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#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.

#1134: The Clash – Rock the Casbah

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The Clash, The Clash, The Clash. Now, I appreciate the band and their influence and I understand why people would be a huge, huge fans of their music. I did revisit the London Calling album some months ago and did think that it was where Pete Doherty and Carl Barât got their whole shtick from for their Libertines stuff. Seemed so obvious while listening through it. But for me, The Clash are a group that I’ve never caught the fever over to start worshipping them. They do have some great songs, though. In fact, here’s one right now. ‘Rock the Casbah’. At least, in my opinion, it is. As one of the band’s most well-known singles, some may think it’s overplayed and they’ve heard it too much. I’m not one of those people.

Unlike the majority of Clash songs where songwriting duo Joe Strummer and Mick Jones would create the music and then continue to develop the songs with the rest of the band, ‘Rock the Casbah’ was brought into the studio almost completely finished by drummer Topper Headon. He had a piano idea in mind for some time. When one day he came into the studio and found no one there, he recorded the drums, bass guitar and piano. Strummer, Jones and regular bassist Paul Simonon came in and were impressed with what Headon had got down. After not-so-subtly rejecting Headon’s original lyrics for the track, Strummer wrote his own – detailing an ongoing situation where a king calls a ban on Western music, much to his people’s annoyance. They go ahead and play it anyway, because they just don’t care. We’re meant to imagine that this is all happening in the Middle East somewhere, most likely Iran, hence the mentions of ‘ragas’, ‘minarets’ the ‘Sharif’ and so on and so forth.

I think it was after seeing the video a few times on MTV2, or some other music video channel, that I thought the song was cool enough to add to the personal library. Upon finding out how the song was made, I always thought it was wrong how the bass guitar was mixed so low in the version that ended up on Combat Rock. Luckily, the mix used when it was reissued some years later (and in the music video above) altered that choice and pushed it forward. How Strummer sings “The Sheikh he drive his CADILLAAAC” makes me chuckle. He really hacks out the “cadillac”. You can hear a digital wristwatch alarm at one point during the track. I don’t have much else to day. I enjoy this one a lot. A shame that Topper Headon wasn’t able to enjoy the success the song he made got. He left the band before the song was released because of a slight addiction to heroin and had to witness the music video the band filmed without him with another drummer in his place.

#1133: Blink-182 – The Rock Show

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I’ve never listened to Blink-182’s 2001 album Take Off Your Pants and Jacket in full. I don’t think I’m missing out on anything if I never did. But I may be being a bit too harsh. I’m sure it has its fans, but the album being sandwiched in between what are considered to be the band’s best works with Enema of the State in ’99 and the self-titled/untitled album arriving in 2003 has built up this preconceived idea in my head that the whole record probably wouldn’t be as good. ‘Happy Holidays, You Bastard’ is a regular at the Christmas parties I have with friends. I’m pretty indifferent to it. And I’ll be one to say that ‘Anthem’ is way better than ‘Anthem Part Two’. So we’re off to a good start.

‘The Rock Show’ is a song that can be found on the album, however, and is one that’s been around in my life for a long, long time. Maybe even since 2001. I have a memory of watching the video on TV, even before I was consciously looking for music of its type. It was probably on The Box or something. My sister laughed at the scene where Tom DeLonge and Mark Hoppus buy a box of doves from a store and free them from their captivity. It wasn’t until years later, after finding out who Blink-182 actually were and getting into their music, that they were the group who made that song about falling in love with the girl at the rock show. The track, mainly written by bassist Mark Hoppus but credited to the entire band, was released as Take Off’s… first single.

The track is a tale of young love. Very pop-punk oriented. A boy meets a girl on the Warped Tour, they’re both into each other, they tell their parents they going to move Las Vegas… and by the song’s bridge it seems that some time’s passed and the relationship has ended, but it doesn’t stop the narrator remembering those good times as he stares at her picture on the wall and waits for a phone call that never arrives. I never realised that there was a line that was a nod to Bon Jovi’s ‘Livin’ on a Prayer’, but it’s there, that’s quite neat, actually. It’s a tight performance by Hoppus, DeLonge and Travis Barker, energetic and very cathartic with those cymbal crashes on the “Fell in love/She said what/She’s so cool” moments in the choruses. The whole track just seems like a brief snapshot in time when things in America seemed to be carefree before another event in 2001 happened and messed everything up.