152 BPM 3: Moving Forward, Using All My Breath
Posted in Good for a run on the treadmill…
152 bpm 3: Moving Forward, Using All My Breath
The Chain – Fleetwood Mac I Melt With You – Modern English Roadkill – Concussion Ensemble Who Are You – The Who Rags – The Waterboys June – Unrest Waka – Camper Van Beethoven The Saints Are Coming – The Skids Helter Skelter (live) – U2 Bang Bang Rock and Roll – Art Brut Grandelinquent – Klark Kent (cooldown) I Never Asked To Be Your Mountain – Tim Buckley
This one keeps up the energy pretty nicely, I think.
It took me a long time to feel comfortable about loving Fleetwood Mac, and “The Chain” was one of the songs that helped me get over the hump. Rumours, though one of the greatest pure-pop records ever, really brings the creep on some tracks. I love the tension in the build-up to the coda; I almost wish it went on longer—the release seems a little rushed.
“Melt With You” never gets old, does it? Ever since its release, it’s had a little radio revival every couple of years. Curious little song.
You know, I’ve loved The Waterboys for years, and viewing them through the filters of their shifting influences has brought me to a lot of great bands. And until just this moment, I hadn’t considered that for a while there, they were trying to be The Teardrop Explodes.
I got “June” from Fluxblog. I somehow managed to get through the 80s and 90s without ever listening to many of the seminal American indie bands (see also: Superchunk). I like this one, though I start getting tired at about this point in the mix and this throws me off because it slows down as it goes on. I’m sympathetic: I used to play with a drummer like that. he’s always start too fast and then run out of steam. It was a bitch when we were playing “Wipeout,’ I’ll tell you that: the first drum solo would be dynamite, but the third would be pretty sad.
(The Skids track has a bit of the same problem, to be honest.)
Klark Kent was a side project, an outlet for Stewart Copeland’s songwriting during his Police years. What’s funny is that the same riffs keep showing up, even today, in his soundtrack work. He’s spun quite a career out of what is really a very limited palette of musical ideas. He makes up for it in sheer energy, I think: and energy goes a long way, especially to a purpose like this.
