bro1988 Just another Blo9s weblog

The Verve Bittersweet Symphony

Bitter Sweet Symphony Cover

Llevo meses escuchando el cuarto disco de los australianos The Panics. Hoy, apenas tengo tiempo de buscar e informarme sobre música como en otros momentos. Así que no sé si me estoy perdiendo cosas estupendas. Seguro que sí. Por mi parte, puedo decir que "Cruel Guards" el cuarto álbum (sin contar los tres ep´s anteriores, a partir del 2002) del grupo liderado por Jae Laffer es lo que más profundamente me ha gustado de lo que he podido escuchar este año (aunque el disco se editó a finales del 2007). 

Einstein decía: "No reveles nunca tus fuentes de información". Le haré caso, aunque una pista puedo dar: lo descubrí en un programa de radio de los pocos que se salvan de la quema. Fácil, ¿no?

Y, como ténía por costumbre un "track by track" por mi cumpleaños y resulta que no tengo mucho tiempo, cedo la palabra al mismísimo Jae Laffer que ha tenido a bien facilitar la labor a un servidor. Y así de paso practicamos el inglés del kangaroo:

THE PANICS
‘CRUEL GUARDS’ – TRACK BY TRACK by Jae Laffer

1. GET US HOME
We wanted to record a song to open the record which was sweeping and epic. The Ennio Morricone vibe that comes with this was deliberate - I think the song sounds like a bunch of us riding over a hill into a dusty town. I peppered the lyrics with vague references to landscapes. It has a real sense of mystery and drama to it. 

2. RUINS
This is a break up song, but it’s full of imagery and the honest lyric ‘You know I’m not the one that you’re looking for.’ It has a certain resignation to it – a sense that the character in the song knows the relationship is coming to an end. The strings came from Myles sampling different orchestras and this song has a real classic sound to it. Hopefully it doesn’t come across as being pretentious. I loved those Britpop anthems like The Verve ‘Bittersweet Symphony’ where the strings drove the song, rather than just being thrown on at the end.

3. CREAKS
I created a little scene with this song. It’s about leaving someone while they’re sleeping. The creaks mentioned in the lyrics are the little creaks in the floorboards that I have to avoid to leave without making a noise and waking her up. It’s a pumped up song though – we’ve never been afraid of big choruses. My dad was always playing Manfred Mann records when I grew up, which inspires me when writing songs.

4. DON’T FIGHT IT
This is a big song with a big chorus. I wanted this to be a simple bittersweet pop song. The organs sound like gospel organs, and it’s really uplifting. It’s got a catchy chorus and it’s got old style verses where I just rap along. I like to think that people can listen to this and understand the lyrics without having to interpret the lyrics.

5. FEELING IS GONE
This is the simplest song I’ve ever written - it’s a three chord wonder. It’s nice to break the record up with a really basic song like Feeling Is Gone. Again, it’s another bittersweet track. I like writing about the dark things – whether it’s something that comes from the dark corners of the mind late at night or something bad from your past that comes back to haunt you.

6. CRUEL GUARDS
This is the darkest song on the record. It’s haunting and it’s a whole bunch of imagery about society. I was having panic attacks for a while, which I was eventually medicated for. I wanted to write a song that reflected the really bad moments in the day when everything seemed really bad. It’s weird because whenever we play live, this becomes a singalong.

7. LIVE WITHOUT
This song has so many words in it. It was stuff that was floating around my mind at the time I was writing it. It’s a thumping song based on relationships. I know that’s a cliché, but that’s what pop music is all about. I created a bit of a backdrop to the song by spitting out line after line that didn’t necessarily connect, but they work on their own. The lyrical rhythm has a real hip hop feel.

8. SOMETHING IN THE GARDEN
It has a sample from an Aboriginal choir in it, which sounds great. We recorded an instrumental of this and it comes across like a spaghetti western with these big guitar solos over the top. Lyrically, it had a real storytelling vibe. I was listening to a lot of Nick Cave at the time and it was inspired by the ghosts you create in your head when you’re on your own for a long time. I liked putting a few dark characters in the song too. It’s very oppressive and desperate sounding.

9. CONFESS
It’s got a bit of a Kate Bush feel to this because there’s lot of wood instruments underneath. It’s really simple but it’s been expanded with different instruments. It’s a very gung ho song.

10. SUNDOWNER
This was musical jam that expanded into something bigger. We wanted to write a song that closed the album in a dramatic fashion. I’d found out that the word Sundowner was an old term for the first drink of the evening after a long day at work. I really liked the imagery of that.

ok so as a child the little gayboi in me loved the spice girls (and he still does) so no soundtrack of my life could be complete without a spice song thrown in, so that is where we will begin. i chose stop as it is very feel good and if theres one thing i remember the spice girls giving me was a giddy happy feeling, so here you are (oh and i still no the dance moves to stop lol)

so anyone who knows me well knows i had i pretty ok childhood upto 11 when it feel apart, parents divorce, mum becoming an alcoholic, dad leaving for another woman who killed herself, all things that seem to hurl at me in the spce of a couple of years. i quit school for a while and had issues to work through. i had times in my life where i felt i hadn't got parents as they were so wrapped up in their own issues the by product of its effect on me was little more than an after thought. anyway jagged little pill by alanis morissette had dropped a few years earlier and it became a powerful record in my life. perfect was particularly deep for me, the lyrics still cut to the bone and it is still a very difficult record for me to listen to now as it carries so much hurt. i will post the video and lyrics as the lyrics for a mixed up 13 year old with absent parents was almost like she had writen them for me.

Sometimes is never quite enough
If you're flawless, then you'll win my love
Don't forget to win first place
Don't forget to keep that smile on your face

Be a good boy
Try a little harder
You've got to measure up
And make me prouder

How long before you screw it up
How many times do I have to tell you to hurry up
With everything I do for you
The least you can do is keep quiet

Be a good girl
You've gotta try a little harder
That simply wasn't good enough
To make us proud

I'll live through you
I'll make you what I never was
If you're the best, then maybe so am I
Compared to him compared to her
I'm doing this for your own damn good
You'll make up for what I blew
What's the problem...why are you crying

Be a good boy
Push a little farther now
That wasn't fast enough
To make us happy
We'll love you just the way you are
If you're perfect

another song from jagged little pill that moved me and mirrored my feeling was forgiven, i was becoming a very upset and angry youth who looked at all things in very different ways, i saw sex and my sexuality as a way of feeling something other than pain. but being 13/14 exploring ones sexuality and starting to have sex for whatever reason was deemed wrong/bad all the time keeping up the 'im straight' act by dating a girl for a good few months that i had known from school. i started to look and think it was religion that force upon me these morals that something that made me feel good in dark times was seen as wrong immoral. i was not religious but i needed something to blame for feeling guilty straight after the high of letting older guys have their way with me, feeling something at this point was better than feeling nothing. i still have a very unsettling relationship with sex and still to this day use it as a way of feeling selfworth when im down. i would say at the age of 14 i was at my lowest i have ever been, had quit school and my with my parents had become so bad i still do not trust either to this day. anyway forgiven was the track off jagged little pill that combined my sexual explorings along with my wanting to blame religion for a great deal of things (why would god let this happen to me, if he is i must be a bad person)

by the time i was nearly 15 i had started to go back to school (not very regular i have to admit) even though home life was still very rocky. i feel in love with a guy at school called john, i speant over a year in a relationship with john and as a result by year 11 i was back in school full time (well 75% attendence) and he was the 1st person for a good couple of years gave me a reason to dream of a future. of course with him being the one thing that was worth anything in my life i became way to attatched and by the end of year 11 my controling and needyness towards him had become suffacting for him. still he kept my nose to the ground and along with lauren (a friend who by the last year of school had become almost family given we were both had bad home lives, so found solice in each other) with their help i caught up on coursework and passed the 6 GCSE's i took with B's and C's. this was enough to get me into college. anyway he was grade 7 in piano (stupidly gifted at everything) and he had an album called littleearthquakes by tori amos. he loved her because of the piano playing i fell in love with her raw emotions and lyrics. there are many songs on little earthquakes that touched me but i'll pick two. winter which is about a relationship with ones father, who at this point had moved from derby and we had been drifting ever futher apart and happy phantom which is an upbeat song about making the most of a situation but with a bitter twist at the end.

by 16 i was at college and me and john were growing futher apart whilst i was still very needy, still things at home were getting better (my mum had done detox and was on the way to recovery, though had still many slip ups) and although john splitting up with me was painful and crushed me for a while, it was looking back for the best as i was ready to outgrow the relationship as was he. college was all about my personal growh as much as it was about learning horticulture. i was standing on my own 2 feet doing something i enjoyed and after splitting up with john was finally not relying on sex or someone else to fill voids in my life. i still had down times and my mum would still go off the rails and i would fall back into sleeping with guys for a quick high, but over all i was also becoming more comfortable with being gay and enjoying exploring beyond quick shags. thats when i met chris, chris unlike john was older than me and wanted to spil me, it was just what i needed at 17 (though i told him i was 18 and like 3 months into the relationship had to come clean with my age), he would take me for dinners, treat me with cds, gifts and all sorts of things. we even had a holiday together. things had settled down enough at home that my friend lauren had moved in with me and i was for the most part happy. the 2 songs i pick for this part of my life are a whole new world from aladdin, as me a nd lauren used to sing this to each other as we sat outside under the leento with her smoking away and us chatting for hours. she to this day is one of the few people i tell all to and trust 100%, shes an amazing friend and person. the 2nd is rihanna SOS as chris loved rihanna and i remember buying him the a girl like me album.

so as these things do life moves on, i finished college, me and chris split up and lauren moved to york, but i was still happier. i had got tattoos, started my own business and grown up. my relationship was still non exist with my dad but me and mum had become closer (not like a mother and son, but closer). john came back into my life in the aug of 2008, i was 19 by then and we restarted our relationship (we had dabble back together a couple of times over the years from when we split up) but this was a bit more real. anyway needless to say he had a boyfriend who he lived with, and i was falling head over feet once more, yep it was never going to end well lol. anyway we did have another go and he split up with his BF but we were completely different people by then, the love was still there and probably always will be (he annoyingly says we will be together when we are 30 and on the same path again), anyway mirah carey stay the night became a song that really reminded me of us at the time. i swear i didn't buy a mariah cd i stole it off chris and never gave it back lol. as you can see by the lyrics we was winning me back despite myself.

You're kissing me
And saying I'm the one you need
To keep you warm
And lay with you tonight
Baby I feel the same way
I don't want to leave
Wanna hold you close
And feel your love inside
But I don't wanna play myself
Cause I know you're with someone else
And I don't need complications in my life
And I don't wanna fall back in
And get caught up in you again
Boy I'm so conflicted in my mind

You keep saying stay the night
Just let me rock you till the morning light
It's cold outside
And much too late to drive
You know I need you baby
I'm so lost without your love

Obviously, procrastinating just to be
Close to you a little longer now
It's hard for me to break away from you baby
Never could resist you
And I still haven't learned how
And I don't wanna be a fool
But it's hard when it comes to you
And I'm feeling vulnerable tonight
Cause I don't wanna miss the chance
Of reliving our sweet romance
Boy I'm so confused down deep inside

You keep saying stay the night
Just let me rock you til the morning light
It's cold outside
And much too late to drive
You know I need you baby
I'm so lost without your love

anyway something amazing happened to me this january, i met a poster off this forum called kim (legend1) and well we became instant friends. she puts up with my tori amos obsession and my sex talk. i seriously love this girl beyond words (in a gay way lol), shes brillopads and we are having a fake christmas together next saturday. our personalities seem to mesh so well. anyway theres a really silly tori amos song called posse bonus and it is our song, so in an ode to kimbo from her sambo this is the only posse bonus video i could find.

so as i sit here and type i have lauren, kimbo and my friend adam who i love and keep me sane. my sex life, while not normal, is deffinately more controled and healthier. my family life though not back to what it was is better, and this last 2 weeks i have got back in contact with my dad. im single but happy and enjoy my work and feel in a good place (though i have down moments).

so as an ode to myself my last 2 songs are blackbox ride on time cus it just makes me wanna dance, and its old skool and briil and tori amos a sorta fairytale, because my life as it is now seemed like a fairytale or dream to me when i was 14 and going through everything life threw at me.

that was most cathartic and i would have never even been able to talk about all that even a year ago.