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#1074: The Who – The Punk and the Godfather

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Been a long time since I’ve written about a track from Quadrophenia. Looking at my phone, it appears the previous song from it would have come in the ‘I’ series. Couldn’t even begin to remember what year I was doing that in. I’m sure I would have discussed how much the album means to me (for lack of any less melodramatic phrase) in at least one post out of the eight songs I’ve covered from there in the past. But I’ll sum it up here by saying simply it’s my favourite Who album by miles, came across it when I was 15 and feeling a bit lost and it seemed like the perfect soundtrack for the whole time. Plus, the four band members are firing on all cylinders on every cut. I’m a big fan of By Numbers too, but there is a reason why many a person including Pete Townshend himself regards Quadrophenia as the last great Who album.

The big point about Quadrophenia is that it’s a rock opera. One about a kid named Jimmy who’s a Mod, trying to find where he belongs in the Mod scene, all while having a sort of split personality disorder, separated into four different characters based on the four individuals of The Who. These four personalities also have their own individual musical motifs that will appear in one song, become the main refrain in another, before then appearing again as maybe a little melodic hook somewhere else. It’s a whole thing. You really should hear the record in its entirety. In the album’s fifth track, ‘The Punk and/meets the Godfather’, Jimmy goes to see a band to find some kind of inspiration in the dull life. The track takes on the narrative perspectives of who I think are the security letting the people into the venue, or the punks, and the performers onstage who try to possess the audience in the palms of their hands.

This might just be my favourite Who song. It’s definitely up there. Like I said earlier, every instrument strum/strike/finger pick is delivered with a ferocious urge. Those slamming beginning power chords set the scene, Keith Moon amps it up with his hectic drum fills. John Entwistle enters the frame by mimicking the strum pattern of the guitar chords on his bass guitar and they all fall together to allow Roger Daltrey to begin his vocal. Daltrey knocks it out the park here too. Upon the initial listen years ago, I thought another person began singing when it came to the “I’m the guy in the sky…” choruses. But it’s just him putting on a voice, I guess to just help him reach those notes. Townshend offers his own vocal during the song, coming in during the gentler, introspective bridge – one where he harmonises with himself too. After the final chorus, the dust settles with the melodic stuttering of ‘My generation’ among a twinkling acoustic guitar, a fantastic bass riff and the sound of an audience cheering. It’s like they’re applauding the song that’s just happened. In the story though, Jimmy’s left disappointed and disillusioned by it all. It’s a beautiful track. Might just listen to it right now.

#1069: Test Icicles – Pull the Lever

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Rory Attwell, or ‘Raary Decichells’ as he went by as a member of Test Icicles, would usually change his voice entirely whenever it came to delivering vocals for tracks he had written for the band. You’ll hear his normal speaking voice and probably think what he’s trying to achieve when listening to ‘Pull the Lever’ or ‘Dancing on Pegs’ for example. Think it’s fair that any first time listener would be thrown off. It’s only properly dawned on me how strange it may sound. But funnily enough, the three songs he contributed to Test Icicles’ For Screening Purposes Only album, and a B-side that was left off, are among my favourites to listen to generally. They’ll get their posts someday. I’ve covered one already, which has been linked. And today’s is ‘Pull the Lever’ the second track from that record.

There’s not much of a long-winded, melodramatic story about how much this song means to me that I can give you. I listened to that Test Icicles album in 2010 after sort of forgetting about them for a while after the band split in 2006. ‘Pull the Lever’ came on, and when that harmonised vocal came in on the first chorus I recall it becoming a favourite almost instantly. It sounded so nice in contrast to the busier verses. Those are led by this busy, quirky punk guitar riff (played by Sam Mehran) and blaring keyboard stabs (courtesy of Dev Hynes) while Attwell exclaims about nothing much in particular, but then suddenly transition into the more melodic choruses where Attwell calmly sings the refrain. The post-chorus occurs with Attwell returning to that barking-like vocal before an instrumental breaks takes us back to the second verse to repeat the rounds again.

When I talk about Attwell ranting about ‘nothing in particular’, I don’t mean to give the idea that you shouldn’t pay any attention to the words in the song. But even the band admit that they were an afterthought, and were very much so for the majority of the album. They do sound good alongside the music though. Sometimes it’s those kinds of lyrics (where not much thought has been put into them, but not so much that it doesn’t look like they’re not trying at all) that somehow work out the best in songs. I tend to be attracted to those types, anyway. I don’t think I have anything of value to add anymore, so below’s a video of the band performing the track live for the BBC. If you like what you hear, it’s good to see the band in action.

#1058: Bloc Party – The Prayer

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I guess A Weekend in the City will always be seen as the not-as-good paler-in-comparison follow up to Silent Alarm, but when it was coming round to the release of Bloc Party’s second album in the first month of 2007, the anticipation and expectation couldn’t have been greater. Like the band had said in 2005, it was only two more years to hold on. Lo and behold, two years later – a new album was to come. ‘The Prayer’ was the first single, with its music video released in advance of the album’s arrival, and boy, do I remember that being repeated endlessly on MTV2 almost immediately. The band don’t do anything but sit around in some club. Only Kele Okereke gets up and walks about a little while the club-goers start distorting and all types of weird things start happening.

But none of the visuals mattered. What counted was that Bloc Party was back with this ‘new’ sound. It certainly made an impression with the 11-year-old kid I was. The huge boom-clap introduction was an ear-catcher from the moment it began, inspired by Busta Rhymes’ massive ‘Touch It’ single that would have been around while they were making the song. And then it’s followed by this ominous monk(?)-like humming which may also have a guitar buried underneath. Those are the main elements that lead into the verses in which Okereke takes on the persona of a man praying to the Lord above to give him the courage and strength to go out to the club and impress everyone he meets with his charm and his dance moves. The song’s page on Wikipedia says the track’s about drugs like ecstasy and Ketamine in nightclubs. It really isn’t. It’s about some guy who considers himself a bit of a lame-o during the working week that wants to be the main attraction when he’s on the dancefloor on the weekend. But I guess if you really wanted to think about it, the drug route is a possible way to go. Personally though, I’d say it’s the wrong way to go.

This song was a big one for Bloc Party. In the second week of its release, it got to number four in the UK singles chart and still remains to be their highest-charting single over here. For good reason too. Surely, the lyrics can be felt by any of those shy people who crave that sought-for recognition they believe they’re due, maybe even going so far as praying to help them obtain their success. You never know. It could be a desperate situation for people out there. Also, remember when I mentioned the producer Jacknife Lee in the post about Weezer’s ‘Pork and Beans’ a few days back? Well, he’s here again, managing to take the established presence of the band’s rhythm-section heavy dynamic and somehow making it even fatter. When those choruses arrive, they sound absolutely huge. Helps that the melodies throughout are just too good to not sing along to. God, it’s getting up to 20 years since this song’s been around. I mean, surely it was 2007 just a few years ago? Unlike a lot of music from around that time, ‘The Prayer’ does not sound as old as “20 years ago” may seem to be.

#1044: Super Furry Animals – The Placid Casual

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I once took on a personal task to go through Super Furry Animals’ discography in 2014. Reading around on the net and seeing comments made by the public, I got the sense that out of the British rock movement going on in the ’90s – not necessarily Britpop, but the entire scene including Radiohead, Manic Street Preachers and those sort of outside bands who didn’t fit in with that specific – SFA had one of the most solid catalogues of records out of them. Guerrilla was an album of theirs that was already well-acquainted with. But I started with the ’96 debut Fuzzy Logic, makes sense. And followed up by listening to Radiator, the band’s sophomore effort that came out a year later. It begins with a minute-and-a-half instrumental, ‘Furryvision’, a proper scene-setter, like the opening music in a TV show that plays over an opening shot of the sun rising over a sleepy town. But then ‘The Placid Casual’ follows and the floodgates fully open.

After a slick drum roll, the track and the band introduce themselves with ringing guitar notes and noticeably high-in-the-mix crash cymbals. With the incredibly trebly atmosphere going on, that whole introduction is like a wall of sirens and general chaos, probably to really announce that this was where the album was really starting, as the first track representing a full band performance. ‘Pawprint marks leave a telltale sign/There’s a furry friend loose and committing a crime’ are the song’s opening lyrics, a personal favourite couplet of mine in any song, and inspirational enough that I want to say it provided the design idea for Radiator‘s album cover. What ‘the placid casual’ is or are is never defined in the song, but taking them together results in a close enough description of a person that is calm, relaxed and unconcerned. There’s a reference to the seizing of power in Sierra Leone by Valentine Strasser in the second verse for no specific reason. Really, what I think the song comes down to is announcing that the band were back with this new album. Singer Gruff Rhys takes the perspective of the listeners, who ask what to do now that they have been freed and led into salvation by the band’s return.

What ‘the placid casual’ is/are isn’t defined in the track. Looking up the two words though, they appear to describe something/someone that is ‘calm and peaceful, and relaxed and unconcerned’. Seemed that the phrase itself had a ring to it in the SFA camp, as the band chose it to be the name of their self set-up record label. After the final iteration of the chorus, the crash cymbals slam away amidst some freaky synthesizer work and the ascending keyboard bass line, coming to a sudden stop and giving way to the following track’s introduction. Just keeps the train rolling on with barely a moment’s peace. If anyone’s wondering how the rest of my discography quest went with Super Furry Animals, I didn’t actually complete it until 2018, when I went ahead and started again from scratch. My own verdict: whole albums weren’t really for me, but the individual tracks I thought were great were faaantastic. ‘Placid Casual’ stood clear as a personal highlight.

#1035: Good Shoes – The Photos on My Wall

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Well, this’ll be the last song by Good Shoes I cover on here. It’s been fun. I’ve written about only two others. But they’re worthwhile to check out. Of course they are, otherwise I wouldn’t have bothered to express my great thoughts about them. Out of these three, ‘The Photos on My Wall’ is the one that I have the least of a personal attachment to. It was the second single to be released from the band’s 2007 debut album Think Before You Speak, the album title also taken from a lyric within the song, but I don’t think I properly listened to it in full until years later. Think it may have been used in an Inbetweeners episode or something. Hearing the song in that context made me want to search it out, and upon that revisit, it became an instant add to the library.

Here’s another case where I’ve heard the track for so long, but never thought to take time out to what the lyrics are going on about. So here it is, my first analysis into them. Well, I’ll say that I think the narrator here expresses a similar view to the one in fellow Good Shoes song ‘Never Meant to Hurt You’. They’re both prone to saying things without thinking, hurting their significant other in the process. Though while the narrator shows at least some remorse in ‘Never Meant…’, the voice in ‘Photos’ knows their shortcomings, but isn’t willing to do anything to improve themselves. Though then again, when Rhys Jones sings ‘I think I could do better/So arrogant’, maybe that’s him saying he could be a better person, realising that he can be a bit full of himself. All this time I thought he was saying he could do better as in finding someone more suitable to be in a relationship with. Though I guess there could be the intentional double-meaning… You see? You get me started on lyrics and I’ll never stop. Thoughts just pour out of me.

The track’s under two minutes. Perky and upbeat in its delivery. I believe the riff that opens the track was what I heard on the Inbetweeners. Or at least some show similar to that that would be showing on Channel 4. Wherever it was, it reminded me that the song did exist and that maybe I should check it out because it sounded so damn catchy. By that point, Good Shoes would have just released their second album No Hope, No Future. Maybe that title was an omen of some sorts because the band broke up after its release. Another one of those countless indie rock bands of the ’00s falling by the wayside. A shame. But they did make some great tunes.