Monthly Archives: August 2013

My iPod #107: Arcade Fire – Black Wave/Bad Vibrations

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Evening everybody.

Feeling good? Yeah, me too. Results day for my exams is in nine days. It’s pretty scary. I’m trying not to think about time though. Next Thursday determines the rest of my life. Or at least the year that’s to come. Let’s hope that I get good ones.

Today is the fifth song on Arcade Fire’s second album “Neon Bible”, released in 2007. To summarise – for those of you who don’t know who Arcade Fire are – they are a Canadian band which practically every critic came to love after they released their fist album “Funeral” in 2004. They rose in popularity, gained a lot of fans and have currently finished their fourth album which is due to be released in Autumn.

Neon Bible’s release was probably as hyped as “Favourite Worst Nightmare”, so everyone was waiting to see what the band would do next. My sister bought it when it came out. We listened to it on Windows Media, that’s when I first heard this song.

I say that today’s post is one song, but it’s actually two sections just merged together to make a full product. I will guide you through them as best as I can.

First section: Black Wave
Régine Chassagne, occassional lead vocalist, sings the first part. The whole song is quite chilling and very haunting. This first part has a lighter mood than “Bad Vibrations” though. It tells the story of a couple, supposedly on the run from the law, and set sail on the ocean to lead a new life. She also sings in French for some lines too, that’s cool. And mysterious.

Then everything comes to an abrupt end, and with a few strikes on a xylophone the second part then starts with a boom.

Second section: Bad Vibrations
Impending doom. That’s really all I can think of when I listen to “Bad Vibrations”. Weirdly, the phrase “Black Wave” is used in this and not in the first. The “bad vibrations” are only alluded to in the final lines, “The sound is not asleep/It’s moving under my feet”, but are also emphasised by the dark tone, Win Butler’s perishing vocals and the various “oohs and aahs” in the background. It’s pretty scary. The song slowly comes to a halt, and segues into the next song.

So there you have it. Another post is done.

Hope you like the song as much as I do. Listen to it. Comment if you want.

Until tomorrow.

Jamie.

My iPod #106: Kanye West – Black Skinhead

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“I just talked to Jesus, he said “What up, Yeezus?”
I said, “Shit, I’m chillin’, tryin’ to stack these millions.”
I know He the most high, but I am a close eye
Mi casa es su casa, that’s our Cosa Nostra HUH?!
I am a god.”

That’s probably one of the funniest verses I’ve heard in a long time. Kanye West, at the moment, feels like he cannot be touched. He’s got a hot wife, he’s a father. Things are looking up for him.

What better way to show his good life off to everyone then, by writing about that (amongst other topics that interest him) in his new album, “Yeezus“?

I like Kanye West’s music. Seems like forever ago when he first came out with “Through the Wire” and seemed like a modest man who, after surviving a life threatening car crash, wanted to show the world that he wasn’t just a great producer but could handle his own material. With an album title such as “Yeezus”, we now see how far this ‘modest man’ has come.

“Yeezus” came as a real surprise to me. Let me tell you why. I knew it was his next album title, and then found reports about his new song “New Slaves” being shown on the sides of buildings around the world. That was around Springtime/early Summer. So I thought, “Well, it must be next year that the album will come.” That was until my friend told me that it would be released in only a few days time. Oh…. SHHHIIIIIII-

No way! The new Kanye album’s coming! Ah man. I couldn’t wait. That was until the album leaked, and the same friend sent me the link through Facebook. I was all over that shit. I couldn’t handle it!

That’s where “Black Skinhead” comes in. After being impressed by “On Sight”, “Black Skinhead came in with those thumping tom-toms and I knew that some hard stuff was about to go down. One thing that struck me about the album was how loud it was, but it came to good effect on this song. This song has to be played loud. It’s Kanye’s theme song.

After listening to it multiple times now, it doesn’t feel the same as it did on that first listen. It’s definitely a highlight though.

Until tomorrow.

Jamie.

My iPod #105: The Darkness – Black Shuck

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Now, it takes time for a person to find that certain artist that will determine their musical taste for the rest of their life. Some people may listen to The Beatles, Michael Jackson… I don’t know. Those recognisable artists that change people’s lives.

I was eight years old in 2003, and I didn’t really listen to a specific genre. Mostly, it was music that was in the charts. At the time, music in the charts was bearable stuff. I wonder if people my age in 2003 hated chart music as much. Hmm. I wonder.

So in 2003, I was young and foolish. I had no idea what music was out there, where was the song that would actually make me want to get that artist’s album. That, my friends, is where The Darkness came in.

I have to say, if it wasn’t for this band, I probably wouldn’t be watching MTV2. I would probably still be listening to chart music thinking it was good. Even if I was in Year 4, I thought “I Believe in a Thing Called Love” was the best song ever. And that was when I thought “Crashed the Wedding” by Busted had that title. My friend also listened to Busted and The Darkness too, and we thought they were the best bands ever. But The Darkness were so much cooler. Busted eventually split later on too. So The Darkness was the better band.

Then they released more songs – which I’ll talk in months to come – and I made up my mind that I had to get the album. My first album ever with a “Parental Advisory” sticker on the cover. I never knew about the word ‘cunt’ until I saw the lyrics for “Get Your Hands off My Woman” in the liner notes. “Permission to Land” was the first rock album I got. For what occasion, I don’t know. I think it was from my cousin though.

The Darkness got a lot of flack. I think a lot of people saw them as some ‘wannabe/joke’ band that were living in another decade. Their music videos didn’t help them so much either. That’s not cool. People are so close-minded. “Black Shuck” starts things off on the album with a thrilling riff, and what I guess is some polyrhythm before launching into actual 4/4 and rocking about some pimp-ass beast dog (Black Shuck) that is said ‘to roam the coastline and countryside of East Anglia’. Wikipedia does not lie.

Until tomorrow.

Jamie.

My iPod #104: Michael Jackson – Black or White

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Michael Jackson. A name that brings up so many memories… so many questions. Too many that I won’t go through in this blog. Whether you hated or loved him, you can’t say that the guy didn’t make some damn fine music. That will go down forever in history.

I remember where I was when the news came out that he died…. I was in my bed, asleep. My sister came home from a night out screaming to my aunt that Jackson had died. “Pffff… no way,” I thought to myself “It’s just a rumour.”

Next morning on BBC News – BREAKING NEWS: MICHAEL JACKSON DEAD. Holy shit… he was gone. I didn’t really care for the guy, his music was fantastic and all. It was a shame though. It was raining. Everyone on the public bus to school was quiet, except for this one guy blaring Michael Jackson songs in his ears. My friend hastily ripped of the front page of The Sun and stuck it on the notice board in our form room as some sort of ‘tribute’, and MTV played Michael Jackson videos all day. It was crazy. Four years has flown by.

Enough with the sadness. Let’s talk about “Black or White”. I can’t remember the first time I heard the song. Michael Jackson seems like a name that had been around forever. I have a feeling my sister had a cassette that showed all the videos for “Dangerous” somewhere. It must have been on that. The faces morphing into different people near the end of the song is something I can remember. It’s very vague.

“Black or White” was the first single from “Dangerous” in 1991. I wasn’t born, my sister had been for a few months. It’s a very happy song, singing positively about equality and people getting along with one another. The chorus of the song is, if you… were thinking of getting with Michael, it didn’t matter if you were black or white. If you were fine – and not like ‘feeling fine’ but if you were fine – then you had a good chance with him. And this is all sung over a joyful riff, not played by Slash of Guns ‘n’ Roses. It reached number one almost everywhere, and was another song to add to Jackson’s classics.

Until tomorrow.

Jamie.

My iPod #103: Soundgarden – Black Hole Sun

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This may be a short post. I’m not really a fan of Soundgarden, so I don’t know if I’ll be able to say a lot about them. I did download “Superunknown” last year though, thought that was awesome and listened to a few songs of theirs afterwards. But I’ll try and fill the void.

“Black Hole Sun” was actually the third single from “Superunknown”. Huh. I always assumed it was the first, only because it’s considered to be the band’s most popular song. Grunge was still the big thing in America at the time the song was released, but Kurt Cobain was dead too. So the grunge followers needed a song that would reflect the feelings. This eventually became that song.

I watched Kerrang! one day, and the video for “Black Hole Sun” came on. I was pretty weirded out by the whole thing. The whole apocalypse theme, the weird stretching faces… pure nightmare fuel for anybody. ‘Cause of that, I didn’t really like the song. I didn’t want to see the video again for quite some time either. I realised the song wasn’t bad though. I can’t make my mind up on whether the song has a positive mood or a negative one. Stereotypically, grunge never has a positive message. There’s no negative theme in the song, it’s just about who observes problems around them, and yearns for something to ‘wash the rain away’. Maybe it’s the drop D tuning that does it. Makes the track sound dark and moody.

Until tomorrow.

Jamie.