Category Archives: Music

My iPod #37: Beastie Boys – And Me

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2012 was a sad year for all Beastie Boys fans. Adam ‘MCA’ Yauch passed away with salivary gland cancer, since then the hip-hop trio have gone on hiatus but it is hard to imagine that Ad-Rock and Mike D could perform under the ‘Beastie Boys’ moniker without that trademark low and raspy vocal.

I liked Beastie Boys, but I had never listened to any of their albums. It sounds bad that I only decided to after MCA’s death, and as I type I do feel quite shitty for not listening to one earlier.

Upon release the album received mostly positive reviews. The majority of them mentioning how the trio were branching out with their sound, gaining influence from an eclectic range of genres and successfully stepping forward in progress from previous releases. This is understandable, compare this album with their debut ‘Licensed to Ill’ for example.

‘And Me’ was one of the songs that caught my attention upon my first listen. To my knowledge, it was the first time that Beastie Boys had ever had such a calm and mellow vibe in a song. No one raps, it’s just Ad-Rock (though I am not sure) singing accompanied by synthesizers and a steady drum beat. I had never heard something like that by them before.

Sure the song is a bit repetitive, the melody is the same for every verse. Maybe it’s because they’re better at rapping, but I don’t know. It’s a very under rated song, so listen to it and see what you think about it.

Until next time.

Jamie.

My iPod #36: Sex Pistols – Anarchy in the UK

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Sorry for being late.

Mate.”Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols” is one of the best punk albums of all time.

Made up of Johnny Rotten, Steve Jones, Paul Cook and Glen Matlock (who then left and was replaced by Sid Vicious) were the voice of a generation who didn’t give a shit. About anything. They only released one official album of original material, but the legacy they left on the punk genre and Britain overall still goes on to this day.

The first time I heard the song was around 9 or 8 years ago. I was watching this football show, something along the lines of the top ten controversial moments in the Premier League, and the incident where Eric Cantona kung-fu kicked a fan in the stands was shown. Of course it was one of those countdown things where the producers recruited these random celebrities to talk about these ‘controversial moments’ even if they didn’t give a shit about football.

Cantona got in a lot of trouble for that in ’95. The whole ‘I AM AN ANTICHRIST, I AM AN ANARCHIST’ seemed to fit the clip exactly, and seeing Cantona go crazy and hearing the song for the first time freaked me out a bit. I was eight years old at that time so… you know. It was scary.

Again, I would thank Yahoo’s Launch for helping me find the song. I was listening to my specific radio station when ‘L’Anarchie Pour Le UK‘ from ‘The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle’ played. I thought that the song sounded familiar, even if it was sung in French, and one thing led to another and I found ‘Anarchy in the UK’.

I thought it was the best song I’d ever heard. It was just so punchy and raw, that trademark whiney vocal by Rotten and just the whole ‘don’t give a fuck’ attitude that the song gave off.

‘GET PISSED, DESTROOOOOOOYYAAAAAAAAAH.’

A great message for all the children.

Until next time.

Jamie.

Check out my new video on YouTube.

And Happy Easter too!

My iPod #35: They Might Be Giants – Ana Ng

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:’) Another great song.

One of the best They Might Be Giants songs ever. It’s got everything you want. A great chorus, an edgy guitar riff in the verses, and their typical trait of being able to write a melody that gets stuck in your head and never leaves.

The video of this song was one of the first of theirs I saw. I’ve told you guys about the Launchcast site Yahoo had, and how it basically introduced to what is my favourite band. When I saw it, I didn’t know who was singing. Neither John was lip-syncing to the song. The video just gave me everything I needed to know about them. They were synchronising in everything, their pounding on the table, their ‘dancing’, their general (I don’t want to say it) quirkiness just attracted me to them.

I had a good friend in primary school, and I was ten when I watched the video. So seeing that just made me want to force him to watch it so we could mimic the things they did during lunchtime or whatever. Everything is fun when you’re in year five.

Then primary school finished, and it was the summer holidays before I would start year seven. From being the oldest in the school, back to the youngest. I couldn’t handle it. I went out with my sister to Woolworths to buy stationery (pens, pencils, all the stuff) to prepare, and I saw one of my good friends from primary school there. I saw her, but I don’t think she saw me. I realised that’s how it would be from then on. I would never have the same relationship I had with my friends once I moved to my new school. The fact that I was the only person from my school to get into the one I did only emphasised that. I barely saw any of them, when I did it was a small exchange of:

“Hi! How are you?”
“I’m good.”
“Haven’t seen you for aaaaaaages!”
“Yeah, I know.”
“Well, see ya then! :)”
“See ya. :)”

😦 It was never the same.

I remember getting on the bus with my sister after finishing at the shop, ‘Ana Ng’ came into my head and I just kept on humming it and singing it quietly to myself whilst looking out the window feeling the time go by.

‘Ana Ng’ is a really important song for me. It reminds of me of the good times.

Until next time.

Jamie.

My iPod #34: The Offspring – Americana

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I got this album for Christmas 2005.

‘Americana’ is a good place to start if you’re just getting into The Offspring. A few of their most popular songs are on it, and the hard punk rock sound that they had had for many years was still present but it was also with this album that they started to explore punk with a bit of pop on the side.

The song is sandwiched in between the light, hey-hey-hey, na-na-na-nanah, upbeat song of ‘Why Don’t You Get a Job?‘ and the trippy and eventually epic climax ‘Pay the Man‘, and is the real last short and sharp burst of music that you hear by the band before the final song starts. The introduction takes up one minute of the song. Little by little, the instruments build up. First you hear a simple 4/4 bass kick, then some toms, a killer riff is then overdubbed, the rhythm section joins in with the background vocals, (Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh.), on and on it continues like a tribal chant. Until Dexter barges in with the first line, ‘NOW I’D LIKE TO TELL YOU ALL ABOUT MY DREAM, IT’S A PLACE.’

Then the song really kicks in. It’s energetic, it’s strong, the word ‘fuck’ is mentioned about five times on here. I have no idea what the song is about but seeing as it is the one the album is named after I would say that it is probably the centerpiece of the running theme of American society that is common throughout. I think the narrator is frustrated by what he lives in, what he is surrounded by and how he is defined.

‘My future’s determined by thieves, thugs, and vermin
It’s quite an excursion but it’s okay
Everything’s backwards in Americana my way’ 

How the narrator is brought up is only because ‘Americana’ made him that way, and this is the straw that breaks the camel’s back. HE HAS BECOME ONE OF THEM. ‘Woh oh oh, woh oh oh, woh oh oh
My nightmare has come true.’ That’s just my interpretation anyway.

Then there’s a key change which would not be expected, but it’s pretty cool to hear. It adds a bit of something extra to the song. Otherwise it could have been a bit to repetitive.

This song’s a really good one. It’s one of my favourites of the album. It hits you hard after listening to the previous song.

Until next time.

Jamie.

My iPod #33: Simon & Garfunkel – America

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Ah Paul Simon and Arthur ‘Art’ Garfunkel. What can I say about them?

Not much really. I’m not a massive fan.

It was in late 2011, that I listened to a full song by them. I knew ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’, but I had always thought that was a hymn or something. I never knew it was an actual song.

A documentary on the BBC was shown once in October, a brief snippet of it is can be viewed here. This song played on it when the duo started talking about the conception of their ‘Songs of America’ documentary and the controversy that surrounded it and everything.

Hearing it then, I thought I had heard that song somewhere else before. In an advert, or a film, or another various medium.

It doesn’t matter though. I listened to the song, liked it and put it on my iPod.

‘Bookends‘ is the album that the song is on. ‘Save the Life of My Child’ is my favourite song on it, but you could say that ‘America’ is the centerpiece of the first ‘side’ of the album.

Of course there are no sides on a CD but the first half of the album has a concept of life starting from birth to death which is pretty cool. It’s always nice to have a concept album once in a while. Even though it’s only the first six songs.

Like I said, Simon & Garfunkel isn’t really my kind of thing. ‘Bookends’ and ‘Bridge over Troubled Water’ are both great albums though.

Until next time.

Jamie.