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My iPod #525: They Might Be Giants – Hide Away Folk Family

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When listening to They Might Be Giants’ 1986 self-titled debut for the first time, the opening drum fill for “Hide Away Folk Family” slightly caught me off guard. The four preceding songs establish the album’s upbeat and sprightly mood that you assume it’s the kind of rhythm and mood they’ll be going for throughout the whole thing. But no. “Hide Away” slows the album’s pacing down, allowing the listener to breathe for a few minutes and really feel the music.

Sung and presumably written by John Flansburgh, the track has a cosy and homey feel to it with a light lullaby-like melody to its lyrics and cute instrumentation. Take away the lyrics which creepily depict a mother and father who are paranoid about their house being burned down or blown up, and you have a perfect instrumental for a child’s bedtime song. The ‘happy music with dissonant lyrics’ trope is one that They Might Be Giants have used countless times; this is another instance in which it is executed with great effect. You wouldn’t realise what it was you were singing about unless you had a very good look at the lyrics.

My iPod #337: The Beatles – Everybody’s Got Something to Hide Except Me and My Monkey

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Hey what’s up how’s it going?

Today’s first song is from disc two (or side four for all you vinyl people) of The Beatles self-titled album from 1968. Or “The White Album” as almost everyone refers to it. That year was when John, Paul, George and Ringo started to dislike each other a bit. Why? Well there’s one word that the latter three, and a lot of fans would answer that question with. Yoko. John Lennon and Yoko Ono were hardly ever apart, even during recording sessions, and this aggravated George, Paul, and Ringo quite a bit. How did John answer this? Possibly by many ways which would have gone on behind closed doors, but for us he wrote “Me and My Monkey”.

“Monkey” should be played very loudly out of speakers. It gets me in the mood to party. It sounds like the band had a very fun time recording it, what with the random howls and screams which appear after almost every “Come on” that John yells, that incessant bell that never seems to end and when John also appears to start becoming a sheep right when the song begins to fade out.

It may be about heroin use and there may be some sexual connotations thrown in too, but those are just interpretations.

Dunno about you, but has anyone else noticed during the breakdown near when only the guitars and bass are playing that the bass plays a sharper note than the guitar chords? Just irks me a bit. But still, it’s cool. Very good hard rock song.