#1138: Danny Brown ft. Petite Noir – Rolling Stone

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Thinking about it now, Danny Brown’s Atrocity Exhibition was the hip-hop album I’d been waiting for my entire life up until its release in September 2016. I remember the time well. I’d just started what was to be my final year of university, and Brown surprise-released it three days earlier than what it was officially announced to be. Set up Spotify, ‘Downward Spiral’ started, and when the song’s first chorus hit, I knew I was in for something very, very special. Unfortunately, there’s only one more song from Atrocity… that I’ll be able to speak about on here. But if the album had been released four years sooner, you’d see a larger representation of it on the site.

The album is one grim, disturbing look into Brown’s hedonistic lifestyle, one that he repeatedly states to the listener could lead to the end of him and leaves him feeling numb inside despite the pleasures of sex and drugs that come along with it. ‘Rolling Stone’, the third track, is one of the gems that provides another window into the rapper’s thought on the matter. Brown knows that he’s going down this road of self-destruction and only indulges in more excess to aim in easing the pain, which only makes things worse. It’s a lonely life to live, is what the song is trying to tell you. Alongside Danny Brown is Petite Noir on the choruses and the outro, who also produced the track having contacted Brown on Twitter and initiated a back-and-forth of ideas between the two.

That keyboard(?) melody the song starts with (and appears throughout) is too catchy. There are a lot of times when I’m just nodding to the groove and singing along to it rather than listening to the lyrics. There’s that moment where a ghostly vocal comes in singing the melody during Brown’s second verse, almost drowning his voice out in the process, which makes me think it’s meant to symbolise much more darker than its appealing tone would suggest. Danny Brown has the beat in his pocket, spitting out his lines with the trademark barking yelp of his. Funny to think that this song might not have happened at all had Brown not been awake at four in the morning and been checking his DMs.

#1137: The Beatles – Rocky Raccoon

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When I first heard ‘Rocky Raccoon’ by the Beatles for the first time, I want to say I had a reaction that was very similar to this YouTuber’s. Coming up as the third round in that animal “trilogy” on the White Album after ‘Blackbird’ and ‘Piggies’, it had me thinking this song was going to be a song about a raccoon. Interesting to say the least, but we’ll see how it goes. Then Paul McCartney comes in with the exaggerated Southern drawl in the introduction. I thought it sounded too silly. I made fun of it a bit, was ready to dismiss the whole thing entirely. But then, McCartney starts singing for real, and I was sort of spellbound. I don’t think I realised that I liked the song that much until I started singing it spontaneously a period of time afterwards. Goes to show, you’ve got to give every song a chance.

‘Rocky Raccoon’ isn’t about an actual raccoon, by the way. Doesn’t stop me from imagining these anthropomorphic creatures acting out the song’s storyline. Set in the Wild West with those cowboy hats and everything, very clear imagery. Anyway, that’s what the song is importantly, a story. It’s pretty much spelled out in the lyrics. The titular character checks into a hotel to get revenge on a man (who calls himself Dan) who’s ‘stolen’ his girlfriend. The girl’s name is Lil McGill, but everyone knows her as Nancy. Rocky Raccoon challenges Dan to a showdown. Dan shoots him quick on the draw and Rocky loses. Rocky recovers miraculously fast and goes back to the hotel to lick his wounds. And at points of this storytelling come some jumpy, upbeat honky-tonk piano breaks (provided by George Martin) to really tie the pieces together.

I don’t know how Paul McCartney does it. The melody used throughout his so simple, but so memorable. Almost like a lullaby. Shouldn’t be surprised as the guy’s pretty much a master of melody, so much so it left a lot of his peers and bandmates stumped. But a song with a name like ‘Rocky Raccoon’ could go badly so easily. Good thing it was McCartney who wrote it. Also without it, we wouldn’t have Rocket Raccoon in Guardians of the Galaxy. That’s a movie series I’m not very keen on myself. But what I’m getting at is that its influence and legacy goes out farther than just music. The track is very Paul, but you’ve got to hand it to the other bandmembers for their contribution the song’s sound. George Martin’s aforementioned piano performance livens up proceedings, and to reinforce the country-western vibe, John Lennon provides a harmonica part for what would be the final time on a Beatles recording.

#1136: The Rolling Stones – Rocks Off

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Only the second Rolling Stones song I’ve talked about on here. A lot of people love Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, all the other members associated and the albums too. I can take them in small amounts. I feel like a lot of the songs they do are indebted to the old-time blues rock of the US, which I’ve never had much feeling for anyway. There are however some songs by the Stones that I can’t deny must be regarded as ahem… ‘stone’-cold classics. And not the obvious ones like ‘Satisfaction’ or ‘Gimme Shelter’. Even I think those are both just all right. ‘Rocks Off’ though has to be one that almost every Stones fan appreciates. Not just because it opens what’s considered to be the band’s best album, but because of its general feel-good energy and the tight performance by the group as a whole. I got ’round to listening to Exile on Main St. around the same time I was going through a Best Ever Albums list on a website of the same name. At the time the website listed the album as the band’s best piece fo work, the best of its year, and one of the greatest of the ’70s as a decade. Gotta admit, I was excited for what I was about to hear.

It all begins with ‘Rocks Off’, a track that I could hear being played in those dirty, seedy underground nightclubs that I imagine were the places to be during the ’70s. Jagger’s confident “Oh, yeeeah” that he comes out with makes me screw my face up every time, just ’cause I think I know how he’s feeling hearing the guitar work of Richards and Mick Taylor and the rhythm section bring themselves into the mix and establish the groove. This song oozes coolness in all aspects. Jagger doesn’t ham up his vocals to a large extent, taking a sort of laidback approach for the verses and saving the more unrestrained approaches for the choruses. Richards joins in on harmonies. And a big round of applause has to go to those rousing horns that take the track to a higher level entirely. This a real good album opener. Probably one of the best of all time, I’d say the best in the Stones’ discography straight up.

I said the song has a feel-good energy in the first paragraph, which it does, but accompanying the uplifting music are the musings of a narrator who’s feeling disillusioned with life. They’re sort of losing themselves in places, they’re not able to absorb and take things in like they once did. Days are coming and going, they give in to their vices. They’ve lived a life of excess to the brim that they’ve become numb to it, and the only way they’re able to get any true relief and excitement is in their sleep. Sort of goes against the whole idea of getting rocks off. But that’s the way things are going for this person. The song’s about being as jaded as you could possibly get, but man, it’s delivered in such a celebratory manner that you can be forgiven for completely missing the cynicism. I know I did.

#1135: Ferry Corsten – Rock Your Body, Rock

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How I came to know this track is unlike a lot of other stories I recount when it comes to writing these posts. Dutch DJ Ferry Corsten’s ‘Rock Your Body, Rock’ was a song I heard in my sleep. That’s right. Around 2003/04, I was sharing a bedroom with my sister, and she’d leave the radio on as we laid our weary heads on our separate beds and got our few hours of shut-eye in. It was during one of those nights that Corsten’s track played. I feel like I was in a deep sleep at the time, but hearing the song woke me up because it sounded like some intense robot factory. I told my sister the next morning, “I heard this really good song that played on the radio last night.” She said, “Ah, nice. Cool.” Something along those lines. She was being nice about it, but kinda brushed it off. And I was left wondering what that really good song was for a long while.

That all changed though, thanks to Top of the Pops. At some point, the show was doing the countdown of the official UK singles chart. ‘Rock Your Body, Rock’ had charted at number 11. I think a short clip of the music video (below) played, and it sort of stopped me dead in my tracks. I went onto Corsten’s website, the video could be played in full on there. This was the song. Would be funny after all these years if it actually wasn’t and I’ve still yet to hear that sleep-song. I’m 95% sure this was it, though. And I tell you, I kept repeating that video basking in the success. Having owned FIFAs 2003 and 2004, I did think it would be cool if the song was used in the next game that would be made. And it was like EA heard my thoughts because the company included the song on the FIFA 2005 soundtrack. Now there was no way I would be able to forget it even if I wanted to.

‘Rock Your Body, Rock’ is the only song of its genre that I’ve ever thought to listen to. ‘Trance’. If anyone knows any Trance albums, please send them my way. If you can’t, well, I can always go to Rate Your Music. But if this turns out to be the only one I know for the rest of my life, I’d be pretty fine. ‘Rock Your Body. Rock’ begins suddenly with Corsten’s heavily effected vocals, droning on a B-flat note (which is also the one chord the track stays on for its entirety), in which he tells the listener that he wants to have relations with his girl on a worldwide scale. Hence the song’s title. I didn’t know that when I was eight but became very apparent while growing up. His verses appear only twice in the whole song, dedicating a lot more time to the surging instrumental passages that trundle along, fade away, then come in with a vengeance with the euphoric “choruses”. The official music video cuts out a lot of the instrumental sections out, so I’d say the album version’s the way to go. But the edit is also there only have three-and-a-half minutes to spare.

#1134: The Clash – Rock the Casbah

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The Clash, The Clash, The Clash. Now, I appreciate the band and their influence and I understand why people would be a huge, huge fans of their music. I did revisit the London Calling album some months ago and did think that it was where Pete Doherty and Carl Barât got their whole shtick from for their Libertines stuff. Seemed so obvious while listening through it. But for me, The Clash are a group that I’ve never caught the fever over to start worshipping them. They do have some great songs, though. In fact, here’s one right now. ‘Rock the Casbah’. At least, in my opinion, it is. As one of the band’s most well-known singles, some may think it’s overplayed and they’ve heard it too much. I’m not one of those people.

Unlike the majority of Clash songs where songwriting duo Joe Strummer and Mick Jones would create the music and then continue to develop the songs with the rest of the band, ‘Rock the Casbah’ was brought into the studio almost completely finished by drummer Topper Headon. He had a piano idea in mind for some time. When one day he came into the studio and found no one there, he recorded the drums, bass guitar and piano. Strummer, Jones and regular bassist Paul Simonon came in and were impressed with what Headon had got down. After not-so-subtly rejecting Headon’s original lyrics for the track, Strummer wrote his own – detailing an ongoing situation where a king calls a ban on Western music, much to his people’s annoyance. They go ahead and play it anyway, because they just don’t care. We’re meant to imagine that this is all happening in the Middle East somewhere, most likely Iran, hence the mentions of ‘ragas’, ‘minarets’ the ‘Sharif’ and so on and so forth.

I think it was after seeing the video a few times on MTV2, or some other music video channel, that I thought the song was cool enough to add to the personal library. Upon finding out how the song was made, I always thought it was wrong how the bass guitar was mixed so low in the version that ended up on Combat Rock. Luckily, the mix used when it was reissued some years later (and in the music video above) altered that choice and pushed it forward. How Strummer sings “The Sheikh he drive his CADILLAAAC” makes me chuckle. He really hacks out the “cadillac”. You can hear a digital wristwatch alarm at one point during the track. I don’t have much else to day. I enjoy this one a lot. A shame that Topper Headon wasn’t able to enjoy the success the song he made got. He left the band before the song was released because of a slight addiction to heroin and had to witness the music video the band filmed without him with another drummer in his place.