Category Archives: Music

My iPod #141: Editors – Bullets

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Hi everybody.

It’s time for another Editors song, and again it is one from their first album. Like “Blood”, “Bullets” was also released twice which explains why it has two different videos. The first video plays the album version whereas the second plays a re-recorded version which the band did with the producer Jacknife Lee, a man who has done work with Biffy Clyro, Snow Patrol and Weezer.

If any of you are wondering what’s different in the song in both of the videos, I can only remember the arrangement being a bit different. I don’t like the album version and therefore have not listened to it for a while. It was the second out of the two which I saw first on the television. Nothing much happens in it. Lead singer Tom Smith sings in slow motion and looks at an elderly man, a girl dances in slow motion and two guys drive a car into a field and proceed to vandalise it. It’s not a very exciting video.

The song itself is very solid though. You’ve got Chris Urbanowicz’s delivering that wailing siren-sounding riff which repeats itself during the choruses and outro. I’m sure the drumming pattern doesn’t change but it certainly hits hard. It’s very snare-y. A lot more so than “Blood”. That doesn’t take anything away though. Lyrically the song is very repetitive but it’s good that the melody isn’t annoying otherwise it would be very tiresome. The chorus “You don’t need this disease” just runs into itself over and over again it becomes something of a madness mantra.

The word ‘bullets’ isn’t mentioned anywhere in the lyrics. Listen to the song and figure out why it may be called “Bullets” because thinking about it now, I can’t tell you.

YOUDONTNEEDTHISDISEASEYOUDONTYOUDONTNEEDTHISDISEASEYOUDONT.

Bye.

Jamie.

My iPod #140: Weezer – Buddy Holly

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I’ve never been a fan of “Happy Days”, but I did attempt to watch a few episodes after seeing the music video for “Buddy Holly” when I was ten. The video by Spike Jonze was something I’d never seen before. How were Weezer able to perform in front of the cast of Happy Days? How did they get that man – who I assume to be ‘Fonzie’ – to dance to their music? Well, the video just combined footage of the sitcom with the band performing. A stunt double helped along too. The scenes were placed at very appropriate times to add great comedic effect, and I showed the video to my friend at his house and also found it funny. Especially at the Asian man near the end making a squee face. I’d found my favourite video of all time.

“Buddy Holly” is one of the main reasons I wanted “Weezer” for my eleventh birthday. It seemed that there was no way to actually listen to the full song online. Instead I was treated to a mash-up that included the song with “99 Problems” by Jay-Z. It wasn’t on YouTube though. That wasn’t around. All I wanted to do was listen to the song on Windows Media Player and put it on repeat, and it seemed that getting the album was the most efficient way to do it. That was a good decision on my part. Weezer’s first album is a damn fine piece of work.

Did you know the song almost never made it onto the album? Rivers first thought it would be too cheesy, but it was the persistent encouragement from the album producer that changed his mind in the end. It’s nice to know that Rivers once thought about how his songs sounded one time. I’ve pretty much given up on the albums they’ve released lately.

Oh, I don’t want to be mean. Rivers Cuomo is a nice guy.

Jamie.

My iPod #139: Kings of Leon – The Bucket

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There are creepy people out there. There I was going down the escalator in Stratford’s Westfields so we could wait for a mate who needed to go to the loo, when these two guys came over to us asking if we were born again Christians. They then directed their attention to me, and told me to ‘talk to them privately’ to say the ‘prayer’ and I was like “FUCK THIS, I HAVE GOT TO GET OUT OF HERE”. So I told them a wrong phone number and made up a name for myself, and proceeded to leave the mall with my friends.

It was very scary. I’ve never wanted to be anywhere else in the world like I did during those moments. I’m really glad to be home. Typing to you.

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Right. Kings of Leon. I’ve probably said as much as I can on what I think about them in other posts. Thinking about it now, I’m positive that I’ve only done one post. But in short, from Youth & Young Manhood to Because of the Times = good stuff, Only by the Night onwards = the bad stuff. Except “Supersoaker” and “Wait for Me” which depicts “Mechanical Bull” as something that will be a return to form. We can only hope. Well, I can only hope.

“The Bucket” was the first song to be released from the band’s second album “Aha Shake Heartbreak” in 2004, which is my favourite album they’ve done. I can’t remember when I first heard it. I’ll just say it was on MTV2. Yes, it was on MTV2.

I wonder who yells “Wooooooo!”at the start. It sounds like someone fucked up and didn’t know they were recording, but I can’t imagine the song without that exclamation. I’m just used to it after listening to the track for all these years.

The subject matter of “The Bucket” is the band’s bassist Jared Followill, who was having problems dealing with the fame of being in the band.

The thing that I’ve always liked about older Kings of Leon songs, especially those on the Aha Shake and Times albums, is Caleb’s vocals. Now he’s older he actually sings from the stomach, but I preferred those when his voice was breaking almost every time he tried to reach the high notes. There’s a bit of this in “The Bucket”.

Have fun listening to it.

Jamie.

My iPod #138: Feeder – Buck Rogers

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One of the better songs that the early twenty-first century years brought us.

Feeder have a fantastic set of singles; “Buck Rogers” is one which many people may be familiar with. Even people who don’t know Feeder are might have heard this song in a TV show or an advert, it’s just one of those songs.

Yet again, I saw the “Buck Rogers” video on the television and was left in awe. The camera work and the special effects, the TARDIS elephant they walk into and that slow sweeping shot of the band playing the last two choruses at the end. The song itself is very catchy – it’s stays in your head for days and days, but that video…. mm-mm-mm. If you look at it, you may think I am exaggerating but for me it’s a perfect video for the song.

It was even funnier when I was in Year 6 and found out that one of my friends knew the song because of its presence in Gran Turismo 3 and we would sing it out loud during lessons (because those really didn’t matter at the time) and classmates would laugh whilst the teacher asked us to stop singing. Those were good times.

It was also one of the first songs I learned to play on the guitar – albeit only on the low ‘E’ string, but I thought I’d actually done pretty well to play along with it without tabs.

Here is it’s Wikipedia page; there you will find information at length about the song. But for now, enjoy it. Comment on it if you want. Give it a chance.

Jamie.

My iPod #137: Biffy Clyro – Bubbles

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Sorry people. I know I didn’t do a post yesterday, I was busy playing FIFA and NBA at my friend’s house before he moves to university next week.

Those of you who were expecting a blog, I know I could have said something and I do apologise. It’s only good that whenever I miss a day I follow it up with two songs the next. Here’s the first.

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…”Mon’ the Biff! Mon’ the Biff! Mon’ the Biff!” It’s only bloody Biffy Clyro!

I watched them headline the Reading Festival on the BBC iPlayer two weeks ago, and it wasn’t hard to notice that there was a large decrease in reception whenever they played material pre-Puzzle and Only Revolutions. I’m not going to complain; I thought it was a bit funny, actually. I’m not saying that the people who were there weren’t Biffy Clyro fans, but it was obvious to assume when they became them. It seems the band aren’t into their past material so much, I think only two songs and a verse and chorus from tracks before 2007 were performed. But if Biffy Clyro enjoy their newer stuff that made them much more popular than they were before, who can blame ’em?

“57” was the first song I heard by them when its video played on MTV2. They look so young, and very clean. They’re all wearing clothes, and Simon Neil has hair like Frodo. But for a band that looked so innocent, the song was very different from anything I’d listened to before. The song is good, but at the time I didn’t think it was something that made me interested in the band. Later on, “Questions and Answers” came on the TV. That’s nice too. It’s very calm by Biff standards. That was pretty much everything I’d heard by them. But it was in year seven (2006/07) that Biffy Clyro became… mainstream. *gasp* oh my god.

I’m only joking. I feel I should save that for another time, ’cause I’ll be babbling on for ages about nothing that has to do with the song for today. Bubbles! It’s the third song from the band’s fifth album “Only Revolutions”, and was eventually as its penultimate single in spring 2010. It was a song of theirs that I couldn’t stop singing to myself. It begins with a tickling lick on the guitar which is interrupted as the band begin to play. They’ve got that quiet verse/loud chorus dynamic going on too, just like Pixies and Nirvana, which can never go wrong if you know what you’re doing. And then, just when you think the song should finishes, the band rocks out for a minute and in steps Josh Homme of Queens of the Stone Age to finish everything off with a guitar solo. It’s crazy. It’s brilliant.

Next song’s coming soon.

Jamie.