Tag Archives: my ipod

My iPod #401: The Beach Boys – Fun, Fun, Fun

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So one day, a few years back, I listened to The Beach Boys’ album “Pet Sounds”. Would it be as good as I was led to believe it would be, due to the acclaim and praise it gets by critics and fans alike? It would be, I was very pleased after hearing it. It was a great listening experience. Although “Pet Sounds” was the album where The Beach Boys (or more specifically Brian Wilson) set out a mission to put more work into a song’s arrangement and lyrics, no one could forget that only a few years prior the group were making songs about girls, surfing and being young and free.

It was during that phase that “Fun, Fun, Fun” was written. The track tells the story of a chick who takes her dad’s car for a ride without his permission and gets all the attention from other jealous ladies and lustful men. The fun ends when the dad catches her out and takes the set of keys away. But it’s all fine, ‘cos…. Mike Love supposedly arrives to make things all better. A creepy thought, but that’s how it goes.

This is a fun, fun, fun one to listen to. Filled with everything you’d expect from an early Beach Boys release. Well-executed harmonies all round covering all vocal ranges, and a general lively, peppy performance. Nice little nod to Chuck Berry right at the start too. Solid track.

My iPod #400: Nine Black Alps – Full Moon Summer

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Nine Black Alps’ third album “Locked Out from the Inside” owns. Unlike “Everything Is” where there are two solely acoustic tracks to slow down the album’s flow and mellow things out a bit, “Locked Out” provides one stormer after another. “Full Moon Summer” is the seventh one in the track list.

I can’t remember how I felt about the track when I listened to the album for the first time. As a whole, I was just very happy to be hearing a new Nine Black Alps album; the excitement took over and I knew that I was hearing stuff, but it didn’t really sink in. But after inevitable repeated listens of it, I weirdly came to the conclusion that “Full Moon Summer” is the album’s centerpiece.

I hear this song and visualise the band playing it on a stormy day under skies in the mixed colours of pink/blue/black/purple that you see on the album’s front cover. Generally,  I find something very mystical and highly dramatic about it. Mystical because I think it’s about a ghostly presence (if not I have no idea), and dramatic just because of how every note and sound is pummeled into your ears. It’s intense.

My iPod #399: Babyshambles – Fuck Forever

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“Fuck Forever” was the second single from Babyshambles’ debut album “Down in Albion”; it was the first track I’d ever heard by the band when I was about ten years old, and its music video played regularly in the mornings on MTV2 – part of its countdown in the channel’s ’10 newest/hottest tracks’ programme. Or a name similar to that.

Obviously, the song’s title was censored as well as anytime Pete Doherty uttered the word ‘fuck’ or stuck up two crooked fingers to the camera. But at ten years old, I was surprised that a song with such a title could ever be played at that time. Or even be released as a single. And I also did think that it sounded fucking awful the first time. Doherty can barely sing on this one, the part where he belts out ‘ANNNNNNNND’ for the lead-up into the final chorus cracks me up every time, and the song’s overall instrumentation has a really sloppy feel to it.

I still have those feelings today. But even at that time I grew to appreciate the track more and more. The song was actually memorable and catchy in its own shitty way. It is a beautiful mess.

This track rules. Doherty has problems, but he can write good music.

My iPod #398: 30 Seconds to Mars – From Yesterday

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The song doesn’t properly start until two minutes in. If you’re here just for that, then skip to that time. Otherwise, enjoy the seven and a half music video.

Though I’m not the biggest fan of 30 Seconds to Mars, I do think all of the singles released from “A Beautiful Lie” are great. Around the time that their music videos started appearing on TV, I was just starting my first year of secondary school. There never seemed to be a moment when one of their videos wasn’t showing on MTV. If, let’s say, “The Kill”‘s music video stopped playing because the single was getting old and didn’t need to get into the charts then the band’s newer video would start playing instead. It was mad stuff, though they had to be heavily edited due to the band’s tendency to make their videos as short films. “From Yesterday”‘s video did not differ from this, as you can see. Apparently there’s a thirteen minute version.

The track is the seventh on the band’s second album, and from looking at it’s lyrics I can only suggest that it’s about….. the President?…. maybe? You can contest me on that one. Generally, hearing it nearly every day either after coming home from school, or in the mornings when getting ready pretty much forced me to remember its melody and  everything else. Though it wasn’t a song that I found annoying or repetitive, so I wasn’t bothered. Still, doesn’t bother me today. Nice to hear it when it pops up on the iPod now and again. Reminds me of being in year 7.

My iPod #397: Arctic Monkeys – From the Ritz to the Rubble

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Like “Fake Tales of San Francisco”, the version of “From the Ritz to the Rubble” I listen to can be found on the EP “Five Minutes with Arctic Monkeys”. There aren’t any major differences between that version and the re-recorded take on “Whatever People Say….”. The only one I can think of at the top of my head is the ending bass. Even so, the version you can hear above was the one I was listening to waaaay before the album was released and therefore I got used to seeing that as the official version. Though both tracks were recorded in a totally different label, I have to say that I feel “Five Minutes with Arctic Monkeys” contains the better takes of both songs.

Though the majority of you may recognise the track as the penultimate offering of Arctic Monkeys’ phenomenal debut from 2006, “Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not”, an album about a Saturday night out in Sheffield. Although “A Certain Romance” brings the album to a close, I consider “From the Ritz to the Rubble” to be night-out concept’s ending, coming from a person who wakes up on the Sunday morning thinking ‘what the fuck was that all about?’. Though not before a recalling of events involving a power-mad bouncer at the entrance of a club, which funnily isn’t all that important as Turner shrugs it off claiming it as ‘a story to tell you’.

The song’s main message concerns how people reflect on the things they’ve done on a drunk night out, and how amazingly different things appear to be the morning after. It is also one of the most energetic tracks on the Monkeys’ debut; many cymbals crash, a lot of alternating guitar lines occur which pan from one ear to the other, and plus it has a groovy bassline which you can never go wrong with. One to get the blood rushing.