Tag Archives: fire

#1366: The Band – This Wheel’s on Fire

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Back in 2018, The Band’s 1968 debut album Music from Big Pink was reissued for its 50th anniversary with a whole new stereo mix, constructed by engineer and producer Bob Clearmountain. I liked The Band’s 1969 self-titled album by that point. I’d never listened through …Big Pink before. And I sort of knew it was meant to be an important album for the culture at the time of its release, ushering a movement of a return to straight rock-and-roll by bands in 1968 after the psychedelic times of 1967. There was no better time to discover what I was missing. And, you know, I thought ‘The Weight’ was cool, it’s like the centerpiece that also happens to be one of their best-known songs. ‘Chest Fever’ with those organ breaks. Mmm, it was good listening. But the two numbers that stood out to me, I can remember that first run-through so well, were ‘In a Station’ – the album’s third song – and ‘This Wheel’s on Fire’, which comes a little later near its end.

A thing about The Band is, before they became known as their own entity outright, they were known for being Bob Dylan’s backing band during the 1966 tour where people were chastising him for “going electric” and supposedly spitting in the face of the folk movement. Dylan then had a motorcycle accident, retreated back to his home in Woodstock and made a ton of music with The Band in 1967. The results were released in 1975 as The Basement Tapes. Dylan and The Band recorded ‘This Wheel’s on Fire’, which closes out that album with a slow, shuffling rhythm. As Band bass guitarist Rick Danko helped Dylan write the track, they more or less had the right to do their own version of the song. And they did, as you may have witnessed from the embedded YouTube video above. The Band take it much faster, with much more urgency. Danko provides the lead vocal, pianist Richard Manuel joins in on harmony in the second half of the verses, and then drummer Levon Helm joins in to complete the three-part for the culminating choruses.

I think it’s been said that this is the one track Dylan wrote that truly references his accident at any length, with the wheel rolling down the road obviously belonging to his motorcycle. But apart from that, it’s really anyone’s guess. The narrator in this song declares they and another person will meet again, but only if that other person is able to remember. This other person will request favours from the narrator, who doesn’t really want to do them. And “no man will come to [them] with another tale to tell”, maybe because either they’ll forget or share these tales with other people. Seems to me that this song is about someone untrustworthy and generally unreliable. It’s all a guess. When I first heard ‘This Wheel’s on Fire’ and the chorus came in and finished, I thought to myself, “So this is who originally made that song.” I’d heard it years before as the theme song to the BBC show Absolutely Fabulous, which itself was a re-recording of the notable 1968 cover by Julie Driscoll, Brian Auger & the Trinity. My sister liked that show, it’s the only reason I would have known about it.

#975: Eminem – On Fire

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Is it fair to say that Eminem’s Recovery was the last album in which he actually sounded natural over a beat? Sure, it’s filled with all these poppy choruses that sound like they belong in 2010. But otherwise when the rapping’s going on, there’s never a moment where I’m suddenly put off by how mechanical and static he enunciates some words. On ‘Rap God’ there’s a lyric about rapping like a computer, which is kind of ironic because he’s been sounding like a malfunctioning one on a lot of song since, and I think it started from The Marshall Mathers LP 2 onwards, an album I’ve never cared for, but from what I’ve seen has become known as one of Eminem’s best in his post-classic era. I’m digressing a bit here. If you do agree with what I asked in the very first sentence of this paragraph, then I think the track ‘On Fire’ is a great example of Eminem just rapping well and sounding good over the beat provided, even though he’s not saying anything of great importance.

Seguing into the mix right after the end of previous track ‘Talkin’ 2 Myself’, ‘On Fire’ is led by a hypnotizing boom-bap beat produced by Mr Porter, also known to many a fan as Kon Artis from D12, which very much stays the same throughout the whole track albeit with some pauses and removal of elements to allow Eminem’s voice to take more of the spotlight for brief moments. Speaking of Eminem, he flat out states that this track is no more than “a bullshit hook in between two long ass verses”. It sort of sounds like he’s making fun of the listener for putting any emotional investment into this track, which he’s no stranger to doing. But looking deeper into the lyrics, there’s nothing much that you really have to latch onto. He’s just flowing and rhyming really effortlessly, and not in that way like now where he seems to try and put an emphasis into every internal rhyme he does. He references Flo Rida and Brooke Hogan, throws a shout-out to the track’s producer, and sort of makes a witty remark about Michael Jackson, who at the point of the album’s release had only been dead for just under a year. The whole track is just him reminding us that he’s very good at what he does, culminating in the hooks where he tells us he’s on fire the way he’s able to rap so well.

Although I have written about album opener ‘Cold Wind Blows’ in the past, I can say that that track is no longer in my rotation. Hasn’t been for some time now. And ‘On Fire’ is really the only track from Recovery that I go back to regularly. Like Em says, it’s just a simple hook sandwiched by two long verses. But it’s executed so well that I’m never disappointed by the end of it. The rest of Recovery consists of the most radio-friendly choruses and songs that I’ve just generally grown out of. But there’s still a soft spot I have for the album all the say. It reminds me of being in Year 10 and talking about awesome Eminem was with my schoolmates. But yeah, definitely sounds like it was made for 2010.

#710: Meat Puppets – Lake of Fire

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Anyone who reads this blog and is very much into the same music will see this and think, “Hey, that’s that song Nirvana covered in the Unplugged concert for MTV”. Then, if you haven’t heard the original, you’ll click on the video above and think “Wow, Kurt did this song way better, this man can’t sing at all!”

Personally, I’m not a big fan of Kurt’s voice in that session and prefer the original by a mile. Curt Kirkwood doesn’t really “sing” the original. It’s more of a strained yelling, (almost) in tune, with a scream that occurs for a split second in the midst of it all. I can’t say that cliché where the singing doesn’t matter because it’s the passion with which it’s sung because Kirkwood sounds either very high or drunk behind the microphone. But I really like it still, I’ve got to say.

Despite it’s almost lo-fi style and the really loose way the music is delivered, there’s still an almighty sense of swing and menace to the track. The bass is thick and melodic, right in the centre, and the lead guitar in the right sounds ferocious with its triplet licks and emphatic downstrokes. It’s clear how Cobain took influence from their music in the first place. There’s also this strange clicking noise that you can hear throughout the track… Don’t know what it is, but it only adds to the dark and quite strange atmosphere.

I’ll leave Nirvana’s cover below – but it’s all about the Meat Puppets for me.

#690: Goldhawks – Keep the Fire

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Rewind to late 2009. I was lying in bed watching Friday Night with Jonathan Ross. Why that is I’m not sure, guess it was something to pass the time. He was about to interview Andre Agassi. Before that happened, a little montage played showing Agassi’s highlights as a tennis player. This exact montage actually. I thought the music that played matched the visuals perfectly and it sounded fantastic. I had to know what this song was and who it was by.

It took me months to find out. I thought it was Supergrass for a while, because the vocals sounded just like Gaz Coombes. I believe I sent an email to a Supergrass fansite asking if this was some exclusive new song the band had made. It wasn’t. Supergrass ended up splitting in 2010 anyway. So here was this great song by a new band that I could possibly get into and no one seemed to know who they were. Lyrics weren’t available online. You couldn’t download it. It took me months to find out who made this song. It started playing in football adverts and everything, it was very frustrating. It’s so long ago now I actually can’t remember how I finally found out who it was. I actually think it was on some forum somewhere after someone asked what song was playing in a particular advert. The response was more or less “The song’s called ‘Keep the Fire’ by Goldhawks’. And there it was.

The track is the third on the band’s only album Trick of Light, released in 2010. As you can assume from what I’ve read it’s the first song I ever heard by them. It was only the track’s chorus and its ending that played that night on that Jonathan Ross show, but I thought it was the best few seconds of a song I had heard in a long time. I’ve tried to describe the band’s sound in a suitable manner in a previous post. Listening to it more and more, it’s basically about trying to keep a relationship alive and flowing so thing’s don’t get so boring. Though I think its focal point is lead singer Bobby Cook’s vocals. He just sings it brilliantly. A lot of emotion, and very earnest.

A year and a bit after I initially heard the song, the band finally made a music video for it. You can see that at the top of the page. I was very disappointed in it. It definitely deserved better than what it got. They basically did a Pixies move. I definitely prefer to just listen to it and have my own visions in my head while it’s playing.

Anyway, you don’t hear much from Goldhawks now. That’s because the members no longer play together. This song’ll last forever though.

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.