My 501 Best Songs of the 21st Century series continues.
Featuring Interpol, Viking explorers, the Gang of Four, the Dandy Warhols, Blanco Y Negro, and the Walkmen.
Plus, the origins of the name Spikeysongs are revealed.
spiky
adjective
ˈspī-kē
variants or less commonly spikey
spikier; spikiest
1
: of, relating to, or characterized by spikes
2
: sharply irritating or acerbic (as in temper or manner)
Back in the early 90s, I worked briefly for a company called Advanced Travel. They were wholesalers to the travel retail trade and based in a suburb called Malvern, slightly east of the Johannesburg CBD. I was the only male in an office of about twenty. My role was to call on their corporate clients.
It was a pretty easy job, but maybe too stress-free for my liking. Also, the bickering amongst some of those females was relentless. I soon tired of their petty politics, resigned, and returned to the “normality” of the flooring world.
Not before I cadged an all-expenses paid ten-day trip to Australia, mind you. The travel industry has these delightful things where you go on “educational” excursions to exotic locations around the globe. So you can sell these destinations to Joe Public.
The general rule is you work for a company for a year before qualifying to go on one of the educational’s. I was about six months deep into my travel “career” and planning to vamoose when I somehow secured a spot on that particular South African Airways 747 bound for Sydney.
I kept my plans to myself, of course, and soon found myself swanning around Australian hotels and resorts my budget could never have afforded. An Afrikaans guy from SAA, twelve travel industry ladies from around South Africa, and myself. Fun, fun, fun. Let’s leave it at that – a story for another day.
I resigned soon after my return. Advanced Travel was a bit pissed off but grudgingly wished me well as I bid them all a fond farewell.
But, before that, there I was in this office filled with women. Two of whom stand out for me.
Alison
I can’t remember her surname, but she was gorgeous and lovely all rolled into one. I had a major crush on her. Sadly, Alison had a boyfriend. It was a troubled relationship by the sounds of things, but, bottom line, she wasn’t looking at me in any meaningful or, more importantly, lustful way!
My confidante in all things Alison was a striking blonde woman who I kind of also fancied.
Stella
This extremely compelling lady was in our marketing or accounts department. I can’t remember which, or maybe it was none of those. She had a stylish yet bohemian-like way about her. Not quite boho-chic, but you get the idea. All in all, Stella was a lovely person. She wasn’t beautiful in a traditional sense but still rather dazzling. With an open face and deep brown eyes, you could drown in. I can still see them. Ha-Ha.
Before I go any further let me now mention a song that always makes me think of her when I hear it. For reasons that should be fairly obvious. No, nothing to do with the diver part either.
Stella Was a Diver and She Was Always Down by Interpol is # 13 in my 501 series
Over 10,789,000 Spotify Spins
Try a snippet here 👆 or watch the video there 👇
Interpol
Is an American rock band from Manhattan, New York. Formed in 1997, their original line-up consisted of Paul Banks (lead vocals, rhythm guitar), Daniel Kessler (lead guitar, backing vocals), Carlos Dengler (bass guitar, keyboards), and Greg Drudy (drums). Drudy left the band in 2000 and was replaced by Sam Fogarino.
The track “Stella Was a Diver and She Was Always Down” is lifted from the band’s 2002 debut album called Turn on the Bright Lights. The album’s sound drew comparisons to post-punk groups of the early 1980s and late 1970s, particularly Joy Division, Echo and the Bunnymen, and The Smiths.
It came out in the aftermath of 9/11 and captured the dark, dissonant, detached tone of that era, and is the cream of the crop for the then-burgeoning New York City indie music scene.
The record was a slow-building success, selling 300,000 copies by 2004
One might go into a review like this one wondering how many words will pass before Joy Division is brought up. In this case, the answer is 16. Many are too quick to classify Interpol as mimics and lose out on discovering that little more than an allusion is being made. The music made by both bands explores the vast space between black and white and produces something pained, deftly penetrating, and beautiful. Save for a couple vocal tics, that’s where the obvious parallels end.
Andy Kellman (AllMusic Guide)
My favorite track on the album is also a non-single release which the group called “Leif Erikson.”
The lyrics have no connection to the Icelandic explorer Leif Erikson.* Interpol’s lead singer and guitarist, Paul Banks, revealed to Pitchfork in 2003 how the music inspired the title of the song.
“That was one of those things where, if you were to be able to isolate the keyboard part to that song – which you probably can’t – but if you were in the studio, or if you just heard us doing a soundcheck, there’s a quality to it which someone commented was kind of Viking-esque. Like if you were watching a film, you could see the galleon approaching the coast, the f–king Vikings peering over the edge or whatever, and then I just said, you know, ‘Oh, Leif Erikson,’ and I was really happy that everyone could live with it because, for me, it’s like absurdist. Absurdism is great, ’cause why not? It seems more arbitrary to take a lyric and make it your title than to take something completely out of the left field.”
*Leif Erikson, Leiv Eiriksson, or Leif Ericson, also known as Leif the Lucky (c. 970 – c. 1019 to 1025), was a Norse explorer who is thought to have been the first European to have set foot on continental North America, approximately half a millennium before Christopher Columbus.
Other key tracks
The songs “PDA“, “Obstacle 1” and the double a-side single “Say Hello to the Angels” / “NYC” were released as singles, with music videos being shot for all except “Say Hello to the Angels.”
They all make my mighty 501 (#15 – #18)
“Melodic Peter Hook-like basslines; the divine shoegazer textures of My Bloody Valentine and Ride; a peppy, Strokes-like bounce; and a singer who’s a dead ringer for Ian Curtis.”
Michael Chamy of The Austin Chronicle on INTERPOL
Interpol will feature again later in my 501 Best Songs of the 21st Century series.
Stella
When I started planning what I would write here I couldn’t recall Stella’s surname. After a little while, it partly came back to me.
It was a name of a brand of Scotch whisky.
How could I forget? But which one?
I went through a couple of options in my head and then … ah yes … Dewar’s.
Dewar. Stella Dewar.
What’s not to like about a woman with an alcohol-implied first name AND surname? YUM!!
If only the Interpol song had been called Stella was a Dewar!
Stella was older than me and a touch intimidating in her confident, slightly outrageous manner. I would have been about 25, and she a trendy thirty-something. Intelligent, in a worldly-wise way, sexy, a bit wild, and a lot naughty. She was my kind of woman. Most guys type, I imagine.
As I said earlier Stella was the only one that knew of my Alison fixation. She consoled me and offered advice. We became good friends.
At that point, I was living in a commune in good old Yeoville. On Muller which was only a short walk away from the bustling and so hip it hurts Rockey Street. Stella resided alone in a large airy flat in nearby Killarney. I hung out occasionally with Stella and some of her set of older (than me) bohemian friends. At times these gatherings got quite hectic and I could have been a smidgeon out of my depth, but it was all pretty cool.
bohemian
noun
a socially unconventional person, especially one who is involved in the arts.
“Warhol and the artists and bohemians he worked with in the 1960s“
adjective
socially unconventional in an artistic way.
“as an opera singer, you live a bohemian lifestyle”
Bohemian Like You by The Dandy Warhols is # 19 in my 501 series
Over 145,000,000 Spotify spins
Try a snippet here 👆 or watch the video there 👇
The Dandy Warhols are an American alternative rock band, formed in Portland, Oregon, in 1994 by singer-guitarist Courtney Taylor-Taylor and guitarist Peter Holmström. They were later joined by Zia McCabe* and drummer Eric Hedford. Hedford left in 1998 and was replaced by Taylor-Taylor’s cousin Brent DeBoer.
* on joining the group McCabe could not play any instruments at all. Courtney simply liked her positive attitude and how she looked. She learned to play the bass guitar on the fly. Playing in her words “a root note drone” until she began to master the instrument a few years in. Zia eventually started writing her own basslines and also learned how to play keyboards and the guitar. She still has no idea how musical scales work but is now viewed as a proficient multi-instrumentalist.
Taylor-Taylor described the band’s beginning as a group of friends who “needed music to drink to.” Early in their career, The Dandy Warhols performed in bars throughout Portland and became well known for their nudity-filled live shows.
Combining psych-rock, shoegaze, power pop, synth pop, and more with the cheeky detachment of their pop-art namesake, the Dandy Warhols are equally skilled at heady reveries and satirical pop. The group skewered hipster culture with a wit that suggested they were America’s answer to Brit-pop.
In 2000 they released their third album Thirteen Tales from Urban Bohemia, which downplayed their psych leanings in favor of sharp-edged pop such as the single “Bohemian Like You.” One of the band’s definitive songs, it peaked at number 28 on Billboard’s Alternative Songs chart in the U.S. and reached number five on the U.K. Singles Chart in 2001.
The band rose to new levels of fame after “Bohemian Like You” enjoyed extensive exposure due to being featured in a Vodafone advertisement. See below.
Thirteen Tales From Urban Bohemia presents a bakers’ dozen of their most focused and cohesive songs. Where their earlier albums were eclectic to the point of being scattershot, this release manages to limit the band’s style-switching to dreamy, sweeping epics like “Godless” and “Nietzsche,” sussed, sleazy power pop like “Mohammed” and “Cool Scene,” and country and gospel ventures like “Country Leaver” and “The Gospel.”
It also features anxious pop songs like “Solid,” “Get Off,” and the delicate, lovelorn ballad “Sleep.”
All in all, it’s a damn fine record.
Stella
One evening I picked Stella up in my car. I think we were going to see a film at the Killarney Mall. I was playing a cassette by the Leeds-based band Gang of Four on my car stereo.
“WTF were you thinking Mark?”
Yes, I honestly must have thought this would impress her. Ha-Ha.
Gang of Four
One of the most influential and groundbreaking bands to rise from the British punk scene in the late ’70s, Gang of Four took the freedoms and possibilities presented by punk and brought them to wild and unexpected places, both musically and philosophically. Gang of Four’s music fused tough funk rhythms, jagged shards of metallic guitar, and lyrics that filtered Marxist theory through the realities of daily life into a sound that bore little resemblance to any other group when they released their debut album, Entertainment!, in 1979.
Over 37,516,000 Spotify Spins
Try a snippet here 👆 or watch the video there 👇
The sound of people thinking
Greil Marcus on the Gang of Four
Somewhere on this little drive of ours Stella turned to me and said:
“Mark, why are your songs ALWAYS so SPIKY?!“
No idea what my immediate retort was but her comment stuck somewhere in my brain. From that moment on, every mixtape I made, bore my “brand” name SpikeySongs.
Many years later when Apple invented iTunes I used it to label the main folder containing all my … well … spiky songs. These days it’s also the name of my blog.
I added the ‘e’ because Stella had started calling me Spike. Make of that what you wish. Chuckle.
and
At first, I used to write my “logo” as
Spike Y Songs
Influenced by the independent record label Blanco Y Negro
Blanco y Negro Records (Spanish: “White and Black”), a subsidiary of WEA Records Ltd., was established in 1983 by Geoff Travis of Rough Trade Records and Mike Alway of él Records.
Blanco y Negro was the label of Bananarama, Everything but the Girl, the Jesus and Mary Chain, Eddi Reader, the Dream Academy, Dinosaur Jr., A House, Catatonia, and The Veils.
When I started writing this blog I worried that ‘spikey’ was not actually a word. That it’s the word spiky misspelled. But, once I checked out the ‘net a bit I found that it does exist.
SPIKEY: having spikes, also SPIKY [adj SPIKIER, SPIKIEST]
It’s even a valid Scrabble word scoring a minimum of 15 points if you get to use it, apparently.
So there we go, and now you know.
But what about the title of this particular blog? What has a rat got to do with all of this?
Let me tell you,
about,
The Rat
My plan had been to write about Stella and the invention of SpikeYsongs. I had a seriously SPIKEY song in mind that could also be included in my 501 Best Songs of the 21st Century.
Once I started writing I couldn’t help slipping in the Interpol track (‘coz it has Stella in the title), and then later the Dandys. Bohemian like you, Stella.
In 2002 someone at Look & Listen in Fourways thrust a CD at me and said, “Mark, take this, you’re gonna love it.” The album was called Bows + Arrows and that record store clerk was quite correct. I love that record and the band that made it to this day!!
The Walkmen are an American indie rock band. Active from 2000 to 2013, they are known as part of the 2000s-era post-punk revival in New York City, particularly for their critically acclaimed single “The Rat.”
The band is made up of drummer Matt Barrick, bassist/organist Peter Matthew Bauer, frontman Hamilton Leithauser, guitarist Paul Maroon, and multi-instrumentalist Walter Martin.
I remember listening to this song the first time…. talk about a kick in the pants. I kept wanting to get friends and relatives to listen and love this as much as I did. And while I did not have much luck I still think that one day The Rat will be recognized as an absolute classic of the genre.
Martin Serrato
From the opening ‘You’ve got a nerve…’ line, the track establishes its antagonistic tone, evoking the image of someone desperate, to a fault (and they know it), to spew bile at their ex, if only they’d open the front door.
You’ve got a nerve to be asking a favor
You’ve got a nerve to be calling my number
I know we’ve been through this before
Can’t you hear me? I’m calling out your name
Can’t you see me? I’m pounding on your door
I love the urgency, pain, anger, and sadness all wrapped up in this one song. If you’re of a certain age, this one hits hard and is the perfect soundtrack to a drunken night out that ends up going down miserable memory lane.
‘The Rat’ is audial battery, opening with a wall of C minor guitar chords that are hastily backed by an urgent and unrelenting drum pattern; it’s these drums that most people will cite as their favourite thing about the song, and actually came first when the band wrote the thing.
Christopher Hooton (The Independent)
Singer Hamilton Leithauser told Rolling Stone magazine that this song originated when the band was “just screwin’ around.” Then the band’s drummer Matt Barrick kicked off a breakneck groove, and the others joined. He concluded: “We threw some chords on it, I wrote the words in five minutes, and then we all started slammin’!“
Personally I don’t think there’s a better song defining this genre. “When I used to go out, I’d know everyone I saw. Now I go out alone if I go out at all” Gets me every single time.
Sam Cornwell
Despite simply swinging back and forth through a standard song structure, “The Rat,” originally called “Girls At Night,” demands repeat plays. It’s not original in style or genre, it’s just a fucking great song, and remains so.
“The Rat” was one of John Peel’s favorite songs too. Enough said.
Pitchfork Media voted it #6 in their list of best singles of 2004.
21st Century songs similar to
“The Rat”
“Thinking of a Dream I Had” (The Walkmen), “Take Me Out” (Franz Ferdinand), “Chelsea Dagger” (The Fratellis), “A-Punk” (Vampire Weekend), “Munich” (Editors), “Banquet” (Bloc Party), “Jenny Was a Friend of Mine (The Killers), “Little House of Savages” (The Walkmen), “Rebellion (Lies)” (Arcade Fire), and “The Skin of my Yellow Country Teeth” (Clap Your Hands Say Yeah)
All feature in my 501 Best Songs of the 21st Century series.
My updated playlist 👇
Epilogue
Once I left Advanced Travel, my friendship with Stella dwindled and eventually petered out completely. Not long after that, I met Mariana, love came tumbling, and that was that.
I bumped into Alison many years later. She looked good, fabulous in fact, but had married that boyfriend. My dreams of using Elvis Costello’s tune in her name as the first dance at our wedding were dashed forever. I wished her well.
It’s now been three decades since I heard from or laid eyes upon Stella. Our time together had been brief, but the impression she made on me, lingers pleasantly to this day. Shout out to Stella.
Thanks for reading
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