Category Archives: Music

#677: Blur – Jubilee

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I guess I took a bit of an unplanned break. It was the holidays, and plus I had a lot of stuff going in my life that I had to sort out. But that’s all done, for now anyway, and it’s 2020. That is a big number. Happy new year. Hope all goes well for you.

The first post of the new decade goes to Blur’s song ‘Jubilee’, a song from their iconic Parklife album from 1994. Coming towards the end of that particular record, the track is essentially another of Damon Albarn’s third-person narratives – this time based on a boy ‘Jubilee’ who does nothing all day but watch television, play video games, and generally make no effort to get out of the house. This is something I can relate with as I’m sure many others can as well.

I’ll say this is really the last proper hectic track on the album. Following it comes ‘This Is a Low’, the emotional climax to the entire thing. Before that ‘Jubilee’ is a bit of a wild one. Snotty backing vocals appear at points, squirty synthesizers and some trumpets are thrown in there too. It’s a charging ball of energy. Because of its place in the tracklist, I feel like only those are really into Blur will know this song at all. They performed quite a lot back in the day though, so I assume the band themselves were quite fond of it.

#676: Gay Dad – Joy!

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Gay Dad’s ‘Joy!’ was a single from the band’s album Leisure Noise, released in 1999. I’ve never listened to anything else by the band. I couldn’t tell you much else about them that isn’t on their Wikipedia page. This song was on FIFA 2000, albeit heavily edited so it ran under three minutes. When that game was released I was four years old. I can’t remember playing the game when I was that young. I may have done though I always try to give you the facts on here. There was a point when I was about nine that I remember spending hours on the thing. As a result, this song and a few others ingrained themselves into my memory.

‘Joy!’ stood out for a few reasons. Its main guitar riff is a killer. The verses are led by a smooth groove by its bassline and lead singer Cliff Jones’ calmly delivered vocals. But really it’s all about that build up to the chorus that ends in an emphatic cry of the song’s title. Because I had been listening to the FIFA 2000 edit for most of my life, it was a small surprise to find that the track went on for another two minutes ending with a section where the singer calls: “Goodbye, my darling, I’m ready to die”. It’s a bit of a strange shift from what goes on in the minutes before it but all-in-all doesn’t change the song’s momentum too much.

The track has a music video which I’ll embed below. Never knew it had one. I don’t think it’s too great. I’ll leave that for you to decide.

#675: Blink-182 – Josie

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Was sometime in 2005 when I first came across ‘Josie’. Blink-182 had quite recently split up, and the video for ‘Not Now’ was usually on the tele. That video played as a sort of clipshow of all the music videos the band had done up to that point. Some of them I hadn’t seen before. So I guess that stirred my curiosity and I went to check out the band’s older stuff.

Seeing the videos for ‘Dammit’ and ‘Josie’ I thought they were the most hilarious things I’d seen in my life. I was ten years old at the time. Even so, the humour in both clips hold up to this day. Mark Hoppus and Tom DeLonge ham up their acting performances just perfectly in the story aspects of the two promos. I’ve talked about ‘Dammit’ before though, so what about ‘Josie’?

Well, ‘Josie’ was released as a single from the band’s second album Dude Ranch in 1997. This was the last LP of the band’s featuring original drummer Scott Raynor, who was dismissed from the band the following years for reasons that no one knows for sure but is widely agreed that alcoholism was involved. The drumming on this particular track is just as frenetic and thunderous as the stuff Travis Barker would do from Enema onwards. Though Barker is definitely the better drummer, Raynor fills the role fine propelling the power-chord led track’s rhythm further and further with snare rolls and cymbal crashes.

The track is about having a girlfriend and the benefits that arise from the situation. Mark Hoppus wonders how he got this girl in the first place and how she hasn’t left him for another man already. But he takes great pleasure in the small things she does, and when he gets home late from work and she’s there – well, he’s happy to be alive. I do enjoy watching the video along with the music. It’s one of those that just makes the song sound better. Though it is a fantastic track by itself.

#674: Enter Shikari – Jonny Sniper

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‘Jonny Sniper’ was the last single to be released from Enter Shikari’s Take to the Skies album in 2007. At that time I was twelve and just about finishing my first year in secondary school. I thought the band were cool and, again, their videos were a usual feature on MTV2. And that’s how I got to know this track right here.

After all these years I never realised that the song has a strong environmental theme to it. It’s really obvious when you read/see them. I’ve always enjoyed it mainly because of its somewhat uplifting tone and the vocals between Rou Reynolds and bassist Chris Batten. Looking at the album’s Wiki page, it is classed as post-hardcore and trance(?). And there are a lot of post-hardcore elements in this track. Those double-bass pedal drums and the chugging guitars in the mix add to it. But generally ‘Sniper’ is one of the more poppier (I guess) sounding songs on here. And I don’t think that’s any detriment to the group’s usual style. It’s cool that they can mix their harder material with the almost light-hearted matter too.

I don’t really follow the group so much anymore. Time goes on and music tastes change or whatever. I’m taken to a time when I was a jumped up teenager who had more energy for things. I’ll check out a new song if it’s out. Skies and Common Dreads are in my library to this day though and won’t leave any time soon.

#673: Wolfmother – Joker & the Thief

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I haven’t listened to any new Wolfmother material in years. Not saying I was the biggest fan of the group in the first place. But when two original members left and the new album then was going to be called Cosmic Egg, that’s where it lost me. The albums they’ve made since the self-titled debut may well be quite for all I know, but probably wouldn’t hit as hard as that first record.

‘Joker & the Thief’ is a track from that album. It was also released as a single, the last one – at least in the UK – if I remember right. Its video (above), featuring the cast of Jackass due to its inclusion in Jackass Number Two, was played regularly on MTV2. That’s pretty much how I got to know it. But it was another hit in a long run of great singles from the band that urged me to get the whole album.

After seeing/hearing it so many times on television, it’s quite difficult to get down into the nitty-gritty of what makes the song good. It’s just a great hard rock song. A bit Led Zeppelin-like in the way they take a character and describe them in a way that makes them seem far out and cosmic. I also like that there’s no bass guitar in the track, instead being replaced by a keyboard that works equally as well. It’s quite different to what you’re normally used to.