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#1383: The Who – Time Is Passing

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So I got to know The Who’s ‘Time Is Passing’ via the band’s Odds & Sods compilation. I think I listened to that before I got round to hearing Who’s Next and other studio albums by the band. I know it was definitely before Tommy. But I can’t remember why. A possible reason I can think of, is that I saw it once got a perfect 10/10 score on Pitchfork – in a review you won’t see on the site now – and was convinced enough just by that to check it out. When Odds & Sods was originally released in 1974, it contained 11 tracks and ran for a solid vinyl-record length of 40 minutes and 23 seconds. But when it was reissued in 1998, with CDs being the norm and allowing more available storage, a fine decision was made to double the amount of songs on the compilation, ramping the running time up to a grand 77 minutes. This was the version that was digitally available back in 2011, which was when I first went through the album, though on a now-defunct website called we7.com that was sort of a precursor to all the streaming services that exist now.

‘Time Is Passing’ was one of the tracks added to that ’98 reissue. It was originally written for the Lifehouse rock opera Pete Townshend had envisioned to be The Who’s big follow-up to Tommy. But because no one could understand what the story was after countless explanations, Townshend had a breakdown. It was decided the opera be trimmed down to its highlights, resulting in Who’s Next. But man, with the amount of good music Townshend was writing and The Who were making at the time, Lifehouse could have been the greatest rock album ever. ‘Time Is Passing’ would have been on it, in the opera’s first act, establishing the country lifestyle the protagonist follows and introducing the “music has the potential save us all” theme that anchors the entire plot. Roger Daltrey sings about playing [his] guitar while [his] sister bangs a jar and walking by the sea and other natural/homely things, all the while he yearns to hear a piece of music he feels will set him free (which ties into ‘Pure and Easy’, but that’s opening a whole other can of worms that needn’t be). And for a Who song, it’s performed pretty straight. Just Daltrey singing over the musicianship of Townshend, Entwistle and Moon with that growl of his. It’s strong, strong stuff.

I liked ‘Time Is Passing’ almost immediately. Thought it was very full-sounding to the ears, So much so that I didn’t realise that what I was listening to was a mono mix, made from the right channel of the original stereo which was then forced into the centre. When the track was found for the 1998 reissue, the left channel of the stereo mix was apparently in such a bad condition that it was discarded. I’m sure I read this somewhere, think it was on thewho.net before that site went through changes that made it worse. A person on YouTube used a bootleg and the official release to make an approximation of how the entire soundscape initially was. It turned out there was a keyboard and steel guitar adding a whole other dimension that everyone was missing out on. An official Who-certified stereo mix wasn’t available for the public to hear until 2023 when the Super Deluxe Who’s Next:Life House Super Deluxe edition release was released. Now that’s around, it’s pretty much replaced the Odds & Sods version in my eyes, as much as I do appreciate it for being the initial one I heard. Nothing beats a good stereo mix, though.

#1364: Billy Talent – This Is How It Goes

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Christmas Day 2006 was when I received both the first Billy Talent album and Billy Talent II as gifts. I was very happy. My experience with the band’s debut album was either through listening to 30-second samples of its songs on a site called artistdirect.com – which no longer exists – or hearing one of them on the rare occasion it played on the Launch.com radio service. But now I had the whole package in my hands. I think it might have been the enhanced CD, a video player that when on to show a little EPK came onto the screen when I popped the disc into the computer. There’s still a couple songs left to write about from Billy Talent, but I’ll say now that I still consider this one of my favourite albums ever, I know almost every word on it from front to back. Lot of angst and anger, a lot of screaming, it could easily be slotted as one of those “It’s not a phase, Mom” albums. But I can put it on today and just let it roll to its end. It goes in… so hard.

‘This Is How It Goes’ is the very first song. The band introduces themselves one-by-one, Ian D’Sa on the guitar, Aaron Solowoniuk with the hi-hats – being the drummer and all – and Jon Gallant’s bass line before leaping into the killer riff that leaps all over the guitar neck, which eventually goes on to play underneath the upcoming choruses. I’m a fan of Ben Kowalewicz’s vocals. A common complaint I’d usually witness from roaming around online back in the day was how grating some people found his voice to be. And to be fair, I could probably see where they’re coming from. But I couldn’t imagine any other tone than the high-pitched, bratty kind he has while delivering the lyrics on this track. He sings, with Ian D’Sa harmonising on certain phrases, before abruptly launching into the screaming tirade that makes up the chorus, everyone in the band comes in together, increasing the intensity with the aforementioned riff playing underneath. A freakin’ juggernaut of energy, such a great way to open up a whole discography, let alone one album.

One thing I found out as soon as I got into ‘…How It Goes’ was how it was written about drummer Aaron Solowoniuk and his battle with multiple sclerosis. He’s very rarely plays the drums with the band in a live setting now and didn’t on their last two albums due to MS relapse in 2016. While the track doesn’t specifically detail Solowoniuk’s experiences, it’s written to give a general sense of how much a burden it could be to live with the illness. Frustration, self-doubt, irritation. All captured in these three-and-a-half minutes. The band had the track in the works when they originally went under the name Pezz. I want to say I read some kind of interview or article where one bandmember said that once they had got this song down, it pretty much set the direction truly wanted to take their music – more toward a darker and brooding energy rather than the lighter and maybe less focused style they had exhibited on their Watoosh! album. I say “maybe” ’cause I like that album too and don’t see it as less focused at all. But it’s fair to say Pezz became Billy Talent when the four of them came up with this song right here.

#1363: Arctic Monkeys – This House Is a Circus

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I knew this one was coming, but I think I covered the bases concerning how I feel about Favourite Worst Nightmare in the last song I wrote about from the album. But without referring to it, I think I said it was my favourite – no pun meant – Arctic Monkeys record and that they sounded their coolest on it. I feel I’m pretty close with that guess. This’ll be the last track from there I’ll be writing about. If you look in the archives, you’ll see I’ve covered ten of its songs overall – this one included. But I’ll say now, three of them I haven’t listened to in years ’cause they don’t hit in the same way they once did. That goes for ‘505’ too, which some may not be very happy about. It’s just how I feel. And I was never the biggest fan of ‘Fluorescent Adolescent’, hence its absence. That’s near half the album that I don’t like so, so much. But it’s still my favourite of the band’s. You don’t see many other Arctic Monkeys songs from their other albums on here, do you? So there you go.

‘This House Is a Circus’ is the eighth song on …Worst Nightmare. To be quite honest, the thing that first wowed me about it – when I was 12 and the album was very much fresh off the shelf – was how its ending transitioned into ‘If You Were There, Beware’ with that sort of siren sound. The effect is messed up on streaming, there’s a second of silence for whatever reason between the two songs, which is why you should get a physical copy. I preferred ‘If You Were There…’ to ‘This House…’ for a long while, even though I enjoyed both. But somewhere along the way, ‘This House…’ crept up as one of my highlights from the album while ‘…Beware’ kind of got left behind. From the jump, the tempo’s set, and it never really lets up apart from a guitar break before its ending section. I think the key element of the track is the bass line provided by Nick O’Malley, he plays a lot of hummable runs throughout and they arrive in the forefront of the mix at various points. But Matt Helders plays his ass off on the drums too, to the point where I’m so sure he drops his sticks at about 1:44, but manages to strike some cymbals before swiftly keeping the rhythm going not too long after. It’s a song that shows the band firing on all cylinders. Definitely the heaviest thing they done at that point of their career.

I did use to think it was a song about the house on the album’s cover. If you get the album, the images in the booklet show the inside of the house covered in this psychedelic, sort of circus-y themed imagery. But I think it’s clearly about a general house party where anything goes. The drugs are around, people are getting off with each other, debauchery, debauchery, debauchery. The narrator sees all this going on and can tell this house isn’t a place to be in for too long, but his friends seem to be having a good time, even if whatever’s happening around them looks more like something you’d see in a movie rather than real life. Alex Turner rhymes ‘circus’ with ‘berserk as’ in the first line. I definitely thought he was made up a word in order to achieve the rhyme, singing “This house is a circus, berserkus, fuck.” It’s that Northern dialect that fooled me. That’s a personal aside. It’s songs like this that make me miss how Arctic Monkeys used to be. The latest loungey, orchestral rock route they’ve been going for relatively lately never won me over. I feel it’s unlikely they’d go back to this sort of music again. It’s just how these things go sometimes. But it’s not like this song’s gonna disappear from existence or something. So, Arctic Monkeys, do what you like, I’ll still have Favourite Worst Nightmare on my rotation.

#892: Weezer – My Name Is Jonas

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One of the greatest album openers to ever exist? It might just be. I’ve had a physical copy of Weezer’s Blue Album for so long now, almost all of its lyrics and guitar parts and vocal embellishments… guitar feedback, you name it, are all embedded in that thick head of mine. And that album begins with this song, one that I want to say I can remember properly hearing for the first time in 2006 on proper quadrophonic computer speakers that my uncle installed because he was a nerd about that sort of stuff, pausing and rewinding at certain parts because I was so wowed that guitars were playing different things in each speaker.

The acoustic riff, written by the band’s original guitarist who left before the album was finished, that starts everything off is all jolly and unassuming. Then Rivers Cuomo comes in with the track’s first line alongside the band proper, and from then on it’s a whole different ball game. With its 6/8 timing, the track has this huge swaying momentum – heave-hoing back and forth with that wall of crunchy guitars. And the fact that this track doesn’t have a real chorus means that there isn’t a break or change of some sort. Sure there are those parts where the guitars fade and let the acoustic riff come in, but then they launch back into the frame again. Every section seamlessly rolls into the next, culminating with that final “Yeah, yeah, yeaaaargh”. Musically, it really throws you all over the place. Pulling and pushing, lifting you up and then gently placing you down.

Sometimes I kind of forget that there are words to this track that you have to follow. The lyrics aren’t necessarily about one thing. They touch upon nostalgia, childhood… memories in general. One main point in there is when Cuomo recollects a phone call he received from his little brother who had (then) recently been in an accident at work. But there’s such an towering confidence in the delivery of these words that it’s easy to let them just wash over you. Melody’s fantastic. I remember reading somewhere that after Kurt Cobain killed himself, kids found their next musical saviours in Weezer when the Blue Album arrived. And dammit if “My Name Is Jonas” didn’t get their hopes up when they popped the album into their computers, then I don’t know what more they could have wanted.

#890: Big Star – My Life Is Right

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This is the second post with Big Star that I’ve written in the entire history of this blog. Had I started the whole thing earlier, I would have a few more songs of theirs up. And if I did, you would have noticed that I prefer the band’s songs by Chris Bell compared to those of Alex Chilton. ‘Feel’ and ‘Don’t Lie to Me’ would have received my high praise in a few paragraphs made up of waffling sentences. And while ‘In the Street’ was a Chilton song, it’s Bell’s lead vocal on it that gives the track its grit. These three tracks are all from #1 Record, the only album of Big Star’s that Chris Bell featured on before leaving the group, and so is today’s.

‘My Life Is Right’ is another Bell-penned track, and an older song that he had performed with an previous band before joining Big Star. He was really into his Christianity. His love of the Lord was a message in quite a few of his compositions, and it’s clear in this one too. He sings about having no one to share his troubles with, until one day he was shown the way and now feels that he has purpose in life. He was lost and now he’s found. Though listening for the first time, you wouldn’t be wrong to assume that it was about a new love or a woman, something along those lines. But nope. It’s God. Or at the very least, Jesus.

And although it’s got a religious overtone to it, it’s nothing that’s preachy or overbearing. It’s a wonderful upbeat power pop tune with brilliant production and an uplifting tone. Things start off with this wandering piano with a double-tracked Bell singing the first few lines concerning loneliness and frustration, but then the bass guitar and acoustic guitars join in to mirror the change in mood with the lyrics where he then sings on how he’s been shown the way before the whole band kicks in for the huge chorus. For a track made in the early 70s, there’s a grandness and pristine sheen to every strike of the guitar and crash of the cymbals that make this track sound massive. It’s common throughout the whole album. Might just be one of my favourites of that decade.