Monthly Archives: December 2013

My iPod #186: Green Day – Christian’s Inferno

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I thought “21st Century Breakdown” was a real bore of a first listen. Being available as an exclusive on we7.com, when the site was actually useful, I took the opportunity to hear Green Day’s new album. It was their first in five years, you know.

But I didn’t think it was too great. At least from what I can remember anyway. I already didn’t like “Know Your Enemy” – thought that was quite a disappointing first single – and I wasn’t amazed by anything much on the album. Everything sounded the same production-wise.

I did download it eventually later on in 2009. Feelings improved a bit. I still didn’t think it could be regarded as one of the band’s finest albums though. But the number of songs I was able to memorise did increase.

Then Green Day: Rock Band came out the following year, and that helped me a lot to work out the melodies and ‘guitar patterns’ of the whole album. It made me appreciate the album that bit more.

I am still very confused about what the concept of 21st Century Breakdown is. I probably mentioned this in a previous post. Still not quite sure who Christian and Gloria are, or what they are meant to represent. I am not sure why Christian is so full of wrath in this particular track either.

“Inferno” is a belter though. Not one of the best tracks on the album, with a repetitive chorus and theatrical, maniacal laughter by Billie Joe which doesn’t have any emotional effect on me whatsoever. But…. I don’t know, it’s just something to jump around and go crazy to when no one’s around.

My iPod #185: System of a Down – Chop Suey!

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Ah, Chop Suey… I was confused as fuck when I saw the video for this. System of a Down freaked me out just a bit.

I change the channel and suddenly there are these half-naked guitarists pulling faces at the camera, a singer with a huge beard yelling, screaming and saying gibberish in the verses. Quite creepy. But I saw it again and again and wasn’t so perturbed by it anymore. In fact, the more I watched it the more I understood what the song was about. The more I liked it, too.

Back then, I probably thought the band members were just being weird. But it’s probably the passion they put into performing the song if anything. The video is pretty cool; the song is…… Well, I’ll just say if mood swings were to be composed into music then this is the piece captured in three and a half minutes.

“Chop Suey” was the first single from the band’s second album “Toxicity” in 2001. I did not hear the song until years after.

It is very hard to say exactly how I feel about the song. Only because a lot of things happen in it. If you haven’t heard it, where have you been?

But really if you haven’t heard it then you should watch it above because…. it is something.

My iPod #184: Snow Patrol – Chocolate

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“Chocolate” was the first song I ever heard by Snow Patrol. The video played on MTV, or one of the music channels I can’t exactly remember which one it was, and I just liked it from that moment. That snare drum that plays throughout the whole song, the guitar and xylophone riff that plays during the breaks and Gary Lightbody’s vocal just all worked together. Those made the song very memorable.

This along with “Spitting Games” are the two songs I really like by the band. The rest that followed all kind of sound the same. They all sound very sad. Lightbody’s voice only emphasises that emotion. It has never really changed either. He still has the ‘breathy, sighy’ singing voice. So, I can never feel anything but depressed when listening to a Snow Patrol song – apart the two songs I’ve mentioned are better, so listen to those.

That’s it.

Oh yeah, “Chocolate” was released as a single from the album “Final Straw“.

My iPod #183: Battle – Children

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Who remembers Battle? Yeeeaaaaahhhhh – wait, no? I can’t blame you. The band wasn’t around for too long. Two years apparently. And this is the only song of theirs that played on any kind of medium as far I can recall.

“Children” did not make it onto either of the two albums that Battle made, being a single-only release.

The video played on MTV2, and I thought it was alright. I remembered the line, “If we are the only ones, I will disappear” for a while. I wasn’t able to listen to it for some time once the video stopped circulating on the channel, cos downloading sites had no idea who the band was and YouTube had only just become a site.

I was amused when the lead singer randomly started screaming too….. Thinking about it, screaming probably isn’t the right word. If there is a word for putting a lot of effort into the delivery of lines, it would have been useful.

Here are other songs the band have written.

My iPod #182: Blur – Chemical World

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I undertook on a Blur marathon earlier this year. Putting my Premium Spotify account to good use, I decided to listen the band’s discography. It was not a continuous action so marathon may not be the right word, but it took me a weekend to get from “Leisure” to “Think Tank“. It was not just those original albums either; they included the bonus discs including B-Sides, demos and live material that accompanied each album as part of the “Blur 21” compilation. It was a lot of hours well spent. That ‘event’ also helped me to realise how much good music the band actually made. Before, I just had the Best Of compilation and thought that was fine, but the deep cuts are just as good. Buy albums. Compilations are useless. Blur is probably one of my favourite bands now, and it only took a weekend of their music to make me see the light.

That’s enough of that.

“Chemical World” is a tune from the band’s ‘fuck you America’ album “Modern Life Is Rubbish“. It was also released as its second single in 1993.

Like many other songs I have on my iPod, this was one that I first heard/saw when its video played on MTV2. Then, I didn’t think much of the song. That’s how I feel with pretty much everything I listen to. But its chorus was quite memorable and embedded itself in my head, even though I had no idea what Damon was singing in the verses.

Fast forward a few years later and do what I describe in the opening paragraph, I couldn’t wait for the song to start because it was the only song – apart from “For Tomorrow” that I would be familiar with. Well, that and “Sunday Sunday” but that’s a different story.

Listening to the lyrics now, still not sure what it’s about. I initially assumed it was a song about the environment seeing as it was called “Chemical World” and mentions of “putting the holes in”. It may be about drugs – it’s all very metaphorical.