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#1126: Brakes – Ring a Ding Ding

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No more Brakes after this one. Some of you may read this post and think, “So?” Maybe this is the first song you would have ever heard by the band. Well, if that’s the case, this would be a good place to start. ‘Ring a Ding Ding’ is the first song on the band’s debut album Give Blood, released back in 2005. The first song I’d ever heard by this band was ‘All Night Disco Party’, which you can listen to and read about via clicking on the title name. That’s a fun one. It’s also on the same album. Choruses come at you fast throughout the record, in styles ranging from country to disco to punk, no time to dwell on verses, and it all begins with this track right here. There’s an official music video for this song, which for some reason isn’t on YouTube. You can see it on Apple Music, though.

‘Ring’ opens with a small “woo”, a strident strumming of an F-sharp chord and some guitar feedback before the band come in altogether with Eamon Hamilton’s gravelly vocal. The narrator here describes the messed-up state he’s in brought about by the nonsensical, surreal things that are happening around him. There’s a cowboy in the court who’s singing to the monkey macaroni (which I think is meant to be a dance of some kind) and he finds solace in Super Skipper Sue who he hopes will provide some comfort to him. What I take the song to be is a big metaphor of going to work, just being sick of the people and different characters you have to deal with on a daily basis, and them coming home to your girlfriend/wife/significant other who makes things better when you walk through the door. But going literal with the lyrics wouldn’t make it that interesting, would it? After a passing mention of the phrase from which the album gets its name from, the song ends abruptly, leaving you hanging for a short while before proceedings continue on the following track.

Yeah, BrakesBrakesBrakes. They were a good band. They are a good band. Still not sure whether they’ve split up or not. The band’s Touchdown is their most recent album to date, and it was released 15 years ago. Not looking like there’s any new music on the horizon, which is a shame. But like so many of those UK indie bands from the 2000s, they just seemed to fade away. Pitchfork described Give Blood as ‘a gift to short attention spans everywhere’, and that is very much a sentiment that could be carried for the other two albums that make up what I guess you would call a trilogy. Don’t think things got as unpredictable as they were on Give Blood, which is why I would say it’s my favourite of the three. You can find the band on your local streaming platform. Can’t go wrong with any album you start with.

#1007: Radiohead – Packt Like Sardines in a Crushd Tin Box

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It’s P time. Everytime I start a new section of this, I’m always weary of the amount of typing that I’ve gotta go through. But it has to be done. I’ve had this voice in my head telling me to have this done by the time I’m 30. That gives me just over two years. Maybe that’s pushing it. There’s still so many songs to go. But it’s worth a try. So let’s get restarted.

‘Packt Like Sardines in a Crushd Tin Box’ is the opening track on Radiohead’s 2001 Amnesiac album, the second in the group’s iconic – for lack of a better word – left-turn experimental phase after Kid A preceded it a few months before. I want to say that it acted as a bit of a message on part of the band that if people who thought Kid A was strange, then they had no idea. No better way to start of an album with looping metallic chimes and electronic bleep-bloops to keep rock fans on their side. As I’ve come to know it though, that wait for some sort of melody or settled rhythm to kick in is well worth it once those (keys? synths?) come in at 36 seconds.

I’ll always remember where I was when I ‘listened’ to Amnesiac for the first time. ‘Listened’ being in quotation marks because I was asleep for the majority of it. It was a tiring day after A-Level preparation in year 13 days, I think I may have been feeling down at that point too, and Spotify had this free trial offer going on. Though I more or less missed the middle part of the record, I remember still being sort of awake during ‘Packt…’ and digging Thom Yorke’s pitch-corrected vocals and the overall glitchy vibe of the entire thing. Then my consciousness faded away gradually, but then suddenly perked up when ‘Life in a Glasshouse’ started. As a result, those two tracks were the ones from the album that I considered its highlights for some time. I’ve come to appreciate a couple more songs from it, but the record isn’t up there in my personal Radiohead album ranking, to be frank. Doesn’t have that good a flow, I feel.

But, ah, the song. What is ‘Packt…’ about? Well, if you’ve been a longtime reader here, you may have come across a few posts where I’ve flat out stated that I’m not much of a lyrics guy. Even when it comes to writing these, I usually see what other people have said and see whether I agree with it or not. In rare cases, there are some tracks where I’ve felt I got the meaning down, which makes sense to me. This isn’t one of those times. Knowing that during the making of Kid A/Amnesiac, Thom Yorke utilised a method of cutting up lyrics and randomly linking them together, there’s a good chance that there isn’t a truly deep meaning to pick up from these sets of lyrics at all. They do sound great together, though, which to me is really all that matters. Oh, actually the main message is Thom Yorke wants some peace – leave him alone. There we go.

#984: John Lennon – One Day (At a Time)

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Just a note to take into account before you read this. This track isn’t actually six minutes and 36 seconds long. There are two versions of this song in it, but I’m really only talking about the first 3 minutes in there or so. If you want to carry on listening after, that’s up to you. Cool. That’s out of the way.

When I was really getting into the Beatles at the beginning of the tail-end of the 00s, I came across this project online called Everyday Chemistry. The website where you could download it provided the backstory. This was an album created in a parallel universe where the Beatles never broke up in 1970 that somehow made its way to our planet. Quite the way to get people interested. Really, it’s just a mashup album created by a fan using solo Beatles work. In the vein of the official Beatles LOVE record. And it wasn’t actually bad. In fact, it was this project that got me thinking about listening to the Beatles solo projects and songs. One track on there that struck my ear immediately was ‘Anybody Else’, which was a mashup of McCartney’s track ‘Somedays’, Ringo Starr’s ‘Monkey See – Monkey Do’, and an alternate take of John Lennon’s ‘One Day (At a Time)’ taken from the 1998 Anthology compilation. The latter was the anchor of this song, providing the bassline and what is essentially the main riff. So it only made sense to seek out the original and see what was going on.

‘One Day (At a Time)’ was written and recorded during a period when John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s marriage was on the rocks, just before they properly separated and Lennon went on an 18-month bender in Los Angeles. I feel the track is meant to act as something of a statement from Lennon to Ono as to why they should stay together. With he being the fish to her sea, the bee to her honey and so on and so forth, he feels they’re two people who complete each other. Any trouble arises then taking things day by day should be the way to right any wrongs. As mentioned before, that route didn’t work out. But man, this track makes for some truly comfortable listening. Probably the coziest recording Lennon ever made. This is bare bones, made up of Lennon’s cool vocal, a keyboard, bass guitar and drums played with brushes rather than sticks, and a twinkling guitar that provides a backdrop during the verses. It’s like the the musicians are playing right in front of you in this dark lounge, smoke in the room, people wearing shades. It’s magic stuff. So relaxing, so warm. You listen to those first three minutes up there. You’d think that take could have been on an official album, right?

Well, wrong. With some advice on Ono’s part to sing the vocal in a falsetto range, and the addition of backing vocalists and maybe a steel pedal guitar, the track was released in its ‘final form’ on Lennon’s Mind Games album in 1973. I don’t like this version as much. Not a lot, to be honest. With the alternate Anthology take, Lennon singing in his natural range provided so much more sincerity, in my opinion. The decision to go falsetto on the album doesn’t sit right with me. I guess by doing so he’s meant to sound like some innocent child or something. Maybe meant so sound more vulnerable? I don’t know. To me it comes off as if he’s making fun of the entire thing. Considering it was Ono’s idea, he probably didn’t want to do it that way. Think the backing singers and the added instrumentation is a bit extra too. But hey, that’s just me. I’ll stick to the Anthology. Listen to the album version for yourself and decide.

#980: Talking Heads – Once in a Lifetime

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One of the greatest memories I have associated with this track is when I was at Glastonbury in 2016 vibing at a silent disco really late in the night. ‘Once in a Lifetime’ came on, and it was clear that this stranger close to me was listening to it too. We were both high as anything, miming along to the words, mimicking David Byrne’s dance moves from the music video. A lot of shaking hands and laughing occurred; it was a good time. I sometimes get the slightest feeling that he was mostly surprised that here was this Black dude who was into Talking Heads. Gotta face it sometimes. But that slight negativity has always been overshadowed by that memory of acting like a fool and bonding through a fantastic song.

I have to tip my metaphorical hat to the music video. I’m sure that’s how I came across the song in the first place. It’s an example of those videos that somehow manage to enhance the music, or at least provide the perfect visual experience to accompany the music. Byrne is a lanky, jerky, sweating machine by the end of it and for good reason. Those are some moves he’s got going there, alongside some actions where he looks like he’s going through some severe muscle spasms, mainly conjured up by himself with some streamlining advised by choreographer Toni Basil.

So, no beating around the bush here, I think ‘Once in a Lifetime’ is one of the best songs of all time. Every time I hear it, a sense of wonderment always arises within me. This was recorded just over 40 years ago, but it transcends through time. Could be released this Friday or two years from now and would still turn heads and puzzle people like I’m sure it did all that time ago. In so many ways, it shouldn’t work. Amidst this bustling groove established by a two-note bassline, off-kilter drums and a bubbling keyboard soundscape, David Byrne preaches to the listener, telling us things that we might say to ourselves, places we may end up living in, marital situations that may puzzle us as we go through our lives only to then burst out into one of the most memorable singalong choruses ever, a move which I think is meant to symbolise that it’s fine to have all these moments of existential dread as it’s something that has gone on through generations. Just like water flowing underground or the days going into the next. Like Byrne says in its closing moments, time isn’t slowing down or something to be feared, it’s just this thing that remains constant, so the best thing we can all do is let it happen. Coming from someone as neurotic as David Byrne was in those days, I’d say that’s a lesson to be learned.

#973: Nirvana – On a Plain

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You may be a frequent reader on this blog and think, “Hey, where are all the Nirvana songs around here?” And that’s fair. The last song of the band’s I’ve written a post for was ‘Heart-Shaped Box’ in 2015, when I was nearing the end of my second year of university. To tell you the truth, I’m not the most massive fan of Nirvana. Appreciate the songs the trio made for sure. But man, are their songs played a lot or what? Especially in the case of Nevermind. The first half of that album’s lost its effect on me just a little. Except for maybe ‘Breed’, but even then I don’t go to that too much. Nah, while people are fawning over the usual suspects, and I guess ‘Something in the Way’ now thanks to The Batman, I’ll be in the corner jamming to ‘On a Plain’. It’s my go-to song on Nevermind by a considerable distance.

There are some odd moments on Nevermind, and the beginning of ‘On a Plain’ is no exception. A mixture of guitar feedback and what I think is someone attempting to armpit fart in the microphone introduce things for a few seconds. After a brief silence where you’re left to wonder what could happen next, the track starts for real and turns out to be arguably the catchiest three minutes on the entire album. The band come in emphatically on the downbeat, Kurt Cobain immediately joins in with some low-key vocals before ramping things up on the “Love myself better than you” line, where he’s also joined by Dave Grohl on backing harmonies. You don’t really even need to understand what’s going on during the rest of those verses. Those deliveries on the “Love myself…” lines are always killer. If you do want to pay attention to the lyrics, you’ll find that you’ll most likely gain nothing from them, as Cobain makes clear in the track’s final verse. I think it’s one of those songs where the words were written to match the music, rather than to contain any sort of emotional depth. And a lot of times those types of songs are the best ones. Especially for someone like me who doesn’t place much importance in the words anyway.

Apart from wanting to make clear my appreciation for the “Hmm-hmm” harmonies and that killer chord progression during the choruses and Krist Novoselic’s bassline during the verses, I think everything I’ve said in the previous paragraphs is all I have to say on this composition. It’s a bit of a ‘see you ’round’ moment, something of a happier ending to leave you feeling good, before ‘Something in the Way’ comes in and takes that feeling away. And we all know how ‘Endless, Nameless’ goes. This is the only Nevermind track you’ll get from me on here. I know, I know. It’s a shame. I’m much more a fan of In Utero anyway.