This song was the third single from the band’s fifth studio album called How We Operate  and is the first album that they didn’t produce themselves and has a more feel good, popier sound than any of their other albums and see the world  is a good example of this. With it’s catchy hooks, beautiful melody and some nice harmonies if they ever wanted a radio hit then this song would be it.

To me the song is dealing with a friend that’s lost his way a little bit and won’t listen to any of his friends as in the verse below he refer’s to his friend as a ’soldier’ that’s lost his ‘composure’.

‘You seem like a soldier
Who’s lost his composure
You’re wounded and play a waiting game
In no-man’s land no-one’s to blame’

The chorus provides some advice to this friend regardless of whether they want it or not. The advice tells the friend to relax and enjoy life and don’t take things too seriously.

‘See the world
Find an old fashioned girl
And when all’s been said and done
It’s the things that are given, not won
Are the things that you earned’

There is two reason’s why I really like this song even though there is more rockier songs on the album, songs that I would normally prefer and one of the reason’s is the fact that the context of song deals with friendship and those days when you try to reach out to a friend but they don’t want to listen. Its the delievery of this context that’s really the clincher for me. It is so spirited and uplifting. I dare anyone to tell me that this is not a dinky little number.

The second reason is that Ben Ottewell is on vocal duty…say no more. Check out the  video of song.

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While The Bends was an excellent album, with a top-rate set of guitar-based songs that dealt with isolation, paranoia and a general feeling of dread, 1997’s OK Computer was a revelation. The verse-chorus-verse structure was subverted, the lyrics tried to make metaphors of the daily commute, European integration, loud taling and German automotive engineering. Instead of talking about his own maladjustment, lead singer Thom Yorke widened the issue to include a general malaise in society, one that was directly linked to the way we lived.

For the millions of us on the comedown from Britpop’s hollow journey, this rang very true. Coming as the first single off of OK Computer, ‘Paranoid Android’ was one of the most unlikely hits of all time, while at the same time being strangely comforting in how weird and “far out” it was.

The song is split into four sections, starting with acoustic guitar and a soft guitar figure, with Yorke crying in a high-pitched voice about the “unborn chicken voices in my head”. The first of several great riffs has him dragging out the words “What’s that”. Feelings of impending dread and doom were never felt so keenly since Ian Curtis.

While the song shifts gears, with new riffs and tempos introduced and left behind, Yorke aims at familiar Radiohead themes like ruthless ambition, arrogance, egotism, business networking and so on, juxtaposing these targets with “off with his head”, “panic”, “vomit” and other disturbing feelings.

The general impact on the listener is that the protagonist is having a really bad time at some event or other, and fantasises secretly about molotov-ing (verb?) the whole place, nay the whole world. Vintage Thom Yorke, in other words.

The video is a story on itself - check the Wikipedia article for the background on this. Musically, it’s amazing, especially with headphones on in a darkened room (which I always called “the Pink Floyd experience”). Guitars duel with each other over intermittent feedback bursts, the bass goes all over the register, and the drums switch tempo as the canvas for the madness.

So, then, truly a great moment in music - and OK Computer is the first time I heard an album and considered it a classic on first listen. Here’s the video for ‘Paranoid Android’.

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The song Not a Job is the third single from the album Cast of Thousands - a stark, layered album dealing with real issues affecting almost everybody - love, drinking, etc although the lyrics often seem, to me at least, to be complex and indecipherable but this song is probably one the most accessible songs on the album (along with Buttons and Zips) in terms of reaching a general audience with it’s beautiful, soft melody. For the most part I think I do get this song as its a breakup song but he’s still hurting and coming to rash decisions which everybody that experiences this comes too. The cold light of day often brings a different perspective.

Words to make her stay: you said
Leave me and the plants die
A panic smile across your face
Corrugated browline
The hissing bitter punchline
Call when you can tie your lace

From this verse he is still bitter over the breakup and the emotions are still raw as ‘when you can tie your  lace’ seems full of contempt for the ex although he does seem to admit this, in a roundabout way from the line above ‘the hissing bitter punchline’. While I did state that their lyrics can be complex and indecipherable, it is still their strongest weapon when you do understand them in someway. An example of complex lyrics in this song are:

‘The dream again nobody understands
Walking through the long grass on your hands
It’s not a job to do today
Sleep it off’

Sometimes I think he’s just saying that nobody understands his feelings better than himself and to explain them is like ‘Walking through grass on your hands’ which could be a metaphor for why bother? but he will bother another time. To summarise what I really think about them is…they are a compelling listen at the worst of times.  Here is a link to the video they made for the song.

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An extremely simple song, both musically and lyrically, it’s still an exhilirating listen, and would make an excellent song to drink to or put on at a party. The bass and power chording guitar play the same riff the whole way through, while the singer demonises Katrina, which I initially thought was some girl.

But listening to the lyrics, you realise it’s really about Hurricane Katrina (how slow am I on the uptake?) - lines like “you saw a highway down in New Orleans” pretty much give it away.

The guitar solo comes in bursts of high-pitched fretwork and feedback, reminiscent of Raw Power-era Stooges or the Velvet Underground. It adds nicely to the punky feel of the song.

All in all, a simplistic song that’s a damn good listen. The video is here.

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Safe From Harm was the third single from their debut album Blue Lines and is probably not the most well known song, we’ll have to give that to Unfinished Symphony, from what is a truely exceptional album in terms of production, experimentation and courage, yes courage in a sense of bravery to try something new. I’ve alway’s liked Massive Attack, even up to this day so I was somewhat dissappointed when I saw them live at the electric picnic 07 but that was probably more because of the high expectation from me as opposed to the performance of the band itself.

With vocalist Shara Nelson at the helm and 3D providing the ‘hop’ element the song’s beat is heavily, if not totally, sampled from the great jazz Panamanian drummer Billy Cobham’s song Stratus, well the begining of Cobham’s song anyway. The song quickly gets into the rythm with great intent. The song always reminds me of a human’s or animal’s instinct to protect those they love when Nelson sings the line

‘if you hurt what’s mine, I’ll sure as hell retaliate’

and could be extended even further to include inanimate objects that are very important to someone. To me the line totally encapsulates human behaviour in society in general whether they are trying to protect loved ones or trying to surive. The line is almost a Darwinian statement and is repeated a number of times throughout the song. Another line that I like in the song is

‘I was lookin’ back to see if you were lookin back at me To see me lookin back at you’

The line doesn’t necessarily hold any meaning for me but instead it’s the dichotomy betweens 3D’s rapper’s voice and Nelson’s beautiful voice that intrigue’s me and really bring the song to a higher level. Here is the origional video of the song which is itself pretty cool.

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As much a product of the times as the synth and mullet was to the ’80s, ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ (Wikipedia page) was nonetheless revolutionary. The Beatles were always slightly outside the whole ‘hippie’ developments of the 1960s, and yet they led the trend for all other bands to follow.

Obviously based on concepts and ideas developed by Lennon in the midst of an LSD trip, the song juxtaposes Olde Englishe whimsy with a surrealism that rivals Picasso and Dali, and was to be taken to its logical conclusion with ‘I Am The Walrus’. In Strawberry Fields (in reality a Salvation Army house in Liverpool), reality is just another side of the the illusion, yet there’s “nothing to get hung about”. The lyrics resemble the random, idiosyncratic conversation that takes place on such drugs. On a couple of occasions, Lennon tries to make a point about growing up, togetherness and society, but then backs away with a carefree “It doesn’t matter much to me”.

Musically, ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ is a revelation, quite unlike anything the Beatles had heretofore recorded. Although 1966’s Revolver album had given us songs like ‘I’m Only Sleeping’ and ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’, with ‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ Lennon left us in no doubt as to what he’d been taking.

The intro starts with a mellotron, and the song is composed in an unusual key with some unorthodox chords - quite difficult to play on the guitar. Certain chord progressions are avoided, leaving the listener with a sense that things really are not quite what they seem. Several elements of the song - the softly-played guitar, Ringo’s phased drums, vari-speeded multiple takes and Lennon’s breathy vocal - all contribute to a feeling of time slowing down slightly…

‘Strawberry Fields Forever’ has, of course, long since become a standard. I think I first heard it sung in a playground when I was four or five. It says a lot about the Fab Four that such a subsersive song can be accepted so readily into popular culture. But listening to this song with fresh ears is a real revelation, and if you’re one of those people who say they’re “not that gone on The Beatles”, then maybe it’s time you had a fresh listen to this (nice video too).

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The song Fortunate Son is taken from their fourth studio album Willy and the Poor Boys and their third album of that year (how come bands of that era were so prolific eh?) the song again deals with the Vietnam War but I don’t consider this a protest song in the same vein as Dylan’s Masters of War or Edwin Starr’s War as both of these songs, and protest song’s in general, criticise war itself and the generals that run the war. This song, to me, is more about American society, but could be generalised to most western world countries, and how if you have money you can be absolved from many things including the possiblity of going to war because you were born ‘with a silver spoon in hand’  or were a ‘millionaire’s son’ . One of the sadest things in modern society is the inequality of people based on money as well as race, culture and creed.

John Fogarty is solo these days and a few months back he appeared on the Jools Holland Show and while he looked a bit weather beaten, his voice remains as strong today as it ever was. Check out a video for the song live in 1969. I’m probably opening myself up for a public flogging here but I alway’s think that CCR were the American version of that great English band The Kinks. 

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Samuel Barber, who was Irish-American and thus stakes a claim for the only appearance of an Irishman in classical music (I await correction on this), is really only remembered for this composition, though that probably does the man a disservice. Influenced by Bach and Brahms, he represented more an evolution of classical music than an original voice, and experimented with different genres such as jazz later in his career, which ran from the 1930s on.

Barber was a closeted homosexual, served in the Air Corps in WW2, and went into a depression-fuelled isolation for several years after his Opera for Antony & Cleopatra did not meet the critical acclaim he felt it deserved. I’ve never heard any of his other work, but only 27 years after his death in 1981, Barber has at least contributed one vital piece to the classical Canon.

The piece is quite repetitive around a central theme - in classical music lingo this is referred to as “arch form”. The melody quivers up the note scale, first with violins, then cellos, and finally with violas. As it moves up the register, the notes become almost drone-like, It starts quite slow-paced, but builds up noticeably as it comes to each crescendo. After the first peak is a slight fall-off down the register and a silence, which only adds to the sheer mournfulness of the composition. Little wonder that it was played at the funeral of Franklin D. Roosevelt.

The piece was most famously used as Willem Dafoe’s Elias runs from the Vietnam jungle before being cut down by enemy fire, and falls into the famous Jesus Christ pose that we see on the cover of Platoon. It’s also used in the moving final scene of The Elephant Man, where John Merrick (John Hurt’s eyes and lots of makeup) lies down and dies, having just received a standing ovation. It was also voted “Saddest Classical Work Ever” by BBC listeners.

‘Adagio for Strings’ is also well-known from remixes performed by DJ Tiesto and William Orbit, and it’s to its testament that it fits so appositely to dance music. Toscanini, one of the greatest conductors of all, performed it in its first rehearsal, and could only say: “Semplice e bella”. Simple and beautiful.

You can hear the piece on YouTube here, along with some scenes from Lynch’s movies. And if you get a chance, rent out The Elephant Man. It’s the second David Lynch movie I’ve seen in a fortnight, and it’s a disturbing but compelling show, and one of the best English movies I’ve ever seen from an American director.

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About a year ago I then got my hands an album of theirs and today’s song is taken from that fourth studio album of theirs called Somewhere Between Heaven and Hell. I haven’t yet had the chance to check out any of their other albums so I can’t qualify what type of they are but from listening to the above mentioned album I just think that they are a high tempo, old fashioned rock and roll type of band although I have seen them being described as punk (I can hear some of that on the album), hardcore punk, rockability (what does that mean?) etc, I hope to get my hands on other albums of theirs soon and find out.

I don’t think this song on the album is any better or worse than any of the other songs on the album but for some reason this song just stuck in my head more than any of the others. I think the reason for this is the lyrics in which he talks about coming to the realisation that the girl he’s seeing is no good for him. Below are the lyrics to the first verse:

‘I believe I was wrong but baby know I know.
You and your evil ways gotta go.
Take the key and break away these chains of love,
And I’ll thank the good Lord above.
The radio’s playin’ a sad song…
Bye Bye Baby yeah yeah X2′

In all honesty I just like the way Ness sings Bye Bye Baby repeatedly over some thumping guitar work. Check out a video of the song , it would be a good choice of song to get a party going…

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