Category Archives: Music

My iPod #79: Late of the Pier – The Bears Are Coming

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“The Bears Are Coming” is a song by the band Late of the Pier, a dance-punky quartet who have only released one album to this day called “Fantasy Black Channel”. They haven’t been around for quite some time, and in this duration their fans have yearned and pined for new material.

I don’t know if I would call myself a fan of the band. If I am, it would be embarrassing to compare myself to others who actually keep up with whatever the members of the band do, whether it is “Late of the Pier” or side projects and stuff. But I like the album. It never has the same sound throughout each song. It’s diverse, it’s eclectic, it’s whatever synonym there is that means “wide range in differences”.

I remember talking to two of my friends about the music they listened to when I was in Year 8 or something. I had only vaguely heard something about the band, I think my sister liked them. Ben (one of them) talked about “Late of the Pier” and how he thought the name “Does It Offend You, Yeah?” was a cool name for a band. He also started singing “Space and the Woods” which was quite funny. Normally he just reads books all the time, and I never knew then that he listened to music very much.

“The Bears Are Coming” played for about ten seconds on a Virgin Media Music Videos preview on my TV. Virgin Media allows you to watch a large number of music videos for free as part of their “On Demand” option. The first line and part of the second were the only parts of the video that played, and I thought it sounded good.

I didn’t watch the video though. It sounds odd that I didn’t. It’s pretty weird that I didn’t if it was available for free. I don’t think I actually listened to the full song until late last year.

It’s a good song. It was released as a single too. Late of the Pier’s singles are very good. If you haven’t listened to it yet, watch the video above.

You might be confused by it. It’s much less confusing than the video for “Focker” though. That video is something else.

Until tomorrow.

Jamie.

My iPod #78: Billy Talent – Beach Balls

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I’ve known this song for a long time, and it has never bored me once.

Billy Talent is one of my favourite bands ever. From the day when I first saw “River Below” on TV when I was eight, I needed to find more about them. I did. I never looked back.

“Beach Balls” is a song that was originally released on the “Try Honesty EP” in 2001 – I’m thinking this was the time when the band was looking for a label to sign to. It can also be found as a bonus track on some releases of “Billy Talent II” from 2006.

So when I became interested in Billy Talent in 2004, I wanted to find the lyrics to their songs so I could sing along to them. Letssingit was the first site to come up as a result on Google, and it was there that the lyrics to all their songs from the first album were listed. Furthermore, it was there that the lyrics for “Beach Balls” were listed; it wasn’t on the album, and I didn’t know Wikipedia existed at the time so I had no idea what this song was or how to find it. It could have been a song wrongly associated to the band for all I knew.

That was until I found a download link for the song on one of the many Billy Talent fansites that were around. As soon as the song started I knew that there was something different about the sound. Billy Talent’s first album is very angry, there’s a lot of screaming and hard rocking instrumentation. On “Beach Balls”, the sound is much more peppy. You have a Spanish-sounding guitar riff that plays and carries on during the verses. There’s no screaming on this song at all, which is something I really like the band for, but it’s still a really cool track to listen to.

Then it only struck me recently how the structure of the song is very similar those found on the album “Watoosh!” when the band were called Pezz. (Which is a brilliant album, they should play those songs live some time). For those who haven’t listened to songs on that album, the structure is basically:

Intro – Verse – Chorus – Verse – Chorus – Break – Sound of the song you’ve been listening to for the first half completely changes – One or two lines are sung which are then repeated until the song ends

So I can only assume that this song was performed when the band were still Pezz, but was released when the band changed their name.

The song is great though. Even if it’s not Billy Talent, it still is. If you know what I mean.

Until tomorrow.

Jamie.

My iPod #77: Kings of Leon – Be Somebody

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Ah. The only one I really like from “Only by the Night”.

I am, admittedly, a Kings of Leon fan who prefers their music prior to “Only by the Night”. Sure, “Sex on Fire” and “Use Somebody” were major successes for them – and that’s great. I just like it when they weren’t aiming for this big, stadium filling sound that they seem to have been going for since the album’s release in 2008. Ever since they cut their hair, which I first noticed in the video for “Charmer”, things just started going downhill for me. I’m just saying. Don’t hate me.

“Be Somebody” is the highlight from the album for me. That’s only because the two songs I’ve mentioned above are repeated endlessly on the TV or radio. I can’t get no satisfaction when I hearing them sung by contestants on the X Factor, or Britain’s Got Talent, or other inane Saturday night ITV programmes that are on.

It sounds like a song that could have been on “Because of the Times”, I don’t get a sense of “Ooh, look at us we’re this huge band now and you should listen to us” vibe that I get from other songs on the album. It’s a haunting song, emphasised by the descending riff in the verses and the shrieking guitar in the breaks between the verses until you are suddenly lifted by an uplifting sounding chorus, where Caleb reaches the top of his lungs singing how he’s going to be somebody.

To summarise, for me it’s the only good song on the album. I’ll stick to their tunes from when their hair was long.

Until tomorrow.

Jamie.

P.S. Congratulations to Andy Murray, who became the first Briton to win Wimbledon in 77 years. He’s still Scottish.

My iPod #76: Fatman Scoop ft. The Crooklyn Clan – Be Faithful

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Oh, man. One of the biggest of 2003 right here guys.

This song was the most contagious thing ever. I was only eight years old, but this song played almost every day. It got to number one in the UK and stayed there for two weeks.

You can’t sit still to this song. As soon as the intro starts, the bass drop kicks in and “Scoop” starts yelling “OH, OH, OH, OH, OH, OH, OH”. That’s it. You’re done. You’re already jumping around the room and shouting along with him.

This is probably one of the most random songs I have on my iPod. I think it just brings back memories of when I was in primary school. It also played for about 30 seconds at my recent prom, so that was cool too.

As for Fatman Scoop, he’s featured on a few songs here and there since the hit. But the success for him as a solo artist never reached the highs as it did for him with this track. He did release another song entitled “It Takes Scoop”, which was a top ten entry in the UK. But I don’t think anyone would think that is quite as memorable as “Be Faithful”.

I’m sorry Fatman, but this is one for the ‘one-hit wonder’ chart countdowns on television.

I LOVE IT THOUGH, IT’S SO HYPE.

Until tomorrow.

Jamie.

My iPod #75: Morning Runner – Be All You Want Me to Be

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This is the first song I heard by Morning Runner.

I was watching music television one day. I think the channel was The Amp -which was a really good music channel; I don’t know why it got removed – and I watched the video for it.

But you know how it goes. Time moves on, and songs get older and older until they eventually fade away and are hardly ever played again. I never forgot about the song though. I wasn’t able to watch the video again until sometime in 2010. I downloaded the song, and I can have it on repeat whenever I want.

It’s got that “Rush of Blood” Coldplay type vibe. Apparently it influenced Chris Martin to write songs with Coldplay for “X&Y”, so obviously it must be good.

The song was released as the band’s second single from their debut album “Wilderness Is Paradise Now”. Their debut was also their last as the band then split in 2007. People may also know this band for “Gone Up in Flames”, a song in FIFA 07 and the theme song for “The Inbetweeners”.

Until tomorrow.

Jamie.

P.S. I created a Twitter account, so if you want to follow me please do @JamieKManteaw.

Bye, bye.