#oneaday Day 337: Lyrical Genius

Have you ever been on the website "Genius"? It's a site that hosts song lyrics, but it also has an annotation feature that allows the nerds of the Internet to highlight sections of the lyrics and post overly elaborate explanations of what they "really" mean.

I love sites like this, because inevitably you will stumble across people who take it really seriously, and that often leads to amusingly impassioned arguments about things that really don't matter. So let's have an explore, shall we?

Genius Annotation
3 contributors
Breakfast is one of the first things you do in the morning so if you burn you breakfast things are going “great”.

(As to why he’s making breakfast, knowing he’s two hours late for work, is beyond me!)

That one's from the second verse of I'll Be There For You, the theme from Friends by The Rembrandts. Elsewhere in the comments, someone points out that the theme song is sung from the perspective of first-season Rachel specifically, which honestly is not something I'd really considered before, but it would seem to apply for the most part.

Genius Annotation
1 contributor
This is likely a reference to being high on Methamphetamine, which is sometimes refered to as “Scooby snacks”

This one's from, unsurprisingly, Scooby Snacks by The Fun Lovin' Criminals. The downvotes are due to the fact that "Scooby Snacks" refer to ecstasy, not methamphetamine, and while the two share some chemical bits and pieces in common, they are not the same thing. Underneath, someone posted this alternative explanation, which I think I like a bit more anyway:

Comment by TiwakingTiwakingTiwaking, 6 months ago:

"Huey Morgan came up with lyrics about drug-addled bank robbers, an idea inspired by a security guard who handed out Valium to rowdy patrons at a New York City club called The Tunnel.

“On Sunday nights they had this crazy hip-hop party called Mecca,” Leiser explained. “There were fights and people trying to sneak weapons in, guns and knives, so the security guards were always on edge. One of the guards was a crazy dude and he’d be giving everyone Valiums so at least they were all chilled out. He’d hand them around and say, ‘Does anyone want a scooby snack?’ That’s where got the idea for the chorus from: what if this dude and some of his meathead friends were robbing banks, all high on these scooby snacks?”"

Here's some actual insight on MMMBop by Hanson:

Genius Annotation
1 contributor
Via Vulture:

Zac: “MMMBop” was started as a background part during the making of our previous independent album, called Boomerang. We were looking for background parts for a song, and somebody started singing what became the “MMMBop” chorus.

Ike: We were trying to come up with a catchy background part, and it was too catchy — like, “Oh, that’s really a foreground part.”

And some on Barbie Girl by Aqua, too:

Genius Annotation
2 contributors

The singer lives a life similar to the famous Barbie, where people live carefree, easy lives.

This line spawned one of the more hilarious court cases in music history, where Mattel, parent company to Barbie, sued Aqua for damaging the doll’s reputation. The judge ultimately sided with Aqua, leading to the now infamous ruling:

“The parties are advised to chill.”

"Oh baby, baby, the reason I breathe is you (Oh yeah)" from …Baby One More Time by Britney Spears prompted this discussion:

Genius Annotation
2 contributors
She’s addicted to her lover, and he’s the only reason she’s alive.

In 2003, 5 years after “…Baby One More Time,” Britney released a song called “Breathe on Me,” where breathing has less to do with survival and more to do with sex.

You know, I launched into this post thinking I would mock Genius and its community for taking things far too seriously, but a lot of these are actually surprisingly insightful. Maybe I should just pick something really stupid, dumb and obvious. Hmm.

Genius Annotation
1 contributor
“I need some love like I never needed love before.” The chorus erupts—a primal plea for connection. She yearns to make love, to explore every crevice of desire. Her past love was a mere appetizer; now, she’s back for the main course. The chorus repeats, a mantra of longing, urging her lover to set their spirits free—the only way to truly be.

This, from 2 Become 1 by the Spice Girls, is getting there, but I don't know. It's not wrong as such. It's just written in spectacularly flowery language, but then this is nothing unusual for music criticism, and I'm getting the increasing sense that Genius commentators would like nothing more than to be published music critics.

I was hoping that a song like Don't Stop (Wiggle Wiggle) by The Outhere Brothers would offer some gold, but disappointingly, there are no annotations on this song at all. I guess the lines "Put yo' ass on my face / I love the way your pussy tastes / Girl, you know you are the one / Take that ass and make me cum" are fairly self-explanatory, after all. Let's keep looking.

Okay, this one has a diagram. (Boom, Boom, Boom, Boom!! by Vengaboys, if you were wondering.) Good work. But, again, neither wrong nor particularly worthy of mocking. What are you doing to me, Genius? Stop providing genuine value and a good sense of humour! You have no place on the Internet of 2025!

Genius Annotation
3 contributors

In this part of the song, Rick is saying that he will be loyal to his girl and, as the lyrics says, he’ll never give up on her, neither let her down, etc.

The chorus is remembered by a lot of people because of the “Rick Rolled” meme.

(Pie chart showing Rick Astley, indicating the things he would never do, including Give You Up, Let You Down, Run Around and Desert You, Make You Cry, Say Goodbye, Tell a Lie and Hurt You. Proportionally, Give You Up has the largest portion of the pie.)

Okay, I think we're done here. You win this round, Genius. But I will find you. I will find the most stupid annotation on your stupid website, and I will share it and I will mock it.

But in the meantime, I will probably just continue looking up lyrics on you, because you seem like a pretty reliable source for that and, with adblockers and all that shenanigans set up, you also don't appear to want to fill my computer with malware, so good job on that, I guess.

If you happen to find anything particularly ridiculous in your own explorations of Genius, please do share!

Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.

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#oneaday Day 334: Shine on Me

Any time I have a long drive, I always agonise for at least a short period over What I Should Listen To. On the way down yesterday, this was pretty simple: I had two episodes of the excellent Fun Factor podcast to catch up on, so I did that. On the way back this evening, though, I had a momentary pause. Did I want to listen to more podcasts, did I want to listen to a playlist on shuffle that will inevitably surface the same tracks it always does, or did I want to do something a bit different?

Last September, I made the argument that you should listen to albums more. I stand by that, but I will extend my suggestion to say that by "albums" I also include specifically curated compilations. Because for my journey back this evening, I listened to nothing but the two-CD compilation Shine 7 (well, a digital version of it, anyway).

Shine 7 is, as the name suggests, the seventh in a series. Specifically, it was a series that ran throughout the 1990s by Polygram TV that focused on indie rock — primarily of the "Britpop" variety, but also incorporating some American artists such as Green Day and Soundgarden. There does not appear to be a record of why the series was called Shine, but I always chose to believe that it was because Liam Gallagher singing the word "Shine" as a three-syllable word ("Sheeee–eeeeyyyyeeeee–nnnnneh") in multiple Oasis songs was an iconic sound of the 1990s indie rock scene, and Oasis, of course, appeared on every Shine compilation except Shine 10. Sometimes, as in the case of Shine 7, multiple times.

Shine 7 in particular is a compilation that carries some personal nostalgia for me, because it was through Shine 7 specifically that I started to develop some of my tastes in popular music. I was a bit of a latecomer to buying and enjoying music of contemporary bands — indeed, I made a terrible faux pas when purchasing a CD album with my own money for the first time: I bought Oasis' Definitely Maybe literally the day before (What's the Story) Morning Glory? came out. Naturally, I copped a fair amount of ribbing from my school friends for that one, but I didn't regret it; I enjoyed Definitely Maybe and in some respects I think I still like it more than Morning Glory.

Anyway, I knew that it was "cool" to be into "indie" at the time, even though I didn't really know what "indie" meant, and I'm not sure anyone else did either. I did know that Stacey, a girl I had struck up a friendship with while participating in a school play, and, as it happened, a girl I rather fancied, seemed to know her stuff about music, though, so I asked her for some recommendations. And she recommended Shine 7 to me, as she'd recently got a copy and was impressed with the two CDs, which contained a nice mix of both very well-known and lesser-known groups from the time.

Aside: this is a story I'll probably tell in more detail another time, but for quite some time I was known as "non-pulling Stacey freak" by my friend Woody for an utterly failed attempt to seduce her at a party I was hosting. Largely because, as a socially awkward (and, retrospectively, autistic) teenager, I had absolutely no idea how one would go about such things. And ultimately decided that I valued my friendship with her more than my apparently indescribable, incommunicable desire to kiss her on the mouth. But I digress.

So anyway, I bought myself a copy of Shine 7, thinking that this might bring me a little closer to Stacey, and also thinking that this might be a good means of getting to know a few names in the "indie" space. It didn't bring me any closer to knowing what "indie" meant — it was an embarrassing number of years later that I discovered it meant "independent", which was probably a misnomer for a significant number of names on Shine 7 — but it did introduce me to a variety of interesting music that I enjoyed listening to.

And I enjoyed the curation of the compilation; there wasn't a particularly running "theme" through it or anything, but the progression of the songs was pleasing to me. You'd get some well-known stuff you'd heard on the radio, then some stuff you probably weren't familiar with, then maybe some stuff that had only released as singles, not on albums (Oasis' Whatever was my first contact with this type of release) and then back to the really well-known stuff. It didn't sit still or become complacent, and everything felt like it had equal "importance". There were, of course, some tracks I came to like a lot more than others — and some that I tended to skip on subsequent re-listens — but for the most part, I appreciated Shine 7 as a complete work in and of itself.

And y'know what? Listening to it in full for the first time in probably more than 30 years on the drive home this evening, it really took me back. I haven't heard some of these songs for a very long time, but pretty much all of them were comfortably familiar despite that long period away from my lugholes. I listened to Shine 7 a lot when I first got it — you have to remember that we didn't have music streaming services or even digital music stores like iTunes then, so you were stuck with whatever CDs you had — and I think it imprinted itself on my soul.

I'm not going to tell you that Shine 7 is a work of great genius or anything. If anything, it was a cynical attempt to cash in on the Britpop and indie rock craze that was sweeping the nation in the 1990s — the fact that there are 10 numbered Shine albums plus two Best of Shine compilations-of-compilations should tell you that — but back then, it was simply an enjoyable part of my CD collection that I liked a lot. I don't know if it really brought me any closer to Stacey or not, but I'd like to think it did.

And in listening to it on the way home this evening, I thought fondly of Stacey for the first time in many years. I hope she's doing well.

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#oneaday Day 313: Memories of Me: the curious intimacy of school concerts

As a Kid Who Could Do Music, I was involved in performances of various kinds from a pretty early age. I have fairly vivid memories of, as a primary school-age kid, participating in the Bedford Music Festival, at which I would play piano duets and trios with other equally young pianists from my local area who were studying under the same teacher. I remember taking the Yamaha YS-200 keyboard to my Nan and Grandad's house to put on "concerts" for them, complete with synthesised applause when I finished a piece. And, of course, when we had visitors, I was often asked to play for them on my piano at home.

It wasn't until secondary school that I really started doing a lot of public performance, though. I joined a number of the musical groups at my school, including the concert band, jazz band (known as Dance Band), orchestra and choir, and through being a member of those groups (as well as my solo performance abilities), I participated in, I think, pretty much every school concert that happened between me joining the school in Year 7 and my leaving it after Year 13.

I absolutely loved school concert night, for a whole host of reasons. Firstly, it was simply fun to perform: to take all the hard work we'd done in each group's weekly rehearsals and finally show off what we'd accomplished. I don't remember any major disasters happening at any time, either; the leaders of the various groups (also the school's main music teachers) were all pretty fastidious about ensuring we could perform things to the best of our ability, and they also seemed to make good choices of pieces that were appropriate to the overall ability level of the group as a whole.

For those who have never performed as part of a large ensemble, it's quite something. Your part might not stand out as the most important or recognisable, but every instrument playing something plays an important role in the overall texture and timbre of the piece being played. If you're playing it right, people might not notice you as an individual performer — though this does, of course, have the side effect that if you play it wrong, people will definitely notice.

For me, it was satisfying to be part of something bigger than myself. It was fascinating to see a rather tedious 3rd Clarinet part actually having some importance to a greater whole. And it was wonderful to feel a connection with the people around you, all of whom were there for a common purpose: to make music, to entertain people, and to express themselves.

I think this is a big part of the reason that I always found school concerts to be immensely romantic occasions. I've talked before about how, throughout secondary school, I fell in love with a lot of girls, and many of these flights of what were ultimately passing fancy started on the evening of a school concert. There was something curiously intimate about sitting next to someone in the middle of a large ensemble, performing with them, supporting one another. That feeling of connection was even stronger with the other members of your section, and particularly with your partner on your specific part.

And so it was that I inevitably came away from each school concert feeling like I was on cloud nine, not just for a satisfying performance that had gone down well with the supportive audience of parents and teachers; not just for the feeling that there was something in this world that I was good at, that gave me value; not just for the praise I got from my teachers, my peers and other parents, particularly when I performed solo; but because I had, through the music, enjoyed what I felt was an incredibly intimate moment of connection with another person.

I'm almost certain that my fellow 3rd Clarinet partners at various points didn't feel the same way, which is why I never attempted to "make a move" on anyone — not that I had the confidence to do that, anyway. But for that evening, that wonderful, romantic, evening when the school concert took place, I felt genuine happiness and closeness with other people, quite unlike at any other time in my life.

I kind of miss it. I haven't been a member of a musical ensemble for a very long time and my clarinets and saxophones haven't been out of their cases for many years, either. But I still have those pleasant memories; the recollection of the feelings that I felt at the time. It didn't matter that they were one-way or unrequited; to have just been there in the moment was enough, and that's what makes those memories intensely, deeply precious to me.

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#oneaday Day 279: Criminal Records

I sort of miss the whole ritual of buying music from a shop. You know, going in there, agonising over whether or not you really want to spend twelve quid on a CD from a band you're not sure you like based on a song you've heard so much on the radio you basically Stockholm Syndromed yourself into convincing you were a fan of?

Back when we actually still did that sort of thing, I had a fairly shameless attitude towards buying music, even though I occasionally got the piss taken out of me when I was a teen. This attitude started pretty early on, when the first music album I purchased for myself with my own money was Oasis' Definitely Maybe… literally the day before (What's The Story) Morning Glory? came out. After earning the jeers of my peer group for that particular escapade, I pretty much decided to go "fuck it", and just buy stuff I felt like buying, without shame. Same approach I take with video games to this day, as it happens.

That's not quite the full story, mind. There were still CDs that I saw in the shops that I knew it would effectively be social suicide to purchase, if anyone ever found out I did so. Generally speaking, as a teenage boy, anything by a boy band was right out, as were any of the particularly cheesy pop acts like S Club 7 or Steps. And, of course, the Spice Girls.

I maintained this feeling of warding off potential musical shame for a while, but then I went along with my parents to a party at my "Aunty" Sue and "Uncle" Peter's house. (I put "Aunty" and "Uncle" in quotes because they're not actually related to me; they're the kind of "Aunty" and "Uncle" that means "friends of my parents") I forget the exact occasion, but it was definitely some sort of celebration. And Aunty Sue and Uncle Peter had a big house — it used to be a school, in fact, but they were also rather well off.

Anyway, I always thought Uncle Peter was kind of cool in that way you never, ever mention to your parents when you're an adolescent, because declaring someone who isn't a celebrity but is from a completely different generation to you is "cool" is absolutely unthinkable.

The reason I thought Uncle Peter was cool was because as part of furnishing their absolutely enormous house, he had an amazing hi-fi system, and an enormous collection of records on various media formats (including several ones that were "weird" by the early '90s, like reel-to-reel tapes and 8-tracks) that covered possibly the most eclectic selection of musical tastes I think I've ever seen.

While Aunty Sue and Uncle Peter were setting up for the party, I happened to wander into the room with the hi-fi, where Uncle Peter was browsing through a big pile of CDs. And, to my surprise, I saw several "criminal" records among them — most notably the Spice Girls' first album, Spice.

I don't know why I felt this way, but something in my brain changed at that point. The thought process was something along the lines of "well, if Uncle Peter can buy a Spice Girls album and not spontaneously combust, would it really be so bad if I did so, too?"

So, not long after that trip and the party, I went out and bought myself a copy of Spice for myself. And I listened to it. And I enjoyed it! I thought a couple of tracks were a bit poo (interestingly, the tracks I tended to like least were the ones that had become singles, like Wannabe, which I still don't like all that much) but I overall… didn't regret my purchase, and listened to it a good few times. And when Spiceworld came out the following year, I bought that, too, also without shame.

I still didn't tell anyone I was buying these albums, nor did I do it in front of them, of course — I still had a certain amount of pride. But I also didn't hide these albums when anyone came to visit, nor did I attempt to concoct any sort of stupid lie about not knowing how they got there, or someone sabotaging my CD collection, or whatever. It was just part of my musical tastes at the time — which grew to be rather eclectic as a direct result of my own willingness to buy "criminal" records.

I sort of miss that. I still like listening to music, particularly when I'm doing something dull, but the thought of just putting a CD on and listening to it as a self-contained activity now feels almost alien to me. There are times when I consider starting to collect CDs again in an attempt to rediscover that lost pleasure of just listening to music as an activity in and of itself… then I remember I have a house bursting at the seams with video games already, and thus not really anywhere to put CDs, so I have to content myself with streaming, like most of us do these days.

My one hangover from those days is that even while streaming music, I tend to prefer to have full control over what I'm listening to, and I will more often than not listen to a full album rather than just putting it on a "Shuffle" or "Radio" setting. I still like that musical journey you take through a good album, but I do miss the whole ritual of buying the CD, taking it home, looking at the artwork, reading the sleeve notes and the lyrics and listening to the music intently and attentively.

I wonder if we'll ever come back around to that? There's already growing unrest and dissatisfaction with streaming video services, with some (including me) actually preferring a return to physical media. But can we go back? Should we? I don't know. But I'm definitely still tempted to rebuild that CD collection. I bet second-hand music CDs are dirt cheap these days.

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#oneaday Day 211: Things that don't exist any more

I was watching a Game Grumps episode where they were playing Supermarket Simulator earlier, and, as is often the case with that series, discussion got well and truly off the topic of the game and onto other matters.

One of the subjects they talked about was "secret tracks" on CDs. The existence of these used to be common knowledge, but with digital music having been A Thing for so long now, it was pretty much necessary for Dan to explain what one of these actually was.

I doubt anyone reading this is young enough to not know what a secret track on a CD is, but on the off-chance you are (or if you've just forgotten), it's where the last track on the CD would end, but the CD would keep playing, often for 10-15 minutes of complete silence, before cutting in with an unexpected new song that wasn't on its own individual track.

You could generally identify a CD with a secret track by if its last song was more than 10 minutes long, though there were, of course, some bands who really did close out their album with 10+ minute prog rock-style epics. There were also, apparently, some bands who found ways to hide secret songs in the "pregap" before track 1, allowing you to "rewind" from the beginning of the CD and find something new. This is one thing I actually never knew existed, as I never came across any in my time listening to CDs — but, like secret tracks in general, they are a thing of the past.

Most streaming versions of albums have the "secret tracks" as a separate, discrete track, thereby making them no longer secret. This also eliminates the "surprise" element, where the CD ends but you're in the middle of doing something (typically homework, essays and suchlike at the time I was listening to CDs rather than digital music) and, ten minutes later, you get suddenly shocked by the appearance of a piece of music you weren't expecting.

It's a little thing, but it's a bit sad to think that such a phenomenon no longer exists. And the episode went on to describe some other things that don't really happen all that much any more, either — like getting together with pals and playing a split-screen game of something like GoldenEye.

Local multiplayer games still exist, of course, but I'm willing to bet that a lot of you reading this haven't engaged in one for quite some time — and if you have, you certainly don't do so regularly.

While I was at university, we had a definite routine. Get up, go to lectures (probably), get some lunch at the student union, head back to my friend Tim's house, where we'd drink and play N64 games, typically Mario Kart 64, GoldenEye or, later, Perfect Dark.

It's funny to think back on this time as I type this across the from from my 55-inch widescreen wall-mounted 4K television, because we were almost certainly playing these games on a CRT that was no bigger than 20 inches, likely even smaller. I remember getting (if I remember rightly) a 26-inch TV from a local second-hand store and being blown away by how enormous it was. (It was also a nightmare to dispose of when it finally gave up the ghost; I ended up illegally leaving it in the bottom of a dumpster outside the block of flats where I lived at the time. No-one ever traced it back to me, so I got away with it.)

These things may seem like little nothings, but I'm saddened to lose them. Of course, one can still experience secret tracks on CDs that still exist — and I'm sure some artists still releasing stuff on CD are still sneaking in secret tracks — but it's no longer something that's just part of regular mainstream popular culture. And one can still get friends over to play split-screen games on the Switch in particular — although given my experiences in recent years, good luck getting anyone to ever commit to anything, even a simple evening of gaming, less than 8 months in advance.

Those of us prone to nostalgia are that way not just because we pine for our younger days, when life seemed simpler and our minds and bodies were perhaps in better shape, but because there were things that existed back then that pretty much… aren't a thing any more. And so, we do our best to remember those things, and why we liked them. And now and again, we get a reminder of something like secret tracks on CDs, and it prompts some fond memories. (And, in some cases, a sudden desire to start collecting CDs again, I'm sure. I have remained mostly immune to this to date… though I will admit to being tempted on occasion!)

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#oneaday Day 158: Obligations from 30+ years ago

I have a recurring dream. I am told it is quite a common one — or variations on it are, anyway — but I'm going to talk about it regardless, because I've been sitting staring at a blank page for half an hour and haven't been able to think of anything else to write today. So indulge me, if you will.

In my recurring dream, I am back at my secondary school. I am hanging out with my friends from that time, which is 30+ years ago. And I am not attending one of the music group rehearsals that I'm supposed to be participating in after school. I am, apparently, deliberately not attending it, and I am standing in a place with my friends that is within line of sight of the music block. My music teacher Mr. Murrall is standing outside the music block with his arms folded, just staring at me with a disapproving expression on his face. I feel bad. I feel guilty. And yet I do not — cannot — walk over there, apologise for whatever reason I have not showed up to rehearsals, and get back involved.

This dream is sometimes complemented or accompanied by a scenario in which I am preparing to go on stage, either to perform a piece of music or act, and I absolutely have not practiced the thing I am supposed to be performing. If I'm supposed to be acting, I don't even know my lines a little bit. If I'm supposed to be performing, I don't really know the piece of music and, usually, my instrument is not in any condition to be played. For some reason, the musical variation of this dream always involves the clarinet, which was always my "second instrument", and the problem is usually that the only reeds I have for it are in an absolutely awful state that would make playing near-impossible.

These sorts of dreams are clearly anxiety-related. I suspect they may also stem from a sense of mild guilt that I don't do as much music in my free time as I used to — though I have been a bit better since we got the new piano, and my Mum has been kind enough to purchase me a frankly absurdly expensive new stool as an early Christmas present, so that will make me even more likely to make time to play. I haven't touched the clarinet or saxophone for years, however; since both are instruments best played in a group situation and I have no suitable group to be part of, I haven't used either of them for a long time.

Times and lives change, of course, but music has always been an important part of my life, even when it comes to my other interests. One of my favourite things about video games, for example, is listening to their music and coming to understand all manner of different styles — and, if I'm lucky, tracking down some piano arrangements to be able to pay homage to my favourite tracks in my own way.

Once that nice piano stool arrives (which may be as soon as tomorrow), I wonder if I will be free of those dreams? I doubt it, I suspect, as dreams are rarely so literal; I suspect these particular scenarios come from a more general sense of anxiety than something specific. But at least I can say to myself that I'm making an effort to make the time for something that has always been — and always will be — important to me.

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#oneaday Day 131: Mandela Affected

Well, I've been well and truly hit with the Mandela Effect today.

Earlier, I was playing Maniac Square, a puzzle game by Spanish arcade developer Gaelco. Andie overheard the music and asked, "why does that game have the Blue Peter music?"

"It doesn't," I said, absolutely convinced of this fact. Blue Peter, as everyone knows, has Sailor's Hornpipe (or, to give it its more correct name, College Hornpipe) as its theme. The same one they play at the Proms every year.

Except it doesn't.

Blue Peter, I have learned, actually uses a tune called Barnacle Bill. It's similar, but different. Have a listen.

Here's Sailor's Hornpipe, with a YouTube thumbnail that resembles the Blue Peter logo, just to add insult to injury:

And here is the Blue Peter theme in one of its more famous incarnations by Mike Oldfield of Tubular Bells fame:

You will hopefully forgive me for getting the two confused. But wait! What's this?

It's only bloody Mike Oldfield doing the Sailor's Hornpipe. And just to confuse matters, his rendition of Barnacle Bill for Blue Peter in the '80s is often misattributed to being a B-side to Tubular Bells called, you guessed it, Sailor's Hornpipe. Except that one actually is Sailor's Hornpipe.

For anyone reading this who isn't British, I'm sorry. I'm not sure I can adequately explain Blue Peter to you other than to say it was a children's TV show that, during my childhood at least, made a lot of things involving "sticky-backed plastic", and occasionally also had wild animals shitting in their studio. It's also the origin point, for a certain generation anyway, of the phrase "here's one I made earlier".

You're going to go and tell me that isn't true either now, aren't you?

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#oneaday Day 110: Listen to albums

I've been trying to make an effort, when I listen to music, to put a full album on and let it run all the way through. It's how I enjoyed listening to music as a teen and twentysomething — I had a big CD collection that I kind of wish I hadn't gotten rid of now — and I'm beginning to drift back into preferring that kind of listening now, too.

Y'see, I've become increasingly conscious of the "media as content" problem that we, as a society, have been enthusiastically plunging ourselves headfirst into. Music has become disposable, and streaming services have made it very difficult for career musicians to… well, have a career out of music. Not only that, there is a not-insignificant number of people out there now who simply don't respect music for its artistry; they just want "background noise". Doesn't matter what it is, so long as it's noise.

I had a 3+ hour drive to and from the office yesterday and today respectively, so I decided to listen to some music rather than putting a podcast on. And I deliberately set up my music queue to play several full albums in succession rather than just a selection of favourite tracks — or, worse, just sticking it on "Shuffle" or "Radio" and letting it do its thing.

I really enjoyed it. And there's still something very pleasant about listening to an entire album in the context it's supposed to be heard. Really good albums feel like they're taking you on a journey; it's not necessarily that they have a narrative (though, of course, some do) but they do have a definite sense of progression from track to track. This is particularly evident in the case of stuff like Prodigy's The Fat of the Land, which smoothly transitions one track into the next, making for one continuous soundscape that evolves in character and energy as it progresses through its complete runtime.

I will attempt to outline my enjoyment of several albums that I found to be particular highlights throughout both journeys.

WWDD – Dempagumi.inc

I can't remember how I first came across Dempagumi.inc, a Japanese idol group that has been around since 2008, but I remember being very struck with this particular album from 2015 the first time I heard it. The songs were catchy and it felt like there was a sense of narrative to it. I didn't understand a word of it, of course, with it being all in Japanese, but I felt like that didn't matter all that much; what does matter to the Dempagumi.inc experience is being swept along by the energy of the group.

One track that I particularly like is Dear Stage e Youkoso (above). It's not necessarily the song on the album that I would describe as the "best", but the narrative setup of a seemingly downtrodden-sounding man discovering the real-life idol bar Dear Stage really works well. The listener finds themselves inhabiting the role of this man who gradually discovers joy through surrounding himself with the energy of the idols, and it feels like the performance is just for you. Or him. Or both. Whatever. Anyway, it's good.

The whole album is energetic and enjoyable, and it's one I come back to a lot. Definitely a good.

These Nuts – Ninja Sex Party

I absolutely adore Ninja Sex Party, the musical outfit run by Dan Avidan (best known as half of Game Grumps) and theoretical physicist Brian Wecht. Their work captures an absolutely perfect balance between being perfect pastiches of classic '80s rock and ballads, and being utterly, hilariously absurd. I could pick any Ninja Sex Party album to go in this slot, but These Nuts, their album from this year, is the one that particularly stuck in my mind today.

The opening track (after Danny Sexbang's obligatory introduction) is one of my favourites. Get Ready (To Get Ready) is a brilliantly energetic piece about people who will never be quite ready to do something when you want them to be — there's always one little thing to do, an email to send or something like that. The whole thing is delivered with such overblown earnestness that it's hard not to enjoy it.

Sports Anthem is also brilliant just because of the mental image it conjures up. It doesn't matter what sport it's referring to — because it doesn't refer to any specific one, and one suspects that neither Danny Sexbang nor Ninja Brian being really into sports is definitely part of the joke — the sentiment of "don't fuck it up" is universal.

The Fat of the Land – Prodigy

I vividly remember when I "discovered" Prodigy. I was on a bus for a school trip of some description, and my partial namesake Peter Miles was listening to a CD single of Breathe by Prodigy. I asked him if I could have a listen, and was immediately taken by, more than anything, the immensely satisfying drumbeat.

I hadn't really thought much of Prodigy prior to this. I'd probably heard Out of Space in passing, and I absolutely detested Firestarter the first time I heard it — though this was, in part, reflected disgust from my parents who, quite understandably, didn't understand the appeal.

But Breathe resonated with me for some reason, even though I still don't know what the actual words are. And when The Fat of the Land came out, I listened to it a lot. I liked Firestarter in context, though it was probably my least favourite track on the album.

Returning to it today, it's a great album. An absolute punch in the face of noise for most of its runtime, of course, but it has that really great sense of progression I was talking about before. Wisely, the whole album doesn't rely on heavy basslines and driving rhythms as in Breathe; around the midpoint there are several more downtempo numbers including the famous Mindfields (probably known by most people due to it being in The Matrix), the Crispian Mills-fronted Narayan and the instrumental Climbatize, all of which I rather like (though I must admit I'd forgotten about Climbatize until today's listen). Definitely one I will likely pop on when I'm in the mood for something loud.

Album-making is definitely an art form, and I worry that it's something we're at risk of losing — as with so many forms of culture. I feel like in the last 25 years or so we've lost more forms of culture than we've gained; the vapid brain-rotting dogshit that is TikTok doesn't feel like a very fair exchange for listening to full albums being the norm.

Still, it's not as if those old albums have gone away. So I'm going to continue making a point of listening to full albums as much as I can. And if you haven't done it for a while, I recommend giving it a go — you might be pleasantly surprised at how enjoyable it is.

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#oneaday Day 71: New Piano Ownership

The new piano arrived yesterday, but as it was a working day and it arrived quite late in the day, I didn't have a lot of time to play around with it. Today, though? Today is the weekend. So I spent some time playing it earlier.

It is very shiny. And yes, you can see Oliver in the upper-left corner. He is sitting on his tree. He is less shiny, but he wanted to see what was going on.

In fact, I did something I haven't done for at least 20 years, which is practice all the scales. All the normal ones, anyway; I didn't go on and do the scales in thirds and sixths like you have to do at Grade 8, I didn't do any chromatics and I didn't do any arpeggios. Those can wait until I'm a bit more back into the swing of things.

The new piano was definitely a good choice. I feel like I have a whole lot more control over tone and dynamics than I had with the clapped-out old thing we had before. It's clear that the old one we had was a nice piano back in its day — Bechstein is a good make, I believe — but the fact it was nearly a hundred years old (possibly more) meant that it was definitely showing its age more than a little bit.

I'm definitely happy with it. It inspired me to pick up some classical pieces that I haven't touched for a long time and give them a shot earlier, plus the stuff I really like playing these days, which is piano arrangements from the Final Fantasy and Nier series of video games, all sound great on it.

I don't think anything is quite up to snuff for me to want to share at this point, but once I've done a bit of that mysterious thing known as "practicing" and knocked something into shape a bit more, perhaps I'll share a piece or two via my YouTube channel or something.

It's nice to share music, so long as it's on your own terms and you're not being strongarmed into it or forced to do it against your will or anything. Thankfully, I never felt like I was being "forced" into learning the piano when I was a kid; I discovered early on that it was something I was quite good at, and that I could impress people who otherwise wouldn't give me the time of day with my piano skills.

I'll be perfectly honest: being at university and studying music alongside people who were at my standard or even better knocked my confidence a bit. I'd probably got a bit complacent and comfortable in my abilities and my relatively "superior" position to my peers at school — I never lorded it over anyone, I hasten to add, but I did always enjoy the looks of admiration and appreciation I got from people who didn't expect a teenager to be able to play the things I was playing at the time.

I think it's been enough years away from all that, though, that I can start rebuilding my enjoyment of the instrument, and getting a nice-quality instrument to play is an important step in that process. Now I just have to develop the self-discipline to practice on a regular basis, and during those practice sessions to push myself a little bit rather than just falling back on the pieces I know I can play well without too much difficulty.

One step at a time. And today was definitely a good first step.

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#oneaday Day 62: Enormous Instrument

I bought a piano today. Those who have been following this blog for a while will know that this is the second time I have done this, with the last being about nine years ago. Back then, I noted that the piano we bought was relatively cheap (about £250) and the seller noted that, since it was quite old, it wouldn't necessarily last very long — but it would be fine for a few years.

Well, turns out he was correct; the piano was consistently going out of tune around the E-flat below middle C — interestingly, the exact same note my childhood piano consistently went out of tune on — and after a visit from a local tuner, it became clear that getting it fixed up was going to cost more than we paid for it in the first place.

I have been somewhat lax on my piano-playing for a while, and this is at least partly because when you have an instrument that isn't quite right like this, it doesn't incentivise you to want to play because you know you have to deal with the boingy out-of-tune notes. It's weirdly "embarrassing", even though it's not the player's fault.

But I had been feeling like I want to play some more again, and if I wanted to do that something had to be done about the poor old piano. The repair option didn't seem worthwhile, so I started looking into replacements and/or a means of getting the old one responsibly removed — a piano isn't the sort of thing you can just take to the tip (and not just because of its size) and the council won't take it away as "bulky waste", so you generally have to hire a specialist to get rid of it.

Thankfully, I found a good piano place about 40 miles from us in the form of Chamberlain Pianos. This is a company over in Haslemere, Surrey, not far from where I used to work as a teacher, and it seemed they offered part-exchange deals. So I enquired as to whether the old piano — which dates back to the 1920s — would be worth anything in part-exchange, and expressed an interest in a couple of the pianos they had on offer.

As it turns out, our old piano was not worth anything in part-exchange — which I was not surprised about, as it's very old — but the company would be able to take it away when delivering a new one. So I made an appointment to go pay them a visit. And today was that appointment.

I was initially interested in an "Essex"-brand piano that had Steinway connections — I technically "have" a Steinway grand piano, but we don't really have anywhere to put it right now, and I'm sure my parents are loathe to part with it anyway, which is perfectly fine as it has been a feature of their living room for a long time at this point. I gave it a go and it was… not bad, but not as mindblowing as I thought it might be.

Thankfully, the chap showing me around Chamberlain Pianos, sales director Dominic Barnett, knew his stuff about pianos and was keen to show me some other pianos around a similar price point that I might be interested in. These included a couple of Kemble-brand pianos that were about 10-15 years old (which are basically Yamahas without the badge and consequently half the price) and a brand new Kawai. I tried them all, and there was definitely a difference between them; I would have probably been happy with any of them, but the one I eventually plumped for was the Kemble "Conservatoire" model — so called because of its use in music schools, apparently — that had a winning combination of a nice action and a lovely tone.

So that should be with us next Friday, which is exciting! It's shiny and black. I've always kind of wanted a shiny black piano ever since I played my secondary school's shiny black Yamaha piano in Music Room 1. So I'm looking forward to putting that through its paces and hopefully making a bit more of a habit of playing and practicing again. I'm long overdue for doing that.

I am exceedingly grateful to my ever-generous parents for providing a contribution towards this new piano; it allowed us to plop down a deposit on a piano that is a bit nicer than we might otherwise have been able to afford by ourselves. So I guess I better make good use of it, huh?

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