We're Not Who You Think We Are
Album: Rancid
Year: 2000
. . .
I don’t know if you know this, because it so rarely comes up in his songs, but Tim Armstrong is from the East Bay, having grown up in the shadow of Golden Gate Fields, the horse-racing track that sits right on the edge of the San Francisco Bay.
And he pays thrilling tribute that upbringing on “GGF,” the final track from Rancid, which opens with a declaration of pride, as well as a peek inside of his soul, as over crashing power chords, Armstrong declares:
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.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #1822: Rancid – “Rigged on a Fix”
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.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #1821: Rancid – “Black Derby Jacket”
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.
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.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs: #1819: Rancid – “Something in The World Today”
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.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #1818: Rancid – “Who Would’ve Thought”
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.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #1817: Rancid – “Ruby Soho”
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.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #1816: Rancid – “Junkie Man”
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.
[Read more…] about Certain Songs #1815: Rancid – “Lock Step & Gone”
(Epic)
I thought that mohawks looked stupid in 1977, in 1995, they’re beyond lame. For years, I’ve been avoiding bands that “looked” punk — my favorite punk bands from Television to X to the Replacements to Nirvana were always derided by the anarchy sheep that made up the hardcore subculture. Beyond that, not only can I play “Spot the Clash Influence” on just about every single song on this record, if I concentrate hard enough, I can tell from which moment on which Clash song they are stealing.
And so what? Unlike the Pistols or Buzzcocks or even the Jam, the Clash weren’t ever copied that much — they were too eclectic, even from the start. I couldn’t even tell you what Rancid’s other records sound like — my guess is closer to by-the-numbers hardcore than this great record, which uses its historical perspective to take ska rhythms for granted instead as a change of pace, and like its forefathers The Clash (you can bet they own both versions) and Give ‘Em Enough Rope (though not London Calling), it’s catchy as hell, and never lets up, not even for a second.
. . .
Written for the 1995 Village Voice Pazz & Jop Poll