Tag Archives: the

#1156: Simon & Garfunkel – Save the Life of My Child

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A pre-Spotify/streaming service website used to exist back in the day. We7.com it was called. It allowed you to play a bunch of music in full, for free, without registration. And I came across it in early 2009, I think because Green Day’s 21st Century Breakdown had just been released and there it was, available to listen to, out in the open. The website doesn’t exist anymore, but when it did I got to hear a lot of the music I listen to now for the first time. And that’s where Simon & Garfunkel’s ‘Save the Life of My Child’ comes in. The track played on the site’s internet radio feature one day. Though I’m sure I would have heard ‘The Sound of Silence’ way before then, or ‘Bridge over Troubled Water’, I do believe it’s ‘Save…’ that was properly the first S&G track I’d fully paid attention with headphones at hand.

And the fat synthesizer that opens the song up is not what I was expecting on that initial hearing. I wonder how listeners back in 1968 would have felt too. It’s such a contrast compared to the usual acoustic numbers the duo did, and especially coming right after the light introduction that opens Bookends, the album on which ‘Save the Life…’ can be found. The track is one of the very first ever to utilise the Moog synthesizer, used predominantly for the bassline, and Paul Simon chugs away on the acoustic guitar while singing from the different perspectives of different people witnessing a boy sitting on the ledge of a high building, contemplating suicide. It’s a busy, busy scene. Passersby speculate, newspapers are rolling out with the story, the cops are called, and when one does arrive, they offer no considerable help in the slightest. Spotlights are put on the kid who, in that moment, decides to fall. That’s how the song ends.

I’ve always felt that the song is in some way providing a wider commentary than what’s being portrayed within. I wasn’t around in the ’60s, but from what I’ve gleaned by just reading around, things were much different in the America of 1968 than it was in ’67. The summer of love had long gone, and people wanted politicians to answer for poor decisions. Looking to musicians to provide some solidarity in their art. It was a general time of unrest. And that unrest is very much captured in the performance and general feel of ‘Save the Life…’. The song’s bridge includes an unsettling use of the duo’s aforementioned ‘Sound of Silence’ which, in context, I think symbolises a kind of momentary yearning for those young and innocent days before being abruptly brought back into reality, with the state of affairs of the then-current days being summed up in the final lines as the boy falls to the ground: “Oh, my grace, I got no hiding place.”

#1150: Men Without Hats – The Safety Dance

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Looky here. It’s your favourite series. It’s back. And this ‘S’ section might take a while. We’ll get through it together. I can’t wait. And it begins with something a frequent reader here may find unusual or quite left-field. It’s ‘The Safety Dance’ by Men Without Hats. A one-hit wonder of sorts. I’ve not listened to any other song by the group. I don’t really wish to either. And while some might find this song incredibly cheesy in that way that songs from the ’80s tend to be, I think there’s a lot of sincerity to be found here. The music video doesn’t really help emphasise the latter. Singer and songwriter Ivan Doroschuk hams it up in front of the camera alongside a little person and a blond-haired woman who provides the female backing vocals. Neither of the two are part of the actual musical group. But if I’ve got my headphones in and the synthy introduction gets going, I can’t help but bop my head along to it.

The whole meaning behind the song can be found on its Wikipedia page, which I don’t want to regurgitate back to you. But even without looking at it, the song’s message is very clear. Doroschuk sings for the people who just want to dance, have fun, be free to do what they want hand-in-hand/in solidarity with other like-minded individuals. “We can dance if we want to/We can leave your friends behind/’Cause your friends don’t dance/And if they don’t dance, then they’re no friends of mine”. The opening lyrics right there. Rolls of the tongue, and the melodies throughout are memorable to boot. To bring the listeners all together, he calls for us to enact the phrase that makes up the song’s title, as demonstrated in the music video, by seemingly taking both arms and jerking them into the shape of an ‘S’.

Honestly, I can’t recall how I ever got to know this song in the first place. There was a scene in The Simpsons where Homer sings it and changes the lyrics a little, but I thought that was just the character making up a random song rather than it being a reference to an actual thing. Plenty of people will know it in a scene from Scrubs, but between me and you I’ve never watched the show. In fact, I have a clear memory of my sister talking to me about the song for some vague reason and referring to the Simpsons scene. She clearly knew about it more than me. So I guess I have her to thank for properly introducing me to it.

#1148: Stephen Malkmus – Rushing the Acid Frat

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On a post from a couple months back, I gave a small recap of Stephen Malkmus’s burst of productivity nearing the end of the 2010s. There must have been something in the air because from 2018 to 2020 we got three different albums with the songwriting guitarist’s name on there. Today’s track comes from the record that came around in 2019, Groove Denied. Though his previous self-titled debut and 2005’s Face the Truth were labelled as solo albums, they were still technically Jicks productions as plenty of songs on both contained performances by the whole band. On Groove Denied, Malkmus was properly on his own, making it his first true solo effort after 30 years in the business.

The lead-up to the album’s release was exciting. There had been lore for a while that Malkmus had an electronic record stored in a vault somewhere, and Groove Denied turned out to be it. Turned out that the whole ‘electronic’ bit was just a tad exaggerated. But before I found that out, ‘Viktor Borgia’ was released as the first single a couple months prior. It was certainly different from Malkmus’s usual bag. I liked it though. Reminded me of a rougher LCD Soundsystem. Listeners were left to ponder on it for about a month, and then ‘Rushing the Acid Frat’ came as the next single. The track brought things into more familiar territory, coming along with a trippy video where an animated Malkmus walks toward the camera with a stride in his step while the visuals in the background get all psychedelic.

The song’s lyrics appear to detail types of imagery one might envision while on a heavy acid trip. At least that’s what I’ve always thought. According to Rolling Stone, Malkmus stated that he imagined a fraternity where they just took LSD all the time and attempted to write a song à la The Kingsmen’s ‘Louie Louie’ that these acid takers would hear while tripping,. Thinking of that now, I can see a similarity between the two. Though while ‘Louie’ sticks to that four-chord progression, Malkmus goes into dreamlike choruses where the stereo space opens up and his vocals spreads into the left and right channels with a higher countermelody popping up in the middle. The guitar (or is it a synth?) that comes in at points is wild too, not making any attempt to give a melody, but just providing some straight up noise to add some chaos to the song’s mellow rhythm. Big fan of it. But I’m just a huge Malkmus fan, anyway.

#1146: Kings of Leon – The Runner

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Can you believe Kings of Leons’ Because of the Times turns 20 in three years time? It just doesn’t seem right. I was alive and well during that whole era of the band, but it doesn’t feel like it was happening 17 years ago. In the place of the band’s discography, it sort of captures a transitional moment where the band were sticking to the rawer deal that people came to know them from their first two albums while exploring a wider territory, going bigger in their soundscapes that would fit in a stadium setting. Then they properly went for the latter on Only by the Night, and we all know how that went. The transitional aspect gives it a charm that I appreciate it for, even if it may not be my favourite album of the band’s. I’m one of those people who’ll say it’s probably their last great record though.

‘The Runner’ is the tenth song on Times. It’s only struck me now how quite similar it is to ‘Rememo’ from Aha Shake Heartbreak. They both depend on the 6/8 waltz time. They sort of have this Western-wandering-on-the-range atmosphere about them. Though while ‘Rememo’ is delivered with an intimacy that could lull you to sleep, ‘The Runner’ is handed a bigger soundscape that properly comes into life when the enveloping guitars enter the frame during the swaying choruses. It also doesn’t rely on a two-note melody, which makes things a lot more dynamic. I like that there are two guitar riffs the song revolves around. The first being Caleb Followill’s lone guitar that opens the track and then the acoustic guitar melody which is then mirrored by the vocal during the verses. Both memorable in their own respective ways.

The track, in my view, seems to be from the perspective of a narrator who tends to be on the move a lot of the time, having to spend large periods of it away from his lady as a result. The song’s title phrase doesn’t appear in the lyrics, but I usually assume it’s the nickname of this narrator. They handle whatever comes their way, whatever life brings them, praying to Jesus that they’ll be guided through hard times ahead. The first verse depicts the scene of ‘The Runner’ on the rails on their latest travel, with the second focusing on the lady left behind and giving the listener a little glimpse into her backstory. The choruses bring the two characters together, with the Runner detailing their worry about the lady’s whereabouts and implied infidelity. I mean, that’s what I get from it all, anyway. I’ve always enjoyed this one. It’s a little under the radar, but it’s very much rewarding after every listen.

#1144: George Harrison – Run of the Mill

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Well, it looks like this track right here will be the last one you’ll see on here from George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass album. I know, it’s a real shame, isn’t it? On the contrary, if there was a real-life situation where songs were disappearing from albums and the one left standing was the one you could hear for the rest of your days, I wouldn’t complain about having ‘Run of the Mill’ as the survivor. Ever since hearing it around 2010/11 via an old, old streaming service called We7 that went defunct years ago, the track’s been a strong favourite of mine from the record. It’s that horn melody during the introduction that always stirs something within me initially. And Harrison’s lyrics are also something to ponder on, even though they’re very much himself and his own experiences.

The big experience influencing the song’s words would be the tense time when the Beatles, that band Harrison used to be in, were on the verge of breaking up. Harrison didn’t feel he was being taken seriously as a songwriter by bandmates Paul McCartney and John Lennon, and his relationships with the two were becoming strained. Adding the fact that they were trying to run a business at the same time, which ran itself into the ground quite dramatically, and the whole situation was a sorry state of affairs for everyone involved. ‘Run of the Mill’ contains Harrison’s thoughts on the matter, which basically tell his two bandmates to get their acts together and stop laying their own frustrations out on him without mentioning their names outright.

The performers on this particular track are an all-star cast, featuring the members who would go on to become Derek and the Dominos with Eric Clapton very during the album sessions for All Things… Session musician Jim Price provides the trumpets that play the song’s main instrumental hook. But, apart from George Harrison’s great vocal, my ears also tend to latch onto the bass guitar work of Carl Radle that climb and fall and perform other melodic hooks that interplay with the track’s chord progression. Harrison is also singing “It’s you that decides” and not “The jeweller decides”, which I believed to be the lyric initially. ‘Run of the Mill’ is a song of rumination, but it doesn’t aim to make the listener feel sad or melancholy in any way. You can empathise with Harrison for sure. But I think it’s the warming music against the resigned inspiration behind the lyrics that make the track one of the songwriter’s best.