Category Archives: Music

#1203: The Stone Roses – Shoot You Down

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Hey, it’s a tune by the Stone Roses. It’s the first ever one I’ve covered in this whole series too, what do you know. Me and the Roses go way back. I was a small one when ‘Fools Gold’ appeared in the soundtrack of FIFA 2004. It was an oldie to appear in the game, alongside The Jam’s ‘Town Called Malice’, and I became a fan of both in the process. Years followed, and throughout them I’d usually see the Roses on various music channels. MTV2, VH2, Q, all those nice places. Though a lot of the times, it was either ‘Fools Gold’ or ‘I Wanna Be Adored’ that got a lot of the attention on them.

I got to listening to the band’s great, great self-titled debut album in full around 2013 or so. Then revisited it in about 2015. ‘Bye Bye Badman’ became a favourite of mine in that instance. Bit of a deeper cut, but it stood out to me nonetheless. Then maybe in about 2018/19, ‘Shoot You Down’ appeared on the Spotify Discover Weekly playlist. Hearing it on there, separate from the context within the album, I gained a newfound appreciation for it. And that brings me to where I am today. The track’s the ninth one on the LP, sandwiched between two popular ones in ‘Made of Stone’ and ‘This Is the One’, so it’s got a bit of a raw deal in terms of recognition. But I recognise it, so this is my post of appreciation.

This song’s another on the album where Ian Brown displays contempt for what/whoever he’s singing about. For a long time, I figured it was maybe about a girl or something. Now I think he may be singing about the crowds/fans that the bands were attracting. You know, it’s like they’re showing their love for the band, but Brown wants to disappoint them for the hell of it. I think it’s the latter more than anything now, but generally it could all be open-ended. I feel like the song may have begun out of some sort of jam initiated between drummer Reni and bassist Mani, because the music relies on the groove established by the two, while guitarist John Squire lays some sweet licks over the top. All very easy-going stuff, which makes the subtle change in intensity at 1:36 when the vocal harmonies all the more sweeter before settling down for the remainder of the track. A side note, but if anyone remembers The Twang and their song ‘Wide Awake’, I’m sure the Roses are due some credits on that one. The rhythm section is strikingly similar.

#1202: Big Boi ft. B.o.B & Wavves – Shoes for Running

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Thinking about how to approach today’s song, I questioned for a moment, “How did I actually come to know this one?” Thankfully, I laid the backstory out in the first post I wrote for a song from Big Boi’s Vicious Lies and Dangerous Rumors way, way back in this blog’s early days. It’s been more than a decade since that LP was released. It doesn’t get talked about all that much. I remember it wasn’t that widely praised when it first came out too. I’m sure Wikipedia has sources to reviews of the time. I want to say I recall one in particular that put a highlight on the numerous collaborations with indie acts on there. Whether it was spun in a negative or positive way, that’s where you lose me. But one track on there which comes under that collaborative label is ‘Shoes for Running’, the 11th number in the running, featuring B.o.B and Nathan Williams of indie rock band Wavves.

Again I’m speaking more than a decade on, but when I inadvertently found the album on Spotify and played through it that first time, ‘Shoes for Running’ was one of the few on there that stuck out to me. The instrumental, produced by Williams, is quite cheerful and upbeat in nature. People are whistling and a group of children are included in the proceedings. But it runs against the downbeat lyrical content that focuses on the inevitability of death and the poor revolting against the rich. The track has a catchy chorus, one that I witnessed people slating on various YouTube comments and other forum-like places, but to me it was always good. B.o.B might be an artist whose relevance was left behind in the 2010s, but he had his time and he does a fine job on his verse here. And well, I don’t have to say much about Big Boi because we all know. For the longest time I thought B.o.B was singing the verse before the final chorus. I found out it’s Big Boi just recently. The guy could sing too, jack of all trades.

Well, I don’t have much else to say about the tune itself. I can tell you that this’ll be the last track from Vicious Lies… that I’ll be writing about on here. I revisited it relatively recently, and found it was very enjoyable to listen to. I think the dominance of features by indie acts over other hip-hop artists is what may have turned some people away. There’s also the very obvious attempt at the radio-hit song with ‘Mama Told Me’ with Kelly Rowland. You could probably miss me with that one. But all in all, Big Boi doesn’t disappoint in the slightest. Fine hooks in every tracks. I wouldn’t say it beats Sir Lucious Left Foot…. But I think its due time that people at least gave Vicious Lies… another go if it’s been a while.

1201: Hot Club de Paris – Shipwreck

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It’s been a long, long time since I’ve written anything about Hot Club de Paris around here. The last time I did, I was a bit of an arse about them. Very dismissive. You know how it is when you’re 18, you think you’re smart ’cause you’re an adult on paper and you think everyone wants to know your real opinion about something. It’s a time of my life I don’t miss. What I’ll say now about the band is that, even if I haven’t listened to any of their albums in full, the three songs I got to know by them whenever their videos showed up MTV2 got stuck in the brain usually at an instant. Those videos may have played only a few times, and that was almost, almost 20 years ago. The third song will get its own post soon.

But for now, here’s the second, and it’s the song that opens the trio’s debut album. It’s the second on the linked video, but that somehow includes the pregap track that was hidden on the CD copies. ‘Shipwreck’ was released as the second single from Drop It ’til It Pops in about early 2007 or so. Saw the video on the TV in the morning one day, saw that it was by the band who made another song I liked a few months earlier, the third song I was talking about earlier, and was into it right away. Compared to their previous video that had a stop-motion thing going on, this one showed the band actually performing, and as an 11-year-old kid in grammar school who wasn’t going to gigs anytime soon, it was quite exciting to see.

All the time I’ve known the track, I’ve never stopped to think what it was about. I’ve always been a more “music first-lyrics later’ kinda guy, I can’t help it. But looking at the words briefly, I think it’s about a group of lads – maybe referring to the band themselves, who knows – being rowdy on a night out at a club, but it’s all told with the inclusion of nautical/pirate-themed lyrics and imagery to cleverly make things that little more difficult to gauge. Paul Rafferty, the bassist, and guitarist Matthew Smith both take lead vocals on the tune, as demonstrated in the music video, usually amidst rollicking “woo” and “yo-ho-ho” chants in the back, with both pulling off melodic licks that drive the track along. Sections of the song are also played in 7/8 time, kind of a math rock thing going on but not really. It all sounds good to me. Wouldn’t hurt to actually listen through their discography one of these days.

#1200: Ol’ Dirty Bastard – Shimmy Shimmy Ya

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All the years seem to blend into one when I think about the time spent getting into Wu-Tang Clan in university. Want to say it took a couple years to fully understand. I have a clear vision of being in my first-year room and listening to 36 Chambers and GZA’s Liquid Swords. Only Built 4 Cuban Linx… may have shown up around the time too. But I think it was the earlier part of my second year where I became somewhat enthralled by their whole thing, and on my part was watching interviews, documentary clips and the like. You know what, it was around the time when they announced that they were about to release their new album – their first in a long, long time. A Better Tomorrow, I think it was. That record wasn’t all that great. But the hype building up to it got me all invested in the group, making me seek out the rest of the members’ own solo discographies.

Having covered GZA and Raekwon already, I think their albums had shown up somewhere in the ‘Best Ever Albums’ list on besteveralbums.com – the only reason why I got to listening to them, it was my decision to hear the album by the Wu member who always entertained me the most, be it in both the music and video. This led me to Return to the 36 Chambers: The Dirty Version, the 1995 debut by the group’s beloved drunken master, the Ol’ Dirty Bastard. Always seemed to remain in the pocket while also possessing the most exaggerated and eccentric delivery out of the Wu’s nine members. He wasn’t afraid to occasionally break out into song during his verses too. Wanted you to know he had soul in him. His presence was a usual highlight throughout 36 Chambers, so what could be better than a whole hour of the guy on his own solo project?

It’s been a while since I’ve properly gone through The Dirty Version. Have to go back to it one of these days. But what I do know is that after its almost-five minute intro, one of the most hilarious and entertaining in any hip-hop album, comes ‘Shimmy Shimmy Ya’, one of if not the signature tune by ODB. It’s a track where he declares that he’s out to take the world by storm in the name of the Wu-Tang and basically goes on to tell us why he’s the best at what he does. There are so many hooks to latch on to, “Ooh, baby, I like it raaaaw, HUH”, “Shimmy shimmy ya, shimmy yam, shimmy yay”, “Jump on stage a-den-a-den deeeeen”. The two-note piano lick that starts it off. So simple yet so effective. And the whole track relies on a second-verse-same-as-the-first-thing going on, so you can’t go wrong once you’ve got the words memorised. That is, at least how it goes on the album version (below). You can tell the second verse was probably overdubbed at a different stage than the first. The extended version, used for the music video, features the original second verse that sounds like it was improvised on the spot. The video also features a snippet of fellow album track, ‘Baby C’mon’, which I’m also very into. Can’t write a post about it now. But that’s another highlight of mine.

#1199: Pink Floyd – Sheep

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Looks like this’ll be the last song from Pink Floyd’s Animals that’ll be on here. But it also happens to be my favourite track on there. I’ve come to think of the record as the band’s almost, sort of reaction to punk at the time. Those gospel backing choirs and saxophones the group used on Dark Side and Wish You Were Here were done away with. The Floyd took a DIY approach to the making of Animals through building their own studio to record it in after leaving their usual work area of Abbey Road Studios. As a result, it’s truly an effort created and curated by the four members, even if Roger Waters will take credit for it all. And plus, there’s a lot of frustration and anger behind it all, which we can all do with sometimes. A lot of people are into ‘Dogs’. A lot of people are into ‘Pigs (Three Different Ones)’. And I swear, for a while, from what I saw, ‘Sheep’ was usually considered to be the weakest out of the three mammoth tracks that make up the meaty part of the album. Something that I couldn’t really understand. Because, in regards to listening to the entire LP, ‘Sheep’ is the track that the entire album has been building up towards.

‘Sheep’ had its origins from before the band even started work on Wish You Were Here a few years prior, as it was usually performed live under the name ‘Raving and Drooling’. Then Roger Waters was inspired by George Orwell’s Animal Farm and the lyrical content morphed into something completely different and now described a dire situation in which people were blindly following an ideology without thinking for themselves or willing to fight against it. Proceedings begin with the sound of sheep braying in a field, smooth chords on the Rhodes piano by Richard Wright and a bass riff that lingers on one note for the longest time. The three together make for a very ominous intro, made all the more so when the bass guitar finally slides down to a different key. Something big is about to go down. And it does, with the whole band entering and Roger Waters delivering a forceful vocal that seamlessly transitions into wild, freaky, spaced out note on the synthesizers. It’s a production trick that blew my mind when that happened the first time. Some genius stuff.

Once the band come in all together for that first verse, the whole track’s a juggernaut from that point forward. Roger Waters howling away on the vocals, while also taking on a rhythm guitar role (buried in the mix), with David Gilmour thrashing out these wild guitar chords. Nick Mason throws out these emphatic fills on the drumkit and Richard Wright fills the sound out with blaring Hammond organ chords. This is a band that’s locked in. It’s difficult for me to not just go through the song minute-by-minute and explain what happens here and there, that’s how quite strongly I feel about this track. This post may be one of my longest in a while. Sometimes you just have to leave it for someone to hear for themselves. But what I will say though, is that the outro to this song is quite possibly one of the greatest of all time. Like one comment on YouTube says, it’s the climax of the entire album. The way the whole track seems to rise in decibels when the cymbals crash and Gilmour’s monstrous descending guitar riff brings everything to a rapturous close as it eventually fades out. If there were musical definition for the words ‘glory’ or ‘freedom’, the two minutes of this song’s outro would be a fine contender.