Author Archives: The Music in My Ears (by Jamie Kyei)

About The Music in My Ears (by Jamie Kyei)

Just one man who's making his way through life one day at a time writing about the songs he has on his phone. And other things at some points.

#1295: The Rakes – Strasbourg

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Whoa, whoa, whoa. I haven’t written about The Rakes in a long, long time. One of my earliest posts for this series was for a song by the band. I give a brief bit of context on how I came to know the group in the two sentences that make up the second paragraph. And then I also give links to three other songs of theirs that I knew I would never be writing about. Had to leave you good readers waiting with a suspense lasting 12-and-a-bit years. But the moment has come. And no better way to mark the arrival than with an album opener. ‘Strasbourg’ is the first song on the band’s 2005 debut album Capture/Release. I, however, came to know the track through different circumstances. If you had a peek at one of the tags below, you may have already figured those circumstances out. And if not, it was because of FIFA 06. The song was on the soundtrack.

‘Strasbourg’ is a fiery, punky number, suitable to get any album off to an energetic start. First you hear some feedback, then the guitar gets going. The drums join in, followed by the bass. And then singer Alan Donohoe enters the frame after this calculated layer-by-layer introduction of instruments. The track details the trials and tribulations of a couple trying to flee 1980s Germany, when the Berlin Wall was still up and all of that business, for the French city of Strasbourg which is located pretty much on the border. I think the main highlight of the track is how it suddenly switches up a gear r two in energy and vigour during the choruses, in which Donohoe wails out “We’ll meet in Strasbourg” alongside backing vocals from guitarist Matthew Swinnerton. It’s like hell breaks loose for those moments before sanity’s regained for the more “conservative” verses. Great dynamic going on there.

And yeah, this track is another one of those sprinkled throughout this ongoing list that I was introduced to and grew accustomed to because of its inclusion on a video game’s playlist. Specifically one by EA Sports. ‘Strasbourg’ wasn’t the first song by The Rakes I’d ever heard. By the time of FIFA 06’s release, I’m sure I would have seen the music video for ’22 Grand Job’ on MTV2 multiple times. That’s one that’ll get its own post one day. So I definitely knew who The Rakes were. Just so happened that someone in the EA headquarters caught wind of the band and thought they were cool enough to add to the game. I do remember 10-year-old me attempting to sing along to this tune many a time. And I think I got nearly all the lyrics down, even the German ones. But again, like a lot of songs on FIFA, the track had gone through the censorship wringer. Alcohol references and obvious curses were either muted or replaced with cut-out phrases from other parts of the song, and the ending comes to an even more awkward sudden end than it does already on the album. This ‘clean’ version is below.

#1294: Ween – Strap on that jammypac

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You know those times at a live show when a band comes out and, to get the crowd pumped up, the guitarists will start strumming one chord vigorously with the bass guitarist following suit with one note on a string and the drummer laying into the cymbals before signalling a count that suitably falls into the rhythm of the opening number of the night? I feel like Foo Fighters do that kind of thing a lot of the time. They just come to me as an example. Well, Ween’s ‘Strap on that jammypac’ is a song where the music is based on those specific moments, except the actual song that’s supposed to begin right after never starts. ‘…jammypac’ is the opening number to Ween’s almighty sophomore album The Pod, released in September 1991. And what better way to get this unusual album going than with a track just as unusual in nature?

The ‘jammypac’ in the song’s title refers to the apparatus donned by the figure on the album’s cover, widely known by Ween fans as ‘Mean Ween’, whose name is Chris Williams and a good friend of both Gene and Dean Ween. This was supposedly used to aid in the huffing of Scotchgard that went on during the making of the album. But of course it’s well-known now that this activity was a story made up by the two members of the band, who actually became ill with mononucleosis during the sessions. There were probably plenty of other types of hallucinogens involved, though. Dean Ween sings this tune, sounding like a Looney Tunes/Merry Melodies type of character that I can’t recall the name of, sometimes coming in a little too early or much, much later than the music backing him. Goes to show the vocal take was probably done after the music was recorded.

Overall, I guess you can say this is a song of invitation. There’s no better place to put it on the album than at the very beginning. Dean Ween wants you to put this jammypac on and promises that he and the listener will have a good time together, but sprinkled in among this is a tale of a man who doesn’t get the required amount of food he needs cooked by his woman and can’t take the situation anymore. It also marks the start of the dozens of internal references that occur throughout the album, with the mention of a ‘van Winkle’ who’s also mentioned in fellow album cuts ‘Boing’ and ‘Molly’, before getting their own dedicated song in ‘Sketches of Winkle’. Despite the track, I think, being influenced by those live rock concert situations, it wasn’t played in a live setting by Ween until they were on tour for Chocolate and Cheese a few years later. Whenever they’ve played it live in more recent times, it’s usually the show’s opening tune. It goes down very, very well with the crowd.

#1293: Nine Black Alps – Strangest Feeling

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Back in 2011, Nine Black Alps’ website looked like this. If you click on that link and scroll down a little, you can see that the band allowed you to stream their albums, 2005’s Everything Is and Love/Hate from 2007, as well as their whole catalogue of B-sides and a collection of their demos. Why I was on their website at the time, I can’t remember. But what I can say for sure is through launching the audio player under the ‘B-sides’ section, their inclusion being due to “public demand”, I came to know the subject of today’s post. ‘Strangest Feeling’ was a B-side released on a specific vinyl release of the ‘Burn Faster’ single. Strange that it was released only on vinyl, yet it’s available to listen to on streaming services. That’s not usually how things go. But in 2011, when I was 16 and already a big Nine Black Alps follower, finding these “new” songs felt like stumbling upon a gold mine.

‘Strangest Feeling’ was a tune I got into right away. Got a vivid memory of singing it loud in the bathroom while looking at myself in the mirror and brushing my teeth in the morning. Songwriter and guitarist Sam Forrest takes on the point of view of someone who becomes a family man. In his words, “[finds] a house and a wife and started breeding”. But this situation’s only really described in the first verse, with the second being a kind of list of contradictory statements, “I’m not coming up, I’m going down”, “I’m ecstatic, there’s no feeling,” et cetera, et cetera. A bit of a mish-mash of themes going on in this song. It may seem like a bit of a writing exercise in that case, and maybe that’s why it was considered a B-side rather than a number that could be considered album-worthy. But its hooky guitar riff and multitude of melodic points have always stood out to me. Like ‘So in Love’, there’s something very ’90s about the whole thing. In fact, this to me sounds more Nirvana than anything from Everything Is.

Ever since hearing it all that time ago, I’ve always thought of it as a really well-delivered, concise pop-rock tune. Poppy by Nine Black Alps standards. The Love/Hate era of the band was one in which Sam Forrest wanted to focus more on a melodic approach to his songwriting and performance, as opposed to the intense, straight-up hard rock found on predecessor Everything Is. It was a change that didn’t work so well, at least not to me, and Forrest has gone on to say that some songs on the album strayed from what he had envisioned. Had they taken those songs off and replaced them with the B-sides such as ‘Destination Nowhere’, ‘Daytime Habit’, ‘Heartstring’ and, obviously, ‘Strangest Feeling’, I think we all would have had a much stronger album on our hands. Always a shame when things don’t always work out the way we want them to.

#1292: Portishead – Strangers

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The very first Portishead song to appear at any point during this long, long process. I know, I know. You might be surprised. Or maybe not, I don’t want to assume. I’d had Dummy in my iTunes library since, I think, at least 2014. That year was one where music journalism websites were publishing articles about “albums turning 20”. Dummy, being released in 1994, came under that category. And just by reading around I knew it was meant to be a good one. So I downloaded it. But it sort of just laid to rest in my old laptop’s drive. It wasn’t until 2018 when I was doing my own listen through artist’s discographies on Spotify “challenge” at work that I properly revisited the album and came to truly appreciate it and get an overall sense of why the trip-hop pioneers were so well-respected. Simply put, the music is very, very good. And they’ve only had to make three albums to show this.

Dummy is the trio’s debut album. Where it all began. Critics at the time bowed down to it, the style of music presented had never been exhibited so exquisitely before. I must admit, it has been a while since I’ve listened through it. But writing this makes me want to. I have my favourite numbers on there. ‘Strangers’, the album’s third song, is one of ’em. My enjoyment for it immediately begins with the thumping groove and vibrating bass line. With some good speakers, the walls will start shaking. For the opening verse, the song switches to a floatier atmosphere – a slick guitar delivers these jazzy chords as Beth Gibbons, sounding like a ghostly presence, asks whether we can see the light where the morn meets the dew and if they can, whether they realize that no one else can experience it the same way as you do. After three trailing beeps, the banging groove kicks in again and Gibbons fully takes control. I’m deeply into this rhythm, and the few pauses and moments of rest that occur in the track make it all the more emphatic when the bass line kicks into gear straight after them.

I’ve sort of said all I needed to, I think. I’ve already stated what’s literally sung in the song, at least in the opening and closing verses, which I believe provide the overlying meaning of the whole track. That being we all may be able to see a beautiful sight, one like no other, one like we’ve never seen before, but each of us have a distinct experience of that view. Someone might appreciate it. Another might not. Whatever your own experience of it is, it’s yours and yours alone. Of course, it might not even be that literal either. That’s just what I get from it. I’m a fan of the rhythm and production, as I’ve said, but I thoroughly enjoy Beth Gibbon’s vocal too, honest and vulnerable with a lot of feeling. There’s a jazzy feel I get when she sings “Done it warning, done it now, and it ain’t real” hook. The melody sounds like a trumpet passage in some old recording. That’s a little aside on my part. Overall, probably one of the coolest tracks I have the pleasure of knowing.

#1291: The Kinks – Strangers

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And it looks like this will be the last track you’ll be seeing from this album too. A shame, really, ’cause I quite like The Kinks’ Lola Versus Powerman and the Moneygoround, Part One. My personal second favourite by the group. If things had been different, you would have at least seen a post for ‘Apeman’ and ‘Denmark Street’ on here. My old laptop contains the original date that I downloaded the record, but the monitor doesn’t turn on and I have to plug an HDMI cable from it to the TV in order to see what I’m doing. I have a good feeling it was sometime in 2015, ’cause I have a good memory of listening to ‘Powerman’ while walking to the place I was working at the time. I’ll get back to you on this matter. It doesn’t seem right to leave things vague like this.*

Among the songs discussing an infatuation to a cross-dresser, moving to the jungle to get out of the smoggy city centre, and generally being screwed over in the music business – all of which are written by main songwriter Ray Davies – are two other numbers written and sung by his little brother and lead guitarist, Dave. ‘Rats’ is a raucous number, I think about a general distrust in people. But it’s ‘Strangers’, the second song on Lola…, that we’re all here for. After the punchy, optimistic opener of ‘The Contenders’, ‘Strangers’ slows things down a peg or two. Adding layers of elements to the proceedings as time goes on – Davies plays acoustic alongside John Gosling’s piano initially which are then followed by drums on the second verse, and bass guitar and organ on the third – the song gains a hymn-like quality towards its end. Very appropriate with the whole unity theme that the song is going for.

It’s no secret that Ray and Dave Davies don’t get along all that well. And it’s been an long-standing, ongoing interpretation that ‘Strangers’ was about the relationship between the two. They might not get along, but at the end of the day, they are brothers. ‘Strangers’ was the sign that Dave at least cared. But really, the songs’s about a close friend of Dave’s who died of an overdose, and something of a list of the things Dave wished he could have done with them, had they not passed away so suddenly. It might not be the interpretation people want, but the sentiment is still oh-so sincere. Davies’s vocal performance here is a powerful one. When he blurts out a line like “All the things I own, I will share with you,” the way he does, just tugs at your heart strings a little. The organ and bass guitar introduced for the final verse add an emphatic sense of warmth to the production. And I like how the recording levels are raised for the pounding tom-tom pattern that closes the track out. It’s beautiful stuff. Seems right it’s the last Lola… song I cover on here.

*The folder containing the album says it was created on 8th July 2015, 15:55. So, there you go.