Category Archives: Music

#1057: The Kinks – Powerman

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The Kinks’ 1970 album Lola Versus Powerman and the Moneygoround, Part One is one that I grew very fond of right from the initial listen. Don’t know what it was about the band from 1968 – 70. Some may argue that the run started some years prior/ended some years after. But the three albums (Village Green, Arthur, and Lola) released one after the other in three consecutive years is where, in my view, Ray Davies and company properly peaked. The first of those is my personal favourite. May have mentioned in other posts concerning songs from it. But while Arthur is usually regarded to be the other top, top classic of the band’s, it’s Lola that has always trumped it for me. The songs are fantastic, and Ray Davies is singing in his normal voice in comparison to that American-soulful inflection thing he has going on throughout Arthur. I’ve never been able to accustom myself to that choice.

Lola Versus Powerman is a bit of a concept album, almost, sort of. It was meant to be the first part of a story that ran for two records, hence the ‘Part One’ of the title, but was ultimately scrapped. A theme running throughout is the disillusionment and a shaking of fists to the music industry and those who sit at the top counting the money while the artists/bands do all the work. This is no better made clearer than in the album’s penultimate track, and I guess the third title track on there, in which Ray and Dave Davies on co-lead vocals sing about ‘Powerman’. Though this Powerman is set up as one character, I think it’s fair to say that it’s also an amalgamation of all the similar types of fat cat/cigar smoking boss-manager type people who were common to find in the record label office back in those days. Davies takes on the point of view of a person who works under ‘Powerman’, telling the listener how, after starting from nothing, the titular character obtained hunger for that sweet, sweet power, climbed that ladder and now laughs at everyone below him as he makes his way to the bank. People can make fun of him, but they’re irrelevant as far as he’s concerned. The narrator has his music and his girlfriend to keep him fulfilled and sane through the whole ordeal, but will always have the looming presence of Powerman behind their shoulder.

This is a great guitar song. The acoustic one that opens it up has this great presence about it, the electric guitar that joins it with that clonking introduction adds another spark. But it’s when then track builds up its pace not soon after and the rhythm section joins in that consistent head-bopping occurs for the rest of the entire track. Sometimes I’m not even singing along to the Davies brothers’ vocals and will just hum/”ner-ner-ner” my way along to the riffs that the guitars are doing through the verses and the choruses. Also, I think the bass guitar and those electric guitars are playing the same notes throughout almost the whole song. Hearing those elements in unison, I don’t know, they just make everything occurring seem so locked together and in-sync. Gives the track a bit of an overbearing presence, almost like a wall of some kind. And if you’re not trying to hear those guitars, then it’s always a plus to hear the Davies brothers harmonising as well as they do here. They might not have got along all that well, but when it came to the music they were always able to make up some magic.

#1056: Kanye West – POWER

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Man, to be a fan of Kanye West in these times. I’m not a huge fan of the guy myself, not like those stan-like, crazy ones you can find out there. I don’t think I’ve enjoyed a full solo Kanye project since 2016’s The Life of Pablo. Everything since then has been met by me with a firm shrug of the shoulders. But the man’s made some good music, you have to admit. He said some things all those months ago that you can’t excuse. Heck, he might have even said another by the time this is out. I’m not looking to excuse them. I honestly couldn’t care that much about the guy. I mean he doesn’t know I exist, right? Not much point in investing too much time into what he’s doing. But ‘POWER’ is the song that I’m writing about today because it’s the track that’s next up in the list, so if you’re aggrieved by the mere mention of Ye’s name, might just wanna skip this post and wait for the next.

I have a small, small memory of seeing the ‘listen to the new single ‘Power’ by Kanye West’ webpage – I think on NME – when the track was released in the summer of 2010, a few months before My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy was released. Obviously, this was the first thing West had released since the whole Taylor Swift/VMAs controversy, which had also happened a few months before. And to the 15-year-old I was at the time, the main thing I took away from it was that I was glad that he was just rapping again. No matter how influential 808s & Heartbreak is considered to be, singing Kanye has never the era of his that I’ve ever looked on too fondly. On ‘POWER’, he was back doing what he does best, sounding like he had nothing left to lose with the amount of confidence in his delivery. I didn’t realize the magnitude of this track off that initial listen on the NME website, and it wasn’t until I heard it within the context of the full album that I did. When that moment came, it all sort of started to make sense.

Like a phoenix rising from the ashes, here was Kanye West returning with a huge middle finger to anyone who criticized him in the aftermath of the VMAs incident – using the hate as fuel to write a cinematic hip-hop song telling you why he’s actually one of the greatest to have ever lived. Like he says in the lyrics, it’s essentially a supervillain’s theme song. Barack Obama called him an jackass. He was mocked by the cast of Saturday Night Live. He was one of the most disliked people in the US. That title still hasn’t faded that much since that time. And yet with ‘POWER’, he bathes in the glory that he was able to make so many people react so negatively as they did, literally laughing it off before telling them how small-minded in comparison to the treasures within his vault of a mind. This track also introduced me to King Crimson’s ’21st Century Schizoid Man’, which I have to thank it for. Not saying that I would never have listened to that particular song. But I would have heard it much, much later had it not been used as the main sample in ‘POWER’. Only made sense to have one extraordinary track be utilized so effectively in another.

#1055: Duels – Potential Futures

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This track is another instance of the music team at EA completely bossing their roles when choosing the songs to be used in their FIFA games in the 2000s. ‘Potential Futures’ by Duels was featured on the soundtrack for FIFA 06. It’s the one and only song I’ve ever listened to by this band. That’s something that probably isn’t likely to change. Don’t think my life’ll be heavily affected if I were to never hear any of the two albums the band have made in full. Then again, maybe I’m the fool to sell the band short like this. If anyone out there can tell me that Duels have made these fine records that I haven’t heard, I’ll welcome your thoughts and opinions with open arms.

Although I was regularly playing the FIFA game around the time of its release, I never fully appreciated the song until years later. In 2009, I asked for another copy of the game after my original from 2005 had some sort of glitch/error where the loading bar before the matches would just stop, which essentially defeated the whole purpose of having the item in the first place. My mum was confused as to why I wanted this old game. I could see where she was coming from. But I always felt I never got as much time with that FIFA edition before it glitched out, so it seemed right to me. I had my established favourites from that game having played it before. Some of them I’ve written about on here. And a few others that just never got a post. Due to this, I want to say I must have muted all of the other songs, including ‘Potential Futures’, to stop them from playing in the menu sections. Its stomping intro would usually crop up in those pre-match loading screens though. But when I did let the whole track play out from 2009 onwards, it was like I’d known the whole song my entire life. Only took maybe a few listens to start singing along to it.

The track narrates the tribulations of a Mr. Jimmy DeLancia, a fictional character who hates where he’s working and wants to hightail it out of the dead end town he’s currently living in. Why such a specific name was used is because the album that this track went on to appear (albeit in a newer re-recorded form which I think is inferior to the original single version) was supposed to be a concept album based around this man, a bit like Pretty Things’ S.F. Sorrow. The idea fell through though, and Jimmy only gets the brief mention here. I’ve come to think of the ‘Potential Futures’ phrase as some sort of company name, with its slogan/mission statement being sung by… I guess, the public who are buying into whatever this company’s selling. It’s the contrast between the disillusioned DeLancia verses and the happy, big singalong choruses that does it for me. Got those nice organs in the back during the latter that makes everything sound on this higher plane of existence. Some nice chord changes and movements that make each transition between song sections very fluid. A strong song in general.

#1054: Ween – pork roll egg and cheese

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Ween’s second album The Pod is a notably difficult album to listen through from start to finish. The tracks all suffer from a very low-budget production quality, having all been recorded on a 4-track cassette recorder. Plus, a lot of the songs on there are quite unconventional to say the least. Ween were never ones to hold themselves in any boundaries when it came to making music, and it’s arguable that The Pod is the major exhibit of just how freaky Gene and Dean Ween could get with whatever they had at their disposal. Yet despite all this, this album’s actually really great. Sometimes it feels so wrong to like as many songs as I do on here. They have no right to be as good as they are, as murky and muddy as they all sound. To also help tie this sprawling experience together, specific lyrical themes are brought in and reintroduced during various points. One of them culminating in ‘pork roll egg and cheese’, the album’s penultimate number.

Initially mentioned in the record’s third track ‘Frank’, the ‘pork roll, egg and cheese’ combination is mentioned again in 13th track ‘Awesome sound’ (with additional bacon). It’s sort of referred to in ‘Pollo Asado’. The phrase is repeated from the beginning to end of the track ‘She fucks me’ as some sort of madness mantra. If you hadn’t by this point, you’ll definitely be wondering what this fixation with this damn sandwich is all about. And right after that last repetition of the phrase in ‘She fucks me’ ends comes the track fully dedicated to it. In comparison to the 21 songs that precede it, ‘pork roll egg and cheese’ is almost like a lullaby. It’s a really relaxing, very chilled track. I don’t think it would be wrong to say it’s actually rather cute in a way. It’a pleasant ode to the times, after having completed a hard day’s work, to just sit down, gather your thoughts and eat some good food.

Let’s say there were potential discussions of singles from this album, which there probably weren’t but just go along with me for this, I don’t think it would be wrong to put ‘pork roll egg and cheese’ as a definite contender. Sure, the subject matter’s a little out there. It may have needed to go through a rerecording/remix. But man, this song hits all the right spots even in its original form on the album. Even the little moments like the split-second clearing of the throat at the song’s start or when Gene Ween kinda cracks up during the verse before the last chorus always scratch that inner itch. Reading comments online, I’ve seen people say that this song deserved to close the album out, and it probably should have. It certainly possesses an ending-credits feel to it. Plus it’s where the ‘pork roll egg and cheese’ theme comes to a close having been introduced probably almost an hour earlier. But ‘The Stallion’ has a few last words he’d like to share before truly leaving the listeners to ponder. But really, ‘pork roll’ is one of my highlights from there and most definitely one of my favourite songs by Ween too. I’ll have to try the sandwich one day.

#1053: Weezer – Pork and Beans

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Gonna cast my mind back all the way to 2008. Let’s see. For the first few months of it, I was 12. Then I turned 13. In my second year of secondary school. No longer a junior and old enough to pick on the new first years who came in. I never did that though. I take no delight in those kinds of things. A lot of time was spent playing FIFA 08 on the PS2, even though the PS3 was very much a thing and an item that was quite affordable. My music taste was still very much under the influence of what I saw on TV and to a lesser extent in the charts. But by that year I was already a firm fan of Weezer, owning physical copies of the Blue Album and Pinkerton and enjoying their music videos whenever they showed up on MTV or other channels of the like. So I was really excited when the Red Album was coming around. Was the first album in three years since Make Believe which, unbeknownst to me at the time, had received the worst reception of any Weezer record to date. It carried on the colour theme after Blue and Green. Things could only go up from here. And just a few weeks after my 13th birthday, ‘Pork and Beans’ was released as the big return, the first single off the new album.

I can’t remember where or when I heard the track for the very first time. I’ve known the track and become so familiar with it at this point, it just sort of feels like it’s been around since before I was born. I have this small memory of a guy in my class bringing in his phone one day and me getting really excited that he had ‘Pork and Beans’ on there. I don’t think he even knew what it was or who it was by, and probably downloaded it because it was a popular song. Really, my hype for the track rising to an all-time high when the music video finally became available on this rising video website called YouTube, and was soon playing on MTV2 as a result. The music video contains all of these Internet personalities and OG meme people and was a huge attention-grabber at the time, but is incredibly dated looking at it 15 years on. I however had no idea who any of the people in there were apart from maybe Tay Zonday, the Numa Numa guy and the Leave Britney alone man. But they all didn’t matter. What did was that Weezer was back, and at the very least it rocked a lot harder than the last time the first single was released from one of their albums.

An executive at Geffen Records told Rivers Cuomo and the rest of the band that they needed to record more commercial material one day. Feeling somewhat annoyed and insulted by the suggestion, he was inspired to write a new song which in turn became ‘Pork and Beans’. Cuomo addresses having to deal with getting older, working out at the gym, putting Rogaine in his hair and the pressures of writing that perfect pop song to dominate the music charts. But considering all this, he tells the listener that, really, once he thinks about all of these things, he’s just going to do what he wants to do, he hasn’t got anything to prove and he’ll just continue on his merry way without considering what outsiders think about him. Was very close to just typing out the lyrics in the chorus to you, but it couldn’t be explained any simpler than how it’s sung during those moments. And speaking of the chorus, it’s such a great singalong section. I mean, any chorus has to be one of those. But this one in particular’s led by a greatly memorable melody accompanied by crunchy guitars and confident rhythm section. I don’t know what it was about producer Jacknife Lee in 2007/08, but a lot of bands wanted his hands on their records, and one thing I’ve noticed listening to his productions of that era is that he could make guitars sound machines and I think that also comes into great effect on this track. The Red Album is probably seen as fairly average Weezer album in terms of their group’s whole discography, but ‘Pork and Beans’ is a damn good track. To this day, probably still one of my favourite Weezer singles.