Friday Night Rock-Out – Ash Clifton, Writer

Friday Night Rock-Out: “Song 2”

A few days ago, I saw a tweet (yes, damn it, a tweet) pointing out that the iconic song “Feel Good Inc” is now twenty years old. It’s amazing how much that song has permeated popular culture in those two decades. I first heard it in the excellent film The Big Short, where it featured prominently on the soundtrack. It’s one of those songs that, once heard, one never forgets.

However, there are a couple of things people might not know about the electronic band Gorillaz, who, with some help from De La Soul, created the song. First, they are a virtual band, meaning that the members seldom meet in person. Instead, they compose and record via the internet. One could write a whole book on the way the internet has changed music—and many already have—but the rise of virtual bands is a seldom-discussed sub-topic.

Another thing people might not know is that lead singer and founder Damon Albarn is also the mastermind behind the (even older) British band Blur, which blew people’s minds back in the 1990s. This song, especially, was hugely popular and influential. Entitled “Song 2” but almost universally known as the “Woo-Hoo Song,” it came out way back in 1997. And, for a few months, it was all you heard streaming out of people’s car radios (yes, we still had car radios, back then).

Rock on….

Friday Night Rock-Out: “Mexican Radio”

If there is one song that can instantly evoke memories of the early 1980s, when me and friends stayed up all night watching MTV, it’s this one, “Mexican Radio.” It’s a very strange little song by a very strange little band, Wall of Voodoo, but it perfectly captures the “collapsed-time” vibe of the Reagan era. The suppressed but inescapable feeling that American culture had somehow degraded (“de-evolved,” as the band Devo put it) to a state where it was totally insane, vulgar, and incomprehensible.

The same sort of black humor, satirical zeitgeist was immortalized in film two years later, in 1984, when Alex Cox’s Repo Man came out. That movie’s soundtrack included many fine punk and post-punk bands like Wall of Voodoo—but without Wall of Voodoo. Oh, well. The movie could have given the band some much-needed exposure. They never did get the respect they deserved.

But for a while, they really did shine.

(Fun fact: I always thought the band’s name was a reference to a spell in Dungeons & Dragons, but I was wrong. It was, in fact, inspired by the brilliant madman Phil Spector and his famous Wall of Sound effect on the songs he produced in the 1960s. Go, figure.)

Rock on…

Friday Night Rock-Out: “Zombie”

I’ve been saddened by the deaths of many famous people, but only three genuinely depressed me. Like, for a good while. These were Robin Williams, David Bowie, and Dolores O’Riordan.

Everybody remembers the first two, and I would bet that many people shared my crestfallen reaction to those two deaths. But relatively few will recognize the third. Unless, that is, you were alive in the 1990s and listening to alt-rock.

I was in the early stages of a career at the time, writing code for a series of software companies, and I was always amazed at how many macho, tech-bros I met were also huge fans of The Cranberries, the band that O’Riordan joined when she was eighteen years old and soon made famous. The band’s first mega-hit, Linger, is also their best song. It displayed O’Riordan’s unique genius—her amazing, Irish voice, alternating between dreamy-and-angelic to fierce-and-vengeful. And the lyrics! Even as a teenager, she could really write! The song’s tale of a woman who has been deceived by the one she loves is sad but not sentimental. Never weepy. Rather, it surges forward with tremendous power.

But it was this song, Zombie, that proved how powerful the band—and O’Riordan—could hit. It’s a protest song, but like all good protest songs, it works both as a political statement as well as a kick-ass song. Some have called it the definitive grunge-rock song. I don’t know about that, but it’s damned good.

Interesting fact: The music video was partially filmed on the streets of war-ravaged Belfast. The kids (and the soldiers) are real folk, for better or worse.

Rock on…

Friday Night Rock-Out: “Hunger Strike”

Gainesville has a famous bar called The Salty Dog Saloon, across the street from the University of Florida and just two blocks away from Ben Hill Griffin Stadium. Back in the 1990s, I spent many an evening at The Salty Dog, shooting pool, drinking beer, and inhaling so much second-hand smoke that, as I soon discovered, I could smoke an entire cigarette without coughing, even though I had never officially taken up the habit.

The Salty Dog also had a great jukebox (maybe it still does). And, this being the height of the grunge era, my friends and I played a lot of Nirvana, Soundgarden, and Pearl Jam. Somehow, a joke started among us that the next Godzilla movie should be set in Seattle, where the great kaiju would be battled (and, no doubt, defeated) by the likes of Chris Cornell, Eddie Vedder, and Kurt Cobain.

It was a dumb joke, but it struck a chord. These guys were the superheroes of rock, cultural warriors that always seemed brilliant, dedicated, and brave. So, in 1993, when two of three, Vedder and Cornell, teamed up to form a super-group called Temple of the Dog, we should have been ecstatic. It was like Batman and Superman joining forces to fight evil (if not Godzilla).

In fact, the band—which was formed by Cornell as a kind of tribute to his late friend and lead singer of Mother Love Bone, Andrew Wood—made very little impact on us. Except for one song: “Hunger Strike.” For a few weeks, it was the practically the only thing on the radio (yes, we still listened to radio in those days). An unlikely duet between Cornell and Vedder, it shows off the vocal strengths of both men, whose voices complement each other in kind of harmonic unity not often heard in alt-rock (and especially not in grunge). I love how Cornell’s magnificent tenor soars high above Vedder’s mournful baritone, which seems to anchor it.

Somehow, through the alchemy of art, the song becomes less of a dirge than a jubilant cry of defiance.

Rock on…

Friday Night Rock-Out: “Why Can’t I Be You?”

Everything you need to know about alt-rock in the 1980s can be learned from listening to four bands: The Smiths, Echo & the Bunnymen, Siouxsie and the Banshees, and The Cure. I’ve featured all of these bands except The Cure, so it’s about time, especially considering that they were, in some ways, the most innovative and versatile of the four.

Most people know the song “Just Like Heaven“, and they should because it’s a masterpiece. But I love this song, too, because it’s so strange and powerful. With Robert Smith singing on the edge of his vocal range, his voice breaking and whinging like the embodiment of every teenage neurosis you can think of, “Why Can’t I Be You?” is the ultimate song about Nerd Love.

It’s also a great dance song. (Yes, a danceable goth-rock song. Who knew?) And the horn section is epic. (A goth-rock song with horns? Yes, again!)

Rock on..

Friday Night Rock-Out: “My Body”

I had never heard of Young the Giant until a few months ago, when this song, “My Body,” popped up on the playlist at my gym. I liked the groove so much that I paused my incredibly wimpy set of curls (“Hey, I’m going for tone, dammit. TONE!”), went to my locker, got out my phone, and Googled it.

The rest is history…

People have compared Young The Giant to The Cure, but they remind me more of Coldplay, but with more of a rock-edge (not to mention a bit more soul).

Rock on…

Friday Night Rock-Out: “Hotel California”

If you’re of a certain age (i.e., over fifty), you probably spent many a summer afternoon in the long-ago past listening to the 45 single of “Hotel California” over and over and over. (You might also have enjoyed a mildly illegal form of herbal, hand-rolled cigarette as you listened.) If you did, you’ve probably read a lot of articles about the song, and heard a lot of interviews by Don Henley or Glenn Frey or others about it, to the point that you probably think you know everything about it. You know, for instance, that Henley and Frey wrote the lyrics in a very short period of time (by some accounts, a few hours; by others, over a weekend). You know that the album cover is a photo of the Beverly Hills Hotel, and that some people think they see a mysterious figure in the bell tower. And you know that the song is really about Hell, or California-as-Hell, or American hedonism, or…something cool like that.

What you probably don’t know is that song is, primarily, the creation of guitarist Don Felder, who wrote the melody by himself before he even joined the band. As Marty Jourard recounts in his excellent non-fiction book Music Everywhere: The Rock and Roll Roots of a Southern Town:

One afternoon while enjoying his ocean view and no doubt the general situation, Felder sat on his sofa and idly strummed an acoustic twelve-string, eventually refining his musical idea into a carefully crafted guitar arrangement. Using a Teac four-track reel-to-reel recorder, Felder first recorded his Rhythm Ace drum machine playing a cha-cha beat, then added acoustic and electric guitar and bass, then an idea for two solo guitars. Don Henley listened to a cassette mix of this song and more than a dozen others Felder had submitted for consideration and declared this rhythmically complex instrumental the best, giving it a working title of “Mexican Bolero,” and along with Glenn Frey wrote lyrics that transformed Felder’s music demo into “Hotel California,” the title track of the next Eagles album and its first single.

It’s also Felder’s actual guitar playing, along with that of co-lead Joe Walsh, that gives the song its unbelievably haunting tone and its indelible, dark crescendo. I’m not just saying this because Felder, like his childhood friend Tom Petty, is a Gainesville boy like me. Felder is, in fact, one of the most underrated musician/composers in the history of rock-and-roll.

Of course, I don’t mean to denigrate Henley’s and Frey’s brilliant lyrics, gave the song its cachet among the teenage set of the 1970s (and now, even). One thing I’ve noted about “Hotel California” is that is one of those rare examples of a narrative poem (i.e., it tells a continuous story). Also, it’s written in ballad quatrains, with a rhyming scheme of ABCB. How cool is that?

And, yes, I do see a mysterious figure in the bell tower.

Rock on…

Friday Night Rock-Out: “Natural One”

Don’t let the name fool you. There is nothing “folksy” about The Folk Implosion, nor about this song. In fact, “Natural One” has a slightly demented, sinister quality to it that I really like.

This skewed quality might be due to the deliberately off-key, jangly sound of the lead guitar, which is the main hook of the song. It’s also, I believe, an example of musical dissonance. (I’m not sure of this; please correct me if I’m wrong.)

Also, don’t be fooled by the graphic for the video above. Those are not the band members. Rather, the image is taken from the poster of the 1995 film Kids, for whose soundtrack the song was composed. I haven’t seen Kids, but I’m told it’s a powerful, brutal depiction of alienation and apathy in a group of suburban youths in the drug-soaked 1990s.

Which means this song is a perfect fit.

Rock on…

BONUS! Here is a really cool video about musical dissonance.

Friday Night Rock-Out: “Passion”

I must admit that I had never heard of Awolnation until a few years ago when my son played me a couple of their songs. This song, in particular, has a big, anthemic sound of the sort one doesn’t hear very often in alt-rock. I really like it. Even the soft parts sound really, really loud. And lead singer Aaron Bruno has the vocal range to pull it off without sounding like he’s screaming.

“Passion” is from Awolnation’s 2017 album Here Come the Runts. Rock on…

Friday Night Rock-Out: “Boilermaker”

There have been a lot of great rock duos over the years—Hall and Oates, Tears for Fears, The White Stripes, David and David—but there haven’t been that many hard rock duos. I’m guessing this because you typically need a minimum of three musicians to form a hard rock band: a drummer, a bassist, and a lead guitarist. (One of those folks has to sing, too, obviously.)

The great British duo Royal Blood gets around this minimum by ditching the lead guitarist and having their bassist, Mike Kerr, do double-duty. On this little gem, which has become one of my favorites, he is actually playing a distorted bass that sounds like a lead guitar. (Jack White does the same thing on “Seven Nation Army“.)

Anyway, rock on…!