Monthly Archives: September 2024

#1160: Red Hot Chili Peppers – Scar Tissue

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When I was a younger buck, the video for ‘Scar Tissue’ would show up on the TV out of the blue on numerous occasions. This would have been after the Californication era of Red Hot Chili Peppers. Heck, even after By the Way. Music channels in the UK in the 2000s would show RHCP just ’cause they’re a popular band anyway. But I’m thinking the video would have been shown more around the time Stadium Arcadium was on the horizon, ‘Dani California’ was the hot new single, and general hype for the Chilis was at a big, big high. All of this is a roundabout way to say, seeing the video on these channels was how I got to know the song.

‘Scar Tissue’ was the first single released from Californication back in 1999. When I found this out initially, I was kinda confused. The track isn’t one of the most upbeat things you’ll ever hear. The band looked battered and bruised in the music video. Pre-pubescent me thought the whole thing was a bit of a downer. But I recognise now that it was meant to be more a symbolic choice more than anything. It showcases the band’s newer melodic, mellow style after the funky Sex Magik and harder-rock One Hot Minute albums that came earlier in the decade. John Frusciante was back in the band. The first thing you hear is Frusciante’s lick that opens the song, he’s driving the car in the music video, the weeping slide-guitar solos are just a few of its highlights. It all made sense once some thought on my part went behind it. It is still a bit of a downer, but sometimes you need those kinds of songs anyway.

Like a lot of things penned by Anthony Kiedis, the song isn’t about anything much at all and are just words written to coalesce with the music that Frusciante, Flea and Chad Smith provide, leaving it all to the listener’s interpretation. I think it’s more about the imagery in this case. He can come up with some laughable headscratchers, it’s true, but you won’t find any here. The melody’s simple, only really alternating between two notes, before switching up for the choruses that are capped off by Frusciante’s guitar solos. You’re guaranteed to see it if you were to see the band live. I don’t think Frusciante’s played those solos in the same way since they first made the track. Overall, some great, great stuff.

#1159: Paul McCartney & Michael Jackson – Say Say Say

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Where to start with this one? I don’t think I have a very deep story to tell with this one, as to how I came across it for the first time. I want to say I have a memory of hearing it on the radio a long, long time ago when I was a child. But even then I’m not so sure. Though if I’m going with this story, I wouldn’t have known who was singing, nor would I have even been aware that there were two different singers on there. I’m sure the kid me thought it was really good. To be very honest, I think I actually became aware of ‘Say Say Say’ through a sample of it that was used in this house track from 2006. It’s very generic. But then through becoming a fan of The Beatles and probably seeing its music video on TV too, it was an instance of “Oh, that’s what that song was sampling.” And it sounded much better in comparison.

Paul McCartney and Michael Jackson decided to get together during the spring of 1981. Story goes Jackson called McCartney up, the latter thought it was a prank. When it was clear it wasn’t, the two came to an agreement to “make some hits” and Jackson stayed round Paul and Linda McCartney’s place during the recording sessions. It may have also been during this time that McCartney advised Jackson to get into song publishing, but that’s another story altogether. The sessions with Jackson and McCartney went swimmingly, with a couple tracks making it out alive as a result. One being ‘The Man’, and ‘Say Say Say’. Between the two, it’s clear which one was always going to be that hit that the two envisioned.

Completed in 1981, it wouldn’t be until a couple years later that the track would see the light of day, when it was released as the first single from McCartney’s Pipes of Peace album. And it got the works. Thriller was probably still in the charts somewhere when ‘Say Say Say”s release came around, and with Jackson being the biggest star on the planet and McCartney still being a former Beatle and all, the song had to also get the big music video (above) to highlight the camaraderie between the two. Also nice to see Linda McCartney in there too. As for the song, well, it’s about a man (whose perspective is sung by the two artists) left hung out to dry by a woman of his affection. He just wants to know if she feels the same way. She’s got to say, say, say, is what it comes down to. McCartney and Jackson are brilliant on the vocals, trading off, harmonising, makes for an engaging listen. Possesses a very tight groove. It’s a dang classic to me.

#1158: The Pigeon Detectives – Say It Like You Mean It

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Well, the last Pigeon Detectives song I wrote about on here was ‘Everybody Wants Me’, just over ten years ago. In that post I mentioned how I didn’t know whether the band were still together. It’s a sentiment I still have today. They are, according to Wikipedia, and even released an album last year. I’m not sure if anyone, apart from their fans, are wondering what the band are up to these days. But there was a time in those mid/late-2000s where they were sort of the talk of the town. The band’s 2007 debut album Wait for Me was a wildly popular one in the UK, and almost a year to the day of its release came the second album Emergency. It did just all right in comparison. But that’s where you’ll find ‘Everybody Wants Me’ and today’s song, ‘Say It Like You Mean It’.

I only really know this song because it was released as the third and final single from Emergency, and its music video got the obligatory play on MTV2 during the mornings or whatever. But that’s not to say I only came to like it through some sort of Stockholm syndrome situation. When it came to their singles, The Pigeon Detectives usually delivered the goods. Handy with a melody, bursting with energy. They were always fine ones to sing along to. It’s very much the same with ‘Say It Like You Mean It’. I read a comment the other day that said it was their most Strokes-ish song. I couldn’t believe that I hadn’t thought of it like that before, because it certainly is, particularly when it comes to the interplay between the rhythm guitar and the lead.

The subject matter isn’t one that I’ve ever heard thought to think to deeply about. The lyrics seem to consist of clichés and typical thoughts ‘n’ feelings that you would find in a song about your standard relationship. And if you like the first minute and 10 seconds of the song, then you’ll certainly like the rest that follows because the verses and refrains never change. But it’s done well. I could never say it’s a bad song. It’s just a shame that it’s the last one by the band that I properly cared about because, after Emergency, the whole UK indie scene kind of died out and everyone, including myself, just moved on to different things. They had us for a while, though. They were all right times.

#1157: Weezer – Say It Ain’t So

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According to my post for ‘Buddy Holly’ years and years back, I properly started getting into Weezer when I was about 10 years old. 29-year-old me can’t remember so well, so I’ll take 18-year-old me’s word. But it does sound about right. 2005 (the year I was 10) was around the time Make Believe was out, and although that’s considered to be one of the band’s worst albums, I think my interest in them stemmed from seeing this video for ‘We Are All on Drugs’ on MTV2 on the regular and other Weezer songs I’d catch on the TV by chance. ‘Buddy Holly’ became a favourite song of young self very quickly, and I think it was through trying to find its music video online that I then came across ‘Say It Ain’t So’, whose video was a lot less gimmicky in comparison but, to me, still impactful nonetheless.

It’s all coming back to me now, actually. I remember spending a lot of time repeating the video at certain points during the song. Not on YouTube (which was busy not being active), but some other vague music video site that probably doesn’t exist now. The “bubbli-hi-hi-hi-hiiing” was unexpected. As was the delivery in the “wrestle with Jiiiimmy”. The string bends in between the power chords during the second chorus. There were all these little quirks and changes within the song that were drawing my attention. And it was through watching the videos for this, ‘Buddy Holly’ and ‘Undone’, not necessarily in that order, that I thought that I had to get The Blue Album in my possession. All the singles were good, so it was a no brainer. Still I have my copy to this day since 2006.

‘Say It Ain’t So’ is rightly one of Weezer’s most popular songs. Probably one of the best alternative rock songs of the ’90s, to be fair. It’s weird though nowadays, ’cause Weezer’s a band that lot of people like to joke about or make memes out of, so you never know if people are really listening for the music or whether they want to be in on the joke. But there’s no joking about this song. It’s all straight from the heart. The track sees Cuomo battling a personal demon he faced when he was 16, when he saw a can of beer in the fridge and, from that, assumed his stepfather would be leaving the family because his biological father started drinking when he left his mother. Cuomo said he probably shouldn’t have written the song about trauma like that. But he did. And it’s very, very good.

#1156: Simon & Garfunkel – Save the Life of My Child

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A pre-Spotify/streaming service website used to exist back in the day. We7.com it was called. It allowed you to play a bunch of music in full, for free, without registration. And I came across it in early 2009, I think because Green Day’s 21st Century Breakdown had just been released and there it was, available to listen to, out in the open. The website doesn’t exist anymore, but when it did I got to hear a lot of the music I listen to now for the first time. And that’s where Simon & Garfunkel’s ‘Save the Life of My Child’ comes in. The track played on the site’s internet radio feature one day. Though I’m sure I would have heard ‘The Sound of Silence’ way before then, or ‘Bridge over Troubled Water’, I do believe it’s ‘Save…’ that was properly the first S&G track I’d fully paid attention with headphones at hand.

And the fat synthesizer that opens the song up is not what I was expecting on that initial hearing. I wonder how listeners back in 1968 would have felt too. It’s such a contrast compared to the usual acoustic numbers the duo did, and especially coming right after the light introduction that opens Bookends, the album on which ‘Save the Life…’ can be found. The track is one of the very first ever to utilise the Moog synthesizer, used predominantly for the bassline, and Paul Simon chugs away on the acoustic guitar while singing from the different perspectives of different people witnessing a boy sitting on the ledge of a high building, contemplating suicide. It’s a busy, busy scene. Passersby speculate, newspapers are rolling out with the story, the cops are called, and when one does arrive, they offer no considerable help in the slightest. Spotlights are put on the kid who, in that moment, decides to fall. That’s how the song ends.

I’ve always felt that the song is in some way providing a wider commentary than what’s being portrayed within. I wasn’t around in the ’60s, but from what I’ve gleaned by just reading around, things were much different in the America of 1968 than it was in ’67. The summer of love had long gone, and people wanted politicians to answer for poor decisions. Looking to musicians to provide some solidarity in their art. It was a general time of unrest. And that unrest is very much captured in the performance and general feel of ‘Save the Life…’. The song’s bridge includes an unsettling use of the duo’s aforementioned ‘Sound of Silence’ which, in context, I think symbolises a kind of momentary yearning for those young and innocent days before being abruptly brought back into reality, with the state of affairs of the then-current days being summed up in the final lines as the boy falls to the ground: “Oh, my grace, I got no hiding place.”