Jim Connelly

Certain Songs #1783: Ramones – “Beat on the Brat”

March 27, 2020 by Jim Connelly Leave a Comment

Album: Ramones
Year: 1976

. . .

And then there are the lyrics on Ramones: darkly funny; smartly stoopid and of course, just incredibly wrong, especially by today’s standards. And of course, looking at the guys on the cover, leather-jacketed, jeans ripped — and was that one guy giving us the finger? — you could only wonder what kind of depravity they were getting up to.

Which is all to say that I can’t imagine any band today even trying to write a song like “Beat on The Brat,” Joey’s response to what Dee Dee claims was a real-life incident.

Certain Songs #1782: Ramones – “Blitzkrieg Bop”

March 26, 2020 by Jim Connelly Leave a Comment

Album: Ramones
Year: 1976

Hey! Ho! Let’s Go!

Like other great opening tracks from world-changing debut albums — “Good Times, Bad Times,” “Just Like Honey” — it’s all there from the very beginning: that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line.

Certain Songs #1781: Rain Parade – “This Can’t Be Today”

March 25, 2020 by Jim Connelly Leave a Comment

Album: Emergency Third Rail Power Trip
Year: 1983

. . .

Outside of The Bangles, of course, no musician from the Paisley Underground had more commercial success that David Roback, when his most successful attempt to make music so slow and etherial, Mazzy Star, had a massive modern rock hit single with “Fade Into You.” But, of course, in Mazzy Star, Roback was overshadowed by Hope Sandoval, whom at the time, epitomized the word “dreamy” on just about every level.

Certain Songs #1780: Rage to Live – “My Heroine”

March 24, 2020 by Jim Connelly 2 Comments

Album: Blame The Victims
Year: 1989

. . .

This, right here, was one of the reasons I started Certain Songs. Sure, it’s fun to go deep on my favorite artists, and we’ll be doing that soon enough once again, but right now, let’s talk about one of the most obscure songs I’ll ever post about, the utterly magnificent “My Heroine” from New Jersey’s Rage to Live.

Certain Songs #1779: Radiohead – “There There”

March 23, 2020 by Jim Connelly Leave a Comment

Album: Hail to the Thief
Year: 2003

It’s one of my favorite moments in any Radiohead song. For nearly two minutes, “There There” has been kinda floating around the room, driven by Phil Selway’s lighter-than-air toms and Thom Yorke and Ed O’Brien’s etherial vocals. And then, all of a sudden, completely out of nowhere, Selway does a couple of quick snare rolls:

Whack-it-a-duh!
Whack-it-a-duh!

So simple. So startling.

Certain Songs #1778: Radiohead – “Morning Bell/Amnesiac”

March 20, 2020 by Jim Connelly Leave a Comment

Album: Amnesiac
Year: 2001

. . .

98% of the time when an artist releases two entirely different versions of the same song, and one of those versions is uptempo and groovy and the other is sludgy and doom-filled, I’m going to pick the uptempo one.

This, right here, is the exception.

Certain Songs #1777: Radiohead – “Knives Out”

March 19, 2020 by Jim Connelly Leave a Comment

Album: Amnesiac
Year: 2001

The shortest turnaround between any two Radiohead albums occurred between the October 2000 release of Kid A and the June 2001 release of Amnesiac. Of course that — with the exception of Amnesiac’s “Life in a Glasshouse” — was because both albums were recorded at the same set of sessions in 1999 and 2000.

Certain Songs #1776: Radiohead – “Idioteque”

March 18, 2020 by Jim Connelly 1 Comment

Album: Kid A
Year: 2000

. . .

So I’m currently sitting in a jury assembly room, which is a stressful situation during the best of times — I think it’s important to do my duty as a citizen, but I hate the uncertainty and the potential disruption to my daily routine — but of course, these are the polar opposite of the best of times.

Certain Songs #1775: Radiohead – “Optimistic”

March 17, 2020 by Jim Connelly Leave a Comment

Album: Kid A
Year: 2000

. . .

Of course, Kid A wasn’t all bleeps, bloops and blorps; bedeeddles and woobles. Mostly, yeah. But just as “Electioneering” served as the big-ass riff-rocker on OK Computer — complete with cowbell — so does “Optimistic” serve as Kid A’s token “normal” rock song.

And so “Optimistic” roars out of the gate with the guitars of Ed O’Brien and Jonny Greenwood clangoring and clamoring against each other over a rolling and tumbling tom-filled Phil Selway beat while Thom Yorke “ooooooooooohs” over the whole thing before sliding into an opening verse that kind of belies the title.

Certain Songs #1774: Radiohead – “Everything In Its Right Place”

March 16, 2020 by Jim Connelly Leave a Comment

Album: Kid A
Year: 2000

. . .

We are now as far away from Kid A as Kid A was from Remain in Light, perhaps the most trenchant example of a restless band changing itself this radically on their fourth album in 1980 that I can think of while writing this post. (I guess Sandinista!, too, though one might argue that it was more of an extension of the genre-bending of London Calling that a full-on reinvention.)

And while we’ll get to Remain in Light in a couple of years — assuming we don’t all die of Covid-19, in case you’re wondering about my mood right now — it does seem weird that Kid A is now 20 years old, because it sure doesn’t seem that old, does it?