Tag Archives: hey everyone

#1399: Dananananaykroyd – Totally Bone

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Well, this is it. The end of the road. The last time I’ll be talking about anything by Dananananaykroyd on here. Won’t have to count how many na’s are in the name when I’m typing the name. It’s all over. I have the honour of writing about a song of theirs in the first few weeks of this blog’s existence when it wasn’t even on WordPress but on Blogspot instead. This may have happened for another artist on here already, in terms of a solid “last ever post”. But I guess I’m making a bigger deal out of this because I hope more people listen to Dananananaykroyd, or are listening to them, maybe after they read my posts or whatever. I’m not sure I have that much of an influence on people’s tastes. But I like their music, and not a lot of people know about them. So spread the word. They made two – what I consider to be – banger albums and dipped. Their self-dubbed “fight pop” music was like nothing anyone else was making in their time.

‘Totally Bone’ is on the band’s first album, Hey Everyone!, released back in 2009. This was a song I really got to know when it came up on shuffle in my iTunes library, in the days when I could have my own personal soundtrack over whatever FIFA game I was playing at the same time. A third of the songs on Hey Everyone! have lyrics written by the band’s original singer and lyricist, Giles Bailey. ‘Totally Bone’ is of them. Bailey left the group a while before the album’s release. He was replaced by Calum Gunn and John Baillie Jnr, the former taking the lead vocal on all of Bailey’s songs when Hey Everyone! eventually came around. ‘Totally Bone’ was released as the band’s first ever single in 2006, though. If you’re wondering how Bailey sounded within the group, well, here he is singing the tune in that original release. In the context of Hey Everyone!, ‘Totally Bone’ follows the “radio friendly pop tune” of ‘Black Wax’, I think in a very calculated move. There’s something very celebratory and joyous sounding about ‘Black Wax’, while ‘Totally Bone’ sounds like someone at the breaking point of rage. It’s just the music that makes it sound that way.

I think ‘Totally Bone’ is about a thing that Gunn and Baillie Jnr cover in their own way with ‘Infinity Milk’. That thing being sex. Both songs look at the anxiety in the lead-up to it and the confidence found after discovering the act can be done, and not too badly either. But again, while the music behind Gunn and Baillie Jnr’s words in ‘Infinity…’ make the discovery sound like this epic, momentous occasion, I think Bailey’s rather graphic evocations of dismembering flesh and cutting off skins in ‘Totally Bone’ influenced the music to go in a different direction. Though it could have been vice-versa. A lot of guitar riffage going on throughout this tune. David Roy on the right with Duncan Robertson on the left, both guitarists playing licks interweaving with each other. That constant chord progression of D to E is a hook in itself. But my favourite parts are the intense instrumental breaks after the “We can totally bone” shouts. It’s those chords blasts alternating with the palm muted strums, small tension builds and quick releases that contain so much energy in their delivery. And Calum Gunn sounds like he has a mental breakdown that intensifies as the song goes on. “Intense” is how I would describe this entire track. Could be too much for some, but I enjoy it a bunch. Rather suitable that the ‘Kroyd’s first single is the last song I talk about. Rounds things up very nicely. Can’t find any good footage of them playing the song live.

#1237: Dananananaykroyd – Some Dresses

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When I wrote about Dananananaykroyd’s ‘Black Wax’ in the bright days of 2013, I mention that I had seen another song by the band via its music video on MTV2 before going onto YouTube and finding ‘Black Wax’ as a result. ‘Some Dresses’ was that ‘another’ song. It was the first ‘Kroyd track I’d ever heard. I want to say I’d read the band’s name on an advert for MTV2 before and probably made fun of it when reciting it to myself a few times. But through the ‘Some Dresses’ video, I now had an image and a song that I could now associate with the name. The clip, showing the band messing about in the woods with some quirky blue screen effects thrown in there, made an impression. An endearing one. It wasn’t too long after that I went ahead and downloaded the band’s debut Hey Everyone! It would be the first of only two albums the group would release.

I only found out relatively recently that a quarter of the tracks from the album contain lyrics that were written by former singer Giles Bailey, who left the band prior its release. ‘Some Dresses’ is one of those Bailey-written numbers. Calum Gunn and John Bailie Jnr joined after Bailey’s departure and contributed their words for seven other songs, with Gunn being the main singer on the majority. The writing styles between the two factions are quite similar though, at least I think. Unless you had a physical copy that told you otherwise, it wouldn’t be harmful to assume that the person singing on the album was the one who wrote the lyrics. It’s not the case. The band did record ‘Some Dresses’ when Bailey was in the band and released it as a single in 2006. I’ll go ahead and embed that not-as-well-known version down below.

The song’s lyrics are told from the perspective of someone waiting for a dress to be fitted on them. There’s nothing much to work out if you read the words. They just tell a head-to-toe look of the different parts of the fabric and the work that’s being done by the tailors and fitters to make sure everything’s good and comfortable. Quite the mundane subject, but certainly unique, made all the more better by the riffs of guitarists David Roy and Duncan Robertson and vocal delivery by Gunn. There’s no reason why a song about putting a dress on should be this punchy and exhilarating. But it just is. The track is comprised of two parts, separated by a breakdown where the band sound like they’ve lost control of all their limbs. The first being more concerned with the dress, while the second takes the making of the dress and turns it into a metaphor of writing a song? At least that’s how I’ve come to think of it. Like this one quite a bit.

#633: Dananananaykroyd – Infinity Milk

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About 10 years ago, my sister went to university. I was 14 years old, a teenager in year 10, and mother went to work every day usually. Whenever she wasn’t home, I would be in the house by myself…. Every teenager’s dream, right? There was a limitless amount of things I could do without either of them having to know. So what would I do? Stayed in and play FIFA all day. Really. I didn’t get out too much, no friends were really around my area. Weeks and weeks of that can take its toll. There was only so much of that game’s soundtrack (FIFA 09) I could take after a while, so I would usually put my iTunes library on shuffle and listen to that while I was in the game’s menu. It was during those times that today’s song randomly played and I realised how much of a belter it is.

I gave a somewhat curt backstory as to how I found out about the band in my post for ‘Black Wax’ six years ago. I just found that and laughed at how I worded that thing. But anyway, I downloaded the album and listened to it but probably didn’t pay much attention to all of the tracks apart from the aforementioned song and ‘Some Dresses’. Those were the only two I knew prior. ‘Infinity Milk’ I properly listened to when playing FIFA. It’s pretty mental. Comes out of the gate with a forceful ascending guitar riff that’s surrounded by two drum kits falling down the stairs in the left and right channels. It goes quiet with another sole guitar lick that alternates between sudden explosions of noise before ending in a call of ‘OH! MY! GOD!’ and finally going into the first verse.

Calum Gunn is the lead vocalist throughout most of the album. On here, he trades lines with the other vocalist (and then-drummer) John Baillie Jnr. Makes for very active listening. Gunn’ll say one line, Baillie will scream the next and by the end they’re both yelling until their lungs give out. The track pushes and pulls, emphatically slows down and thrashes for its choruses before speeding up again for the verses. It’s a rollercoaster. You don’t know where it’s going to go next. I don’t know what it’s about. The lyrics are very descriptive. Quite violent too. Mentions of blood, cutting out gums with knives, and murder in there. It’s hard to make sense of it. I read somewhere that it could be about losing your virginity(?) I can go with that. What matters is – this song is ferociously optimistic. You should give it a listen.

My iPod #521: Dananananaykroyd – Hey James

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“Hey James” is the penultimate track on Hey Everyone!, the debut album by former Scottish ‘fight pop’ band Dananananaykroyd. Despite its welcoming title the song is probably the heaviest one out of the twelve tracks, depicting an image of a barren wasteland, war and what could possibly be the end of the world itself.

In a track-by-track guide-through a week before the album’s release, guitarist David Roy confirmed that the ‘James’ in the title is a reference to their former drummer who had left to pursue other music interests in another band. The track is a tribute to him, written as “a furious sort of epic rock thing with a hint of sadness”. That hint of sadness may be an allusion to the the track’s minor key, otherwise the song is a performance of sheer energy and balls-to-the-wall noise. The use of two separate drum kits throughout the album is something to behold but both of them on here have a noticeable role on here, providing a punchy rhythm during the verses before adding to the disorderly nature of the choruses.

The track climaxes with a 6/8 time signature before closing out with nightmare-inducing whispers creepily repeating the phrase ‘hey everyone….’ into your ears. Those go on for about a minute. Although it gives you time to take in what you’ve heard it is a nervy way to end it all, but it’s all okay once they segue right into the more cheerful sounding opener of the following song.

My iPod #108: Dananananaykroyd – Black Wax

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Hey everyone!

That was the name of Dananananaykroyd’s first album , released on April 6 2009. One day after I turned fourteen. I had not heard the song at the time. I do remember hearing the band’s name one time on MTV or something and working out how to pronounce it. That was about it really.

It was months later when I had started Year 10 in autumn 2009. A video for one of their other songs played on MTV2, I liked that. So I went on YouTube to see the video and listen to that song again. It was then that I found the video for this song.

Looking at the video then I think that I may have seen “Black Wax” on TV, but I changed the channel for some odd reason. Bad mistake. It’s a good thing I came back to the song. It’s one of the most joyful ones I have on my iPod collection. According to Wikipedia, “The song’s lyrics, written by vocalists John Baillie Jnr and Calum Gunn are about a dream John had about the thrill of having sex on a bus made of drums (with another musician, but he won’t say who) in an underground world in Paris, and trying to conserve the feeling by sealing it in a wax lined tin.” Now I know that Wikipedia can be edited by anyone, but that actually seems legit. I don’t know what the lyrics are about, but the music is upbeat and feel good as anything. Especially the last part when guitars roar in with a triumphant shout of ‘here we are’ by the two vocalists before fading out with the guitar. It’s beautiful stuff.

The song was then chosen by EA Sports to be included in FIFA 10. Whether or not that did anything to the band’s popularity is beyond me.

Dananananaykroyd were one of the happiest bands I’d ever witnessed. Instead of a ‘wall of death, they embraced the concept of a ‘wall of hugs’ at their shows. They always looked like they had a good time in their music videos, as well as their home videos they uploaded on their YouTube channel. Look at their cover of “Whip It” by Devo. You can’t help but smile to it. They split up though. That’s a shame.

I may never see you Dananananaykroyd, but thank you for the music anyway.

Until tomorrow.

Jamie.