Tag: Retro

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Vinyl

Vinyl love: Oasis “Time flies… 1994-2009”

(Vinyl Love is a series of posts that quite simply lists, describes, and displays the pieces in my growing vinyl collection. You can bet that each record was given a spin during the drafting of each corresponding post.)

Artist: Oasis
Album Title: Time flies… 1994-2009
Year released: 2010
Year reissued: 2025
Details: 4 x LP, orange, green, pink, blue, 15th anniversary, RSD limited edition, 5363/15000

The skinny: In a parallel universe, I would be attending the first of two Oasis gigs at the newly constructed Rogers Stadium in Toronto with a handful of old friends tonight. The risk in procuring tickets over a year in advance of a gig is that there’s always a possibility that your circumstances could change. In this case, they did change and I needed to give up my ticket. But no fear, I take small comfort in two things. First, that I have seen them already once before*. And second, that I managed to procure this special Record Store Day, coloured vinyl, 4 disc box set reissue of their 2006 ‘best of’ compilation “Stop the clocks” from an online indie shop earlier this year. I’m not always convinced that compilations are the way to go, especially when I already have the best of the artist in question’s albums in my record collection. However, I made the exception for this one given how pretty it looked and that it included a couple of great tracks that I was still missing on vinyl, most importantly, the amazing non-album single featured below. And I’ve listened to set this a few times since it arrived and with all these great tracks, back to back, there’s been no regrets. For those attending tonight, I bet it’s going to be a great show, no matter their setlist, so please enjoy for me.

Standout track: “Whatever”

*That infamous gig at Virgin festival 2008 where a ‘fan’ ridiculously hid under the stage the whole day only to leap out while Oasis were playing and push Noel Gallagher from behind.

Categories
Tunes

Best tunes of 1994: #27 Green Day “Longview”

<< #28   |   #26 >>

For a couple of weeks last month, my life* revolved around Ottawa’s Bluesfest, the local big music festival and arguably one of the biggest in Canada. I’ve been attending this shindig to some extent for the past fifteen years or so and have seen some amazing acts in the process. In fact, one of the things I love most about it, besides discovering new bands, is how it has made it possible for me to see a litany of acts that I likely wouldn’t have otherwise seen. Green Day is a band that fits into this latter category from this year’s edition, a band that I’ve known for decades but never really actively followed and would never have bought a concert ticket to just see them. But man, they did put on a great show and played pretty much every song I would have wanted to hear, including this one.

I first heard of the punk trio from California with the release of “Dookie”, the band’s major label debut. A number of the singles from that album got regular play on CFNY in 1994 and given that that was the radio station of choice for me, I heard quite a bit of them, their songs were ear worms that stuck with me, in spite of me. Later on, that summer, I distinctly remember watching footage of their legendary performance at Woodstock ‘94, the mud fight that ensued, and my appreciation for the band grew. The following fall, my university friend Craig loaned me his CD copy of “Dookie” one day while giving me a ride back to my basement apartment north of the city. I recorded it to cassette and it entered into history as part of my soundtrack for second year university.

I stopped actively following Green Day after that though, and am pretty certain that I haven’t listened to any of the eleven studio albums since “Dookie” in full. However, as I discovered at their show, I’ve still been indirectly exposed to a lot of their material. I was amazed but shouldn’t have been as surprised as I was at the crowd that they drew**. And it occurred to me as I sang along with the masses at how well they have transitioned from the punk pranksters of their youth to a crowd pleasing stadium rock band and seemingly managed to keep their integrity intact.

“Peel me off this Velcro seat
And get me moving
I sure as hell can’t do it by myself”

“Longview” was among the songs they played at the show that I was able to and happily sang along with. It was the first song that I ever heard by Green Day and is still quite simply my favourite by the group. The themes of boredom and lethargy definitely rang true for me back in the day, especially when I thought I was going to be stuck in my small hometown forever, and the memories have me wistfully smiling every time I hear the words. That loping drum intro and out for a stroll bass line gets me every time and when it jumps into overdrive at the chorus, I’m right there with the band. Yeah, it plays that loud-quiet-loud card, giving you downtime between explosions to catch your breath. This is perfect gen X power chord punk.

*And my wife will tell you hers too despite not attending at all this year.

**Rumour has it that was the best attended night of the festival this year and possibly, any of the years yet.

For the rest of the Best tunes of 1994 list, click here.

Categories
Tunes

Eighties’ best 100 redux: #81 Leonard Cohen “Everybody knows” (1988)

<< #82    |    #80 >>

When I was a teenager, I wanted to be Mark Hunter, aka “Hard Harry”. Much like the character portrayed by Christian Slater in the 1990 film “Pump up the volume”, I spent most of high school painfully shy and socially awkward. And though working with the high school drama club did draw me out of my shell, especially during my fourth and fifth years, I still identified with the character and found the story appealing.

In the film, the teenaged protagonist creates the persona of “Hard Harry” out of boredom and starts to broadcast a pirate radio show out of his parents’ basement. It starts out all fun, crude teen jokes and self-amusement, not knowing whether or not anyone was listening. But in truth, he was gaining listeners amongst his peers in his small, sleepy suburban town. During the shows, he reads and responds to letters that start to arrive in the P.O. box he sets up and things begin to turn serious when one of his listeners asks whether or not he should kill himself.

When it comes out the next morning that the listener actually went through with the suicide, things start to unravel. Mark realizes people are listening and that his words have weight and consequences. Of course, school staff, the police, and the FCC realize it too and the witch hunt begins. The rest of the movie is an internal struggle on whether to give it up or continue on, all with a love interest in Samantha Mathis (with dyed black hair) thrown in for good measure.

The reason I dredge up this long forgotten film treasure* today is because, amongst all the great music played and hinted at through shots of record spines and posters, the 1988 Leonard Cohen track “Everybody knows” was used by Mark Hunter as his show’s theme music and of course, the song was played prominently throughout the film**.

Leonard Cohen should need no introduction to most. The Montreal-born poet and folk singer/songwriter started his music career in the late 60s and he immediately contributed a number of future classics to the folk canon. In 1988, Cohen released his 8th studio album, “I’m your man”, which saw the musician further evolve his sound from his strictly folk and organic sound to something more austere and synthetic, allowing him to put even more emphasis on this words. “Everybody knows” was the fifth single to be released off “I’m your man” and was decently received at the time. But its use in “Pump up the volume” exposed the song and its performer to a wider audience. It certainly was my first exposure to Cohen, at least the first exposure that I was conscious of.

“Everybody knows” is five and a half minutes of haunting and driving synthesized strings and a seemingly synthesized Spanish guitar flitting about, while Cohen does his sing-speak poetry reading thing in his deep, deep voice. Frequent collaborator Sharon Robinson adds female backing vocals at the chorus, harmonizing and bringing a human touch to the otherwise, otherworldly sound. The words are intelligent and biting, as Cohen’s lyrics frequently are, marked by a repetition of the song’s title and what it actually is that everybody knows.

Original Eighties best 100 position: n/a

Favourite lyric: “Everybody knows that you’ve been faithful / Ah, give or take a night or two” Classic Leonard Cohen stuff.

Where are they now?: Leonard Cohen sadly passed away in 2016 at the age of 82 from many health issues.

*Long forgotten to likely many but not to me

**Instead of Cohen’s original version, the film’s soundtrack featured Concrete Blonde’s cover, which also played during the film’s closing credits.

For the rest of the Eighties’ best 100 redux list, click here.