Honestly, I can’t remember where this was taken, or when. Quite some time ago, maybe 2007, 2008?
To Every Season
366 Songs 211: Where Do I Begin?
This song – Something that feels so incredibly 1990s and 1960s to me at the same time, with Beth Orton’s vocals feeling like something from a random, half-remembered folk act in the New Folk movement of the latter decade, playing against the psychedelia-influenced “Big Beat” of the Chemical Brothers – reminds me of the final year of my BA degree, the fact that Dig Your Own Hole (the album this came from) was playing in all of the studios, all of us feeding our heads with the same noises and the same influences as we tried to finish our work and find inspiration to be ourselves on paper and canvas and clay and whatever. This and Oasis’ (What’s The Story) Morning Glory?; echoing out from different doorways at different stages as you’d walk down the corridors. One of those sense memories that you find yourself suddenly transported by, without meaning to be.
Eleven Years Ago Never Looked So Good
This is amazing: 2001: A Space Odyssey recut as a contemporary movie trailer. It works so well that I’m almost sad that I’ve seen the movie already and it’s nowhere near as good as this promises.
(Via Marc Barnardin.)
366 Songs 210: Brianstorm
I love the energy of “Brianstorm,” the way that it just doesn’t drop below “intense” on the scale at any point throughout the whole thing. It’s such a young person’s song, in the best ways; the snarkiness in lines like “Brian/Top marks for not tryin'” – and what a rhyme that is – or “We can’t take our eyes off/Your t-shirt and tie combination,” the weird sloganeering of “See you later, elevator.” Or the jitteriness of the song, the restlessness that propels it through the just-under-three minutes that it lasts. This is what it feels like to be young.
366 Songs 209: Shame
I’m sure there are people who’d make fun of me for liking this song, and I can see why; there’s little original about it (The first time I heard it, the opening actually made me think “Oh, it’s like ‘Blackbird’ by the Beatles, but less new”), and it’s over-produced to a degree that almost feels impossible past the 1980s, and yet… And yet, it’s very sing-along-able, and it’s funny. It’s that last part that really makes it work for me – I’m not sure how much of the song is actually meant to be funny (The “So I got busy throwing everybody underneath the bus/And with your poster thirty foot high at the back of Toys’R’Us” part, definitely), but there’s some comedy for me in lines like “My tears could fill the Albert Hall/Is this the sound of sweet surrender?” nonetheless.
And, dammit, even though the vocals are weirdly transAtlantically flattened and the instruments over-produced, I still like the melody of this, deep down. No matter how much it owes to “Blackbird.” Which is, admittedly, a lot.
(Points to both Robbie Williams and Gary Barlow for the “Brokeback Boyband” video, too.)
HashtagSocialMediaFail
Meet the Conservative Minister of Parliament for Cannock Chase, everyone! As always, because it’s Twitter, start from the bottom and read up (He’s tweeting about the opening ceremony for the Summer Olympics, in case you can’t guess).
Social media isn’t that hard, people. Just don’t say anything that you’d be embarrassed for other people to see. Like, for example, the above.
Under The Unfinished Westway
Huh, interesting. William Orbit – fast becoming a Blur spoiler fan-favorite after working with the band on new material and then being dumped when they didn’t like the results – has released an earlier version of “Under The Westway” on YouTube:
It sounds unfinished and far less interesting/epic than the finished version, and I find myself amazingly grateful they didn’t go with this direction, but what’s really fascinating is an entire middle section that was dropped from the song as officially released (1:52-3:30) that’s… actually the best part of this version, and something that I almost wish had made it into the finished take. If nothing else, the bit about “On Friday night/In public houses/We are wonderful/Pathetic or just/Plain gone” is a lovely intro into the “It’s magic arrows hitting the bull!” part at the end…
(Now I’m very curious about what other bits have disappeared from familiar songs that I’d love. That box set filled with demos and unreleased material keeps tempting, dammit…)
The Headline Wasn’t Mine
In which my Time piece from this week has a Sally Field moment. Really, I’m just doing these now because history has taught me that one day I will no longer be writing these and I’ll want to remember that people liked them once*; next week’s piece – Thankfully, not about Batman because I am done with that guy for awhile – promises to be esoteric enough to not even make it into the top 20, never mind the top 10, don’t worry.
(* That’s not actually a joke; I remember writing some things for io9 that were popular and I liked, and now I wouldn’t even vaguely be able to tell you what they were. I just remember that period as one where I wasn’t popular enough, depressingly.)
366 Songs 208: Circle Sky
There’s a lot to love about “Circle Sky.” Where to start…?
Let’s go with the bassline, Peter Tork happily bobbing up and down the scale and keeping the whole thing grounded – There are times when it’s the clearest thing in the mix by far, weirdly enough – while Mike Nesmith outjangles the best of them and Mickey Dolenz drums his little heart out in the background (Davy Jones, as you can see in the video, doesn’t contribute that much, all told). Or Nesmith’s epic, half-yodel vocals as he sings about some kind of 1960s psychopolis that is “a very extraordinary scene to those who don’t understand” and yet, somehow, seems quite appealing the way he puts it.
It’s a song from Head, which for my money is the best ’60s band movie – Yes, better than any of the Beatles’ efforts – and one of the most interesting counterculture movies ever made, but also something that’s home to some of my favorite Monkees music; “As We Go Along,” “Long Title (Do I Have To Do This All Over Again),” even the version of “Daddy’s Song” – They’re all really good songs, and examples of the weird music hall psych pop(corn) that the Monkees offered at their best. None of the above, however, is why I chose this song for #208 in this series. No, instead, I chose it because – after something like three months of running behind, this entry finally means that I have caught up with the number of days in the year to date, meaning that I am – for the first time since February, I think – back on track for a “One Song A Day” plan for this series. “It looks like we’ve made it once again,” as Nesmith sings. Let’s see if I can keep up this pace so that I can get to the next line, “It looks like we’ve made it to the end!”
366 Songs 207: Dirty Harry
There are so many reasons why “Dirty Harry” shouldn’t work: It has a child’s choir, it’s lyrically very simplistic outside of the Bootie Brown rap, which itself has a political reference that was already dated by the time the song appeared (“So said the speaker/With the flight suit on/Maybe to him I’m just a pawn,” referencing George Bush’s Mission Accomplished speech from 2003). And yet… It’s kind of a great song. What happened?
It’s tempting to put it down the the production; Danger Mouse and Damon Albarn have definitely created a great backing for the vocals here, with the phased organ, funk guitars, horror movie strings and the wonderfully vacuum-ish swoop and dive as Bootie does his stuff (Listen to this version of the song without the rap to see what I mean; skip to the 2:10 mark:
It’s great, isn’t it?)
What’s fascinating to me is to hear the original demo for this song, which was released under an entirely different name (“I Need A Gun”) on Damon Albarn’s Democrazy album. It’s recognizable for the vocal hook, but nothing else:
Somewhere in the Gorillaz vaults, there are works-in-progress that show how this song went from that barebones demo to the final version; I’d love to hear them, and find out how the whole thing was built, piece by piece, with every new ingredient just seeming like a bad idea that somehow comes together.