Tag Archives: up the bracket

#1454: The Libertines – Up the Bracket

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So I’m sure I’ve mentioned in the past, I’m a Black man. It shouldn’t really matter all that much. But, you know, the type of music I share my thoughts on wouldn’t usually say “Black” to most people. Regardless, it’s the truth. Growing up and watching MTV2 UK in the mid-2000s, you’d wouldn’t see many, if any, Black faces on music videos. Kele Okereke of Bloc Party’s was probably the first one I saw via ‘Helicopter’. It was the only one for a while. But then the video for The Libertines’ ‘Up the Bracket’ showed up one day. It wasn’t the first of the band’s that I’d seen, but it was certainly the first I watched that featured all the members. Gary Powell was the first Black drummer I’d ever encountered. He didn’t look like he was playing the drums with much focus or precision in the video for ‘…Bracket’, and it got me wondering whether he was actually in the band or a stand-in for someone else. That’s quite messed up, I know, shows you how my 9- or 10-year old brain was conditioned. It wasn’t until I saw him again in the video for ‘Bang Bang You’re Dead’ by Dirty Pretty Things that I understood, this was an actual drummer who could actually play.

You can find that funny, you can find that truly insane. I’m somewhere in the middle thinking on it now. More towards ‘insane’, though. Despite the naive prejudice I gathered on the first viewing, it didn’t distract from the fact that the song itself sounded very nice. Doherty sings about meeting two dodgy men on Vallance Road, supposedly an allusion to the infamous Kray twins who used to live there, and telling them to fuck off by sticking two fingers up at them. Not the peace sign. And then the song focuses on two people for the choruses, a boy and a girl, who look like they’d be the perfect pair but are lost in their own little worlds. A slight change in theme, but it works somehow. The video added to the enjoyability. The band walk up an alleyway (Grove Passage in Bethnal Green, London – a mecca for Libertines fans), Pete Doherty and Carl Barât mime the words while doing so, and they all end up back at someone’s flat, performing the song in their iconic red jackets, in a party-like atmosphere while girls dance around them. Very easy watching. If there are two people who know how to mime lyrics and walk towards the camera, it’s Pete Doherty and Carl Barât. If you see videos by either of them, solo or with their other bands, that’s usually what happens.

‘Up the Bracket’ is the title track on the band’s debut album. It opens the second side, if you were to buy the record on vinyl. As much as I like ‘Up the Bracket’ as a whole, it’s the small, little details that make it an engaging listen. There’s the yell by Doherty right at the beginning, one of frustration, recorded during a moment of chaos in the studio. Barât joins in on the lower harmonies on the “See these two cold fingers” lines, those sound cool. He also plays the descending guitar line in the choruses, he for sure plays the lead guitarist role in the song. There’s that moment during the second chorus when a scratchier vocal track comes into frame, revealed to be inserted from another take of the song in the 2022 anniversary edition. The aforementioned yell is also in that same take. I didn’t know that before writing the sentence, but I’m keeping this all in. I think the oddity that puts the cap on everything is the audible ‘fuck off’ that’s said near the end of the guitar solo. That ‘fuck off’ went uncensored for years on TV. When it was about 2012 or something and I saw the video on what had turned into ‘MTV Rocks’, probably the last time I saw the video on the channel, it appeared that someone at the MTV offices had figured out there was a clear curse word in the song and censored it. I was falling out of love with MTV2/Rocks around that time, the music on rotation there just didn’t seem to as interesting as it used to be. Just that small censorship move showed me that things had really changed on that channel. Couldn’t tune into it the same way anymore.

#1382: The Libertines – Time for Heroes

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Maybe I should approach this post like I’m writing about a song from Up the Bracket for the first time. I mean, I’ve covered ‘I Get Along’ – the last song on the album – but it wasn’t too long after doing that post that the song would come up in the shuffle list, the clunky riff would start, and I’d think to myself, “I’m not sure I like this song all that much anymore.” Got me heading for the skip button quite regularly. But that post will still exist as a reminder of a time when I used to like it a lot. But ‘Time for Heroes’? That’s a whole different story. After the band’s initial split in 2004, music videos by The Libertines would make their occasional appearances on MTV2. It just so happened that ‘Time for Heroes’ had one, being a single and all. I probably saw it once, twice, maybe three times, but that was enough to like the song. Then my sister got Up the Bracket as a loan from a school friend of hers. She ripped that onto the old, old, in-a-landfill-somewhere XP computer. Now I could listen to the song anytime.

I don’t know if there’s some kind of unwritten rule in Libertines fandom. Like you’re not meant to compare Pete Doherty and Carl Barât, you’re meant to like them both equally, or something. I’m not the biggest Libertines-head. But for me, Doherty’s always been the more interesting vocalist out of the two. The main attraction of the band is hearing them in a song together, that goes without saying. But if it’s just one of them throughout the whole thing, I feel Doherty’s usually the one who brings a different element to the proceedings. Like on ‘Time for Heroes’, he’s kind of got this drunken, slurring quality to his vocal delivery. Maybe he was drunk at the time of recording it. He sounds like he could mess a word or line up at any moment. But he still manages to hit every note needed and belts out those passionate “Oh, how I cherish you, my love” lyrics at the end of the verses. Or is that line the chorus? I don’t know if this song has a chorus. Feels like Doherty just sings one long verse over some great chord changes, on and on until the instrumental break comes in with a minute left to go.

‘Time for Heroes’ is Doherty’s observational take on the riots that took place in London on May Day 2000. I think he took part in them himself. I was barely a human being at the time, so I don’t know what the specifics of what happened. But this article on the events can clue us all in. Doherty addresses the listener with the first lines, “Did you see the stylish kids in the riot / Shoveled up like muck, set the night on fire”. Good opening lines by the way. Doherty continues on, shouting out the rioters known as the Wombles who dressed up as the characters of the same name. He references Bill Bones from Treasure Island. Just small things to look out for. Overall, I think the song’s acts as something of a tribute to all of the people who were caught up in the riots that day. Not the police, but the public fighting against them. I feel like they’re the heroes the song’s title refers to, and his ‘love’ is the thrill of being involved in places where he probably shouldn’t be. Least, that’s what I get from the song. It’s a good one. Better to listen to than to read about.

#572: The Libertines – I Get Along

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I appreciate The Libertines; I think they’re alright. You won’t find a huge fan of them in me compared to many many other people out there, but I can’t deny Carl Barât and Pete Doherty wrote some good songs between ’em. ‘I Get Along’ is one of them. Though it’s very much Carl Barât’s composition. It can be found as the closer on the band’s 2002 debut Up the Bracket.

Although the track is one that I can get along with (hehehe) I’ve gotta admit that after some years of knowing, listening, and singing to it I more or less mumble to what he’s saying in the verses. So my version, for example, if you were to hear me would be “You caught me in the middle, dazed and confused adduudduuduufuuduufuuduufududunah something ain’t quite right…” It’s not that hard to decipher what he’s saying…. I’ve just never really taken the time to try.

It’s a good rocker. A rapid burst of energy about living your life your way, getting by, letting things slide, not taking things too seriously, taking things in your stride, having a good time etc etc. It’s a song for those moments where everything’s going right and nothing could block your shine, you know? The song’s ethos is very much summed up in one lyric: “I get along just singing my song, people tell me I’m wrong…… Fuck ’em.” Yeah. You tell those people, Carl.

At the time the music video was being made  (as can be seen above) Doherty was AWOL for reasons that no one really knows but only speculate about. I did always think he was in jail, though. That left Barât, bassist John Hassall and drummer Gary Powell to do it themselves. The whole dynamic just isn’t right when you see it, so here’s the song performed live at the 2010 Reading and Leeds Festival when the band reunited after their initial split in 2004. What a time.