Category Archives: Music

My iPod #3: They Might Be Giants – Absolutely Bill’s Mood

1 Reply

Yo.

I don’t know where to start. I could have a whole blog entry dedicated to They Might Be Giants, they are one of, if not, my favourite band ever. They’ve released fifteen albums, their sixteenth one coming soon, and I haven’t been disappointed by any of them. I don’t want to force them onto you, but if you’ve never heard of them and you are into the same music that I have posted so far, please I beg you to listen to one of their albums. Just one. That’s all I ask.

I normally listen to an album twice before the songs really sink in. The first time I probably just nod my head to the rhythm of a particular track or try and hum to a chorus if it repeats over and over again. And this song was probably stuck in my head by the second or third time of hearing it.

I had already listened to, and really liked ‘Don’t Let’s Start’ and ‘Put Your Hand Inside the Puppet Head’, both of which are on ‘They Might Be Giants’ or ‘The Pink Album’; when I downloaded the album back in September 2010, I was pretty excited because I didn’t know what to expect.

‘Absolutely Bill’s Mood’, the fourteenth track on the debut album isn’t my favourite song on the album. I think some fans will probably agree whilst some may be like WTF, but that’s just my opinion OK?

But it is still great! Once you listen to the lyrics, I think it is very clear that the song is about a crazy person. Lyrics include:
“My room is comfortably small with rubber lining the walls”
“I know monkey see, but monkey’s dead for you it would be wrong”

And the total giveaway:
“I’m insane, I’m insane, I’m insane, I’m insane”

‘Bill’s Mood’ is quite a dark song in comparison with the others, with a strange guitar in the introduction, apparently recorded over the phone, and ominous brrrrrrrrs (keyboard noises) but it lightens the mood with  pretty funny lyrics, a great vocal by John Flansburgh and great conga-sounding drums in the bridge. Nice.

Dig They Might Be Giants.

Until next time.

Jamie.

P.S. THEIR NEW ALBUM ‘NANOBOTS’ IS BEING STREAMED HERE!

LISTEN TO IT!

NNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!

Edit: OK, so it seems like you can’t listen to it on the site. Not on my computer anyway.

BUT PRE-ORDER IT!

NOW!

EDIT 2: THE ALBUM IS ACTUALLY HERE!

OK?!

My iPod #2: Grandaddy – A.M. 180

Leave a reply

Hi everyone.

This is the second song of the ‘A’ section of the music on my iPod. It’s called A.M. 180 by the band Grandaddy.

I heard this song for the first time a while back in 2005/06 when I was 10/11 on an advert BBC One showed about xFM, a radio station which at the time was hosted by Alex Zane.

The opening ‘riff’, if you could call it that, played on that certain advert; at the time I had never come across it before. But BBC just kept on repeating it over and over again, so I had to search it on the internet.

I went onto Google, searched it up, found out the name of the song and who it was by, listened to it once on Myspace, didn’t think much of it and eventually forgot about it….

Until I remembered the beginning of the song last year. 5 bloody years later.

Would I ever be able to find the song again? What is my life? Why always me?

Using Google again, I found a site where you could hum or sing a part of a song into your microphone and the song you wanted came up as a result.

Somehow it worked. So I went onto we7, played that song whilst using Freecorder and put that shit right on my iPod.

I’m sorry to say that this may be a (hopefully rare) occasion where I don’t have a lot to say about this band, because I haven’t heard anything else by them except for this song. Maybe I should one day. According to Wikipedia, the members got back together last year so…. hooray! I guess.

Until next time.

Jamie

P.S. I’m not one to encourage illegal downloading even though I have been for many years now, but if you don’t want to buy anything, Freecorder is the greatest shit ever.

P.S.S. Google saves lives.

Bye!

Predicament solved. New blog series!

2 Replies

Fuck it.

That is my decision for yesterday’s post. As the saying goes, ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.’

But on the topic of my iPod, I was wondering what I could do to bring some consistency to my new blog.

I don’t just want to come on here one day with nothing to write about. I’ve been looking through the songs that I have on my ‘portable device’ and wondering… ‘damn, this is the music that I’ve enjoyed throughout my life…. where does the time go? blah blah blah nostalgia’.

So I’m going to guide you, in alphabetical order, through the songs I have, how I discovered them and whatever.

So number one…..

The Futureheads – A to B

OK. The Futureheads are a four piece band from Sunderland, consisting of two brothers and two other guys. I’ve listened to them for about… nine years now, ever since their debut album came out in 2004.

I think the first song I heard by them was ‘Decent Days and Nights’, when I was watching good old MTV2, when it actually played a wider variety of better music. It is now called MTV Rocks, but it doesn’t rock at all. Not. at. all.

But anyway, I liked that song and I remember I went shopping with my mum in Tesco one day, and we were in the CD aisle and I saw the front cover of The Futureheads album. I saw it, and the conversation as I recall went a little something like:

Mum: “What’s that?”
Me: “It’s an album by a band I listen to.”
Mum: “Do you like them?”
Me: “Yeah, sure.”
Mum: “Alright, well then put it in [the trolley].”

And I’ve never looked back since.

I wouldn’t say that The Futureheads are one of my all time favourite bands, but they have really good, catchy songs with great vocals and punchy instrumentation.

Check out some other stuff by them if you want. Their latest album ‘Rant’ was released last year, but is only acapella…. so get that if you’re into that kind of stuff.

Did you like this blog entry? Comment on it, and I’ll try and make these as daily as I can.

Until next time.

Jamie