Album: Rancid
Year: 2000
. . .
As I’ve mentioned ad nauseam, while punk rock changed my life, I never considered myself a punk, especially the American hardcore kind, and so I didn’t go to as many punk shows as I might have.
That said, I went to quite a few, and pretty early on I came to a conclusion: all of the best musicians gravitated to hardcore, where they could test their musical limits without seeming to show off. Especially drummers. With the exception of Carlton Barrett — I mean, c’mon — a lot of the best drummers I saw were in hardcore bands, stopping and starting at will and cranking out lightspeed backbeats.
Kinda like what Brett Reed is doing during the seventy-six seconds of “Rigged On a Fix,” yet another song from Rancid written by Tim Armstrong but growled by Matt Freeman, this one about the evils of Televison, where with no intro at all, they all launch into it at the same time, going from 0 to 150 in the blink of a snare whack!
Charles Van Doren never seemed to want it
A 64,000 dollar question
It was rigged on a fix, end of innocence
The original T.V. scandal
And this is where they get arty. With Armstrong and Lars Frederiksen (who, nearly 10 posts in, I still have to copy-and-paste his last name from Wikipedia) slashing their guitars in unison, Freeman screams! “It’s true! / you’re through!” after which the entire song stops, except for a Frederiksen guitar lick out of nowhere, and then cranks it back up for everybody to scream “FUCK YOU!!” in unison after which they go right back into the second verse and chorus.
We’re 22 seconds into the song at this point.
A unique one, triggered implosion, outraged disgrace condemnation
Nine-hundred channels, one billion scandals
I’ve been hypnotized by all of youIt’s true, you’re through
FUCK YOU!
Now we’re 44 seconds into the song and Freeman makes his point a couple more times:
I’ve been hypnotized by all of you
I’ve been hypnotized by all of you
At this point, we’re now 56 seconds into the song, so they decide to spend the next 20 seconds alternating hardcore thrashing with free jazz bass and drums. Because they can. It’s just fucking awesome.
“Rigged on a Fix”
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