Music
You Need to Hear this Song #20
Heavy Rotation — New Town Velocity, Johnny Marr (The Messenger, 2013)
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. These were good for record companies and artists alike.
Today, 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 we 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.
Here, I aim to highlight a particular song by a particular band or singer. We should know a bit about the band, 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 our lives?
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:
#20 — New Town Velocity, Johnny Marr (The Messenger, 2013)
As the number indicates, this is the 20th article in this series. The fact I am including a song from Johnny Marr’s solo career ahead of anything by Morrissey should send a clear message to our Stephen Patrick. And the message is this, “Stop being such a twat and kiss and make up already and get back together with Johnny and make some good music in the years you have left.”
It’s unlikely he’ll read this, and even if he did, he’d either ignore it completely or write and post a long winded diatribe on his website about the folly and futility of being stuck in the past and how is legacy is already set in stone. Las Vegas residency and all that.
Maybe so, Morrissey. Maybe so.
But not our Johnny. He’s still making solo albums. Yes, Morrissey, I know you are too. But Johnny’s are better, and have been for a while. Not only that, but collaborations with The The, Modest Mouse, The Pretenders, Electronic, New Order and the Pet Shop Boys indicate that people actually want to be around him and make great music. Who is your latest collaboration with?
That’s what I thought.
I do love the music of Morrissey, dear reader, lest anyone think I am taking pot shots at a target that makes for easy pot shooting. But when I hear Johnny Marr’s music I hear a heady mix of nostalgia for the past — not of the Smiths, but of the jangle of a guitar in the northwest of England — and a futuristic look forwards at the same time.
New Town Velocity is a great example of that and I can’t believe it’s already 10 years old. You might have come across it as a sort of snuck-in hidden track on his second album, “The Messenger”, which came 10 years after his first solo record in 2003, “Boomslang”. He’s made three more albums since.
But put it on. Close your eyes and listen and try to tell me that it would have been out of place on “The Queen is Dead” in 1986 or “Strangeways, Here We Come” in 1987. The trademark guitar sound and the string / synth background colour put us instantly in another place, in another time. At :30, Johnny’s steady, somewhat deadpan voice comes in for the first time.
“Left home a mystery
Leave school for poetry
I say goodbye to them and me
Mission velocity”
The song is his autobiography about knowing early on that all he wanted to do was play music. The first chorus, coming in at 1:16 is warm and wraps itself around the listener instantly. The road was long and hard full of difficult choices, no matter how obvious they are now.
“I’m in something alright I know
I got to live it out uh-oh”
“But look what I’ve made of it here, my destiny,” Johnny tells us. What gets me every time I hear the chorus is the little guitar trill (someone with more understanding of guitars would know if that’s the right word or not) that repeats above the rhythm guitar. My instant reaction is, “That is exactly the sound of the Smiths”, but I soon come to realise that no, in fact “that Smiths sound is the sound of Johnny Marr”
And then the guitar solo at 2:45. Absolutely blazing, on his Rickenbacker, making sounds that no one else makes.
“It turned out like I said it would
Can I get the world right here?”
To me, at just over 4 minutes long, New Town Velocity, is a happy look backward, both in terms of story and sound, at how it all came out in the wash in the end. You get the feeling Johnny is in a good place here, at peace with it all, but still with plans for more.
There is only doubt that the Smiths will ever reunite — far too much acrimony, ego, court cases and settlements, words said that won’t be taken back, still too fresh and deep to yet be regarded as water under the bridge.
But if you’re reading this Morrissey, there isn’t a single one of your fans that wouldn’t want to hear you wrap your vocal chords around this one, if Johnny offered it to you. And aren’t you all about giving your adoring legions what they want, stubborn bastard that you are? (1068)
Here’s Johnny Marr banging this one out in 2013 as well at a radio appearance. In a burgundy crushed velvet jacket. Pure rock and roll.
If you have made it this far, it will occur to you if this is #20 in this series, then there must be 19 previous ones. This is a correct assumption and here I will link #19. At the bottom of it, you find a link to #18 and the bottom of it, you can — if you so choose — be taken to #17. This ingenious system that I thought up all by myself continues all the way to #1
I really do hope that you like what you have just read. If you want unlimited access to thousands of writers, consider a subscription to Medium. It will set you back $5 a month and if you use this link, then I get a slice of that and I promise to use it to entice Morrissey and Marr to bury the hatchet and give it another go.