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#1441: Talking Heads – Uh-Oh, Love Comes to Town

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Looks like I gave the whole spiel as to what other songs from Talking Heads: 77 would have their own posts here when I last wrote about another song from that album a few years back. Normally I reserve that whole bit for when I’m writing about the last representative from a specific LP. But I guess I couldn’t hold it in. What I’ve found out is that I listened to …77 in full for the first time in March 2014. I thought it was much later in the year. I have a memory that fueled that feeling, I’ll maybe note it in the final paragraph. But let’s see, March 2014. I was hosting a show on my uni’s radio station. I was stuffing my iTunes library with as much music as I could. I had ‘Tentative Decisions’ by itself in there. I’d heard it on an internet radio service in 2012 or so. I’m guessing I must have just thought, “May as well get the rest of the album in too.” It was a well-respected piece of work, according to Wikipedia. I had nothing to lose.

‘Uh-Oh, Love Comes to Town’ is the first song on Talking Heads: 77. The one introducing the band to the masses, with …77 being their debut album and all. It begins with a crashing, ascending four-chord progression before falling straight into that shoulder-shimmying groove. The guitar line skips along, in unison with the bass guitar, and then David Byrne enters on the vocals for all to hear with that shrill but perky delivery of his. Steel drums enter the frame along the way, all a very upbeat affair. Guess it’s safe to say, ‘Uh-Oh…’ is a song about love. In the tune, David Byrne sings from the perspective of a self-proclaimed “know-it-all” who’s got his partner. They get along very well. But the song’s not so much about the couple. It’s more about the notion that being in love can make you do stupid things, make the world go topsy-turvy. Byrne sings about calling in sick to his workplace to be with the one [he] loves, even though he knows he’ll get in trouble for it. He’s misplaced his common sense. He goes out of his mind when his loved one’s around. Stockbrokers are making bad investments, jet pilots are losing control of their vehicles. And why? Because love has come to town. And the song ends as it begins, with that four-chord progression with Byrne wailing “Uh-oh” over the top of it. A strong album opener. A strong discography opener.

Why I thought I heard Talking Heads: 77 later in 2014 is because I once went to Manchester for a weekend or something in November that year, an event was going on. Warehouse Project, people out there will know. I returned to my uni house and found that I could no longer reach those high notes as David Byrne does at the end of ‘Uh-Oh…’ when I tried to sing the song like I had before that weekend happened. I honestly thought that was it, my voice was gone, my angelic tones were no more. Cut to a few weeks later, voice was fine. A lot of that weekend was spent talking loudly, obviously some cords were strained and they got better over time. But I got worried there. So the point was, I thought I had listened to …77 initially around November time of 2014. It was months earlier. But maybe it was during November time that I revisited it and officially got into ‘Uh-Oh’… I’m rambling on a bit, just some thought processes going on here. Whatever may be the case, I enjoy this song and its parent album a lot. I prefer it to More Buildings and Food. I would probably be more inclined to go through …77 on a whim than Remain in Light too. In my view, just the run from ‘The Book I Read’ to ‘Pulled Up’ might be one of my favourites on any album ever. And that does includes ‘First Week/Last Week…Carefree’ because that song is a jam.

#1434: The Byrds – Turn! Turn! Turn! (To Everything There Is a Season)

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Went back to the Vista computer sitting in the corner of the living room to get to the source for this track. According to the file’s properties, I downloaded The Byrds’ ‘Turn! Turn! Turn!’ at 12:30 in the morning, on Sunday 1st of May 2011. Just a few minutes after doing the same for their cover of ‘Mr. Tambourine Man’. It was a wild period of my life that I was behind a desktop on a Saturday night downloading music. Really, I was in the lead-up to my actual GCSE exams and going out wasn’t an option. Around that time, both songs had appeared on a radio service provided by the website we7.com, which I’ve referred to on a few occasions. I liked the two of ’em straight off the bat. When it came to ‘Turn! Turn! Turn!’, I got that all-to-familiar feeling that I’d heard the song somewhere before. It’s in Forrest Gump, which I’m sure I’d seen by that point, but it was like my knowledge of the tune went much further back. This is something I’ll come back to at the end of this post.

Just over two months after completing their first album in April 1965, The Byrds were back in the studio to start work on what would become their second. Only made sense. They’d virtually created the folk rock genre, and their take on ‘Mr. Tambourine Man’ had taken the world by storm. It was time to capitalise. During the sessions for this new album, they recorded an adaptation of ‘Turn! Turn! Turn!’ by Pete Seeger, which itself was heavily reliant on the book of Ecclesiastes in the Bible. The Byrds did their thing. Applied the three-way harmonies of Roger McGuinn, David Crosby and Gene Clark. Utlilised the chiming 12-string guitars. Unlike ‘Mr. Tambourine Man’ where McGuinn was the only Byrd playing his instrument alongside the world-class Wrecking Crew session musicians, all five Byrds were present, correct and performing on ‘Turn! Turn! Turn!’ this time ’round. They completed the song. It was released as the first single from their forthcoming album, also entitled Turn! Turn! Turn!. While maybe not as much as the worldwide smash ‘Tambourine’ was, the people of America got it to number one in their country and the folk rock train of 1965 kept rolling.

I mean, I think it’s a bit of a classic, right? The Byrds would evolve in terms of the music they’d make as the ’60s went on. But in terms of establishing that folk rock sound, ‘Tambourine Man’ and ‘Turn! Turn! Turn!’ solidly set the template and influenced anything like it that followed. I already mentioned them in the previous paragraph, but it’s all about the vocal melodies and the jangly guitars. The combination of those result in some good aural bliss. But I also like how the song picks up in rhythm as its outro sets in and Michael Clarke becomes a little bit more busier on the drums, pulling off some fills and triplet patterns in the process. One thing I would wish for is that The Byrds did a whole Beatles discography remix thing, though. Instruments in the right ear and just vocals in the left… It’s not a stereo mix for today’s society. Oh, and, uh, years after getting to know ‘Turn! Turn! Turn!’ proper in 2011, I found myself watching that Simpsons episode where Bart and Lisa become newsreaders for a children’s programme. In it, Bart seeks inspiration from Kent Brockman. Brockman assists. ‘Turn! Turn! Turn!’ showed up, and that unlocked a memory of sitting in front of the small TV in my grandma’s room when I was maybe eight, watching the same episode while trying not to wake her up. So there you go.

#1424: R.E.M. – Try Not to Breathe

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I’ve got two more songs by R.E.M. left to write about after this one. I’ll leave it to you to figure out what those are. But I can give a clue. They both begin with ‘W’. But as for any from the band’s Automatic for the People, this is it. ‘Try Not to Breathe’, the last of the representatives, even though I only started with ‘Man on the Moon’ relatively recently. ‘Find the River’ would definitely have had one if I properly knew about it. Automatic… It’s a pretty good album, isn’t it? I downloaded it way back in maybe 2013 or something, just ’cause I saw somewhere that it was considered to be one of the best albums ever. It might actually have been on BestEverAlbums.com. But it wasn’t until 2018 that I embarked a full R.E.M. discography discovery, going from Murmur to Collapse into Now in two weeks while I was at work. Got to Automatic… day, played it loud through the stereo system (it was just me in the office) and really heard it in a way I hadn’t before. ‘Try Not to Breathe’ was one track in particular that really stood out on that listen.

To preface everything I’m about to say, Mike Mills and Michael Stipe dissect the song in its dedicated episode on the Song Exploder podcast. They talk about elements in the production that I’ve never picked up on myself, as well as its origin and inspiration. So you can listen to the guys who wrote the thing. But I’m gonna write this without listening to that, so excuse me if I repeat anything in it. In my experience, one thing in particular that’s always stuck out to me on ‘Try Not to Breathe’ is Michael Stipe’s vocal. And you might say, well, duh, his vocal’s the highlight in a lot of R.E.M. songs. But it’s this one where it just sounds good, you know? It’s a heavy topic he’s covering too. The track’s from the point of view of an elderly person who’s ready to die, reached the point where they’ve realized their time on earth is done, and doesn’t want to be a burden to the people looking after them in their last days. Okay, I did a sneak listen of the podcast. It’s about Stipe’s grandmother. ‘Cause of this, you’d think he’d take on a minor-key, downbeat kind of vocal melody and delivery. It’s the complete opposite. It’s upbeat, a bit sprightly, skips along the waltzing tempo established by the musicianship of Peter Buck, Mike Mills and Bill Berry. Gotta love a 3/4-time tune. Or is it 6/8…

I’d like to point out that this the first instance on the album where Stipe sings a drawn out “Oh” over the music, as he does during the bridge. He does this in ‘The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite’ and ‘Sweetness Follows’, and each time those vocalizations sound so right to the ear. Is it also right to say that Automatic… is the last album to feature the Stipe-Mills-Berry countermelodies that were such a notable feature on their earlier albums? They’re definitely the notable feature on ‘Try Not to Breathe’, rounding the song out, with Stipe singing the lead vocal, Mills with the higher, soaring countermelody on the right, and Berry on the left with the tinnier “I have seen things you will never see” lyric. A happy-sounding song about death, it somehow lifts the spirits of the album’s proceedings after ‘Drive’, which doesn’t start the album off in the brightest of ways. Further thinking about album flow, there’s something so satisfying about the intro of ‘Sidewinder’ coming in after ‘Try Not to Breathe”s end. It’s like the former resolves the final chord the latter fades out on. Automatic… is R.E.M.’s biggest album, so I think it’s hard to say anything on there is underlooked. But compared to numbers like ‘Everybody Hurts’ or ‘Man on the Moon’, ‘Try Not to Breathe’ sort of is. And you’ve got to hear it.

#1374: The Beatles – Ticket to Ride

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Just a very small memory I have when it comes to The Beatles’ ‘Ticket to Ride’ is my sister asking me whether it was a song that our mum liked or sung from time-to-time. I replied “No,” and we carried on with our day. I think the song was playing in a very out-of-time ringtone advert which was exclusively based on The Beatles, ’cause it was around that time that the remastered catalogue was being reissued and The Beatles: Rock Band game was hot on the scene. But I’m sure that situation wasn’t the first time I’d heard the song myself. I think its dedicated segment in the Help! film was one of the few Beatles music videos that played on VH1 when there was a Beatlesmania programme on the channel, again because of the Beatles hype in September 2009. I may have also just come across it through watching Help! on Dailymotion or something. It’s all a blur now, it’s been in the psyche so long. I didn’t know it once. I’ve known it for a while now. That’s what this entire blog comes down to.

So, ‘Ticket to Ride’. It was the first single from the band’s fifth album, Help!, released four months in advance of the LP’s arrival. It was also recorded and finished in one day, believe it or not, on 15th February 1965 – worked on in the first recording session the band undertook since releasing their Beatles for Sale album a mere four months earlier. They also started working on ‘I Need You’ and ‘Another Girl’, which would both end up on Help! too. Something must have been in the air in EMI Studios that day. John Lennon primarily wrote ‘Ticket…’. Paul McCartney helped. The song’s known for that kind of herky-jerky drum part Ringo Starr has going on. It’s very effective. Apparently, McCartney told him how to play it. It sort of straightens itself out as the song progresses. Main highlight for me is John Lennon’s vocal, and I guess McCartney’s harmony too. Mainly the melody line, though. I like the way Lennon sounds in a lot of songs he does the lead vocal on. But he sounds very clear on this track, like he’s using all the air in his lungs to deliver the words. He sounds very confident. He kind of flubs the lines at about 1:26 and 2:15, which makes it all the more charming.

No one really knows what this song’s about. Only Lennon and McCartney would, but they both had differing answers regarding the influence. It’s all up in the air. One interesting take, easily viewable on Wikipedia, is that it’s about a girl who leaves a relationship to become a prostitute and have sex whenever she wants. A ticket to ‘ride’. Thinking about the humour shared between the two songwriters, that could very well be the case. My take, the narrator’s sad a relationship’s over and the girl’s free from the shackles of it all. It’s a ticket to freedom. To ‘ride’ is to ‘be free’ in the broadest sense. Sounds a bit melodramatic. It’s a happy-sounding song about a not-so-happy situation. That’s how I think of it, but only when I stop to think about it, if you know what I mean. Otherwise I’m just enjoying the tune in the musical aspect. You’ve got the two main writers singing with each other, George Harrison plays a continuous A-flat note in the verses, the aforementioned drum part, and the surprise double-time ending with Lennon singing “My baby don’t care” until the track fades to silence. It obviously hit the number-one spot in many, many places. Well deserved too.

#1347: James Dean Bradfield – That’s No Way to Tell a Lie

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After finishing what was to be their last tour for a couple years in 2005, the members of Manic Street Preachers took a little break from each other. During that time, drummer Sean Moore… well, no one really knows, but I’m sure he had a good one. Bass guitarist and lyricist Nicky Wire went and recorded a solo album, released in 2006, called I Killed the Zeitgeist. And in the same year came The Great Western, James Dean Bradfield’s first solo project. Bradfield, as many may know, is the lead singer of the Manics, taking great pride in writing the music of the band’s songs alongside Moore. It wasn’t until 2001 that fans got a completely penned Bradfield song, covering music and lyrics, in the form of ‘Ocean Spray’. So how would a whole album of Bradfield-written tracks turn out? I can’t say myself, I’ve never listened to the whole thing. But the one track I know from there, the album’s opener and selected first single, I’ve enjoyed for a very long time. I guess almost 20 years now, ain’t that something?

I saw the video for ‘That’s No Way to Tell a Lie’ once on TV, and it feels like it was never played again. It most likely was. But if that’s the case, I didn’t see it. The video showed up, not on MTV2 but VH2 when that was a channel in the UK. I was sitting on the floor chilling, as you do when you’re 11 years old, watching Bradfield getting dunked into a lake while another Bradfield in shades watches on accompanied by some Asian mobsters while the song played over the top. I didn’t know what was going on. The song sounded all right, though. The chorus where the title’s sung a couple times left a mark. The visual of the mobsters lip-syncing the “Sha-la-la-la” vocals in the break were funny. The video finished, life happened. I’m sure I kept the song in the back of my mind for a while. But then it got to a point where I couldn’t get away from it later on in 2006, because someone at the BBC decided the track would make good backing music for the Goal of the Month competition on Match of the Day. It was like that for a good two seasons of football. Was singing along to it probably every time. So there you go. I was locked in.

I’ve been singing along to the lyrics and enjoying the music to this for so long now, I’ve never thought to go and really dig deep into what the song’s about. I did always like the “I hear you’ve got something to say / But first you need some people to say it to / Just before you rise from the dead” lines. I don’t know just something to the sound of them. But in Bradfield’s words, the song’s about “the push and pull of your head and your heart telling you different, conflicting things about the way you should feel about religion”. Your head saying, “No,” but your heart saying “Yes”. He says so here. I never would have thought that. But I guess mentions of ‘lost souls on a pilgrimage’ and the ‘rise from the dead’ does give way to that context, with the whole ‘that’s no way to tell a lie’ idea being a flat-out rejection of the religious imagery that sways people to believe in it. Or something? Honestly, I don’t know. I just like the song. Knowing what it’s about doesn’t make me like it any less.