be doing this songwriting stuff until he’s gone. If that’s the case, makes it all the more endearing.

I guess another notable thing about Factory Showroom is that it was the first album of They done where the band had a second guitarist in the group. Alongside John Flansburgh now (then) was Eric Schermerhorn, in the role of lead guitarist. Flansburgh provides the anchoring rhythm in the left channel, while Schermerhorn gets the freedom in the right to provide some guitar feedback, those string bends during the choruses and the frantic guitar solo during the break. Here was the new band configuration at its rawest, and they were giving the goods thick and fast. Being the John Linnell composition it is, there’s melody abound, very memorable, easy to get stuck into your head even if the words he fits in them are arriving at a mile a minute, all culminating in those wide-open choruses where – you’ll see in the live video – he practically opens his jaw at its widest to deliver the jubilant high notes. It’s just another good They Might Be Giants song, I don’t know what else to say. I think we’ve reached the end here.

#1377: Green Day – Tight Wad Hill

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Anyone remember the Green Day: Rock Band game? Came as a shock to me when it was initially announced in 2010. It was so close to the Beatles game that had been out for only over half a year at the time, and I like Green Day but I also felt there would have been so many more classic rock bands Harmonix could have dedicated a Rock Band game to. Like Led Zeppelin, or The Who or something. Green Day was a cool choice, though. I wasn’t complaining. I got the game. It was fun to play through the whole of American Idiot, Dookie, a large majority of 21st Century Breakdown and other well-known Green Day songs. Green Day was my favourite band for a while in 2005. By 2010, I’d had physical copies of Dookie, American Idiot, International Superhits… even 1,039/Smoothed Out Slappy Hours for years. But I think it was the release of this game that provided the impetus to dive deeper into the band’s discography as the year went on.

One day I came upon Insomniac, the band’s pissed-off, harder rocking follow-up to Dookie, the band’s big breakthrough album that had only been released a year before. It’s my favourite album of theirs because of the previously listed adjectives. I was well-acquainted with the singles from there, which I never fell out of love with, and the other songs on there were just more of the same. ‘Tight Wad Hill’ is the second-last number on Insomniac. I’ve been around Green Day forums and Reddit pages, and it looked to me that whenever there’s a ranking going on ‘Tight Wad…’ is the tune that’s always rated the worst or the least best. I remember liking it off the rip. Before then, I’d read about how it was almost the title track of the album before the bandmembers decided on ‘Insomniac’, so I reckoned it must have been considered a bit of an important song amongst the band during the album’s making.

Reasons I could think of, though. It follows the musical pattern of verse-chorus-verse-chorus-instrumental break-chorus that’s damn near on every other song on the album. The song details the depressing experiences of a drug addict, and that’s already covered with ‘Geek Stink Breath’, which also provides a more personal level of perspective. It’s also near the album’s end, so listeners are probably just waiting to see how the whole thing officially finishes. But it’s fast, it hits hard – Tré Cool’s pounding away on his drum set – it’s heavy, makes me wanna scrunch my face up. Billie Joe Armstrong’s sings an infectious melody with a snotty snarl, and Mike Dirnt’s playing some very cool lines on the bass guitar. And that’s Insomniac all over. ‘Tight Wad Hill’ does the job, it’s a great representative. Just a shame the band rarely play anything from this album. Insomniac appreciators out there, I’m with you.

#1376: Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks – Tigers

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Mirror Traffic, the fifth album by Stephen Malkmus and his sort of solo act The Jicks, turns 15 in August. I wasn’t aware of it, I’m sure I’ve said in a couple posts before, until a couple years later when the group’s next album was on the horizon in 2014. To the 18-year-old I was, it made sense to listen to the most recent work just to get a taste of what maybe was to come. The cool thing to find out about Mirror Traffic was that it was produced by none other than other singer-songwriter musician man Beck. I appreciate a Beck album or two. He and Malkmus had been mates since the ’90s. I never knew Beck to be a producer. I think he does a good job on …Traffic. It’s also the last album to feature Janet Weiss on drums before she went on to join Wild Flag and then reunite with Sleater-Kinney. People in certain circles know how the latter turned out. Weiss deserved way better. Digressing. I was in uni, it was time to hear Mirror Traffic. ‘Tigers’ starts it off.

Hull City A.F.C. is the name of a football (soccer, bleh) team in England, who are affectionately nicknamed ‘the Tigers’ because of the orange-and-black striped kit the team traditionally wears. Malkmus is a big fan. Their nickname inspired the song’s title, and that’s where the link between the two stays. Otherwise, the track is a kind of collection of evocative ideas and images that sound nice when put together. And really that’s Malkmus’s M.O. He sings about catching someone streaking in their Birkenstock shoes, he blares out the line “zits and toothpaste”, he rounds out the first chorus with “Change is all we need to improve.” A mixture of humour, near-absurdity and straight sincerity throughout, all wrapped up in under two-and-a-half minutes. I believe the whole track acts as an invitation to the listener to be one with the group. Not with the Jicks, but with the Tigers as the members call themselves in the bright choruses. Malkmus also wants you to know that you can put your trust in him, confide, he can be your energy boost. It’s all positive thinking on this tune.

The lyrics that close the song out have stumped music sites for years since its release. I’ve come to the conclusion the final “verse” is: “Hard believe I never had a spleen / Never had a spleen / Never had a dream / Ice cream with straw / Vagrant steel”. It doesn’t make any sense. Lyrics don’t have to. The ending of ‘Tigers’ really comes out of nowhere, a swift right turn from normal proceedings. But it’s great that way, keeps you on your toes. Mirror Traffic isn’t my go-to Malkmus/Jicks album. I’ve got an appreciation for it, just ’cause it’s by Malkmus and he’s straight up one of my favourite songwriters. But again, the tracks on the album that I’ve tried to succinctly write about on here are Malkmus highlights to me. I relistened through the album a couple years back after not doing so for a long, long time. ‘Brain Gallop’ jumped out in a way it hadn’t before. That was about it, though. That song would have a post if I were to do this all again. But that’s all from this album, it’s out of here. Expect more Malkmus, though.

#1375: Fall Out Boy – Tiffany Blews

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I got Fall Out Boy’s Folie à Deux for my 14th birthday back in 2009. Got the sent email in my old Hotmail account – or Outlook, to get with the times – of the gift list I sent to my cousin that backs this statement up. By that time, ‘I Don’t Care’ had been out as a single. I think ‘America’s Suitehearts’ had its video out for some time too. Because I already had Infinity on High, I guess I thought, “Why not”, and asked for From Under the Cork Tree too. And I got ’em. Now I had a copies of that holy trinity. But as I’ve said before, not too long ago either, Folie… is my favourite Fall Out Boy album. I can sort of remember listening through it the first time and having a feeling I was listening to something very good. I think because it’s made by Fall Out Boy, no one apart from Fall Out Boy fans and a rare member of society here and there wants to recognise its quality. That’s just the way life is sometimes.

‘Tiffany Blews’ is the tenth song on Folie…. If you hear it on its own, it feels like it starts very suddenly with the kick drum. That’s just ’cause, on the album, the preceding song transitions into it via a synthesizer chord. Man, the transitions on this album are great too. Makes for a fine listening experience. I can’t remember how I got into this track at all. It certainly wasn’t a first-time epiphany kind of deal. I once had a YouTube channel in 2008, and I uploaded the album in sections onto it before copyright was such a big thing on the site. I’m gonna put it down to that and becoming more familiar with the songs in the process. What you really need to know is ‘Tiffany Blews’ is one of my favourite songs on the album. May be one of my favourite Fall Out Boy songs full stop. And I think it has the best chorus the band’s ever done. That explosion in energy with the “Ohhh, baby, you’re a classic…” line. A moment of elation.

In this track-by-track commentary on the album, Pete Wentz doesn’t go into much detail on ‘Tiffany Blews’. He says it may be a single, it wasn’t, it’s got weird verses and straighter choruses, which I can understand – I’d say the verses are funkier more than anything – and that it features Lil Wayne, which I think must have scared some people when that was revealed, but he actually sounds cooler in the bridge than he does in any of those rock features/albums he wasn’t into around that time. I’m one of those who think Wayne did better than Stump’s initial version. The song’s title doesn’t give anything away in terms of its meaning. One of those reference that only Pete Wentz would understand. And I think it’s to throw you off from the fact that it’s a song about himself – even when he writes “Baby, you’re a classic / Like a little black dress / You’re a faded moon” and so on. It’s all self-examination. At least, that’s what I believe. Look out for those upward scales in the choruses, those are little hooks in themselves.

#1374: The Beatles – Ticket to Ride

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Just a very small memory I have when it comes to The Beatles’ ‘Ticket to Ride’ is my sister asking me whether it was a song that our mum liked or sung from time-to-time. I replied “No,” and we carried on with our day. I think the song was playing in a very out-of-time ringtone advert which was exclusively based on The Beatles, ’cause it was around that time that the remastered catalogue was being reissued and The Beatles: Rock Band game was hot on the scene. But I’m sure that situation wasn’t the first time I’d heard the song myself. I think its dedicated segment in the Help! film was one of the few Beatles music videos that played on VH1 when there was a Beatlesmania programme on the channel, again because of the Beatles hype in September 2009. I may have also just come across it through watching Help! on Dailymotion or something. It’s all a blur now, it’s been in the psyche so long. I didn’t know it once. I’ve known it for a while now. That’s what this entire blog comes down to.

So, ‘Ticket to Ride’. It was the first single from the band’s fifth album, Help!, released four months in advance of the LP’s arrival. It was also recorded and finished in one day, believe it or not, on 15th February 1965 – worked on in the first recording session the band undertook since releasing their Beatles for Sale album a mere four months earlier. They also started working on ‘I Need You’ and ‘Another Girl’, which would both end up on Help! too. Something must have been in the air in EMI Studios that day. John Lennon primarily wrote ‘Ticket…’. Paul McCartney helped. The song’s known for that kind of herky-jerky drum part Ringo Starr has going on. It’s very effective. Apparently, McCartney told him how to play it. It sort of straightens itself out as the song progresses. Main highlight for me is John Lennon’s vocal, and I guess McCartney’s harmony too. Mainly the melody line, though. I like the way Lennon sounds in a lot of songs he does the lead vocal on. But he sounds very clear on this track, like he’s using all the air in his lungs to deliver the words. He sounds very confident. He kind of flubs the lines at about 1:26 and 2:15, which makes it all the more charming.

No one really knows what this song’s about. Only Lennon and McCartney would, but they both had differing answers regarding the influence. It’s all up in the air. One interesting take, easily viewable on Wikipedia, is that it’s about a girl who leaves a relationship to become a prostitute and have sex whenever she wants. A ticket to ‘ride’. Thinking about the humour shared between the two songwriters, that could very well be the case. My take, the narrator’s sad a relationship’s over and the girl’s free from the shackles of it all. It’s a ticket to freedom. To ‘ride’ is to ‘be free’ in the broadest sense. Sounds a bit melodramatic. It’s a happy-sounding song about a not-so-happy situation. That’s how I think of it, but only when I stop to think about it, if you know what I mean. Otherwise I’m just enjoying the tune in the musical aspect. You’ve got the two main writers singing with each other, George Harrison plays a continuous A-flat note in the verses, the aforementioned drum part, and the surprise double-time ending with Lennon singing “My baby don’t care” until the track fades to silence. It obviously hit the number-one spot in many, many places. Well deserved too.