Tag Archives: the

#593: Ween – I’m Dancing in the Show Tonight

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Ween members Gene Ween and Dean Ween both agree that their 1997 album The Mollusk is the best project the band put to tape. I agree with them on most days; for me it is always a close race between it and Quebec. I do hold the The Mollusk in high regard for sentimental reasons too; it was the first full album by Ween that I ever listened to about five years ago.  At the time I felt that I was in a bit of a lull, listening to the same artists over and over, so I decided to look for an album that I hadn’t heard before. ‘Ocean Man’ had been in my iTunes library for some time too, I downloaded it after hearing it in the ending credits of the OG SpongeBob movie, so it only made sense to hear all the other songs around it.

‘I’m Dancing in the Show Tonight’ is the first track on The Mollusk. For a lot of reasons, it shouldn’t work. No band should get away with opening any album with a kitschy, vaudeville show tune. That’s what ‘I’m Dancing in the Show Tonight’ is. But it’s executed so well that it never gets annoying. For the sub-2 minutes it lasts for it builds and builds. Starting off with a piano and the vocals, it steadily progresses as percussion and horns are thrown in and by the end it’s a huge singalong with a fake but emphatic string section. It may confuse some first time listeners, but there’s no time to really think because then the title track suddenly starts like nothing never happened. It’s a brave move. I really enjoy it, I think it’s great.

The track is basically a rip of the Christmas song ‘Are My Ears on Straight?’, sung by Gayla Peevey in 1953, with a few lyrical differences. The band full out admit this on the album’s liner notes though they have yet to be punished for it. Not that I want them to, don’t be silly.

#588: The Beatles – I’ll Follow the Sun

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So it goes that ‘I’ll Follow the Sun’, the fifth track on the Beatles’ second album of 1964 Beatles for Sale, had been one that Paul McCartney had saved up since he was sixteen up to that point. That album was created during a time when the group were constantly touring and barely had any free time to themselves; when they did have that time, it would be used for working and going into the studio and recording more songs. McCartney and Lennon didn’t have as much time to write original material together too, so the former pulled this particular track out to get things moving forward.

‘I’ll Follow the Sun’ sees McCartney writing about the end of one relationship and looking on to the next one with a sense of optimism and wonder, whilst the lady who is left behind doesn’t know what she’s lost until it really hits. It’s a good tune with a great melody as is typical in a lot of McCartney songs. Very mellow with subtle knee-slapping percussion from Ringo Starr and a rhythm guitar in the right channel that has such a smooth tone to it, either played by Harrison or McCartney. In comparison to the ‘shake-it-up-baby-now’ good time music of their previous albums, ‘I’ll Follow the Sun’ – and Beatles for Sale as a whole – signified a change in musical style that would only continue to evolve as the group continued to work together.

Here’s Paul playing the song live with his band in 2005, ’cause why not.

My iPod #538: Sex Pistols – Holidays in the Sun

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“Holidays in the Sun” opens Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols, the only album the punk rock band produced during its two year stint in the late seventies. Its title is a bit misleading. It looks and sounds pleasant, but it is really about the high sense of paranoia Johnny Rotten detected when standing next to the Berlin Wall whilst on holiday with his band-mates. Tony Hawk’s Proving Ground on the Nintendo DS had this track on its soundtrack, I gained a liking to it – I am able to talk to you about it today.

The opening guitar and drums beat in time with the sound of a soldier’s march before hastily rushing into the track’s introductory chord progression, blatantly taken from The Jam’s “In the City” which was released six months prior. And all whilst this progression plays Rotten, buried under the noise, sneaks in the first line “A cheap holiday in other people’s misery” – something the band had seemed to take underneath all the controversy the members had earned themselves before the album’s release.

I always thought Rotten’s vocals were the highlights of most Pistol tracks; he doesn’t disappoint here too. He seems to match his countless exaggerations and intensity in tandem with the performance with the music. He sounds somewhat subdued during the first verse before minutes later he turns into a blubbering mess before the track’s climactic solo. He’s not a great singer. To say he sings at all is a stretch. But his delivery makes the song all that more exhilarating to listen to.

My iPod #532: Brakes – Hold Me in the River

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The Brighton based band Brakes released their second album The Beatific Visions in 2006, one year and a few months after raising the roof with the impressive debut of Give Blood.  The Beatific Visions reinforced the rough rock ‘n’ roll delivered in songs under/just above two minutes that was established with Give Blood, albeit with crisper and cleaner production.

“Hold Me in the River” starts it all off and was released as the album’s first single. The track takes fourteen seconds to warm up before breaking into its riff which acts as the main instrumental refrain. Lacking a chorus, “Hold Me” consists only of two verses sung by an ever-eccentric Eamon Hamilton who sings about, what I can only guess, being ready to take on anything that comes his way.

A very confident opener, it is something to get you ‘settled’ in for the ten tracks that are to come.

My iPod #530: Pavement – Hit the Plane Down

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“Hit the Plane Down” is the track that doesn’t get much attention from a lot of listeners. The penultimate offering on Pavement’s second album Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain does suffer from being the odd one out amongst the other eleven that accompany it. Being the only one on there written by the band’s second guitarist Scott Kannberg AKA Spiral Stairs, it doesn’t have the same quality in terms of lyrics and musicality compared to the songs of Stephen Malkmus. However, its stomping drum pattern and messy guitars make it the heaviest-sounding song on the album, and makes for a good change from the slacker melodies that come before it.

Starting off with an emphatic drum roll from Steve West, the song proceeds to be led by a dissonant bassline made up of two notes while guitars blare out distorted chords and notes to create a disorderly mesh of noise. Kannberg sings through a filter to make him sound like his microphone isn’t working properly, and the track overall switches between the few verses and choruses it has before abruptly switching to a low quality recording of the band working on the track to bring it all to a close.

It is a mess. It doesn’t really go anywhere. But it is strangely entrancing to listen to.