Tag Archives: day

My iPod #248: The Beatles – A Day in the Life

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“A Day in the Life” is the grand finale of The Beatles influential 1967 album “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band”. Many consider this to be the greatest song the group did, and see it as the pinnacle of the experimentation the four guys had been undertaking during the mid 60s.

2007 was its 40th anniversary, and it was of an immense deal that the cast of Eastenders did a cringeworthy tribute of it for Comic Relief (take some time to think before you go to this) and a whole bunch of other bands (from Stereophonics to The Fray) got together to do a cover album as a tribute too. But it was two years later in 2009, when I first listened to the album and therefore the song. I did not think that it was worth all that fuss. I found out that it was. It’s still not my favourite of theirs though.

In terms of the track… I think I was looked at its article on Wikipedia one time (God knows why) and the overwhelming detail it listed about “A Day” – its background, the dates it was recorded on, the crescendos of the brass, the combination of Lennon and McCartney’s separate song ideas, the almighty piano chord at the end – it made me think I was missing out on a song of epic proportions. I had to listen to it.

Funnily enough, I didn’t care for it so much the first time. I was thirteen. This opinion has changed. It is one of the greatest album closers ever.

My iPod #247: Soundgarden – The Day I Tried to Live

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“The Day I Tried to Live” is a track, and also was a single, from Soundgarden’s album “Superunknown”, which celebrates its 20th anniversary this year. The band plan to reissue the whole album along with b-sides, outtakes and some cool t-shirts. You can pre-order the bundle here!

The song is another one of those which I heard for the first time when its video (above) appeared on MTV2. I liked it from that moment on. The descending bass riff at the beginning and its weird time signature (it changes from 7/4 to 4/4 throughout) was what caught my attention. The song also showed me how amazing Chris Cornell actually is as a vocalist. “Cochise”, “Black Hole Sun”, “Original Fire” – all those sung by him were some tracks that I’d seen on the TV before “The Day”, but they never exhibited the range the man possesses. At some point in “The Day”, Cornell’s sings in a low register before screaming like a banshee in a split second. All in what is probably one take too. It is incredible.

Apparently, people have taken this track to be something of a suicide kind of thing, but Cornell stated that it is simply about getting out of the house and doing normal things instead of being a recluse. It is meant to be optimistic. He said so here almost twenty years ago. I will continue to listen to it with that mindset.

My iPod #246: Guttermouth – A Day at the Office

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“A Day at the Office” is a song from Guttermouth’s third album “Teri Yakimoto”. I didn’t find the track by actually listening to “Teri”, but was listening to my own customised radio station on Launch. I always talk about this site… but I’m not sure if anyone knows what I’m talking about. It looked like this.

When the song came on, it was listed to be on the soundtrack for the film “Godmoney”, a movie that I’ve never bothered to watch after all these years and probably won’t in the near future. I also assume that the site didn’t have “Teri Yakimoto” in its database or something.

The phrase ‘a day at the office’ is defined as ‘an ordinary or typical event’ by thefreedictionary.com. The track details a kid who is electrocuted by the next door neighbour, a guy who falls off a roof while his family go on a trip and eventually the death of everybody when a power plant ‘blows’ unexpectedly and sends deadly toxins into the sky. These are not ordinary or typical events. But obviously that’s the joke.

What also adds to the humour is that the melody is really cheerful, so the lyrics don’t really affect you until you properly read them.

“Pleasant dreams and thanks for listening.”

My Post #42: The Who – Another Tricky Day

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The Whooooooooooooo.

Oh man. Summer 2010 was the moment when I began to actually start listening to the band. Best decision I’ve made.

I could start a whole story about how I started listening to them and everything, but ‘Another Tricky Day’; doesn’t really fit in with that, so I’ll leave that for another day.

Firstly, my new found love for The Who made me want to search for music videos on the YouTubes, and after coming across songs like ‘Happy Jack’ and ‘Substitute’ I realised that they were experts at everything they did. Townshend is a great guitar player, Moon, well, you know he’s crazy but a beast on the drums, Entwistle the best bass player of all time and Daltrey with his soaring vocals combined produced a wall of melodic noise to great effect.

Then I watched the video for this song; initially I didn’t think much of it. Keith wasn’t there, he had passed away, and it all sounded very tame. All the energy was lost, but Entwistle made it up with his bass. Townshend was still recuperating after Keith’s death, he was drinking and thinking he was going to go next, his family had left him. Life got hard.

It’s a pretty sad song. I feel sad listening to it sometimes. I was going to school recently with my iPod playing in my ears. It was raining, this song started playing, and I began to feel useless. The weather was bad, I didn’t want to go in, everything was just so boring and repetitive. I don’t feel like working anymore, I will for my exams but school is just so pointless.

“It’s just another tricky day for you.”

Yeah, I know Roger thank you.

All in all, I never feel really happy when I hear this song. Thoughts of dread and despair build up, and it isn’t great.

We shall have a happier post tomorrow.

Until next time.

Jamie.

My iPod #40: The Rutles – Another Day

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Hi everyone.

It’s my birthday tomorrow. Yaaaaaaaaaaay. I am getting older. I will no longer be seventeen in a few hours.

How will I celebrate this day? Probably revising. I will do something with friends though, that’s a guarantee. I’m not socially awkward or anything.

Where does the time go? I remember turning seventeen like it was two days ago. Oh well, here’s to another healthy year on this earth, and may good tidings come my way in the future.

Back to the music.

Lately when I watched a Rutles video on YouTube, some idiot posted ‘Oh my god, these guys are trying to hard to be The Beatles. They make the same kind of music and everything’, or something along those lines.

Well no shit, Sherlock.

The Rutles are a parody of the band, created by Eric Idle of Monty Python fame, and Neil Innes of the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band. The band was originally part of a sketch in the show ‘Rutland Weekend Television’, however the ‘Pre-Fab Four’ gained fame in the television film, ‘All You Need Is Cash‘. A must-watch, it’s very funny. John Lennon and George Harrison liked it, so…. you know. Witness it.

‘Another Day’ isn’t featured in the film, but can be found on the soundtrack album. It’s an obvious parody on ‘Martha My Dear’ from The White Album, with ‘Dirk McQuickly’ on lead vocals. Really it’s sung by Ollie Halsall, a left-handed guitar player who provided lead vocals on all the ‘Paul’ songs of the album. If you want to find out more about him there won’t be anything recent, he passed away in 1992.

I’ve pretty much summed it up right there. Neil Innes wrote all the songs for The Rutles, and his songs sounded so much like The Beatles that, apparently, he was taken to court by owners of The Beatles’ catalogue. The song ‘Cheese and Onions’ even appeared on a John Lennon bootleg because it sounded so much like him.

Innes’ lyrics are very clever too. I didn’t even know the word ‘pusillanimous’ existed until I heard this song.

Until next time.

Jamie.