Category Archives: Music

My iPod #8: Blink-182 – Adam’s Song

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Hey everybody, everybody hey.

The year was 2005. My mum was driving me to my 11+ tutors house. And the news came up on the radio….. that Blink-182 had just split up.

How did I feel? I don’t think I cared, I was only ten at the time. In fact, I wasn’t even listening at the time. I only heard something about Blink-182, and then ‘I Miss You’ started to play. It was only later that I realised, when the video for ‘Not Now’ started showing on MTV.

I had probably first heard Blink-182 when I was about four due to ‘All the Small Things’, but at the time I would have had no idea who it was by. And I think I liked ‘The Rock Show’ too…. but really I can’t remember. Let’s just say I had a vague idea of who they were.

I think the first video I ever sat down and watched on the TV was the one for ‘Always’. I liked that song, and the girl in it was hot too, so it was a win-win situation. I was probably nine.

But anyway, back to ‘Adam’s Song’.

The video for ‘Not Now’, as you may or may not know, is basically clips of all of their past music videos from ‘Dammit’ to ‘Always’ and miscellaneous footage of antics on tour.

Clips from the video for ‘Adam’s Song’ appear in the video, and I had never really watched Blink videos before. I knew they had a thing for being naked, but I wondered what else they had.

Back then, YouTube didn’t exist. I watched videos on this site Yahoo owned called ‘Launchcast’ or ‘UK Launch’ where you could customise your own radio based on your favourite bands and watch music videos for free. It was good shit. It’s gone now, but at the time I had never been on any other site like it.

‘Adam’s Song’ gives you a strong dose of mood whiplash if you’re listening to ‘Enema of the State’, the album the song is on.

Blink are known for really fast, and poppy punk rock songs with bass chords, brilliant drumming, and tag-team vocals between Tom DeLonge and Mark Hoppus. Especially by Tom DeLonge.

But here….. you basically have a song about suicide. Which isn’t cool. The song is cool. But suicide is not.

The video is pretty tame compared to other Blink videos too. There are no midgets playing instruments and there’s not an arse in sight. It’s a performance video with a few still-photo flashbacks, but it is a much more serious video.

Maybe that’s what made me like it. It’s not my favourite song of theirs, but it was quite different to anything that I had heard from them.

It’s all fine though, on the album it’s followed by ‘All the Small Things’, and in video chronology terms the video for ‘Man Overboard’ was released after this one. And that video is funny as shit!

Until next time.

Jamie.

My iPod #7: The Beatles – Across the Universe

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“Let it A.. Let it B, Let it C… Let it D! Let it F-G-H-I-K… douba-wubba-wubba U-G!”

Say what you want about The Beatles. “Pfff…. they’re so overrated, what did Paul McCartney ever do for me?” or “I’m only 8 years old, and I’ve listened to The Beatles allllll my liiiiife.” :/

Well, whatever you do say I don’t care. All I know is that The Beatles are included a lot on my iPod. There will probably be a few songs of theirs coming up in this ‘A’ series of “My iPod” that I’m doing.

Seeing as this the first of many Beatle songs that I have, I should probably start with when I really began to start listening to them and eventually became a victim of their continuing legacy that carries on throughout the years.

It started back in July 2009…. I had my YouTube channel (it was called jamzftw but it got removed so don’t try and look for it). On there, I would just a whole bunch of albums that I liked, upload them and watch the views roll in.

Now here’s something that may sound stupid to you…. I didn’t actually think that The Beatles were real. Hahaha ha ha ha hahahaha I know! Silly, right?

But I had always heard about the hype about Sgt. Pepper, and how it was the best album ever according to….. everyone in the world, really.

So I wondered what all the hubbub was about and downloaded it. Just to see what was so good.

I was 14 at the time. And at the time, I wasn’t really impressed. I didn’t know that they originally sang ‘With a Little Help from My Friends’, the end chord at the end of ‘A Day in the Life’ was cool and the only song that I got into was ‘Good Morning, Good Morning’ out of all of them. And it’s still my favourite now.

I uploaded the album onto YouTube. And that was it.

A few months later, VH1 Classic started this programme called Beatlemania. I think this was due to the 09/09/09 remasters coming out, but at the time I didn’t know that this was happening.

That was the first time that I had actually witnessed their music videos on the TV. MTV2 never showed them, and this was when MTV still showed music instead of reality television. I saw ‘Hey Bulldog’ for the first time, ‘Penny Lane’ and ‘The Night Before’ among others.

To cut a long story short, I downloaded all their albums. Let It Be was probably the last one. I would say that ‘Across the Universe’ is a favourite of mine from the album, and the better version out of those on ‘Past Masters‘ and ‘Let It Be… Naked‘.

I really like The Beatles. I’m glad that I found out that they actually existed.

Until next time.

Jamie

My iPod #6: Oasis – Acquiesce

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Yeah, that is the official video for the song.

OK. So it’s 2006. I’m eleven years old and have just started secondary school. But nothing really matters during that time. I could go to school, come back home and watch as much TV or play games on my PS2 for hours on end, without having to worry about anything. No exams. Nothing.

I can’t remember the very first time I saw the video for ‘Acquiesce’. But I was probably very confused as why it was following a Japanese Liam Gallagher guy practising to impersonate the real Liam Gallagher through karaoke until he finally gets to do the real thing on stage. It didn’t make any sense.

Normally at the beginning of a video that showed on MTV2 UK, it would show the artist name, song name, and album name. ‘Stop the Clocks’ was the name of the new compilation that was coming out at the time. And the video was repeated endlessly on the music channel, and I ended up really liking it. You’ve got the rare moment with Liam and Noel both at lead vocals, and even though it was because Liam couldn’t reach the high notes in the chorus, it stills works really well.

Could  you imagine Liam singing it? “‘CAUSSE WE BELLLIEEIEEVVEBVEHEEEUH.”

No thanks.

But yeah, I didn’t have an Oasis album before, so Stop the Clocks was a good place to start.

Until next time.

Jamie

My iPod #5: Lostprophets – AC Ricochet

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So here we go again. Another time but it feels the same. Got sick of waiting heeeeeeeere.

Hey guys, how’s it going?

Just want to say thanks to whoever has found this blog and had a look at it. I only have 235 pageviews, but it’s nice to know that people are actually seeing it.

Lostprophets…… I don’t know what I can really say about them. One minute they’ll have a really solid album, i.e. Start Something, and then come up with something that was quite below par for me. That would be Liberation Transmission. I haven’t listened to Weapons, but I heard ‘Bring ’em Down’ and ‘We’ll Bring an Arsenal’, and I wasn’t very impressed by them. So I may just give it a pass. Too many ‘gang vocals’ for me.

So in late 2009 when I was reading all this news about how the band was gonna sound harsher, darker and edgier than before, I was really looking foward to it. The name ‘The Betrayed’ sounded very bold. And the artwork….. Well, nothing said ‘this is a dark album’ more than that album cover.

I download it from mp3boo.com, begin listening to it on iTunes…. and it was like Start Something Lostprophets never left. The guitars were all over the place, noodling solos everywhere with a bit of ballad here and there. Choruses to sing at the top of your lungs. Even the interludes were back! The interludes! SHIT.

The best thing was that I downloaded before the link went down, I think, and it was the Japanese edition which had this song, ‘Sunshine’ and the hidden instrumental, ‘The Storm Is Coming…’ on there too.

AC Ricochet is one of my favourite songs from that version of the album. It’s a great contrast when you listen to this and ‘A Better Nothing’ comes on straight after with the piano. A very good listening experience. I think it was crazy that it was left off the UK edition.

Was ‘The Betrayed’ even released in the US? If it hasn’t, just get the Japanese version. It’s really the best one.

I’m not so sure about Lostprophets now… after all that stuff with Ian… and…. well you know.

Until next time.

Jamie.

My iPod #4: Pezz (Billy Talent) – Absorbed

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Hey hey hey heeeeeey.

Billy Talent is one of my favourite bands too. They/it is a band that, again, I could dedicate a whole blog to. Just because all of their albums are of a very high standard, and their songs are brilliant.

I am very bias, I’ve been listening to them for years. But….. they’re just so good.

“Watoosh!” was their actual first album. I know, I know what you may be thinking….. “A band called Billy Talent. That’s a pretty slick name…… But what the fuck is ‘Watoosh!’ What the fuck does that even mean?”

I don’t know what it means either. But I know that before Billy Talent were called Billy Talent, they went by the name of ‘Pezz’. See, that kind of makes it a bit better now right?

I got my sister to download ‘Watoosh!’ back in 2009 on Amazon, using my aunt’s credit card. It’s fine. My aunt’s pretty loaded.

I had heard the first three songs, and their cover of ‘New Orleans Is Sinking’ by The Tragically Hip waaaaay back when I was younger, and I knew that Pezz’s sound was very different from Billy Talent’s sound….. but it still rocked. So I thought why the hell not?

This song is pretty much the last actual song of the album, even if it is followed up by an instrumental and the aforementioned cover.

I feel a lot of emotions from listening to the song. The first two minutes and a half are quite upbeat, the lyrics in the chorus give off a sense of optimism – looking foward to the future: ‘I tried, I lied, but through the waves I’ll find, yeah through the waves I’ll fiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiind.’ Very happy. It makes me feel all warm, deep inssiiidde.

And then things take a turn, not for the worst, but the whole song just changes. The singer starts whispering words under his breath, as the rest of the instruments take a break… to ease things up a bit. And from then on, layers and layers of guitar just build on and on, until the band is just rocking and the last lyrics ‘I’LL RIDE YOU OOUUUUUUTTTTTT’ are repeated and belted out with sheer determination. It’s awesome! It’s good stuff.

‘Watoosh!’ is a good album. Very good. I realised that most of the songs all go by the same structure. If you listen to it, you may realise this too. But’s that’s not bad! The structure works. The songs are all different, however similar they may be. If that makes sense. And I like all of the songs, some more than others, but…… yeah. ‘Sall good.

It’s probably for the best that there was another band at the time called ‘Pezz’. Then they wouldn’t have had to change their name and I wouldn’t have ‘TRY HONESTY, TRY HONESTY!’ in my life.

Until next time.

Jamie.