Samiam - You Are Freaking Me Out

John Saunders. There is the name of a man I have never met. However, it is through him that I discovered one of my favourite bands of all time. John Saunders was an older guy (I've no idea how old - 40?) whom my brother worked with. One day my brother came home from work with a pile of CDs by this band. There was something about the that I liked but there was something not quite clicking with me. I was in my mid teens and I was just getting in to music in a haphazard sort of a way.

I had gotten in to Oasis recently and had begun my Noel Gallagher obsession that lasted a while. I'd also gotten interested in a few other bands, like Pavement and The Flaming Lips - maybe Lowgold was around this time too, I cannot recall. However, I also liked Westlife and Jamiroquai. I knew the words to the vast majority of songs on rotaion on all the music channels on satalite televisions. I'm talking songs by Shaggy, Geri Halliwell, Nas, etc. Just about anything. I was a little bit opinionated (a lot of my opinions I'd simply adopted from my brother and there were some bands that I deemed too trendy and dismissed - post-Pablo Honey Radiohead).

...so, these Samiam CDs just sounded odd to me. The lyrics were almost exclusively not rhymning, the production seemed a bit too amateurish (I wont say 'rough' because I was already liking things with a rough edge to it but this just seemed off to me). Whatever it was, they are no longer opinions I hold, but at the time something just wasn't clicking. Then, one day when the house was empty I put on You Are Freaking Me Out - at the time their most recent release at the time. It was an easily their most mainstream record. At the time that I was listening to it Blink 182 were big, Jimmy Eat World were big, Hot Water Music were as big as they were going to ever be, and this album sat nicely among these bands. Except they were better - and a lot less 'immature' than Blink. This was also around the time that I was falling asleep a lot. I remember falling asleep on the kitchen table whilst listening to Samiam.

For many years I'd considered this album to be my favourite album (with the possible exception of The Masterplan by Oasis, if compilations were being included). I'm not sure I'd currently rate it that highly but it is a great album for taking me back to a time in my life. A time that, now I think about it, is quite a while back (a decade or so). It is very poppy in places, it's fun, it has a very good Beatles cover, it's rocky, it's rocky and it could have been a hit had the lead singer been thin and attractive rather than heading towards middleage and bald.

Since these teen years I have grown to like their other albums (including the two subsequent ones) as much as You Are Freaking Me Out. Few have the same memories attached though. However, there are memories attached to their most recent release as I had the chance to not only see them twice in two days (once at Underworld in Camden and once in Jacobs Well in Leeds) but I also, thanks to Scrip, got to interview Sergie Loobkoff (Guitarist, and primary songwriter) for our radioshow. We called him an hour early and woke him up....then I giggled my way through an interview with rather pathetic questions in. I thought Id be able to link a copy of the show where we interviewed Sergie into this blog but I cannot find it online and I no longer have access to the PC I had at the time - maybe Scrip has a copy.

Seafood – When Do We Start Fighting? (2001)

This album reminds me of the Film Studies room at Sixth Form. I heard this via Adam McGee. Oh yes, Adam McGee made a recommendation and I liked it. A lot. I think the only copy I had of this was on minidisc, and I listened to that minidisc a hell of a lot. I used to fall asleep very happy on the bus back home.

There is a great deal of variety on this album – rocky numbers, quieter ones, and from the reviews I've read they have influences from lots of bands I'm not too familiar with (due, in part, I think, to not listening to music based on reviews in my teens). I don't really prefer the loud or the quiet songs as it really works a lot better as a whole. It is one of those ones that I'd listen to the whole way through, rather than chopping in the singles and making a mix tape/CD/minidisc/playlist. Not to say that the songs don't stand out on their own, I just hear something like 'What May Be The Oldest' in isolation and feel I've cheated and that I should have started at the start and worked up to that.

Like a lot of bands I really like there are both male and female vocalists.

I'd say the ideal place to listen to this album is either on a bus, through headphones, as you gently fall asleep or through speakers on seat by a window on a very bright, though not necessarily warm, day. Again, you'll likely end up asleep. Or maybe, I listened to it during a particularly draining growth spurt in my late teens that just associates listening to, and loving, this album in conjunction with falling to sleep.

Carole King – Tapestry (1971)

I first got in to this album via Guy Nottage. I asked him if he could recommend any songs about love, but love within a relationship that has gone on a while. He made some suggestions. The one that fitted my request the least, but was by far the best to my ear (the rest was all John Lennon and other losers) was one by Carole King. I went out and bought Tapestry (I think) the very next day. Was bloody good. Not often is one of those “Albums You Must Hear Before You Die” from yesteryear lives up to the reputation (I can't be doing with all this Pet Sounds, Astral Weeks stuff).

This also came during a period of listening to almost entirely female fronted bands/ solo artists for me. I don't know if she started the trend or whether she just fit in.

There are about three songs on the album that I knew beforehand but not as Carole King songs. However, I think each one of those ('...Natural Woman', 'You Got a Friend' and 'Will You Love Me Tomorrow') is better by King than there, possibly, more famous incarnations. I'm also a very easily bored person and when I bought the album I was a little concerned that the album might bore me (as I often feel when listening to some like Joni Mitchell or Bob Dylan) but it is totally catchy for the most part. You can even jig to some stuff. Maybe it was the cardi and the cat on the sleeve that concerned me. But my childlike enthusiasm for catchiness was satisfied without it going to far and into Shampoo-territory. Oh yeah, that's right, I mentioned Shampoo in an article/review/ thing about Carole King. Don't see that often happen.