OPENING TRACKS

The Audiophiles 15/12/09 OPENING TRACKS

The Audiophiles met at Bro Deller’s beautiful home to drink beer and ruminate on the special qualities that a potent opening track can bring to an album.

Bro Walsh had proposed this subject. He was inspired to do so by encountering A A Bondy’s ‘American Hearts’ album. He was struck by the offbeat opening track, which featured a strange effect created, he supposed, by sliding something along unfretted guitar strings.

As this was Bondy’s debut album, he wondered how much time Bondy had worried about whether to begin conventionally or nconventionally, given that some listeners would run from an offbeat opening while others might run from some of the more conventional tracks that appear later in the album and in his new album When The Devil’s Loose.

Bro Walsh proposed three ways of considering an opening track’s opening impact:
1. How much was the track chosen or constructed to create an artist’s first impression, especially when the first track was a first track of a first album?
2. How much artists were tempted by the lure of opening special effects, like spoken words or Bondy’s strange guitar sound, when selecting a first track?
3. How much could be learned about the ‘choreography’ of album design from opening tracks – especially in the days of 2-sided albums where as well as side 1 track 1 one had the same for side 2?

Members then proposed the following interesting & eclectic selection of Opening Tracks to albums.

Bro Walsh recommended
Johnny Cash: The Man Comes Around
“Having originally felt that ‘first track of first album’ was the purist’s choice I recalled this track. This is the first track on the last album rather than the first, and not just in the sense of ‘this is the last album unless I decide to make a Gary Glitter style comeback’, since Cash knew he was dying when he made this album. I like the idea of someone knowing that their time is up – every bit of this LP is full of death, with faith, foreboding, resignation and regret working through every song, even when it is a cover of a standard. I also think opening tracks are a decent place for artists to include spoken introductions – Cash reciting from the Book of Revelation on his deathbed, as it were, brings a shiver to the soul. The song is simplicity itself but because of the circumstances is dense with meaning.”
WHAT THEY SAID: ‘Brilliant. A golden voice raging against the arrival of death. Kicking against the pricks – or is it priests? Perhaps they’re one and the same thing…’

Bro Phillips recommended
Louis Jordan: Caldonia
“From a very early LP, recorded for the Mercury Label in 1956, as first track to Somebody Up There Digs Me. Louis Jordan recaptures a period on my corridor living in at Kent Uni. A saxophonist in our midst took to Jordan, the walls reverberating over weeks with Ain’t Nobody Here But Us Chickens, Choo Choo Ch’ Boogie and others. We all submitted to, then loved the mood Jordan provokes. It was a communal response. Many of the songs have you singing and jiving along, quite simply. The key is exuberance, and it is also that rough, pre-sellophane early sound, redolent of the jazz club, for which it is best appreciated on the You Tube recording (2 mins 54 secs). It’s endlessly hopeful stuff, in complete keeping with the spirit of the album as a whole: the world is still in a post-war, post-rationing bubble brimming with hope; the lyrics are affectionate, definitely without idealism. Musically, I like the double bass intro, and the skipping of Jordan’s sax.”
WHAT THEY SAID: ‘We love the walking bass intro. A happy song, in tune with the 40s. Buzzy. The youtube clips show how stereotypically black singers had to behave…’

Bro Attwell recommended
Metallica: Hit The Lights
“Hit the Lights is the first track on the album Kill ’em All. It was the first song that Hetfield and Ulrich worked on when forming Metallica. The song is about performing live, travelling on the road etc. It is very fast paced and the influence of Motorhead can clearly be heard. Its opening chords clearly state what the album is about and the fast, melodic guitar solos draw you into the rest of the album with a promise of greatness, a promise I am pleased to report is certainly kept. It firmly established Metallica as one of the best – actually the best, as time has proven – Thrash Metal bands. The debut album which this track opens had only 1500 copies initially printed; it has now been certified 3x Platinum.”
WHAT THEY SAID: ‘ Thrash, but melodic. It ends at the beginning. Wayne’s World… Spinal Tap… Norse mythology. Is there a Metallica Unplugged? Is such a thing theoretically possible?’

Bro Turner recommended
Pearl Jam: Once
“Quite simply because it is a “side 1 track 1” of a DEBUT album (Ten), which sadly cannot be said for my original track “Living is a problem because everything dies”, being the first track from Biffy Clyro’s outstanding but undeniably Fourth studio album, Puzzle.
I was instantly taken by Ten back in 1992, not caring for allegations that Pearl Jam were simply taking a free-ride on the grunge bandwagon. ONCE is such a happy tale of a man’s descent into madness which leads him into becoming a serial killer. It sets the scene for what I consider to be the band’s greatest album, although they themselves seem to think it to be over-produced with a preponderance of reverb. Never mind that: stand up, rock your head back and forth ungently, and enjoy.”
WHAT THEY SAID: ‘Too melodic to be called grunge. A well-paced, great start to the album. A John the Baptist track – good, but the best is yet to come…’

Bro Deller recommended
The Clash: Janie Jones
“I had a really hard (but fun) time honing down my choices (which started from a short list of 52). Oddly, most prominent in my choices were bands/albums from the late 70’s and early 80’s: The Specials – The Specials, Dexy’s Midnight Runners – Young Soul Rebels, The Cure – Three Imaginary Boys – because I wanted to choose a track that not only had some universal impact to musoes worldwide and defined some longevity of a mutually agreeably ‘important’ band but one that was also influential in shaping my thinking, ideals and aesthetics. Whilst I was really tempted by a great many tracks – especially ‘Burn It Down’ on the Dexy’s album which has a great intro – it was the The Clash who had to take precedence. They were the band that created an image that left the longest lasting impression on me – for most of my teens until I went to Art College really. They were the whole package for me at that time – very stylish, a bit of attitude, actually very listenable music (I never thought they were punks for long) and (being a non-lyrics man) I found their lyrics really struck a chord. Many an hour was spent perusing my favorite treasure; their photo-book The Clash: Before & After with photographs by Pennie Smith. The first tracks of most of their albums are all very good and set the tone for the respective album perfectly. I think they were very good at the choreography of their albums and obviously had good producers. My initial choice was London Calling but I thought for the sake of purity I would trace them back to their origins, thus Janie Jones, which does not do a bad job of encapsulating their lasting sound and sentiment.”
WHAT THEY SAID: ‘It tells you what’s coming, in this album and in the rest of The Clash’s work. In a nutshell, what The Clash are all about…’

Bro Mason recommended
Billy Bragg: The Milkman of Human Kindness
“As the working class, Durham undergraduate son of a TGWU shop steward who voted for Margaret Thatcher, I was understandably confused politically in the early eighties. Strangely, considering his views, what Billy Bragg said to me was that humanity is more important than politics and that sentiment comes across clearly in this first track of his first album. As does his love of playing with words and bringing something special out of the apparently mundane.”
WHAT THEY SAID: ‘Poetic wordplay. Billy Bragg always seems to be about soppy love songs, not political songs, in spite of the image and the Red Wedge thing. Pay no more than £2.99!’

Bro Newson recommended
Violent Femmes: Blister In The Sun
“Violent Femmes were pretty well known in the states on the college circuit and someone I was really into while at university. They still hold the honour of playing the best gig I have ever seen, the track I have picked being the opening track they played then. Were a very interesting band, at least during their peak of their first two albums, sufficiently eccentric and different to most things around at the time. I suspect the sound may be too low-fi for some in the group, lyrically this is also not the hi-point of Gano’s career. Still however something I like, possibly in part this is due to nostalgic reasons. Hopefully offers something slightly different to the other choices and if not, hey it’s very short!”
WHAT THEY SAID: ‘A good riff – sadly used in a Foster’s advert recently – the one with the men in their own shadows. The drum is not just keeping time but being used as an instrument.’

Bro Callas recommended
The Jimi Hendrix Experience: Foxy Lady
“Despite the rather dated Austin Powers, Shagadelic style lyrics this is a classic opening track. The opening with the flickering guitar raises the excitement and the anticipation builds. The feedback comes in and you are not sure what is going to happen next. Then it hits you. The changing guitar and Hendrix’s hugely distinctive, genuinely bluesy voice carry you into the main body of the track. From that point on it is an aural orgy of the main man’s superb musicianship and his powerful, expressive voice. You now know what the album has in store. Lie back and give your ears a treat. Yeah baby!!!!!!”
WHAT THEY SAID: ‘Feels like a forerunner of heavy metal, what with the Pete Townsend style feedback. Extremely foxy – back to Wayne’s World again…’

(Also recommended by the absent Bros Yates and Anderson were ‘Kid Loco’ and ‘Blue Suede Shoes’.)

In general the Bros felt that first tracks were often forgettable yet often still loved – like clothes that you would no longer dream of wearing, first tracks of first albums by favourite artists occupied a strangely irrational place of affection in one’s mind. A good first track allowed you to hear what was coming, not just in the individual album but also in the wider sphere of the artist’s work. A good first track was crucial to the design of the album, of course.

The vote for best track, conducted on an elaborate Single Transferable Vote System of which the Paddy Pantsdown’s SDP would have been proud, saw Bragg & Hendrix eliminated in the first round and Pearl Jam in the second. In the end Johnny Cash just outlasted the Violent Femmes. Best opening track therefore is THE MAN COMES AROUND.