Tag Archives: demon days

My iPod #370: Gorillaz – Fire Coming Out of the Monkey’s Head

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Looking through my iPod before I started this I found that, to my embarrassment, I have accidentally missed out a song. Silly me. I thought I had the order sussed out too. I’ll get to it one day. For now, the series must continue.

“Fire Coming Out of the Monkey’s Head” begins the “End of the World” track trilogy at the end of the “Demon Days” album with “Don’t Get Lost in Heaven” and the title track coming after. Listen to those three songs in succession. I also don’t think they have an official name together, “End of the World” just seems like the most appropriate thing to call it.

The track is essentially a story, narrated by the late and great Dennis Hopper, about the ‘Happyfolk’ who live under the great mountain called Monkey. Monkey eventually explodes, consuming the Earth in a great wave of fire after the ‘Strangefolk’ dig deep into its centre, stealing the jewels that lie within it. A menacing, repetitive bassline plays with deep humming backing vocals and clicking guitar licks setting the tracks mysterious and creepy tone during the verses. Damon Albarn (2D) comes in with a few verses too, accompanied by a sole acoustic guitar.

I read an interesting comment on there that suggested that this track was the main track of the entire album. Every track preceding has essentially been parts of the narrative that is told in this one song where everything comes together. Kinda makes sense. The happyfolk being the “Last Living Souls” and everything, and “Feel Good Inc.” being that point where the happy people seem to realise that something is going amiss but try and block it out to all they’re might. It’s very long to describe. But I can see it. Can’t remember where I saw that comment though, must have been years ago. Oh well.

My iPod #363: Gorillaz – Feel Good Inc.

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Yeeaaaahh. I remember seeing the video for “Feel Good Inc.” when it was an exclusive, brand new, never before seen thing getting its debut on music television. Nine years later, people know it as being Gorillaz’s signature track (either that or “Clint Eastwood“) but even then, at the age of ten, I knew Gorillaz was onto something.

2D, Noodle, Murdoc & Russell were looking better and more badass than before. One thing that was clearly noticeable was the improvement in animation. Four years gives you a lot of time to get shit done. But the track was so funky and dark with that phat, iconic bassline and manic laughter provided by Maseo of De La Soul. I liked it, my sister liked it. Every time the video ended on TV, we waited for the coming of the next hour so we could see it again. We searched on the ‘Windows Media Guide’ on the Windows Media Player to try and find an mp3 of the thing we thought it was the shit. This was the best ‘new’ song that I had heard for a very long time. The song would be played everywhere – it featured on an iPod advert, the group performed it on stage at 2005 EMA Awards… this was really the song of the year.

The track comes in around the middle of “Demon Days” fading in from the children’s laughter from the previous track. 2D wants us to feel good and also sings about a magical windmill in the chorus, Murdoc plays that bass, Russell provides the solid drum beat and De La Soul (well, Dave from the hip hop trio) come in for the killer rap bridge, sounding very grimy and intimidating. The video reinforces this. Witness 2D’s suffering when the rapping starts. It’s brutal.

And it still sounds as good today as it did then. Almost a decade, Dios Mío.

If you haven’t heard the song before….. where have you been? Under a rock? In a cave? I joke. You’ve heard it. You know you have.

My iPod #314: Gorillaz – El Mañana

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“El Mañana” was the last single released from Gorillaz’s second album “Demon Days”. It was a double-A single released alongside the other song “Kids with Guns“, which I don’t have on my iPod because I don’t care for it that much.

I’ve always thought “Demon Days” was some sort of concept album detailing a story of the final days on Earth before the apocalypse. “El Mañana” coming from the perspective of a person who has actually witnessed ‘the end’ (in their mind, obviously) and has been reduced to a shivering mess because of it.

I first heard the song on the Yahoo Internet radio thing that I’ve mentioned in a lot of posts before. I thought it was alright. Didn’t really matter that much because I was just absorbing what I was listening to. I would go on to find out that it is probably the most emotional song on the whole album. But still, at that point, it was just a track. Three minutes and a half of Damon Albarn singing.

Then its official music video came out a few months later….. that’s when it really hit home. The dramatic music set up against helicopters shooting down Noodle’s peaceful windmill island out of the sky….. I know it is only a cartoon, but it is very difficult to contain the feels when watching that music video. Then all Gorillaz fans wondered if she had died, and if so what would happen to the group. All of this takes up about half of the page on the song’s Wikipedia article, so you can read about it all there.

Long story short: Noodle didn’t die. But listening to “El Mañana” takes me back when most Gorillaz fans thought “wh-what the fuck is happening?” Including myself.

My iPod #278: Gorillaz – Dirty Harry

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Woop woop, hi everyone. Can you tell I am in a good mood? Only because the football team I’ve supported for about twelve years has made it to the final of a tournament, and actually have a chance of winning their first piece of silverware in nine years. It has been a long wait, but it has never stopped me dreaming.

Still, I have a song to write about. It’s “Dirty Harry”, another reference to Clint Eastwood, the song and third single from “Demon Days” by the cartoon group Gorillaz. The video for the track was another that premiered in the very early hours of a morning in 2005; I watched it, but I had a very hard time remembering the melody because I was almost half asleep whilst viewing it. It got its airtime on every music channel but failed to reach number one in the charts like “Feel Good Inc.” or “DARE“, and peaked at number six. That’s not that bad either, considering interest for “Demon Days” had not diminished in any way at the time.

“Dirty Harry” was actually released a few years earlier albeit in a more minimal, and unfinished manner. This time, the song was risen to a higher pedestal thanks to the addition of a children’s choir and a rap by Bootie Brown, rapper from hip-hop group The Pharcyde.

Simply it is a funky and upbeat song about a very serious matter, which ends with maniacal laughter and segues into the next track…. you all know that one.

Yeah, give it a listen why don’t you.