Medialoper

Certain Songs #1822: Rancid – “Rigged on a Fix”

May 19, 2020 by Jim Connelly

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.

Certain Songs #1821: Rancid – “Black Derby Jacket”

May 18, 2020 by Jim Connelly

Album: Rancid
Year: 2000

. . .

After widening their sound with 1998’s Life Won’t Wait, Rancid narrowed it down to a full hardcore road just two years later with 2000’s Rancid, the second self-titled record in their career.

Cramming 22 songs into a little over 40 minutes, Rancid plays a bit like a hardcore version of Alien Lanes, though — as hardcore does — far more consistent, with most of the songs clocking in under two minutes and some of them practically over before they begin. So when you got a longer one — the epic “Radio Havana” at 3:42, they kinda stood out. As did the songs sung by bassist Matt Freeman, who hadn’t sung any leads at all on the previous two.

Certain Songs #1820: Rancid – “Coppers”

May 16, 2020 by Jim Connelly

Album: Life Won’t Wait
Year: 1998

. . .

But Life Won’t Wait saved its best shot for the very end.

Which, sometimes Rancid’s generosity could be exhausting: wading through 20 tracks of pummeling punk rock mixed with speedy ska probably wasn’t everybody’s idea of the best way to spend an hour of their life, not to mention the time it took to sort out the individual songs from each other. So I do wonder if some people even made it to the end of Life Won’t Wait and got to this utter stunner of a track.

Certain Songs: #1819: Rancid – “Something in The World Today”

May 15, 2020 by Jim Connelly

Album: Life Won’t Wait
Year: 1998

Of course, while Life Won’t Wait might have leaned towards the ska side of Rancid’s punk/ska hybrid, it wasn’t all skank-ass riddims. There were a few punk rock firefights, my favorite of which was Lars Frederiksen’s “Something in the World Today.”

And yeah, while technically “Something in the World Today” is listed as co-write with Tim Armstrong, it’s pretty much all Frederiksen, at least on the vocals. Not even any vocal tradeoffs, just straight out punk rock fury from the get-go, as a fuzzed-out chiming guitar sets the initial scene, leading to the expected power chords on the verses and chorus.

Certain Songs #1818: Rancid – “Who Would’ve Thought”

May 14, 2020 by Jim Connelly

Album: Life Won’t Wait
Year: 1998

While Rancid reportedly recorded as many as 40 songs for …And Out Come The Wolves, there was still a three-year hiatus between it and the follow-up, 1998’s Life Won’t Wait. In the meantime, the mid-90s ska revival — following the early 90s punk revival, I guess — was on its downswing, which perhaps made the fact that Life Won’t Wait was more ska-oriented than its predecessor kinda hurt its long-term commercial chances

And so, while …And Out Come The Wolves went platinum, Life Won’t Wait didn’t even go gold (even though it peaked at #35, ten places higher than its predecessor did, such are the vagaries of the charts), and didn’t even have any big radio singles.

Certain Songs #1817: Rancid – “Ruby Soho”

May 13, 2020 by Jim Connelly

Album: …And Out Come The Wolves
Year: 1995

. . .

On one hand, while Rancid never had string of alt radio hits like contemporaries like The Offspring or Green Day, it was kind of a small miracle that they got on the radio at all, given how rough Tim Armstrong and Lars Frederiksen’s vocals were, which is why even their biggest hits — “Roots Radicals,” “Time Bomb,” and “Ruby Soho” didn’t climb as high as the songs by those other bands that are still getting played all the time.

Certain Songs #1816: Rancid – “Junkie Man”

May 12, 2020 by Jim Connelly

Album:…And Out Come The Wolves
Year: 1995

“Ahhhhh, turn it up!” advises Tim Armstrong at the outset of this one, over a tumbling, jangling Lars Frederiksen guitar riff and a kick-heavy snareless beat from Brett Reed, after which they all kick into the song full-out, Armstrong slurring the verses where he’s humanizing the junkies he’s seeing on the street.

Certain Songs #1815: Rancid – “Lock Step & Gone”

May 11, 2020 by Jim Connelly

Album: …And Out Come The Wolves
Year: 1995

When it comes to California punk, I’m no pioneer, so I discovered — or at least got into — Rancid at the same damn time the rest of the world did: their 1995 breakthrough …And Out Come The Wolves, a typically generous slice of melodic hardcore filtered through ska and, of course, The Clash.

Certain Songs #1814: Ramones – “I Don’t Want To Grow Up”

May 8, 2020 by Jim Connelly

Album: Adios Amigos!
Year: 1995

. . .

I’ll admit: after Dee Dee left, I pretty much stopped paying attention. I don’t think the two things really had anything to do with each other, but outside of the singles, I had no use for 1989’s Brain Drain, and I probably got 1992’s Mondo Bizarro at Ragin’, I can’t remember a fucking thing about it. To the point where I didn’t realize that Dee Dee kept writing for the band even after CJ took over the bass duties.

And so I completely ignored their covers album, 1993’s Acid Eaters — which I stuck in the rotation earlier this year and realized that I made the right decision — but actually kinda enjoyed their first official American live album, 1991’s Loco Live!, because the sturdy tracklist was filled with songs that are essentially unbreakable electric versions of campfire singalongs. But of course, Loco Live! was made redundant by the official U.S. release of It’s Alive in 1995.

Certain Songs #1813: Ramones – “Pet Sematary”

May 7, 2020 by Jim Connelly

Album: Brain Drain
Year: 1989

I got to see the Ramones for the second and final time on September 19, 1987 at the Wilson Theater in Fresno. This was on the Brain Drain tour, a record that was so devoid of inspiration that Robert Christgau dissed by calling them a “great band that has worn down to a day job for night people.”

However, lack of inspiration isn’t lack of professionalism, and with Marky back in the drummers throne, they were awesome in concert. Though it might have been the, er, substance Ronnie (R.I.P.) and I ingested before they went on, I remember just letting myself being blown away by one great song after another, all of which were announced by Dee Dee’s omnipresent “1-2-3-4!”, and even if they hated each other and were doing it because they knew there was nothing else they could do, they clearly still trusted in their ever-present momentum.