#1391: Gorillaz – Tomorrow Comes Today

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‘Clint Eastwood’ is the official first single by Gorillaz. I’m sure it goes down as that. When it was released in 2001, I was but a small child, but I have a vague memory of watching The Box or something and seeing Noodle kicking a gorilla in the face, having no idea what was going on. Seemed weird seeing a cartoon set to music. That’s seen as the song that introduced the world to Gorillaz. But a few months before, the first batch of Gorillaz material was released in the form of the Tomorrow Comes Today EP. A very pivotal time in Damon Albarn’s life. Only a month before the EP was out, he was appearing on TV shows with Blur, doing promotional work for the band’s Best Of: compilation. But that work was over, it was a new millennium, and it was time to unveil this new project. Gorillaz, hell yeah. ‘Tomorrow Comes Today’ was really the first Gorillaz song to be unveiled, along with a music video that, according to the Bananaz documentary, was done in two weeks.

I… did not like this song a very long time. I heard Gorillaz for the first time in 2010. I may have heard ‘Tomorrow…’ here and there before then, but here it was in the context of the album. With its placement after ‘Re-Hash’ and ‘5/4’, ‘Tomorrow…’ felt like such a downer. Albarn melodically mumbling syllables over downcast music. It wasn’t for me. I didn’t get it. But then, I remember, I was on a train, more specifically the Underground, back home one day. Couldn’t say what year. I was looking at people’s faces, most of them blank, expressionless, tired. The song came to my head, and that was it. I feel I finally understood what the tune was going for. Even though I don’t think anyone really knows what Albarn’s saying apart from the man himself, I get the feeling it’s about being anywhere else than a place you’re currently in – whether that be physically or mentally too. It might have to do with the rapid development of technology or something as well. Albarn’s vocal’s perfect for it. The best part is probably when Miho Hatori, as Noodle, harmonises with him on the last line. Icing on the cake.

The song goes back as early as 1999. We know this because, in its demo form, it was released as a bonus track on Japanese releases of Blur’s 13. Check out Damon Albarn just messing around on his Casio. Obviously, he saw enough potential in the song he had to develop it into the fleshed-out composition it would become. In its album form, it’s led by a really deep bass guitar, sparse piano tinkles and the melodica, an instrumental you’ll find in many a Gorillaz song. I never realized how sample-assisted the track is too. The drum beat is taken from Allen Toussaint’s ‘Get Out of My Life, Woman’. And if I hadn’t looked at Genius, I would have never known there was a recording of a Gregorian chant during the introduction. Thinking that’s down to the involvement of producer Dan the Automator, who was also working on Deltron 3030 almost at the same time. That’s a whole other bag we don’t have to put our hands into. But to sum things up, ‘Tomorrow Comes Today’ is a song I like a lot now having disregarded it for many years. I can find a lot of solace in its gloom.

#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.