They Suck Young Blood

The Arctic Monkeys now have the fastest selling debut album in the UK. They sold over 360,000 copies in a week, leaving behind the reality TV-fabricated boyband Hear'Say by 60,000. Oasis had the record before them, with some 250,000. The record industry has not seen a phenomenon like this since...

...the Beatles.

So it's not surprising that the journo's are wetting their pants. And, inevitably, the sourpusses are taking potshots at them, saying they've lifted this from here and that from there. Or, in some extreme cases, that they suck. Bless them, confused souls.

There's a song on the album that most reviewers either ignore, or declare as "weak". Here are the lyrics to Alex Turner's pre-emptive strike. It's a song about hype, overenthusiastic praise, and fickle press-men.

Perhaps Vampire is a bit strong but..

Well I've seen your eyes as they fix on me
What is he doing? What on earth's the plan? Has he got one?
You'd better give me some pointers
Since you are the big rocket launcher and I'm just the shotgun

Well I ain't got no dollar signs in my eyes
That might be a surprise but it's true
That I'm not like you and I don't want your advice
Or your praise or to move in the ways you do
And I never will

Cause all you people are vampires
And all your stories are stale
And though you pretend to you'll stand by us
I know you're certain we'll fail

Well I've seen your eyes as they flicked on me
Full of confusion
Your snarl is just so condescending
Try to explain that we're onto a win
If the fee we get in
Near recoups what we're spending

He says, I can't believe that you drove all that way
Well how much did they pay ya? How much did they pay ya?
You'd've been better to stay round our way
Thinking 'bout things but not actually doing a thing

Cause all you people are vampires!


Any surprises that the rock critics didn't go for this ?

Listen to this wonderful rock and roll middle finger:

Perhaps Vampire is a bit strong but... [mp3]

You Sexy Little Swine

Arctic Monkeys.

Arctic Monkeys?

Arctic Monkeys!

However you say it, it's a silly band name.

Then again, who wants to be a misspelled insect?









ARCTIC MONKEYS KICK ASS!!!

I wanted to slowly work my way to the noughties, weaving through everything I like -from Chuck Berry to Radiohead - but I'm just too excited about this band. I have allowed myself to be caught up in a wave of hype that has nothing to do with my geographical location.

The internet can do that. Next thing you know there'll be slick Delhi-ites hip to the Moscow jive.

Or - like - whatever.

So as I was saying...I'm really following this band, downloading everything I can get my hands on (which is a lot). They have the guitar hooks, the playful dancy drums, and most importantly, the lyrics. The critics think it's all about Sheffield and whatnot, but I could pretty much access most of the songs. I'm not surprised at all that these guys are set to snatch from Oasis the record for fastest selling debut rock album in the UK. It's a perfect album, as this guy said. (I love reading reviews of music I already like!)

I hesitated for a bit before gushing about these kiddos (three 19-year-olds and a 20 year old). Many of my music-listening friends sit still, just about tapping their feet or nodding their heads to the beat. Madhu does the occassional Ravey Ravey move. But only at raves. And no, headbanging and drunken swaying do not count. They never did.

[Thoma falls under a different category, which is beyond the scope of our discussion. He rocked the scenario.]

I'm not going to put pictures up. I'm merely going to direct you people to a source of mp3s and a source of videos.




Arctic Army has loads of mp3s.

I recommend Dancing Shoes, Fake Tales of San Francisco, From the Ritz to the Rubble....actually, just try out all the demos.

Mardy Bum has a great stock of videos. The files are nice and small, yet the quality is pretty damn good. I suggest the MTV Gonzo on Tour videos.




Listen. Learn. And Enjoy. You may even "look good on the dancefloor, dancing to electro pop like a robot from 1984".

In the days of my youth I was told what it means to be a man

Happened in first year, first term. I will always associate Led Zeppelin and the Grateful Dead with three people from Muk West: RR, RP, and DM. They were seniors and they were unspeakably cool in the eys of a futcha. Unspeakably. [Philip I got to know later. On second thought maybe he wasn't that cool. But he was mean to Madhu in humourous and creative ways. So that compensates.]

RR and RP were the quintessential rock n roll stoners. The first time I saw weed ["Drugs!" I gasped. They laughed. How was I to know?] was in Philip's room, on my very first day of college. I impressed them by naming more than half the Rock Gods on the wall - Dylan, the Beatles, Marley, Ozzie Osbourne, Jerry Garcia - the usual suspects. [The truth was I had just seen the entire BBC series Dancing in the Streets - a history of Popular Music - over the course of the past year.]

Not that I had heard most of them properly. All angle, even at the beginning.

RR had a very cool walk. He used to wake up every morning to the same song - Communication Breakdown - on full blast, so that he could here it all the way in the loo. So it got into my head.

Smouldering.

DM gave me Led Zeppelin I and III on one cassette, and II and IV on the other. I didn't hear anything else for days. Weeks. By the end of it I thought he had recorded them thats way intentionally. [Later I found out that it was a fluke.] I and III are dark, brooding: all brown and yellows - shadows and low flames. I and IV have that magic, that bounce: watery blue and night black, with tinges of earthy green. Tolkien.

So I liked them, yeah?

One of the first few times I got drunk, I was recorded grooving to Whole Lotta Love on top of my bed, with Ragu in the foreground attempting to match my moves.

Someone has that footage...



I heard the Grateful Dead in RP's room. he was with RR, who was pointing out some finer point in the music playing in the background. Perhaps I was being sent off to buy booze, I can't remember. He said "Now now check this out:", so I strained my ear. A cymbal played...and then it stopped. I felt rather thick. I didn't get it. Luckily Philip didn't either. Apparently the drummer hadto hold the cymbal to silence it that way. Uh. Okay.

RR told me that American Beauty was the most accessible album. How right he was! I was planning on proving him wrong, but this was the perfect step after CSNY. There's no denying that lazy morning music. The perfect entry into their acid hillbilly fantasy.

These guys were part of the wider Soundcheck gang. Soundcheck 42 was a great college band. While future engineers across India headbanged to that ridiculous Iron Maiden, Soundcheck 42 gave us healthy doses of Rolling Stones, CCR, Dylan - the occasional Beatles song. They even did a Strokes cover way back when. During the exams all of them would study till midnight, then gather in RR's room for a jam session. They would sing the occassional Dead song. They either passed out or passed (almost all of them, at any rate!), and their music passed to us, through osmosis. And the rest, as they say, is Philosophy [in second year].


It’s a hand-me-down, the thoughts are broken,
Perhaps they’re better left unsung.
I don’t know, don’t really care
Let there be songs to fill the air.

- Ripple, The Grateful Dead


Cast of Characters

Led Zeppelin - Communication Breakdown [mp3]

The Grateful Dead - Ripple[mp3]

No One I Think Is In My Tree

I love the Beatles so much it hurts. Yellow Submarine is like a nursery rhyme to me. My sister and I know every single dialogue from the movies A Hard Day's Night and Help! by heart. John, Paul, George and Ringo aren't musicians or pop stars. They're members of my family.

To say they are the greatest is to do them the disservice of comparison. Besides, I can't be objective. Who can?

It's not the psychedelia, or the lyrics, or the vocals - you can't break it down to its basic elements. And I hate it when people tell me "Yeah I like their later stuff...not that Love Me Do business." It's probably their early songs that are dearest to me. I'll pick a couple that I like for no particular reason.

I'll Cry Instead - it lasts for less than two minutes but what a wonderful ride it is. My video cassette of A Hard Day's Night opens with this song, and a collage of stills from the movie. Gives me a warm fuzzy feeling. [mp3]

I often find myself singing I'll Be Back. Not sure why. Nothing to get hung about, surely? Buried deep in my subconscious I guess. [mp3]

Let's start from the very beginning...

A very good place to start. I've been bouncing around the mp3 blogs for a few months now, and thanks to the esteemed bloggers listed on the sidebar, I have discovered Arctic Monkeys, Kaiser Chiefs, and loads of other good stuff. Sadly, with none of my close friends around the place, I cannot indulge in the urge to be a music missionary.

Peoples, please to be enjoying and commenting and whatnot. You know who you are. And so do I.

Music started out as singing. I can't even remember when I started. Everyone in my family sings. My dad sings Hindi songs from the Golden Era, doing more than justice to the memories of Mohammad Rafi and Kishore Kumar. My mum sings those wonderful folksy songs found in your typical chord-and-lyric books from the 70's, strumming her guitar. My sister can sing all sorts of things. She sang O Holy Night on a few occassions, for carol services. No easy string of notes to hit. She sang Zombie at some coffee pub - live band and all. (There was an annoying period when she used to belt out R&B numbers, overdoing the caterwauling Whitney-Mariah nonsense. Thankfully, all things must pass.)

Me? I sang in choirs as a li'l kid. Then my voice cracked, and silence descended on me for several years. Until my third year of college, when I was asked to sing Maxwell's Silver Hammer for a wonderfully kooky play. The response was quite unexpected, so now I think I might sing in public again someday. If someone askes me to of course! Nothing like singing with intruments to back you up, and help you find your way.

The Ancient and Mystic Art of Singing lies at the very root of my musical appreciation; for all my forays into hard rock, prog-rock, instrumentals, psychedelia, funk, punk and sundry, I still look for The Sing-a-long Song. The catchy tune. There's a lilt in certain voices (the Sound of Sincerity, my dad might day) that tugs the heartstrings, inviting me to try and keep up. I think this is the common thread that links me to John Lennon, David Gilmour, Thom Yorke and Freddie Mercury - to name a paltry few.

Hence the Sound of Music reference in the title.

I want to quickly get to the new stuff I'm listening to, but I think I should warm up first, leafing through my dusty musical photo-album, searching for origins.

These are the roots of rhythm and the roots of rhythm remain.
- Under African Skies - Paul Simon

So in the next few posts I shall work my way up to this nameless decade. A lot of the bands are the standard Greatest Bands in the History of the Universe, so I can't say anything 'original' about them. What I am going to do can basically be summed up as follows:

A History of Rock 'n' Roll 'n' Me
(Being a meandering discourse on my subjective experience of listening to music)

Why "Zorro on Doughnuts", you might ask...

Noel Gallagher described Jack White as "Zorro on Doughnuts".


Read all about it.

He also lambasted the mustachio'd songsmith for doing a song for a Coca-Cola ad, despite the fact that he and his brother are endorsing some Toshiba mobile phone.

This little tidbit contains three elements integral to my existence: Oasis, The White Stripes, and... Coca-Cola.



This shall be a music blog. Any questions?