Degausser

I loved the choir of, what seems like, children singing. I like what elliot said about the bipolarness of the music. That is a great way to describe this band and music in this genre. I read a little bit about this album and found out that the title of the album was inspired by Daniel Johnston. If you don't know about him you should. I myself only know a little bit about him. I am going to find out more about him. He became well known when Kurt Cobain wore a t-shirt of one of Daniel Johnstons Album Covers. (Daniel is also a respected artist) I am all about roots. I always feel like I can't understand music unless I know its roots. Nirvana is certainly a root to the Brand New tree but lets dig deeper. For my assignment I want you guys to review Daniel Johnston. I am going to do some more research and get back to you with specific songs. In the mean time google Daniel Johnston.

Sowing Season - Brand New

[Sorry I'm late. I turned in a 25 pg. paper today that I didn't start until this last mid-Saturday due to a trip to the ER, among other things...]

Okay, so it's no secret that I'm a fan of Nirvana. When I was experiencing my teenage apathy, I finally understood why similarly lame teenagers had connected so strongly with Nirvana half a decade earlier.

Where's he going with this?

Many people don't like/appreciate/connect with/recognize Nirvana, but for those who do (yes, those that do all of those slash-separated items!) they understand that Kurt was a master of the bi-polar, schizophrenic sound.

This isn't Nirvana, it's Brand New. Again, where's he going with this?

So too with this song. I don't want to sell the song short, but you don't have to understand what the lyrics mean to understand this song. You don't even have to speak English.

This guy's too liberal for me. . .

If you're an impatient person and just want my conclusion now--skip forward to 0:45. Let the mood sink in quickly, because in 18 seconds you're going to be hit in the ear-hole with a passionate "YEAH!!!"

I still don't get it.

This is a song that you blast when you are heart-broken or angry at life or just frustrated with something unsettling. You feel pensive moments when you're depressingly sensitive, followed by moments of mania--when you want to angrily lash out at anything or nothing at all.

This is too abstract and pretentious for my taste.

Then, 3:33 happens. Naked expression. Something you yell in the car as you drive away from something that didn't go right. This naked expression is followed by a rush to your head--similar to the swell you start to hear at 3:45.

It's a beautiful song.

It's a great song. But I wonder if I was listening to the same thing as you.

Brand New, "Jesus Christ"

I like the song because it is full of feeling. The same reason I like any song for the most part.  But it is difficult for me to go any further than that. I almost feel like it is analyzing a pray. All it needs is an "amen" at the end. But then again, it is published and produced for the world to hear and in that way, I guess it is open for commentary. 

Here are a few lines that I feel are most important to the song:

I know you're coming in the night like a thief...

...But I'm scared I'll get scared and I swear I'll try to nail you back up
So do you think that we could work out a sign
So I'll know it's you and that it's over so I won't even try
I know you're coming for the people like me
But we all got wood and nails
And we turn out hate in factories...

...And we sleep inside of this machine

This reminds me of that common story that we hear at church about a guy being interviewed and asked if he knows Jesus and if so, how. He then leaves the interview. The next interviewee walks into the room and falls on his knees and says, "my Lord my God." We are all familiar with this story, correct?  

I also thought of a question that I think I have heard asked in church, "What would you have done if you were a jew in Jerusalem during the time of Jesus?"

   

The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me (again)

Well... since no one (besides me) reviewed songs the week that I assigned songs from this album I'm going to do it again. Now, to decide what to give to whom.

Elliot - Sowing Season (Yeah), Brand New

Ryan - Jesus Christ, Brand New

Isaac - Degausser, Brand New

I find songmeanings.net to be very helpful, if you need ideas or anything.

Jackson Square

Upon first listen to this song I was kind of confused. I kept waiting for a chorus that never came. I usually like when songs step outside the norm like that. I like the song I just don't like that there isn't a chorus. I think that this song would be better with it.

This song is about Jennings and a woman he met in New Orleans. It's about their story. It ends up being a very sad story.

One of my favorite lines is:
"you smiled at me and i jumped right in
before i knew it you were all i knew"
I just love this kind of "love line" if you will. I guess this is something that I've always wanted to happen to me and it has, and I like it. Haha. He then talks about how they moved in together and rented a room above Jackson Square.

The story then takes a turn. He talks about how everything changed and how her "eyes got strange". I think that she probably started having problems with depression and that it just keeps getting worse. I just reread these lyrics and they amazed me:
"i can hear her crying through the bathroom door
she says she hears spirits all around the room
and they're telling her things that make her feel scared
i have no idea what to do"
I just really think that the last line is awesome. For some reason his admittance to helplessness is really cool.

The next verse talks about her suicide. I like what words he uses when he says he has a weight on his chest. This is the reason that I think that she had depression but I guess there could have been insanity or something.

Jackson Square is place where Jennings experienced love and then hardships and then loss of love. It was the place where a lot of great and horrible things happened in his life.

The Ghost of Tom Joad

It begins...

0:01 -- 0:22  Random guitar noises. And it starts to build. I recommend listening to this with head phones on.

0:23 -- 0:36  Classic, yet top notch, Rage guitar riff. Probably their very best.  

Durning the verse, while Zack de la Rocha thrash raps Bruce Springstein's lyrics, Tom Morello plays a simplified version of the above mentioned riff. 

At 1:11, what I can only describe as guitar squeaks begin. And the songs continues to build. Note the clicking that starts a 1:24.

2:06 -- 2:19  A riff variation with a sort of drum solo adds some diversity and more building.

2:19 --  Esspecial not worth is the solo-type riff that begins now. I will continue through much of the rest of the song. Another very cool riff.

2:50 -- First riff, second riff and squeaking. Tell me that something is not building.

3:30 -- An almost siren sound begins.

4:24 -- What I call the frustrated guitar/drums begin. By this point de la Rocha is paraphrasing the famous lines from the story of Tom Joad, Grapes of Wrath, which I think is essence of the song. 

4:39 -- He first ends the list of antecedents true to the book, "I'll be there." But at this moment in the song, noise is building to accentuate the paraphrased version, "You'll see me," which is repeated several times.

"Now the highway is alive tonight

No one is fooling no one as to where it goes

I'm sitting down here to the campfire light 

with the ghost of Tom Joad"   

     

"Fred Jones was worn out,...

...from caring for his often, screaming and crying wife during the day but he couldn't sleep at night for fear that she, in a stupor from the drugs that didn't ease the pain, would set the house a blaze with a cigarette." These are the lyrics from a song called "Cigarette" on the Ben Folds Five album called "Whatever and Ever Amen." One of the geniuses of Ben Folds is the way he tells stories with his songs. In the song "Cigarette" he tells a story about Fred Jones in one sentence. Go back and read it again to make sure. In the song "Fred Jones Part 2" he tells a more detailed story about Fred. Both songs are great stories about one sad dude. His wife seems to be sick and dying of something, maybe cancer, in the first song. In the second song he loses his job at "the paper" after 25 years. Each song deals with the element of time in interesting ways. The first song has a minute long intro where the piano plays most of a whole verse and then he sings the whole sentence in one verse and a bridge. The last word of the sentence happens as the piano plays what could be the beginning of another verse, leaving the impression that the song could go on or that Fred goes through the same thing again over and over. The refrain of "part 2" is "and I'm sorry Mr. Jones, it's time." It also deals with one of the biggest measurements of time called life. It barrels on like a run-away train.
Each song also deals with lonliness. I really like both of these songs a lot. They are really sad. The cello in "part 2" kills me. They are both beautifully written and recorded. The back up vocals from the dude from Cake are notable and well placed. Ben Folds is definitely a great story teller.
Other songs of his that profile characters that I like are; Kate, Losing Lisa, Zak and Sara, the Army, the ascent of Stan, the battle of who could care less and many many more.

Assignments - Songs from Elliot's personal top 10

[Ryan I'll need help getting the songs on the website so you, Eric, and Isaac have access to them. Did that need to be said, or is it assumed?]

*Caveat: even though these are songs from my personal top 10, I do not expect you to exhibit any type of deference toward that.

Eric: Jackson Square, Mason Jennings

Isaac: Fred Jones, pt. II, Ben Folds

Ryan: Ghost of Tom Joad, Rage Against The Machine

(If you want, after you've all posted I could tell you where exactly these three songs rank in my top 10)

After all this, won't you give me a smile?

Our first picture. I thought it was a good idea. I decided to write my response before I even read the other ones. I'm not sure if this will help my review but it just seemed right to me.



As I listen to the song on repeat I'm still not exactly sure what all I'm going to write about. I like the music and the way that his voice sounds. It's like authentic punk, which I think is really cool. I think there is some popular clash song that I know but I have no idea what it is. I also probably wouldn't regularly listen to them just cause I feel there are better bands to listen to.

Now onto what the song is about. The reason that the song was written was because of an accident at Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania. There was an accident with a pressurized water reactor and this was the "nuclear error". The Clash singer, Joe Strummer said that he thought that "we were about to slip down a slope, or something".

"A nuclear error, but I have no fear
London is drowning-and I live by the river"

I think that these ending lines to the chorus show the "I don't care" attitude of this type of music. The line about London drowning has to do with the Thames river in the center of London. It has been said that if the river flooded that all of central London would drown.

The next lines I'd like to talk about go as follows:

"London calling, now don't look at us
All that phoney Beatlemania has bitten the dust"

When I first read this line I thought it very interesting that they would hate on the Beatles. Wikipedia begged to differ. Haha. I guess the band was having a lot of issues at the time with debt and with their label. Some say that the line referred to the end of the "punk boom" in 1977. Another point of view is that the line isn't about the Beatles at all but about the Broadway production of Beatlemania. So "the line castigated late 1970s culture for its lack of substance, such as consuming "phoney Beatlemania," essentially a simulated, rather than actual, experience."

Overall, I think that "London Calling" is a good song. I wouldn't mind enjoying it every once in a while.

The Clash - Armagideon Time

"Lot of people a runnin' and hidin' tonight . . . a lot of people won't get no justice tonight"

First of all, let's just say what everyone's thinking: this song must've been the spring-board for Sublime's entire career. Honestly, just think of Sublime one time while listening to this song. Can't you see them as teenagers hearing this and saying, "This song is what I'm basing the rest of my life off of!"

It starts with that awesome reggae beat, but not a typical reggae beat. It sounds almost oppressive. The recurring guitar fill rocks. It's so chill, so simple--I don't smoke pot, but I'm almost tempted to light up a joint and watch a lava lamp for a couple hours talking to a fellow stoner about the end of the world. Okay just kidding (was that too detailed to just be kidding? Yikes.)

"No one will guide you through Armagideon Time"

So long as I'm just writing this off the top of my head (I have like 50 pages of junk to read before noon tomorrow and it's passed 10pm already!), this line shows more lyrical sophistication than any of my experience with Sublime. I don't really know what the song is about, but the lyrics mirror the overall feel of the song. Though it's got that hit on 2-4 reggae beat--which is often thought of as some of the most inherently joyous-sounding music around--it still manages to sound bleak, full of angst, and almost like an nomadic, reggae chant.

I'd like to think that this is a classic, societally pessimistic song--along the vein of common teenage apathy. Specifically about how young people often think that the world's out to get them--that it's set up to do that.

Long story short: melancholy reggae chant; oppressive feel; possible feeling of teenage angst bleeding through.

Train in Vain (Isaac)

I have always wanted to know more about the Clash. One of the most frustrating things in life for me is the fact that I will never be able to listen to all the music I want. I am glad that Ryan has given me a reason to learn more about the Clash. Train in Vain is effectively an after thought on the album London Calling. On the original release the track doesn't even show up on the list of songs instead it fades in after the last song and fades out at the end. It seems that it was written to be given away as part of a promotional packet in a magazine but the cost was too high and so they tagged on to the end of the album. Train in Vain became one of the Clashes biggest hits. It was the first Clash song to crack the United States Top 30 charts and in 2004, the song was ranked number 292 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest songs of all time.


I love how simple this song is. It is really rootsy. It has elements of country in the lyrics, and blues in the rhythm and harmonica. There really isn't much to this song. Three or four chords and repetitive riff from the guitar and harmonica. The lyrics never actually say the words train or vain but it seems that they named it that to avoid confusion with the Ben E. King classic song Stand by Me which is the other title of Train in Vain. It seems that this song draws on not only Kings Stand by Me but also Tammy Winnettes Stand by Your Man. Train in Vain could be an answer to both songs. In the Ben E. King song he pleads "oh darlin won't you stand by me?" In the Winnette song she exhorts women to "Stand by your man." In train in Vain Mick Jones asks "did you stand by me?" and answers his own question "no not at all." This refain is repeated as if to say emphatically that no you didn't stand by me. Not even when "the walls came tumbling down" or when I had to "keep the wolves at bay. Did you stand by me? No not at all."
It is my opinion that all bands need a good song about a train. Though this song doesn't mention a train it does have a train like drive, something that others have noticed, and like a good train song it talks about waiting in vain for something that didn't come. So this is the Clashes good song about a train and I think that as after thoughts go this was a good one.

Assignments: The Clash

I didn't know much about The Clash. I had only heard that they were an influential band and I knew that one of my past favorite bands, 311, covered one of their songs. But that was about it. Well, I listened to some of their stuff that I found on my computer and I read over their Wikipedia page and now I am pretty much and expert and a die-hard fan. All kidding aside, I have chosen songs that I like and that I think you will like.

Elliot-The Clash, "Armagideon Time"

Isaac-The Clash, "Train in Vain"

Eric-The Clash, "London Calling" (I didn't know what I was going to give you until the moment I typed. For some reason, I just really want you to enjoy reviewing this one.)

Enjoy. And feel free to check out their Wikipedia page, it is quite informative.