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

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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.

#1087: The Beatles – Rain

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The story of how I came to know ‘Rain’ by the Beatles is short and very, very simple. Back in 2009, I downloaded the 2006 LOVE remix album – one that introduced me to a lot of Beatles tracks before I went ahead and sought out most of their proper discography. On the version of ‘All You Need Is Love’ that closes that album out, little splices of other Beatles songs come in during the repeated ‘Love is all you need’ mantra. A harmonised ‘Rain, I don’t mind’ came in at about 2:53 seconds in. I liked the little refrain. I typed in ‘rain i don’t mind’ into Google, ‘rain i don’t mind beatles’ came up as the autocomplete option. The music video was the first search result. And that was that. I was already on a Beatles kick as it was, and now another hit was added to the collection.

‘Rain’ was written by John Lennon and recorded by the band during the sessions out of which came Revolver in the summer of 1966. As any Beatles fan will know, the track didn’t appear on that LP. It had already been released as the B-side to ‘Paperback Writer’ months earlier. Now, you hear the term ‘B-side’ and you automatically think, “Well, it’s probably not that good than all the other songs that made the album, or the track on the flip side.” But every Beatles fan will tell you you’re wrong and that ‘Rain’ is actually one of the band’s best and one of their most underappreciated because of the ‘B-side’ status. There’s nothing to deep about it, Lennon sings about how the weather shouldn’t affect the way we think, particularly when it rains, and that it’s our minds that bring us up or down no matter how things are when you look at the sky in the morning. If there is something deep there, I’ve yet to see it. Seems to be a what you see is what you get situation. But Lennon was doing a lot of drugs in that time, so anything’s possible.

Apart from the fact that is just an outright solid tune, melody and the rhythm working together perfectly, there’s a bunch of other aspects about it that separate from those other songs that you’ll hear from day-to-day. Like how the band actually recorded the backing track (guitars and drums) at a much faster speed before it was slowed for the vocals and bass guitar to record over it. Lennon also took great pride in being the first person to incorporate backwards vocals into a song, something he was motivated to do after getting high one night and mistakenly putting a reel of tape on the wrong way round and being astounded by what he heard. Even though Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr didn’t necessarily play together on the song, the former overdubbed his bass guitar later as I said, the two are still locked in unison, providing one of the best rhythm section performances in the Beatles catalogue. Starr was particularly proud of his drumming. When you witness the speed at which he did it, you can see why. I think this song’s great. Gotta say I prefer this version of the video though.

#1086: Madvillain – Raid

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Trying to cast my mind back to that first time I listened to MF DOOM and Madlib’s Madvillainy album. Like a lot of other songs/albums I’ve mentioned in passing on this place, I think there’s a strong likelihood that I came across it via going through the ‘best albums in history’ list on besteveralbums.com. This was all happening sometime around 2012/13, sure to have been 18 at the time, naive as anything and still requiring a lot of growing up to do. The album’s always been considered to be a classic, pretty much since its release in 2004. I heard it and thought it was just all right. Pretty much feel the same way now. But even though I may underplay it, the album’s a prime showcase of DOOM’s wordplay and vocal presence and Madlib’s knack for making the most absurd yet captivating beats.

‘Raid’ is the fifth song on the record and is the one that I distinctly remember being the first on there, in my opinion, to be the most immediate and instantly memorable, when going through the album on the premiere listen all those years. Leading in from the previous track ‘Bistro’, a sort of interlude track where DOOM welcomes the listener to “Madvillain Bistro Bed and Breakfast Bar and Grill Cafe Lounge on the Water” and introduces his and Madlib’s various aliases that are to come throughout the album, ‘Raid’ seems to come from the perspective of the various people waiting in this place (or somewhere else, I’ve always imagined it as some sort of town hall) and are waiting for DOOM to arrive on stage to deliver his statement. The whole first verse, though delivered by DOOM, is made up of lines from different individuals wondering about the mystique of this DOOM character who note that people leave his shows “feeling truly enlightened.” But DOOM doesn’t show up, and instead we are greeted with a killer verse from guest rapper M.E.D. who drops the mic and closes out the meeting much to this audience’s excitement. DOOM may not have shown up, but the crowd are pleased nonetheless. This is all just my head canon, by the way. Always imagined a music video for this would end up that way.

Madlib’s sample flips here are fantastic too. There’s a bit of Bill Evans Trio here, George Clinton there. To create the main instrumental underneath the verses, he took the 6/4 timed ‘América Latina’ by Osmar Milito e Quarteta Forma and added another two beats to make it 4/4. I type this like I know these things off by heart, but I’d have no idea what any of the songs used here would be without their usage here. With some added jumpy, erratic, pulsing bass hits, you have yourself a head-bopping backdrop of instrumentation. The creation of the instrumental is deconstructed in the video below. Yeah, ‘Raid’ has always been a big highlight from Madvillainy for me. Some unforgettable lines, the flows are immaculate, the production – as I’ve said – is top-notch. This is some good hip-hop.

#1085: Eels – Rags to Rags

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I’m not sure if this is something I’ve ever talked about on here. For now, let’s say I haven’t. I had a YouTube account from 2008 – 2011 where I uploaded full albums and other various musical related stuff on there. This was back when you could actually get away with that stuff. But one day I went a bit too far, got my final strike and the account was shut down. Terminated. I was devastated. Three years of my life sorta gone just like that. My own fault, I know. Looking back on it, I think it caused slight bout of depression that coincided with my final two years in secondary school. It wasn’t a fun time. I was still going through that when listening to Eels’ Beautiful Freak album in September 2012. How am I so specific with the month? Well, ’cause it was a year on from when YouTube took my channel down. ‘Novocaine for the Soul’ I’d known prior to that first full listen to the album, but it was ‘Rags to Rags’ that seemed to capture how I was feeling at the time.

The track is written from the perspective of a guy who looks in the mirror, doesn’t think much of what he sees and has something of an existential crisis despite having gone through the ideal American Dream of coming from nothing to suddenly having everything he could ever want. All this is spurred on by the sight of a lone spider crawling on the reflection of the narrator’s eye. Singer/guitarist E might just be singing about himself on this one, correct me if I’m wrong. He’s fulfilled his dream, but still feels worthless like a bunch of rags and rust, coming to the conclusion that this ‘dream’ was ultimately pointless. The only time he gets some solace is in his dreams when he thinks of his hometown, reminiscing about the railroad tracks (something he’d sing about again later in the band’s material) and the pussy willow (something I didn’t know existed until I heard this song).

It’s been 11 years now since that first listen. Some ways it really feels like that amount of time has passed, in others it feels like it was just last week. Either way, the song still provides that feeling-down comfort, even if its lyrical subject matter is a bit of a downer. Some good alternative rock music right here. ‘Rags’ was released as a single in 1996, and from what it looks like a music video was made for it, but the complete version of it seems to be wiped off the face of the earth. You can see a good portion of it, but its beginning and end are missing. Funnily enough, the video finishes before E delivers the line about the American Dream not meaning ‘a fucking thing’. Surely that’s just coincidental, right? If anyone from Eels is reading, let’s get the video back.

#1084: The Who – Rael 1

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Around the summer of 2010, I properly started listening to The Who. The months up until that period of time were those in which I discovered the Beatles and really began my fascination with their music that continues to this day. So I’m thinking that my decision to check out The Who came from a throwaway thought of “What’s another ’60s band that people talk about? The Who? Wouldn’t do no harm to try them out.” And so I did. I was 15 then, and now at 28, albums like Quadrophenia and Who’s Next are such that I can’t imagine my life without. But really I think the first of the band’s albums that I sought to listen to was The Who Sell Out, the group’s third album, released in 1967. I saw its professional ratings on the Wikipedia page and the time and was surprised at how highly rated it seemed to be among critics and the like. Couldn’t be that great, surely? Well, it actually is. And its 1995 remix/reissue that added 10 more songs to the original tracklist further showcased just how on a roll the band appeared to be during those sessions. That’s the version I’m most accustomed to.

‘Rael 1’, originally titled ‘Rael (1 and 2)’ on the original 1967 release, would usually be the album’s closer, though with the 1995 issue there’s an added selection of bonus material recorded during the record’s production. The song was the result of what was initially going to be a much larger project – I believe, a rock opera – conceived by Pete Townshend, but pressure from the band’s record label to produce hit singles at a faster rate ground whatever plans Townshend had to a halt. So what we get is the much compressed version of his vision. Like the Who’s album closer on Sell Out‘s predecessor, ‘Rael 1’ is another mini-opera, consisting of separate musical movements to create one whole piece. But unlike the domestic relationship situation explored in ‘A Quick One…’, ‘Rael’ takes the subject matter to broader horizons, exploring a world in which China is the main power of the world and is on its way to conquer Israel. The track is told by an Israeli protagonist who wishes to return to his home and save his country against all odds.

Shame the idea didn’t get the full album treatment it needed. However, the whole idea of a rock opera was something that was very much on Townshend’s mind. We all know what arrived a couple years later. And if you don’t, well, the band made Tommy, which took the band’s popularity to a whole other level worldwide and took the group’s success to the greatest heights when for a moment it looked like the band were at a crossroads when Sell Out didn’t meet commercial expectations. There are plenty of musical ideas subtly presented in Sell Out that would appear again in the music of Tommy, and none arrive quite as clearly as they do here on ‘Rael 1’, with its final instrumental section being reused for ‘Sparks’. I’m sure Who fans got a kick out of hearing music that they were sure they’d heard before and revisiting Sell Out to find that it was there all along. Even though the music gets its own highlight in the form of ‘Sparks’, I recognise it more as the exciting instrumental passage that brings Sell Out to a cosmic end.

#1083: R.E.M. – Radio Free Europe

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Well, well, well. You didn’t think this was ever going to come back, did you? I was honestly thinking that way for a while too. Hey, remember back when I started on the P’s and said that I could aim to get whole series done by the time I turned 30? Yeah, very unlikely that will happen. I’ll definitely be in my 30s at the least, though. With the breaks I take, it was definitely going to be a effort to try and force that. And I’ve seen the number of songs I have up beginning with ‘S’ and ‘T’. Just those two letters would fill up two separate years themselves, I tell you.

But I’m back. I’m here. It’s time to get started again. And it’s with R.E.M.’s ‘Radio Free Europe’, the opening track on the band’s debut Murmur album from 1983. This isn’t the first time I’ve written about a song from that record. It’s been some time, but I think I’ve written the summary of how I came to know Murmur and the immediate effect it had on me. Probably not worth repeating. We’re here for the track. It’s a fine one. A great way to kick things into gear. It introduces the musical structure that happens a lot through the album, where the song starts with the verse and goes into the pre-chorus, and when usually you think the chorus will come immediately after, the second verse begins. The band holds out on you, so when that chorus eventually does arrive, the weight from all the building tension’s released. The choruses are the best parts on every Murmur track, that’s just a fact.

The song also introduced the lyricism of Michael Stipe, who before he found he could use his voice to speak about things that were important and actually mean something (I’m sure I read that he said this about himself somewhere), wrote words and melodies that were to mainly compliment the musicianship of Mike Mills, Peter Buck and Bill Berry and not meant to say much of anything at all, leaving it to the listener to come up with their own interpretations. What I would guess the song is about is… the importance of the the radio in modern society and its global reach to whoever’s listening out there? I don’t think about the meaning that much, but that’s fine. I don’t think Stipe wants you to either, which is great. There’s no pressure. If you’re not too into the version in the video above, the band previously recorded the track on another label a couple years earlier in 1981 and released it as a single. It’s a bit faster, some people prefer that sort of thing.