Life Won't Wait

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.