Music

You Need to Hear This Song #4

Heavy Rotation: Stevie, Kasabian (48:13, 2014)

Heavy Rotation was a music industry term for songs that one way or another got a lot of airplay. It referred to the large amount of rotation that a particular record got on turntables at radio stations. Since, until the 1980s, this was the only way to get new music into the ears and brains of listeners, heavy rotation meant increased sales. Increased sales were good for the record company and artist alike.

These days, some of us still put records on at home and give them a spin. Most of us don’t. However, the term still applies, though in a different way. Streaming services like Spotify sell subscriptions to listeners and then pay artists based on listens. At least, that’s the way I think it works.

For me, heavy rotation means a song that is in my head for some reason. Maybe for a moment, maybe for a day, maybe for longer. It’s a song that you come back to from time to time and still feels just as good. This series of articles is dedicated to these songs.

In this series, I am going to highlight a particular song by a particular band or singer. I think it’s important to know a bit about the band, to know a bit about where the song fits into its history and where the song fits into what was happening in music at that time. Then there’s the song itself. Who’s playing on it, what are the lyrics getting at and why is it so good? How does it still occupy sonic space in my life?

I’ll (try to) keep it short. It shouldn’t take you any longer to read than the song itself. To that end, I’ll put a Youtube clip of the original recording at the top of the article so you can listen as you read. Or not. And because a song is often much different live than in the recording studio, I’ll stick a live clip on at the end.

What song is in your head right now? Here’s one that won’t leave mine today:

#4 — Stevie, Kasabian (48:13, 2014)

Kasabian’s music came into my consciousness in the early part of this century, just after the ashes of 90s Britpop had finally stopped smouldering. What caught my ear at the time was that it was something fresh, something snarling, something that wanted to say…something. They were named after Linda Kasabian, a member of the Charles Manson family. The menacing name matched a menacing sound.

Their first album, Kasabian (2004), is to me, a classic that I can listen to over and over again, start to finish. Empire (2006), West Ryder Pauper Lunatic Asylum (2009) and Velociraptor (2011) had enough quality tunes to keep me interested. It was their seeming determination not to make the same album over and over again, like some bands I know, that kept me going. These albums are all quite different.

And then, I lost interest for some reason. Perhaps it was with music in general, but a new relationship that started in 2016 with someone who was a huge fan of this band brought me back. Sometimes that’s all it takes. Together, we saw Kasabian at an outdoor venue in Naples, Italy in the summer of 2018. Trust me when I tell you that if you get the chance to see them at one of the countless European festivals they are sure to be playing in the summer of 2022, take it. It is an honest to God rock and roll spectacle.

That said, Kasabian has not put out anything new since For Crying Out Loud (2017) and any live show will be without singer Tom Meighen who was given the boot in 2020 due to a domestic violence incident and who knows what else. Sergio Pizzorno, the actual leader of the band and writer of most of the songs has taken over on vocals and by all accounts is more than up to the task, based on live shows recently.

Olright, so…the song. In we come with what would probably be a pretty good baseline, but is in fact a cello, or perhaps two, or maybe a whole string section. I don’t really know my way around violins.

Trumpets, or again perhaps more than one, enter the fray at 00:13 and produce something of an apocalyptic-feeling theme that sets the tone for the rest of the song. The first whack of the snare drum and high hat hit us, or rather drives into us, at 00:30. Bass and guitar in at 00:44 and some crowd cheering let you know that this song is going to lift you up before it puts you down.

Tom Meighen’s voice enters at 00:59 asking “Stevie where you going with that gun / who you wanna shoot down / who you tryna kill?” Ok, a song about gun violence…I’m on board.

“You’ve been watching too much TV / It’s playing with your memory / It’s tryna break your heart”. Ah, so there is something behind the gun violence. But there’s a solution for anyone with problems; “Calm down / take your medication / that numbs you to the world”. Unfortunately, the solution causes more problems when the pharmaceuticals don’t work as intended.

The world is fucked up and anyone who is trying to grow up in it and figure it out has an uphill task ahead of them. But there’s hope yet, “All the kids they say / live to fight another day / live to fight again”.

The video is gripping, the lyrics are emphatic. And all the pieces of the music come together to rise into one great chaotic, driving, glorious cacophony leading us to realize that “there’s no way back, no there’s no way back”. You can’t unsee it and you can’t unhear it. And once you know what is going on with today’s youth, you can’t pretend everything’s fine.

Here is a video of a live performance of this song in 2014, in Kasabian’s home town of Leicester, England. The energy of the band and the song is given to the fans who then give it back to the band. This needs turning up.