#1390: Bob Dylan – Tombstone Blues

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Highway 61 Revisited. When I found the album in the Best Ever Albums list on BestEverAlbums.com in, I want to say 2013 or something, it was the highest placed Dylan record on it. So I took that to mean, you know, it’s the classic, it’s essential, it’s the go-to Dylan album. Then I listened to more of the guy’s LPs and found that you could apply that mentality to at least five other works of his. My personal favourite is Blood on the Tracks. I don’t know what that says about me. But I do know Highway… as being that important statement signifying Dylan’s firm move to using electric instruments in his music, a move seen as sacrilege in the folk music community. People would go to his shows and boo him, it was a big deal. The album has its classics. ‘Like a Rolling Stone’, arguably one of the best songs ever. ‘Desolation Row’, maybe of one the best ever album closers. And I’ll give a nod to ‘Ballad of a Thin Man’, just because.

But I’m here to talk about the track on the album that I return to the most. Its second, ‘Tombstone Blues’. I think I kind of liked it when I went through the whole initially in ’13. Funnily enough or not, depending on how your sense of humour is, it was a Classic Review of the album by Antony Fantano in 2015 that made me consider it some more. He made a comment on the track’s “whacked-out beat” and called it “more proto-punk than anything The Kinks ever did in the mid-’60s”. He was very enthusiastic about ‘Tombstone Blues’ in general. I listened back to the song, and yeah, the drums were indeed slapping. That cymbal and snare are thwacking away with the booming kick underneath, really packs a punch underneath the music. He also referred to the tune as “the most cleanly assembled track”, but there are definitely moments where players don’t change chords in time or kind of lose where they are in the song, either ’cause Dylan will play a few measures before going into a verse or goes into the chorus a bit earlier than anticipated. But I like the song even more ’cause of those moments. Gives it a lot of character. It is essentially a live take too, gotta take that into account.

So many interpretations are to be found online as to what Bob Dylan is on about in this song. Something that seems to be agreed upon is that it references the Vietnam War. I’m not sure I could arrive at a solid conclusion myself. I’m not prepared to write a whole thesis here. I simply see ‘Tombstone…’ as a kind of ‘state of affairs’, this-is-where-America’s-at-right-now kind of deal. The verses are wordy, filled with references, turns of phrases, irony and dry humour, with AAABCCCB rhyme schemes, detailing these almost absurd situations involving a range of different characters. And while these situations are going on, the familial unit detailed in the choruses are going through very real problems. The mom’s working in the factory with no shoes, the father’s scrounging around for food in the alley, and Dylan – or the narrator – is thinking about death. The tombstone. I guess it’s a metaphor for the ridiculous nature of the goings-on in political establishments when compared to the heavy, relatable issues people are going through at home. I’ll take that as a conclusion, actually.

#1389: The BPA ft. David Byrne & Dizzee Rascal – Toe Jam

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So, Norman Cook, AKA Fatboy Slim. He hasn’t released an official studio album for some time. Doesn’t look like he’ll be releasing another one any time soon. I feel like he’s always touring or doing a show somewhere, though. And the royalty checks from commercial use of his songs must be endless. He’s probably doing just fine. Officially, it’s in the books that Fatboy Slim’s final album is Palookaville in 2004. If anything, it’s really I Think We’re Gonna Need a Bigger Boat from 2009, but because it wasn’t released under the Fatboy Slim name it doesn’t get counted. Co-producing the album with his mate Simon Thornton, who I feel is the distinguishing factor that separates it from a sole ‘Fatboy Slim’ record, Cook predominantly collaborates with a selection of mid-2000s independent artists that I’m thinking he must have simply admired and wanted to work with, releasing the results under the alias of ‘The Brighton Port Authority’, or ‘The BPA’ for short.

But there are a couple of collaborations with absolute legends of the game. The first track is a cover of ‘He’s Frank’ by the Monochrome Set, with Iggy Pop on vocals, and near the album’s end comes ‘Toe Jam’. You see who it features in the blog’s title. The track is how I came to know of the whole BPA project. The music video for it played on MTV2, I think on a show of Gonzo – Zane Lowe hosted this long before he got all big and started working for Apple – and it was one that certainly got me interested in more ways than one, back when I was 13 years old. There is no uncensored version of it. At least, not publicly released. But the placement of the censor bars is the whole point of its concept. It’s censorship that makes sense, and it leads to comical results. Seems to me like it was probably a David Byrne / Fatboy Slim collaboration initially, with Dizzee Rascal being asked to write a verse for it some way down the line. However it came to be, it’s a bop and then some.

First of all, gotta appreciate the double-meaning in the title. The shit that collects in between your toes if you don’t clean there, that’s usually referred to as ‘toe jam’. “In between my toes” is a phrase sung at various points. But then, the whole song is a jam about toes. It’s clever. Byrne mixes the real with the nonsensical throughout the track, singing about walking down a road and talking into a tape recorder and a girl galloping in his toe spaces. He inserts his standard vocal hiccups along the way. Dizzee Rascal comes in with a verse about a successful pull on a night out. The theme that both guests however share in their sections is the power of dancing and the enjoyment that comes out of it. That’s what the entire track comes to when getting to the point. I’ve also got to shout-out the line, “Every day is fuckin’ perfect, it’s a paradise”. I think whoever’s point of view it’s meant to be taken from really believes the sentiment, but it’s a great one to use in a sarcastic manner too. I’m all about that kind of stuff.

#1388: Animal Collective – Today’s Supernatural

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At the time of writing this, my old laptop on which I listened to Animal Collective’s Centipede Hz for the first time is on the fritz. Looks like a black-screen-of death situation going on, it might be game over. I’d like to be accurate with these things and give the exact date I saved all the files to it. I’ve done that before. But for now, I’ll have to go by memory. What I’m pretty sure of is that the listening-through would have happened in 2014, during a time when I was really getting into Animal Collective, and I was either in my room at university or at home during the summer. Not my favourite album by the group, I will say. I do appreciate it for being the 180-move in production and sound from Merriweather Post Pavilion and maybe alienating bandwagoners who started following AnCo ’cause of that album just to be cool. But I only really like four songs on it. Three of those four are at the beginning of the album. It starts strongly. ‘Today’s Supernatural’ is the second song on Centipede… and was the first single from it too, getting a music video to boot.

I sort of remember seeing the title and thinking, “Today’s supernatural… what?” My feeling was it was probably an incomplete thought, some kind of wordplay that wasn’t unusual when it came to Animal Collective song titles. No, it very much means ‘Today Is Supernatural’, and it was a nice surprise to find out when the song name’s sort of stated eventually. Just something I thought was worth sharing. When it comes to the song’s content, I’ve always been impressed with how it sounds like it’s taking place on some warped, demented ride at a carnival. I think it’s the arpeggiated organ throughout that adds to the feeling. Another thing that attracted me to the song was how the rhythm was constantly shifting. It begins as a fast waltz, before abruptly moving into a stomping, syncopated rhythm in 4/4 before going back again. Always switching between the waltzing and the stomping, it is. But what got me the most was Avey Tare’s vocal performance. They were somewhat restrained on Merriweather…, but definitely had their excitable moments. None of them though compare in the wild “Come on and le-le-le-le-le-le-le-le-le-let go”s that begin each verse here or the scream he produces as the instrumentation and soundscape fall into each other at the song’s finish. Those are some vocal tics that’ll get you shakin’.

Even now, I’m not sure I have the song’s meaning all figured out. I did think it was about embracing the world outside and undergoing new experiences, without really digging deep. But actually looking at the lyrics and reading them, ‘Today’s Supernatural’ appears to be about a love interest who Tare, or the narrator, feels they’re not good enough for. At least that’s what I’m seeing. Taking out the ‘bionic hee haw’ / ‘erratic see saw’ phrases, ’cause they could literally mean anything, the song’s narrator expresses an admiration for this subject of interest and proceeds to say all the things they wish they could say to this person. Everything however is summed up in the final lines, “I made a shadow with my hand and made it like your heart / But they will never be the same”. Whatever hopes of a relationship the narrator is thinking could happen, it’s all wishful thinking. Maybe that’s why the song ends with that abrupt descent into madness the way it does, they just can’t handle this admission. It’s a tale as old as time. An obvious highlight on this album, got a lot of love for it.

#1387: The Smashing Pumpkins – Today

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When Smashing Pumpkins were in their prime, in the ’90s as the classic lineup of Corgan, Wretzky, Iha and Chamberlain, I was barely a human being. I’m thinking the first time I may have become aware of the band was through their guest appearance on The Simpsons, a show you couldn’t get me away from when I was a child, and that would have been a repeat airing years after its premiere. The first Pumpkins release I was around to experience the “hype” for was Zeitgeist in ’07. But in the years leading up to that, seeing a Smashing Pumpkins music video on any music television channel was a common occurrence. It’s how I came to know ‘Today.’ I got a grip of what the band’s singles were about. I properly went through their discography in about 2020. I’d heard Siamese Dream and Mellon Collie… before, but 2020 was the year where I could really absorb ’em. Hence this is the first time I’m covering a Smashing Pumpkins song of any kind on here. I do like a few more. They just begin with letters of the alphabet that come before ‘T.’

The track was released as the second single from Siamese Dream, the band’s second album, in 1993. I believe the story goes the band’s label pushed it to be the first, I think for very obvious reasons too, but the band felt ‘Cherub Rock’ was a better representation of where the band was at that point in time. Gotta respect it. But ‘Today’, man. Might be basic to say it’s a favourite Smashing Pumpkins song of mine, but there’s no point in denying it. The quieter parts of the song are where the choruses happen before they launch into the louder verses, putting a nice spin on the usual ‘quiet verse / loud chorus’ dynamic which was a keystone move in ’90s alternative rock. I appreciate that. That, and what I think is an obvious Beatles reference with the ‘I want to turn you on’ repeats near the finish. But I what I appreciate most is the great melody. I’m a sucker for a melody you can get lost in, and that’s all over ‘Today’. Whether Corgan takes on the breathy, airy tone or a gritter one for the louder parts, the melody at the centre of it is always strong. There’s also a guitar solo buried deep in the middle of the layered guitars during the introduction, which is actually one of my favourite parts of the entire thing. It seems insignificant, but for me it adds so much to it all.

Yeah, watching the music video for ‘Today’ was how I got to know the song. It’s a story that applies to a bunch of other songs on this blog. I think the video played on VH2. From what I can remember, the channel used a clip of the video for one of the various ident adverts it had. I became familiar with the track’s twinkling riff and the drop into the heavy intro. That’s how my association with it stayed for a while. One day the whole video played, and that was all I needed. There’s a reason it’s one of the band’s most well-known songs. It’s so damn catchy, even though it’s written at a time when Billy Corgan was at his lowest and contemplating suicide. In his words, he found it funny to write a song saying “today is the greatest day [he’s] ever known” because it couldn’t get any worse. And yet out of what must have been a shitty situation came this track that makes so many people happy. I most likely took the song’s main phrase at face value those first times hearing it. But even after knowing the song’s dark background for a while now, I hear that small, unassuming riff and the sudden switch into the sunny, distorted introduction and can’t help but smile and feel warm inside.

#1386: The Maccabees – Tissue Shoulders

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I mentioned The Maccabees’ Colour It In just a couple days ago. Only by sheer coincidence, I swear. Like I said in the previous post, the album was something I asked to get as a Christmas gift in 2007. There weren’t any other search results under ‘Colour It In’ apart from that Christmas list email, so it must have been under the tree. Videos for The Maccabees’ singles were appearing on MTV2 in that prime UK-indie-rock-everywhere phase of 2006-07. ‘Latchmere’ was the first Maccabees song I heard, followed by ‘First Love’, ‘About Your Dress’ and then ‘Precious Time’, the latter being the proper lead-up single before the album was released maybe a couple weeks later. I liked ’em all. Then NME made it available to listen to on their website on the media player they had back in the day as an exclusive. In low-quality, but obviously the company weren’t going to share a high-quality version for everyone to hear. And that was enough for me, really, hence the gift request later in the year.

Going into listening through the actual CD, now that I had it in my possession, I think I had my favourites sussed out already from that initial NME.com listen. The singles were a given, but then there were the deeper cuts like ‘Good Old Bill’, ‘O.A.V.I.P.’ and ‘Happy Faces’ that I got into right away. ‘Tissue Shoulders’, placed between the last two listed songs in the previous sentence, was not one of them. I never thought it was bad. But with the placement it had in the track list, sandwiched between two tracks I thought were great, it didn’t leave the biggest impression on me for a long time. This changed maybe only a few years ago too. Now, I was certain that I heard a small, small section of the song – the layered guitars during the ending – in an episode of The Inbetweeners I was re-watching, and just that part made me want to revisit the whole track. I searched ’tissue shoulders the inbetweeners’ on Google before writing this just to be sure, and I got no results. Could any Inbetweeners fan out there who knows each episode by heart, potentially reading this, confirm that I’m not going crazy?

A few songs on Colour It In touch upon the universal subject of relationships. Everyone’s favourite subject. ‘Tissue Shoulders’ is one of them. In it, singer Orlando Weeks aims to give some guidance on what to do if you’re looking to get into a relationship. Find someone who knows what they want out of it. If they can give a shoulder to cry on, hence the ’tissue shoulders’ turn of phrase, that would be preferable too. But by the repetitions of “Don’t want to lie alone” and a view of looking to find “another with a shoestring love heart thong” near the song’s end, he’s probably giving this advice to himself. That’s a tragic element to the track that I never picked up on. But the energetic performance supplied by the rest of the band alongside the words does well to hide it. The song always goes back to the bass hook provided by Rupert Jarvis at the song’s start, with the band’s old drummer Robert Dylan Thomas breaking out some hectic rhythms. What I usually most enjoy about ‘Tissue…’ though, like a lot of songs on Colour It In is the guitar interplay between the White brothers, Hugo and Felix. The way they lock in with those stops and starts at the song’s final moments is probably my favourite part. Many layers to ‘Tissue Shoulders’. One of a number of reasons the album remains my Maccabees release of choice.