THINGS I PUT ON THE INTERNET

The COLORS #86 News Machine

“Designed and built for the launch of COLORS #86 - Making the News, the COLORS News Machine churns your tweets through different media filters and into print, simulating the contemporary 24-hour news cycle.”

kapok ss13 lookbook — The Origami Wildlife

Joan Cornellá.

David O’Reilly’s episode of Adventure Time was phenomenal.

Steve Martin by Jason.

Ghost Rider.

iamdanw:

Sydvaranger gruve. Blast.mov (by rexnil)

Hayward Gallery - Light Show - Olafur Eliasson - Model for a Timeless Garden (by SouthbankCentre)

mythologyofblue:

Annie and Eliza Keary. The Heroes of Asgard and the Giants of Jötunheim, or, The Week and its Story (1857)

(geisterseher)

The Karasu-tengu from the Hansōbō (Kenchō-ji), Kamakura by brangal on Flickr.

Huginn & Muninn, smazuga.

Forget Me Knot, Sruli Recht.

userdeck:

Concrete lamp Beton by Matthias Kothe.

reverse of volume (2009), Onishi Yasuaki.

vermibus:

Anorexic (2012)

Dissolvent on paper
26,9 x 39,3 cm
From Kate Moss by Vermibus series.

Open Walls | Itinerant Street Art Gallery
Presents Vermibus & Chow Martin at Bright Tradeshow
Access is reserved to registered visitors. Register Now!
http://brighttradeshow.com/en/registration/buyer.html

CONCENTRATED – SRULI RECHT FW13 (from Style Zeitgeist)

Iakov Chernikhov #3 by Modern Alliance on Flickr.

nevver:

Black Hole tribute, Max Oppenheim

108.

107.

106.

105.

104.

103.

102.

101. Found by @megpickard.

100. Found by @megpickard.

99. Found by @megpickard.

98. Found by @megpickard.

97. Found by @megpickard.

96. Found by @ladytubedriver.

95. Found by @megpickard.

94.

93.

92.

91.

90.

89.

That’s that then. It was a good exercise, and I enjoyed most of it. I think there could have been some better questions, certainly there were some I didn’t feel too excited to answer. If you’d like to suggest any questions to answer, I’ll have a go.

I have a massive amount of thanks for my dad for letting me pick and choose from his music collection as a kid and for not trying to force anything upon me. That’s given me the freedom and licence to try out different things.

To conclude, here are a couple of playlists that can work as an incomplete archive of sorts: Spotify / YouTube.

If you’d like a physical compilation of all the tracks, drop me a line below and I will sort it out for you.

Say hello on last.fm, add me on Spotify and follow on twitter.

My main blog is over here.

Thanks for reading, this has been fun.

No Rain, Blind Melon (Blind Melon, Capitol; 1992)

In my previous job, my co-workers and I collaborated on a lot of things; mostly Spotify compilations.

The playlists started as just songs that we wanted to hear, liked or whatever and ended up being pretty stupid themed playlists taking in weather, food, clothing, colour, etc. A mix of forgotten gems, new pearls and awful dross, as is the nature. There was also plenty of Chief Kooffreh.

Blind Melon’s No Rain featured on every single one. It started out as a lovely slice of teenage nostalgia, of sitting in fields with crappy portable stereos drinking cheap warm booze. By the end, it was the unofficial anthem bonding together the workforce. A sing-a-long for the post-Generation X (apart from one, who was Generation X) working the nine-to-five but dreaming of freedoms outside. Finger-clicking, brushed drums, sickly sweet guitar and a pretty fey vocal took us out of the office and into parks with friends, beer and maybe a frisbee.

It became a running in-joke (not a particularly brilliant one) that a playlist wasn’t a playlist without it.

I’m sticking to that tradition.

LISTEN: Album recording.

WATCH: Commercial video.

Reward, The Teardop Explodes (Single, Mercury; 1981)

Of the few CDs we had in the house, there were a couple that I was particularly drawn to: Staring At The Sea (The Cure singles compilation, 1986) and a Punk & Disorderly compilation of New Wave.

I loved the cover of The Cure compilation because I liked the man’s face. Faces are very important for kids. The Punk & Disorderly compilation had that classic punk design, all torn paper, safety pins and bodged together typography. As a child, I didn’t know anything about design and just liked how messy it was. I listened to both endlessly, along with my Madness cassette and a couple of mixtapes my dad made me.

The P&D compilation was/is amazing, all sorts of acts were on it: Bow Wow Wow, Blondie, Subway Sect, Department S, Ian Dury & The Blockheads, Tenpole Tudor. A real mix of some brilliant punk/post-punk songs. All I knew is that they were great songs. My favourite track on the compilation was Reward by The Teardrop Explodes.

It is superb. All driving drums, parping trumpets, simple keyboard line and Julian Cope. Ah, Julian Cope. Such a way with words and melodies. Then, as now, the opening line “bless my cotton socks, I’m in the news” tickles me. My dad got annoyed with me playing the one song over and over and over again, so put Floored Genius (Best Of) onto a cassette for me. I was the coolest eight-year old around, striding around listening to The Teardrop Explodes on my walkman.

LISTEN: Single recording.

WATCH: Commercial video.

Down In It, Ning Inch Nails (Pretty Hate Machine, TVT/Island; 1989)

Do things. Always try to be good. Sometimes you can’t. Maybe you get too tired, maybe you’re not happy, maybe you just lose will-power. I was young and liked doing things, trying to be good. Sometimes failed.

Did things with someone I shouldn’t have. It was a naughty thing to do. It makes for good tales, really, but it’s not something I’m particularly proud of. I happened to be listening to this around that time. It’s associative, it soundtracked a period of not being the best person.

It’s still a great song, even if it is drenched in angst and youthful wrongs.

LISTEN: Album recording. [Soundcloud link]

WATCH: “Commercial video” / Live, Woodstock ‘94

Angel of Death, Slayer (Reign In Blood, American Recordings; 1986)

I’ve tried. I have. As mentioned yesterday, I’ve picked up instruments. I’ve put them down. In between, I tried to play them. It wasn’t successful. I have made some music, though. Mostly on synthesizer, as navel-gazing ambient drone music. It’s pretty bad.[1] I was also part of a pretty manly noise-jam trio that made ugly noise-jams. I’m quite proud of some of it.[2]

The thing that links the two outputs: there’s no songs, really. Just jams, free-form workouts and ideas being hashed out. I’ve never been comfortable writing lyrics in earnest. I think it’s the cheat’s way of writing poetry, and I don’t write poetry.

There’s plenty of music I wish I’d written — particularly the electro-acoustic pearl of C-Schulz & Hajsch, the incredible Pet Sounds, Rumours, or even just the simple concept of B Flat — but if it comes down to a song I wish I could play, it would always end up being a thrash song. It would always end up being Angel of Death.

As a boy growing up with an aggressive punk and metal streak, hearing Angel of Death was jaw-dropping. Genuinely, punch-in-the-stomach, slackjawed awe. It is fast, technical and hard as anything. The production is punchy where most ’80s thrash is thin on depth. There’s nothing I can say about Angel of Death that hasn’t been said a thousand times: the riffs, the scream, the solos, the drumming, the risqué lyrical content, the tempo-shifts & breakdowns — all perfect.

I’d love to be able to turn around to my twelve-year-old self and say: yes, I can play that. I’d blow my own mind. It’s better than gash ambient and jerk-off noise.

LISTEN: Album recording. / Live (Decade of Aggression)

WATCH: Live, 1986

[1] I dumped most of it on bandcamp just to purge it. Feel free to listen, and criticise. It’s all in mono (left) for some arsehole reason.

[2] There’s loads more, and this isn’t the best stuff. I need a twitter hashtag campaign to encourage uploading.

4’33”, John Cage (1952)

None. That’s simple. I’ll dallied with trying to play instruments off and on over the course of my life. The list of instruments I have picked up and put down include piano, clarinet, guitar, bass, organ, synthesizer, Jew’s harp. I keep coming back to keyboard-based instruments because I understand playing that more than I do guitars.

I can play 4’33” because anyone can, on any instrument. When I play, I lift the lid on my Yamaha electric organ and turn the power on. The next four and a half minutes are a unique composition of dirty contacts inside the organ, creaking stool, breathing and cars going by outside.

It’s pretty good. You should give it a go.

WATCH: BBC Symphony Orchestra performance.

Have I The Right, The Honeycombs (Have I The Right, RGM Sound; 1964)

A real gem of the 1960s pop-scene, produced by Joe Meek. It came towards the end of maverick producer Joe Meek’s chart-topping reign (having scored hits with Telstar and Johnny Remember Me).

Meek pioneered production techniques that resulted in unique sound effects and recordings. His production methodology and recording style were the result of being tone deaf, his experience of working as a radio production engineer, and being a paranoid obsessive. Meek was so paranoid, he felt Phil Spector had stolen his sound for his own “Wall of Sound”.[1]

Towards the mid-sixties, the growing popularity of Merseybeat bands signalled a shift in the sound of the UK Top 40. Meek decided to beat them at their own game and record a song with the biggest beat. Have I The Right is that song.

It’s a pretty standard jangly Beat song, all drums, chiming chords and English accent in the verse. The chorus is what makes me laugh. Meek couldn’t get a huge beat sound no matter how he recorded the drums, or how he set the microphones up. He felt that to make the biggest beat, he would have to do it differently.

To achieve the sound he wanted, he hooked five microphones up to the wooden stairs of his studio and had The Honeycombs stamp their feet. He then hit a tambourine directly onto a microphone. The result is a multi-tracked stomp that hit the top of the charts and delivered one of the finest musical jokes of his era.

LISTEN: Single recording. [Spotify link]

WATCH: Live video, 1964.

[1] To the extent that when Phil Spector phoned Meek to praise him, he simply told him to fuck off and hung up.

Happy Trails, Jim O’Rourke (Bad Timing, Drag City; 1997)

Your exerience, and memory of an experience, is all about punctuation. Your funeral is the end of your statement, and a last chance to influence people’s memory of you. Jim O’Rourke understands punctuation more than most.

This song fulfils two parts of O’Rourke’s musical angles: drone and John Fahey. It opens with a simultaneous open stringed guitar strum and overdriven drone. Both are given equal weight, both share space and overlap.

The drone flares and retreats as the guitar is casually played. Nothing much happens for three and a half minutes. The drone disappears to be replaced with mid-period Fahey acoustic playing. Bottom-string notes resonate as chiming top strings are gently plucked. It’s sweet, charming, occasionally dissonant, warm.

A tune is gradually worked out, rhythm and momentum grows slowly. You can hear the strings on the neck as they’re played.

Then the punctuation. A brass section, drumming, lap-steel, synthesizer, buried melodies appear. It is joyful, incredulous and can’t fail to make you smile. It’s over as quickly as it began, a maudlin strum taking over for the final ninety seconds, with a gentle flute, trombone and synthesizer coda.

Ten minutes, and you’ll remember the burst of brass more than anything. That will make you smile. You’ll leave feeling sad, but you’ll remember feeling happy.

Far too few funerals allow the happiness, that punctuation of joy, to come through. Hopefully mine will.

LISTEN: Album recording. [Soundcloud link]

Give Him A Great Big Kiss, The Shangri-Las (Give Him A Great Big Kiss, Red Bird;1965)

“When I say I’m in love, you best believe I’m in love — L.U.V.”

One of the greatest opening lines to any song[1], and what better way to start a wedding reception?

Handclaps, tambourines, trombones, drums with background ooh and ahhs — there’s no flourishes. It’s a simple, perfect song. A song of swooning love with all the attitude that made The Shangri-Las the best girl group: finger-clicking cool, sexually aggressive and honey sweet.

It mixes brilliant, reverb-drenched melodies with the conversational asides they made popular on Leader Of The Pack.

What colour are his eyes? / I dunno, he’s always wearing shades.

Give Him A Great Big Kiss is one of The Shangri-Las’ few “successful love” songs[2]. It has all the swagger, verve and joy of freshly minted love. The kind of love that makes you skip, talk endlessly about the object of your desire, and kiss in public. The kind of blushing love that makes you insufferable to be around if you are displaying it. Apart from on your wedding day, when it is applauded with John Lewis appliances and book tokens.

I’d want to play this at my wedding so my wife would remember how awesome I am.

LISTEN: Album recording. [Spotify link]

WATCH: Live, 1965.

[1] So good Nation of Ullysses & New York Dolls both borrowed it.

[2] they wrote a lot of Teenage Tragedy songs (Leader Of The Pack, Give Us Your Blessings)

To Be Of Use, Smog (Red Apple Falls, Drag City; 1997)

This sort of repeats on the ground covered over here. I would have put Great Ghosts by Mount Eerie as my answer if I hadn’t already. I’m not one, it turns out, to try to “turn that frown upside down” by listening to music anthithetical to my mood. I match it. Not wallow, or indulge, but ‘allow’ my mood.

I was re-introduced to Smog by a good friend several years ago, and marvelled particularly at Red Apple Falls. I was going through a Jim O’Rourke phase at the time, so absorbed anything he was involved in. His production of Red Apple Falls is flawless. Every guitar string, every horn, every snare and every word that Bill Callahan sings sounds immaculate.

There’s much to love on the album, so many songs to really lose yourself in: the upbeat Ex-Con, steel guitar-led I Was A Stranger and The Morning Paper with its dawn horns. Every song is perfect.

To Be Of Use nestles right in the middle of the album and is one of the sparser, more melancholic songs. A mournful guitar with the occasional flourish of lap-steel leaves Bill Callahan’s voice to fill the rest of the space. Forthright but gentle. The song easily mixes sexual selflessness with great feelings of (non-sexual) impotence, fantasies bleed with simple realities. It is of being, and not being.

That’s why I listen to it when sad. I am good at many many things, all valuable, yet I cannot pin down the one perfect product to be. I do not have the “hard, simple, undeniable use” that Callahan pines for in the song.

I think, ultimately, everyone pines for that. That’s sad.

LISTEN: Album recording. [Soundcloud link]

WATCH Live, 2003.

Songs For David, Honey Shop Screamers (Going Out Dancing, Do The Dog; 2002)

Happiness is the simplest emotion, yet it’s the hardest one to get right. When I’m happy I like to listen to simple music that will keep it going, stuff that can’t spoil. Ska and pop-punk tends to work for me.

Honey Shop Screamers came out of the North West pop-punk and ska-punk scene of the late ’90s. They were a classic ska/2-tone band in the vein of The Selecter, The Beat or The Specials, playing organ-driven, brass-filled upbeat catchy songs. There’s no I and I patois, or false American accents. It’s the voice of semi-rural North West England. A total anomaly in the era of bands wanting to sound like Pennywise, NOFX, Less Than Jake or Snuff.

Songs For David features everything that is great about HSS — choruses that stick in your head for weeks, great synthesiser/organ playing, well arranged brass sections, group vocals and superb lyrics.

It captures the sound of small-town living, finding things to do to pass the time. Getting up to mischief with your best mates, breaking stuff, writing on walls and ending up in places with people you shouldn’t. Real simple pleasures that you can’t really do as a grown-up.

Honey Shop Screamers are also the start point for the equally excellent (but different) Victor FME, Vegetables, National School, and Hot Club De Paris.

LISTEN: Album recording. [Soundcloud link]

Luau, Drive Like Jehu (Yank Crime, Interscope; 1994)

Drive Like Jehu are another band that is the centre point of many other brilliant bands: Pitchfork, Hot Snakes, Rocket From The Crypt, Obits, The Sultans, The Night Marchers.

With Drive Like Jehu, Rick Froberg and John Reis (Speedo) laid down the template for post-hardcore/emo that sadly few have followed up. There are exceptions for the likes of Antioch Arrow, Swing Kids, Planes Mistaken for Stars, Das Oath, but it’s strained. Drive Like Jehu are technical but not too complex, full of riffs without being metal, mid-tempo without being ‘mosh’ heavy and carry a large amount of a tune in their shouting.

They’re the sweet-spot of emo. When emo was emotional hardcore, not crying about late developing pubic hair or being out of Coke Zero. Anger raging alongside introspection, self-analysis and personal politics.

I guess that is why if I’m forced to select a song for when I’m angry, I would reach for Drive Like Jehu. Whenever you’re angry, it’s not always outside causes. There’s a great deal of personal responsibility for it. You have to question why you’re angry, and what you’ve done to encourage that. I used to be angry a lot, but I’m more measured now.

I first heard Luau on a Lord Clothing skate video (VHS), the same place I first heard Texas Is The Reason. Lord skate videos were aggressive, really earnest and full of great songs.

Luau captures that brilliant point between control and anger, of containment and release. It’s all over the place. It starts with a guitar strum, drums and bass hold down a tight rhythm. Rick Froberg’s vocals and guitar cut in and it gets messy. Notes, riffs, drum fills fire off in all directions. It’s chaos, before a calm, brilliantly stripped down middle-section.

What more could you want?

LISTEN: Album recording. [Spotify link]

WATCH: Hot Snakes live cover, 2005.

Anyone Can Have A Good Time, Owls (Owls, Jade Tree; 2001)

Owls are one of the pearls along the Joan of Arc continuum. It was the first time that the core of Cap’n Jazz got together to record new material. Not as Cap’n Jazz, but a totally new band.

Owls is stripped of the “studio-as-instrument” concept that led 1997-2001 Joan of Arc, and is a more matured version of Cap’n Jazz’s youthful exhuberance. It’s tempered, clean and pure, clocking in at a perfect thirty-five minutes. It sounds totally different, but with echoes.

Anyone Can Have A Good Time distills all that is excellent on this album. There’s smart-alec wordplay, in-jokes and obscure cultural references. Words become an instrument in themselves, providing rhythms, unexpected notes, slipping in and out of the real instruments. Musically, it is full of glistening arpeggios, blunt bass, powerful drumming with delicate fills. Time signatures are well off the beaten track. Kinsella’s broken vocals manage to carry an unconventional/off-tune brilliantly. It walks the line between overwrought and smirking, pretentious and earnestness.

Language jokes abound on the album, but there are the occasional couplets that genuinely inspire emotions and shivers, especially on “Anyone Can…”. The outro features the Kinsella brothers sharing lyrics — “we fall into patterns quickly / we fall in patterns too quickly” — before a trademark Tim Kinsella howl of “unname everything, unname everyone” repeats until close. That’s lovely.

The album is just superb. There’s lot to take in over the thirty-five minutes. It demands repeated listens.

After nearly ten years of playing it, I’m still overawed by so much in it.

LISTEN: Album recording.

WATCH: Live, circa 2001. [Enjoy Tim’s unique style of dancing]

Sever, Karate (Unsolved, Southern; 2000)

This was going to be “Age of Aquarius/Let The Sunshine In (Medley)” by Fifth Dimension, but I actually heard it on the radio two days ago. It was as good as I thought that would be. Joyous.

In lieu of that brilliant slice of Christ-filled love, I offer Sever by Karate. Karate were an American band that fit somewhere in a Venn diagram between jazz, indie and late-’80s SST Records bands like fIREHOSE and Slovenly.

Sever is one of the more ‘indie rock’ songs on an otherwise jazzy guitar record. It’s a throwback to a time that never really was: the golden age of beret, polo necks and Gitane. It starts off with a swerving Yacht Rock guitar line underpinned by the tightest rhythm section, strutting with an effortlessly cool hipster vibe. Geoff Farina’s vocals fall somewhere between library assistant and beatnik loner. There are various breaks, jazz and blues, adding space between the rock sections and verses.

Written down, it’s awful. Recorded, it’s incredibly special.

The reason I’d like to hear this on a radio is that it immediately makes me feel more cocksure, it ups my gait to a determined stride and transplants me from wherever I am to an infinitely more happening scene. Man.

LISTEN: Album recording. / Live, 595. [Spotify links]

Legs, ZZ Top (Eliminator, Warner Bros; 1983)

I don’t really listen to the radio. It’s not because it generally lacks music that I like, but because I can’t stand radio DJs. Their jobs are 40% playing music, 60% wasting time with inane comments, phone-ins or booth sound-effects. Aggravating.

When I do come to listen to the radio, I end up going for a non-DJ station. “All music, no talk.” It’s the best possible way. There’s nobody talking over the intro or outro of songs. Key, as well, there is nobody telling you what the song is. It turns listening to the radio into a bit of a game, guessing the song, getting it first. Competitive listening is fun.

My partner and I tend to listen to The Arrow on digital when we’re doing Spring cleaning, or having a massive household chore-drive. It plays the songs that were on cassettes in your dad’s car: Led Zeppelin, AC/DC, Eric Clapton, Free, Rolling Stones, Status Quo.

Doesn’t sound too appealing, but it is “all rock classics,” and that means smiling and singing along without prejudice. The song that I tend to hear, and absolutely bloody love, is Legs by ZZ Top. ZZ Top have always seemed like Americana interpreted by Japanese people: absolutely drenched in US symbolism, blues simulacra and metonyms.[1] They’re pretty incredible.

Legs is a great song. It’s arpeggiated synth-blues, with classic electric blues guitars on top and great melodies. Legs came out a year before Van Halen’s synth-metal landmark Jump and should be just as big in ironic, retro clubs and sincere record-collectors homes.

LISTEN: Album recording.

WATCH: Great video.

[1] They also make me think of Blues Hammer in Ghost World, too.

Blind, Korn (Blind, Immortal/Epic; 1994)

I’m in a rut here. I’ve not been happy with my answers to the last couple of questions, I’m not going to be happy with this one. I am blaming the question; it is not sufficient, or understanding.

Every song I’ve ever loved can be justified (in some way, through different means). I don’t love them all any more, but they still retain a special piece of my life in them. I will drop an ex-love on a mixtape for the knowing laugh of the listener. A song by Stone Temple Pilots, Cecil, Mad Caddies, Rachel Stamp or any number of shockingly bad detuned metal bands that soundtracked my growing hair in unusual places.

I am however, embarrassed by a hell of a lot of these songs. I can laugh about it now, but having taken Korn’s Blind seriously makes me cringe.

It’s a great song, it heralded a new era of metal (nü), and gave a whole generation of tit-biscuit metallers something annoying to shout in people’s faces (“are you ready?”). Jesus, though, it’s awful.

I stand by liking it when I was 11—13, that’s prime pubescent rage period, but it doesn’t half make my skin crawl that I did.

LISTEN: Album recording. / Possibly the worst version of anything, ever.

WATCH: Commercial video.

(You) [I] Can Not See (You) [Me] As (I) [You] Can, Joan of Arc (The Gap, Jade Tree; 2000)

I’m stumped. Thoroughly stumped. I couldn’t answer this when I started, and I can’t answer it now. Pretty sure I can’t. I don’t want to ascribe a set of lyrics that really “define who I am”. That’s very teenage, and I’ve long since passed those years.

I was trying to find a song that has the textures that represent the horribly contradictory things I am. I’m going to be semi-obvious, and go for Joan of Arc’s (You) [I] Can Not See (You) [Me] As (I) [You] Can. I can’t reconcile what I am with what I am seen as being. I’m not a cunt, but often thought to be one.

Simple enough strummed guitar. Wavering, off-key vocals fractured by turning microphone off and on. There’s a warm synthesiser underneath, a field recording of people in the background. It swells to a blissful vocal, synth and feedback drone at the end. There’s lots going on, but only the awkward stuff sticks.

How that is me, if I’m to explain myself: it’s pretty arsey, quite obtuse, it’s definitely seen as pretentious. In reality, it’s someone working through ideas, seeing if they work, having a bit of fun with them. There’s a good dose of titting about with grammatical syntax and wordplay. There’s also a surprising amount of warmth underneath.

There’s a distinct likelihood that a lot of people won’t like it, some will like it and not know why, and some will just get it and love it.

I can’t say this is 100% descriptive of me, but find me a song that does and I’ll buy you dinner.

LISTEN: Album recording / Live in Muenster, 2003

Goodbye Horses, Q Lazzarus (Married To The Mob OST, Reprise; 1988)

I struggled with this one and needed outside perspective. I didn’t really get any that was particularly helpful. Suggestions included The Wombles, Band Aid, The Smiths, Sugababes, The Wonderstuff and Coheed & Cambria. I don’t like any of them, which is no surprise.

The only useful answers were: “Anything that more than 100 people might like, or something that they play on the wireless.” or “Anything good with a decent tune.”

A pop song, then. I thought I’d demonstrated that with Madness, Springsteen and Wings.

Fine. Goodbye Horses by Q Lazzarus. You may not know the song, but you’ll recognise it from the Buffalo Bill “tucking” scene in Silence Of The Lambs.[1]

It’s a perfect fit for that: unsettling, odd, and just a little bit androgynous. The main synthesiser sounds a half-note out of tune. The drums seem recorded in a reverb chamber. The vocals are borderline drag-act.

Nothing much happens in it, it leaves a slightly empty, unfulfilled feeling at the end. It’s a haunting song and one that I can play on repeat.

LISTEN: Single version. [Soundcloud link]

WATCH: Buffalo Bill, dubbed in French

[1] It was originally on the Married To The Mob soundtrack, and has also featured on the GTA IV and Skate 3 in-game soundtracks.

Band On The Run, Paul McCartney & Wings (Band On The Run, Apple; 1973)

There’s no good reason that this song should fall into the “guilty pleasure” category. It’s a great song. It was a commercial and critical success at the time of its release, it has aged remarkably well.

Paul McCartney gets an undue amount of stick for his post-Beatles career. Mainly because he’s alive. He’s not the gentle soul of George Harrison. He’s not the politicised artist of John Lennon. He’s not even laughable enough to be Ringo. Unfortunately for Paul McCartney, he’s just the one who kept writing good songs, didn’t die, didn’t marry an avant garde Japanese artist or voice a tank engine.

John Lennon’s solo output is almost unlistenable, self-reflective, arrogant bullshit masquerading as art. George Harrison’s solo stuff is fine, but really went too far down the Hare Krishna route.

No matter. The words “Paul McCartney and Wings” just inspire dread, revulsion and possibly flashes of Alan Partridge when heard. I find that sad. “Oh, I hate Mull of Kintyre.” Despite widely held prejudices, everyone loves Live And Let Die. That is almost the best post-Beatles song, but it’s not.

Band On The Run is.

Band On The Run is so deceptively amazing as to confuse people into thinking it’s terrible. Most people think they know the song because they can belt out the title-chorus at the end. Think about how it starts, though. That’s odd. Intertwined, shimmering guitars, a lovely synthesizer, great simple bassline. Slightly nasal McCartney trademark melodies drop in. Wonderful.

Ninety seconds in, all the instruments become harder. The bass is more powerful. The rhythm guitar picks up more of a riff, lead guitar plays some pretty obtuse stuff and the synth is right up front. Darker melodies. Barely forty seconds later and there’s another brilliant section: a grand semi-orchestral break, a shift to upbeat acoustic song belting out Band On The Run.

There are three distinct, cleanly connected sections in the song. It’s a real journey, they all hang together perfectly. There’s no showing off, bleating about being avant-garde, but this is a masterful, odd song that should not be considered guilty.

LISTEN: Album recording. [Soundcloud link]

WATCH: Live, Seattle, 1976.

America, Razorlight (Razorlight, Mercury; 2006)

Without integrity and authenticity, music is nothing. You can make good songs by following a formula (hello, Stock, Aitken and Waterman), but if they haven’t got a soul behind them, they count for shit.

My background is in the “often” elitist scenes of indie and punk. They’re both awful. Scenes are, they breed standardisation and formula. There is a lot of authentic, sincere bands that get lost because more cynical bands write songs that aim for the record labels, and the charts.

If your band has a five-year plan, you’re probably a massive prick.

Razorlight are that band. Not happy with describing himself as “better than Dylan” and “the greatest songwriter of [his] generation” in a skin-crawling attempt to get press coverage (NME, happily, lap it up), Johnny Borrell also writes horrendous songs. Not just horrendous songs, but vile, cynical songs that aim directly at the naïve, emotionally-stunted freshman dancefloor. He affects the troubled artist that is so romantic to the white-tights and dolly shoe brigade.

After effectively hoodwinking a generation of clueless British indie-kids, Razorlight set their sights on the Big Market. America is their barely concealed plea to be taken in to the hearts of US corporate indie, joining The Killers, Kings of Leon, John Mayer and all the other soulless bastards on the cunt-carousel.

It’s not even a “good song.” It’s a mawkish, overly sentimental song with pathetic lyrics and ‘sombre’ guitar lines. Tortured artist shows himself again, having trouble sleeping and sad that there’s nothing on television he can relate to.

It’s a meaningless, awful song and it hurts to hear it.

LISTEN: Album recording. [Spotify link]

UPDATE: I’ve been informed that this song was written by the drummer. That makes it even worse.