Daily Archives: July 21, 2013

My iPod #91: Radiohead – The Bends

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Something I didn’t mention in my last post is that I am currently in my cousin’s house for a barbecue. The charcoal is not warming up at all however, and it may be a long time before I get anything to eat. I have only eaten breakfast, and I am quite hungry so something better be put in my belly soon.

Now to the song. A live performance of “The Bends” by Radiohead played on vh2 when I was younger. I can’t remember if I liked the song at that moment, but the album (that takes its name from the song) contains some of Radiohead’s most popular songs, including “My Iron Lung”, “Just” and “Street Spirit (Fade Out)” and I liked those songs when I saw their music videos on the TV. For that reason I asked for “The Bends” for one of my previous birthdays – I can’t remember which one.

The song starts quietly with a thirteen second sample of a guy training some kids outside of a hotel where the band were staying. The song is also about ‘knowing who you real friends are’. My favourite part is the last section when the instruments seem to raise in volume, an great guitar solo occurs and Thom starts wailing ‘I wanna be part of the human race.’ It sounds so uplifting.

I’m edging nearer to my hundredth post. Quite weird. I never thought I could keep this up for so long.

Until tomorrow.

Jamie.

My iPod #90: They Might Be Giants – The Bells Are Ringing

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Hey everyone.

Again, I didn’t have time to make a post yesterday. Well I did, but I was too tired. I went paintballing you see. ‘Twas my first time too. I knew it would be painful, and it was my first experience of being shot at with something. It wasn’t too bad. It was much better than I thought it would be. The paint balls do sting upon contact, and I’ve got a few bruises here and there. I’m fine though. It was all good fun.

This is the first of the two I’ll do today. So here’s another by a favourite band of mine. Yeah, TMBG.

“The Bells Are Ringing” is the final track on the band’s last album from Elektra Records. “Factory Showroom” is the album’s name.

I first heard the song due to the LAUNCHcast radio/website that Yahoo! owned years ago, it came up randomly one of the genre-assorted radios that were available. I heard it that one time, and so forgot about it pretty quickly. YouTube didn’t exist that time, so to listen to a song in full for free on the Internet was a pretty hard thing to do.

I’m not a Malcolm in the Middle fan – I’ve never really watched the show before – but this song also featured in one episode called ‘Christmas’. For that, I just assumed that the song was a Christmas tune, but that’s only because of the mentioning of bells. Bells are something that are common at Christmas time, right? It’s doesn’t have anything to do with Christmas though. The subject of the song, in my opinion, is about this fad that’s caught on by everyone, with the fad being represented as the bells in the song. The bridge brings light upon ‘a girl with cotton in her ears’ who is oblivious to it, but people go on about it and then begins to appreciate it. It’s got a real ‘1984’ theme about it.

At the end of the song, everybody’s happy and those ‘bells’ (which are sung) keep on ringing amongst an increasing volume in marching drums.

I think it’s a happy song, but with They Might Be Giants I can never really be sure.

Coming back soon.

Jamie.