Tag: Sam Roberts

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Tunes

Best tunes of 2002: #6 Sam Roberts “Don’t walk away, Eileen”

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Do you have a song from your youth that you detest? And I’m not thinking because it was a bad tune or anything but that its sole offence was that it used your name in its title or lyrics and became fodder for use in teasing by your peers.

Yeah? Me too.

Mine came by way of El Debarge’s “Who’s Johnny?” that featured prominently in the 80s film “Short circuit”, another source of teasing (“Johnny five is alive!” Kids are so weird). I also got a lot of “Johnny B. Goode”, which I minded quite a bit less, because, well, that song rocks. And then, in university, I was introduced to a song by Madder Rose called “Beautiful John” that… okay… nobody really used that one to tease me…

Then, there’s the case of a friend of my wife’s and mine who had to grow up with people singing words to a certain hit Dexy’s Midnight Runners song, to the point that she couldn’t abide the tune. We were laughing about this very subject one night over dinner and the physical reaction she had at the mere mention of “Come on, Eileen” was hilarious to behold. But when I asked if she felt the same way about Sam Roberts’ hit tune “Don’t walk away Eileen”, her response was: “No! I love that song!” And she immediately started singing the song and drumming her hands on the table.

I don’t disagree with our friend Eileen’s assessment of the song at all. It was released as the second single off Sam Roberts’ debut EP, “The inhuman condition”, and is the second song from it to feature on this very list. Not bad at all for a release that only has six songs in total and one whose artist wondered whether the EP was a good idea for his first foray into music. It is basically a reinterpretation of half the demo tracks he put together to generate industry interest and well, the EP generated a huge buzz on Canadian radio. Then, a bunch of these tracks also appeared on Roberts’ debut long player, “We were born in a flame”, that was released the following year after he signed to Sony Music.

“Don’t walk away Eileen” is a thorough banging and crashing away at drums and guitars, a general racket, really, and Roberts seems less concerned about carrying a tune than emoting the feeling of anger and passion. It is punk without the trappings of being punk. It is a fun tune that many can identify with, a universal kick at a troubled or troubling love interest, a song to scream along with at the top of your lungs, whether in your car, in your room, in a bar drinking with friends, or in the middle of a crowd at a concert.

Yeah, it’s fun. I’m not quite sure it mitigates all those years of “Come on, Eileen” for our friend though.

For the rest of the Best tunes of 2002 list, click here.

Categories
Playlists

Playlist: The first day of Spring

Well, we made it. It’s the first day of Spring.

Yeah, this past winter has felt like an eternity but if I am being honest, it hasn’t even been that bad of a winter in these parts. It was relatively mild and we suffered through very few snowstorms, up until February, when, of course, all that went out the window. Even still, we’ve been seeing more mild weather again and the mounds of the white stuff have all but melted away.

And yet… and yet… it still felt like a long winter, didn’t it?

Well, it is officially over as of today. Mother nature be damned. And we are going to celebrate with a new playlist, the first of four seasonal themed mixes that I have planned for this year, all based on a theory my good friend Andrew Rodriguez has oft posited: there are certain songs that just “feel” like a given season.

Indeed, these are 25 songs that, even if not overtly Spring themed, they at least hint or evoke that certain mood. The playlist follows a chronological path, from the tentative first steps to the splashes in the rain puddles of April, from the traipsing through meadows of flowers to finally, a bit of a dance into June and the excitement of the summer beyond. Unfortunately, the song I really wanted to start this mix off with, The Gandharvas’ “The first day of Spring”, is not actually available on Spotify but I wanted to tip my hat to it nonetheless and replaced it with a similarly named track by Noah and The Whale.

Other highlights on this mix include:

    • “April fools”, the first track I ever heard by Canadian singer/songwriter, Rufus Wainwright, and it’s a whimsical ditty
    • “Rain”, a hazy number by The Clientele that evokes raindrops hitting against a steamed up window
    • Emily Haines and Metric covering the Lou Reed classic, “Perfect day”, no other explanation necessary
    • “June hymn”, off The Decemberists’ pastoral sixth album is a call for us all to go out into the woods and breathe deeply
    • And of course, “Spring and by summer fall”, is a ray of sunshine by Blonde Redhead that leads us off into the new season

For those who don’t use Spotify or if the embedded playlist below doesn’t work for you, here is the entire playlist (complete with YouTube links) as I’ve created it:

1. Noah and the Whale “The first days of Spring”

2. Kurt Vile “Wakin on a pretty day”

3. Rufus Wainwright “April fools”

4. Fontaines D.C. “Oh such a Spring”

5. Blind Melon “No rain”

6. The Jesus and Mary Chain “April skies”

7. Frank Turner “The opening act of Spring”

8. The Clientele “Rain”

9. Ex Cops “Spring break (birthday song)”

10. Engineers “Come in out of the rain”

11. Sea Wolf “Dew in the grass”

12. Camera Obscura “Honey in the sun”

13. Crocodiles “Endless flowers”

14. Arcade Fire “Month of May”

15. Metric “Perfect day”

16. Neutral Milk Hotel “King of carrot flowers, pt. 1”

17. Cults “Go outside”

18. Sam Roberts Band “Spring fever”

19. Dum Dum Girls “Trees and flowers”

20. The Decemberists “June hymn”

21. Hey Rosetta! “Yer Spring”

22. Unkle Bob “Birds and the bees”

23. U2 “Beautiful day”

24. The Like “June gloom”

25. Blonde Redhead “Spring and by Summer Fall”

And as I’ve said before, I’ll say again: Wherever you are in the world, I hope you are safe and continue to be well. Until next time, enjoy the tunes.

For those of you who are on Spotify, feel free to look me up. My user name is “jprobichaud911”.

Categories
Tunes

Best tunes of 2002: #22 Sam Roberts “Brother down”

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According to our friends at Wikipedia, an “extended play record, often referred to as an EP, is a musical recording that contains more tracks than a single, but is usually unqualified as an album or LP”. It’s a format that seems to have made a bit of a comeback in the last decade or so, likely as a result of and in conjunction with the return to relevance of vinyl records as a means of releasing music. In an otherwise digital sales and streaming world, the term would be rendered meaningless. Personally, and though I know a number of my favourite bands (see Belle & Sebastian) love the format, I’ve never been big on them, only procuring them in the cases of many of these same bands when I started to turn completist on collecting their musical outputs. It’s likely because for much of my early life, I didn’t have a lot of disposable income to put towards purchasing the music I loved so I had to be picky and found more value for dollar on full-length albums.

Sam Roberts’ debut release, an EP called “The inhuman condition”, was one of the few EPs I ever purchased brand new* on CD. I distinctly remember heading down to the HMV at the Rideau Centre one night after work with a $75 gift card burning a hole in my wallet. I remember wandering around the store many times with various combinations of discs in my hands, not wanting to waste such a rare opportunity in those days on poor choices. Of course, of the four or five CDs I walked out of the store with that evening, excited to get home to start spinning them, that EP was one of them, the relatively lower price and my enjoyment of this particular track whenever I heard it on X101 FM being the two main reasons.

The Montreal-based singer/songwriter has since gone on to great success nationally but I think Sam Roberts’ first single, “Brother down”, really paved the way. The version on the EP is the second version recorded (the first was a demo that you might find floating around) and he redid it a third time when he released his debut full-length the following year. It’s definitely still quite popular and has been a crowd favourite every time I’ve seen him perform live, which is actually quite a few times. It is a fun and funky number, the bongos, handclaps, and call and response vocals that run throughout providing the requisite groove. At the time, I honestly felt and described Roberts as Canada’s answer to Beck and though these days I can’t conscientiously make the same comparison, this particular song does smack audibly of Beck’s mid-90s “Odelay” days. It just makes me want to dance.

For the rest of the Best tunes of 2002 list, click here.

* As opposed to secondhand, I mean.