27 October 2023 - Pink Floyd - Learning To Fly

This song was the lead single from Pink Floyd's 1987 album A Momentary Lapse of Reason, and was primarily written by David Gilmour, like so much of this era of Pink Floyd music.  

The song is often seen as a metaphor for David Gilmour taking over leadership of the band following Roger Waters's departure, and in that sense, it works.  But also, Nick Mason, Pink Floyd's drummer and a pilot, can be heard in the middle of the song, as if on an airplane radio.

The video was largely filmed in the mountains near Canmore, Alberta, which is a place I have been and mountains I have seen.  

The song was a big hit in the US - on the rock and, to a lesser extent, the pop charts.  This was due to a lot of MTV airplay.  It was NOT, however, a hit in their native UK.

In the post-Waters era, this song was a centerpiece of Pink Floyd shows.  It plays spectacularly live.

26 October 2023 - Smashing Pumpkins - Bullet with Butterfly Wings

This is the last Smashing Pumpkins song I remember liking a lot.  I was a huge fan of theirs... for their first two albums.  Then they released the utterly self-indulgent Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness double album.

I was really excited to purchase that album until I heard it.  It was uneven and, well, overproduced.  

But the lead single from that album.... that was - is - a masterpiece.  It opens with Billy Corgan in acapella, as if to punctuate his sentence "the world is a vampire" with James Iha's guitar coming in on the last syllable.  The origins of the song do come from the Siamese Dream sessions, which probably explains why it's so much better than anything else on Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness.

It also became a hit song - surprisinging, their first top 40 hit, reaching number 22 on the Billboard charts and rising on other pop and alternative charts worldwide.

This video is the last time Billy Corgan was seen with hair.  That's actually true - he shaved his head soon after the filming.

They did tour in support of this album, but the band self-destructed soon after.  This is a performance from 1995 that seems to interpolate their new sound as well - but it's still a great performance, one of the last with the classic lineup.

The band eventually broke up in 2000 only to reform in 2006 - and went through some lineup changes.  This iteration from 2023 does include the entire classic lineup except for D'Arcy Wretzky, who I , for one, miss - but that reunion is not likely to happen.

Despite using a different bassist, the band still sounds great, nearly 30 years after this song's initial release.

25 October 2023 - T.I. ft. Kanye West, Jay Z, and Li'l Wayne - Swagga Like Us

If you know me in real life, you probably know where I'm eventually going with this post.  

This song is really T.I.'s by title, but it was written by all four artists - and there's a long list of people with songwriting credits on this one, including one Mathangi Arulpragasam, who goes by a stage name we're getting to - the song was written around a sample that includes her voice - and all the members of The Clash - because THAT sample contains a sample of one of THEIR songs.  We'll talk about Ms. Arulpragasam's song at another point.

The song was produced by T.I. and is pretty much nothing but a lot of boasting.  But it's a collaboration of four rap superstars and their massive egos sharing a song.  

The song won a Grammy for best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group - so all four of them are Grammy winners - and was nominated for Best Rap Song - so ALL those songwriters got nominations.

The song has only been performed live by all four of them one time by my knowledge, but here's where the fun of this post starts.

You know how I mentioned that song sampled by them that led to a songwriting credit for Mathangi Arulpragasam?  Well, that song was "Paper Planes", and Mathangi Arulpragasam is better known as M.I.A.  "Paper Planes", as it turns out, was nominated for Record of the Year at the same Grammy Awards as "Swagga Like Us".   

The same ceremony.

So wouldn't it make sense that she'd just do her sample for them live?

Slight issue: the Grammys happened to be on the same night as the night she was due to give birth.  

Which she did, a day and a half later.

So, you'd expect she'd do her little piece from the corner of the stage and rest?

Nope.

She OUTSHINED those four gigantic egos with a massive pregnancy belly in what is arguably the greatest Grammy performance of all time.  She opened with "Paper Planes" and stayed center stage with the 4 of them the WHOLE time.   

24 October 2023 - System Of A Down - Chop Suey!

Chop suey is a dish in American Chinese cuisine and other forms of overseas Chinese cuisine, consisting of meat and eggs, cooked quickly with vegetables ...

Oh, wait, that's not quite what we're writing about.  No, we're writing about "Chop Suey!"

This song is 22 years old as of this writing, which is probably a huge surprise to many of you.  It was released in 2001, and earned System of a Down a Grammy nomination - their first.  It is full of Biblical references - quoting Jesus on the cross at several points.  

But that title?  The song has nothing to do with Chinese food.  No, in fact, the song was originally titled, strangely enough, "Self Righteous Suicide"..... but they went with "Suey" - half of the word "Suicide" - or, in other words, "Chop"ped in half.  

Yep.  It's just that level of logic that makes for classic songwriting.

We haven't even talked about the song - which has several SERIOUS tempo changes, going back and forth between rock ballad and really fast speed metal.  It's like audio whiplash, and it's just fantastic.  

At the 2003 Reading Festival, the crowd seemed to enjoy the song.

When System of a Down performed the song in Armenia in 2015, they had not lost a single beat. The song seems to have softened ever so slightly - but still, the energy is really high.  

And also, the crowd is feeling it - in the rain!!!

23 October 2023 - INXS - Devil Inside

Oh, crap, we're late on getting a post out.

Well, since so many of you love this spooky season so much (I very much do NOT), here's a spooky song for you. 

Written by Andrew Farriss and Michael Hutchence, it was the followup single to the breakthrough "Need You Tonight" in the US and became a worldwide hit, again.   It uses a super breathy Hutchence vocal over what Farriss called a ""Daytripper"-like guitar sound", which I don't really hear, but hey! I'm a blogger, not a musician.  Just enjoy the song.

Look at them go.

Look at them Kick.

This live version should also drive home that, although not the title song from the album, that the band was Kicking all over the place.

Also, the Hutchence stage presence is amazing, as always.

20 October 2023 - The Rentals - Friends Of P.

The Rentals started off as a Weezer/that dog side project.  It turned into Matt Sharp's full time band.  

But who was P?  Who are they friends with?

Yes, P is not only a person, but a famous one. 

The debut album by Weezer was produced by former Cars frontman Ric Ocasek.  He did a great job on that album, and it was a bit of a family affair.  Frequently, Ocasek's wife, supermodel Paulina Porizkova, would join him.  In one of her conversations with Matt Sharp, Porizkova talked about how she had songs written about her... by bad metal bands.

So, Matt Sharp, friend of P., wrote a song about her.  

Turns out, she was better friends with Rivers Cuomo - at least according to Ric Ocasek, who called the song "silly".   He was not wrong.  

:Let's talk about the video.  None of these people were wearing glasses that actually matched their prescription.  If you go to about 2:40, you can see Petra Haden playing viola with a terrible headache because she was wearing such crazy glasses.  Ah, the pains of art.

Matt Sharp is the only constant in The Rentals, a project that still exists.  This live performance is from 1996, soon after the release of this song, and there were ALREADY lineup changes.

But also, live, the Moog synthesizer really shines through.  

19 October 2023 - Santigold - I'm a Lady

It's weird that I start a post with a live version of a song, especially one that I have to start in the middle of a video because it's part of a longer performance - in this case, an NPR Tiny Desk live set.

Santigold is something of a weird artist.  She's a black artist making music that's a little punk, a little pop, a little rock, a little folk - not necessarily what is considered traditional black music - which, given that she started her career working for Epic Records's urban music division, is even more interesting.

She's pretty clear that this song isn't punk, though.  It's a song that wouldn't sound out of place in the Siouxsie and the Banshees catalog, or the Pixies - as would the rest of her debut album, Santogold.  That's not misspelled - that was her stage name at the time (her real name is Santi White).  

It makes sense to have you hear the studio version of the song, which features co-writer Trouble Andrew (probably better known as a snowboarder than a musician) as a second vocalist.  Since the song was never an official single, it was never released in an official video format - but that's OK, because these people in this video made one.

The video is wild.  The song is super cool.

Since this was her debut album, she immediately toured in support of it.  This performance is from the 2009 Lowlands festival in the Netherlands. Her stage presence is already felt at this point in her career.

Ten years later, she still had that stage presence.

It's important to note that she doesn't have Trouble Andrew and his husky voice to do his part of the song, so she has to adapt it to her voice.  She does so effortlessly.