Tag Archives: want

#1123: They Might Be Giants – Rhythm Section Want Ad

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They Might Be Giants’ first album from 1986 is my personal favourite by the band. It’s not like the debut is where they peaked and everything else that followed paled in comparison. It’s just that the record very much shows the two Johns at their most eccentric, kind of brash and unapologetically unconventional, before they dialled things down a bit and went for a more warmer tone on their sophomore effort. The most avid TMBG fan will tell you that even though the first album is great, its second half may just get a bit too strange for its own good. I’m all for it, though. Tracks like ‘Chess Piece Face’, ‘I Hope That I Get Old Before I Die‘ and ‘The Day’, as unique as they are, wouldn’t be ones to bust out at the social gathering. You’ll get to the album’s last track and you’ll think, “Well, after all that, how could this record possibly close out?” It does so with one of the band’s greatest songs in their whole discography.

Before co-founding TMBG, John Linnell performed as a keyboard player in a short-lived new wave band The Mundanes. You can see him here, usually in the peripheral area when the camera is focusing on the guitarists or lead singer Marsha Armitage. Linnell left that band to form a new one with his good friend John Flansburgh, and with this exciting new venture was inspired to write a lyric acting as something of a mission statement. According to Linnell’s former bandmate John Andrews (another John), Linnell spontaneously started singing it one day while they were working together – not too long after forming TMBG. So here the Giants were, a new band for the 1980s, a musical duo consisting of an accordion player and a guitar player, no drummer, no bassist. But surely no band could be a band without a rhythm section, right? Well, no. And Linnell and Flansburgh were here to show you how it could be done.

Alongside the mission statement aspect of the song, the lyric reads as a big tribute to the ’80s in general, albeit with some witty remarks on how artists and musicians would usually get the short end of the stick. Like how poets and their fans will come together across the street from a corporate office where the real ‘pros’ are working.But Linnell says tells us to forget about ‘the man’, shouting out MDC and Menudo, Eurythmics (who, as it says in the lyric, someone thought the two Johns must be into – that wasn’t the case), general bands with girl lead singers… It’s a call out to the styles of the era, where people could use hats as megaphones, or have hairstyles made of bones. Seems like anything could be done in the ’80s. And now here were They Might Be Giants, a new band to add to the melting pot. Linnell embarks on a rapid-fire vocal delivery, matching the bustling/blistering pace of the music and making for one of his most engaging vocal takes. Expressive as ever, each lyric he provides appears to possess a different melody, rising and falling constantly before leaping to a height for the title mentions and eventually culminating in the track’s final word. It’s such a damn fun song. A damn fun song to close out a damn fun album. It couldn’t have gone any better.

#585: The Beatles – I Want to Tell You

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The fifth Beatles entry so far in the “I”‘s. Told you yesterday, there’s more to come still. Though in comparison to yesterday, with ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’ being one of those diamond compositions written by the iconic pairing of Lennon/McCartney, ‘I Want to Tell You’ was written by the band’s lead guitarist George Harrison. The upload above has very poor audio quality, clearly to avoid copyright infringment, so please… try and listen to it on a streaming service or something. Damn Apple Corps.

Revolver, the album on which the track can be found, is my favourite Beatles album. It’s a ten out of ten. Every song on there is great. Well, ‘Yellow Submarine’ is okay. And it also saw the three main songwriters have somewhat of an equal share of the tracklisting with Harrison having three songs allowed on there, one of them being ‘Taxman’ which starts the whole thing off – that’s for another time.

For about two years straight ‘I Want to Tell You’ was always on in my head. Upon hearing Revolver for the first time it was the song that I always kept on repeating endlessly. So much so that it was my most played song in my iTunes library for about two years. It’s not the one on the album that you would find many people talk about, compared to ‘Eleanor Rigby’ or ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’, though for me it always had that quality that gave it that edge.

The excitement is all set up in those opening fifteen seconds or so. The fade-in with the hanging guitar line reels you in, the first striking piano chord along with Ringo’s snare hits keeps you still, the shaking of maracas somehow build up this sense of anticipation for what’s to follow…. and what does follow is a bouncy joint about confusion and errors in communication when in a relationship.

Harrison along with Lennon and McCartney sound like they’re having a good time in the studio just because of their vocal performances, when the latter two come in for their harmonies they sound on form, especially during the ending when Paul goes all crazy on the higher notes. It’s very upbeat, I sang along from ages 14-16… it’s good to put on every now and then.

#584: The Beatles – I Want to Hold Your Hand

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Been almost a month since I was last here…. I’m sorry. Can’t say I’ve tried to keep to my earlier statement of doing a blog at least every Sunday. The posts will arrive in due time. Just been suffering from a lack of motivation. Not in a bad way, it’s just work. Weekends have really been reserved for laying down and sleeping.

Recently I decided to listen to all the songs on my phone in alphabetical order during my morning/evening commutes. Only because the shuffle system on iPhones is very poor. In doing so I’ve only properly realised how many songs by The Beatles (that I personally enjoy) begin with the letter ‘I’. There’s a lot of them to come in this ‘I’ series. ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand’ was the hit that made the four lads huge in the USA, and pretty much everywhere else.

There are some days when I listen to this thing and think it’s just too sappy. The lyrics are too simple and on the nose…. A song like this would never be taken seriously in today’s musical climate. Though the majority it’s just like….. fuck that. This song’s great for all of those reasons. John Lennon and Paul McCartney sing their chests out on this one, singing in unison and in perfect harmony…. The musicality between the four of them is just wild and thrilling but tight and controlled. It rocks without trying too hard. It’s just a good pop song, it can’t be denied.

Again, when it comes to The Beatles and YouTube – it’s very hard to find their official stuff because their record label always takes their music down when you try and upload it. There is an actual video for it; it’s not up just yet. Still, below’s the performance taken from the Ed Sullivan show when John, Paul, George and Ringo appeared on American television for the first time and owned it.

#570: Ween – I Don’t Want It

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I was about 18 when I listened to The Mollusk for the first time when looking for new music to get into. That album was released in 1997 so it’s not new by any means, but you know looking out for stuff that I’d just never heard before. I got to love that album but then I never thought about really digging into the rest of the band’s discography.

Fast forward to 2015. Twenty years old, just started a new job for my placement year. Things are going good. I was at home just chilling in the evening as you do before going to work again the next day and out of curiosity I decided to listen to GodWeenSatan: The Oneness on Spotify…… There was no turning back. I dove deeper into the hole that had opened beyond my ears. I’ve been properly listening to Ween for just over two years now, and I am convinced that they might be the greatest band on this planet. No one really knows it though.

And so, the first Ween song I’m able to cover is ‘I Don’t Want It’, the tenth song on the group’s 2003 album Quebec. The album arrived at the end of a dark period during the band’s original run in which drummer Claude Coleman almost died in a severe car accident and lead vocalist Aaron Freeman (Gene Ween) going through a crummy divorce. ‘I Don’t Want It’ is the song about that crummy divorce and depicts Freeman’s feelings about the whole situation. It’s a sad song, to put it straight, perfectly capturing the moment of realisation when a breaking relationship has come to an end. It’s obviously for the best, though the love is still there that you don’t want to let go.

For the most part the track is played straight. Verse, chorus, verse, chorus. Things slow down afterwards, a short break occurs, and then suddenly a burst of guitar feedback kicks in leading into one of the most glorious guitar solos I’ve heard, drowning out almost every other instrument, echoing into the abyss and backed by some heavenly ‘aah’ vocals. For a time I did think it was lead guitarist Mickey Melchiondo (Dean Ween) doing this solo. Why not? If there’s a solo in any other Ween song, it’s usually him who pulls them off. Then it dawned on me that it could possibly be Freeman himself… Turned out that it was, which made it all the more powerful and heartbreaking to me. It’s perfect.

My iPod #285: Franz Ferdinand – Do You Want To

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After a year and a bit of waiting, “Do You Want To” was Franz Ferdinand’s ‘we’re back’ single in 2005, their first one from their then upcoming second album “You Could Have It So Much Better” with Franz Ferdinand. The band went on to shorten the name.

I remember the first time I watched the “Do You Want To” video well. And the second time…. and the third. And so on. That’s because (after, again, premiering the day before on Channel 4) it was repeated every hour on MTV2. The band pretend to be drunk, or just act really stupidly, at a casual gathering. It seemed that they were pleased that everybody’s favourite Scottish band had returned, after what seemed like a long, long… long year and a bit. It was very hard to hear the same thing over and over without getting a bit sick of it; fortunately it isn’t an annoying track.

The anticipation towards a night out is the subject of many songs. Take this one, for example. That is what “Do You Want To” is about too. But in this case, Alex has his eyes on someone that he wants to take out for a night in the town. That someone is the listener… and we are very lucky to be chosen. With the infectious “doo doo doos” and the memorable chorus, it’s very hard to refuse Alex’s offer.