SkippedTrax: The Blog for songs that accompany Radio Hits on their Albums, but never reach the milestone themselves.

Welcome back folks. Since last time I visited a slow, modern rock track, this time I thought I’d go a little more Pop-ish, yet still a very unknown track; the Pop-Rock track “Ideal Waste of Time” by Treble Charger, found on their fifth studio album Detox (2002).

Now although this album had quite a bit of success, (going Gold in Canada, and being Nominated for “Rock Album of the Year” at the 2003 Juno Awards), Treble Charger fell out of the spotlight very quickly after the release of their only real hit single off the album, “Hundred Million”.

Despite this, I find one track in particular, located between “Hundred Million” and the only other “hit single” off the album, “Don’t Believe It All”, I’m talking about “Ideal Waste of Time”, track #5. When listened to, it’s easy to quickly pick up on the catchy, pump-up, high-school-themed feel of the song.

After a five second quiet build-up at the start of the tune, a strong, hard drum fill takes us into a very memorable Pop-Punk guitar riff that is just fun to listen to. Utilizing notes from the obvious major scale of the song’s key, the quick little riff actually resembles (at least from a tonal perspective) an extremely simplified David Gilmour riff from the mid-later Pink Floyd tracks. Backed by a consistent punching quarter note rhythm, the song makes a great Teenage-anthem start that already has your head bobbing before the lyrics even enter the song.

The two verses of the song are distinguishable in the choppy, hard hitting rhythm of the palm muted guitars working with the bass and drums to continue the rhythmic draw this song has on the listener. Each verse is preceded by the opening “Gilmour” riff, defining the low-chugging verse rhythm each time it comes in. Following these verses are a couple of still rhythmic, but more consistent pre-choruses. These parts usher in an immensely catchy chorus, with the cleverly written vocal line following the fundamental notes of the opening riff, making it easy for this repeated melody to find a comfortable home in the listener’s ears and mind.

Apart from these sections, the song offers just a short bridge section as well as a softer version of the chorus before the last chorus jumps back in, full force, for the outro, once again installing the catchy flow of the vocal/intro-riff melody into the listener’s musical memory bank. Although, strangely enough, this song does boast one more interesting quality for it’s very generic and rule-based genre of Pop-Rock; a guitar solo!

The solo itself is nothing more than simplicity seasoned with flare, but structurally takes a daring turn from the melody originally set up by the vocals in the chorus, and the guitar riff that precedes the verses of the song. This is a smart move by guitarist Bill Priddle, as to (although it’s a great line) not over-play the catchy melody I’ve been rambling on about for the past few sentences. When you have a catchy melody, you want to show it off quite a bit, to ensure that the listener not only gets a good listen and appreciation to/for the line, BUT if you play nothing but that through almost the whole tune, the melody line itself will depreciate in value, for it is not longer the best part of the song, it is just The Whole Song. The solo is actually pretty catchy itself anyway, so I doubt Priddle worried too much about straying from the chorus line for a couple measures.

Overall, to sum up this tune, all I can really say is “One hell of a catchy Teen-Pop-Rock song”, one that would fit amazingly well in the soundtrack of a film anywhere along the lines of American Pie or National Lampoon’s Van Wilder. I find it strange that the band never chose to release this tune as a single along with the other two, or possibly even instead of “Don’t Believe It All”, but I suppose if they had, I wouldn’t be writing this article about it now. Personally, I love rocking this song when driving around on a hot sunny day, all the windows down, cruising and appreciating women’s warm-summer-weather attire. I definitely recommend checking it out.

Jay

SkippedTrax: The Blog for songs that accompany Radio Hits on their Albums, but never reach the milestone themselves.

Hello readers, welcome to my first posting on SkippedTrax. Today we will discuss a song I find reasonably neutral in the different families of Rock Music, that incorporates various musical ingredients despite it’s first-glance-simplicity;

“Mexico” found on the album Morning View (2001) by Incubus …

… is a song found half way through Incubus’ fourth studio album. It is an acoustic track, featuring just a guitar and vocals as the principal instruments on the track. As I mentioned earlier, at first glance/listen, the song seems extremely simple, with a simple picking guitar pattern accompanied by a single tracked Vocal line that covers only two Verses and a Chorus repeated about three times, changed only by a short Bridge line where singer Brandon Boyd shows off a soothing high-note vocal line that swims over the guitar-line and some soft Viola/Cello lines (these being the only other instruments in the song, and make their way into the track soon after the first Chorus). The song finishes off with the guitar’s Verse line and Brandon leaving us with one last taste of his clean, lullaby-like, wordless melodies drifting out into the sounds of the Cello as the song finishes almost identically to how it started out.

The interesting thing about the song is that despite it’s simple musical arrangement of both sections and instrumental-components, it is obvious that it resonates a strong emotion within the listener, and how the raw sounds of the ingredients within the song work to full effect in achieving a memorable mood and message. The songwriter speaks of feeling short-handed due to the subject of the song obviously not doing his/her part to create a relationship of equality and mutual respect.

“You could see me reaching
So why couldn’t you have
Met me halfway”

This is the line that opens the song, and can be used to sum up some of the feelings that the song tries to push across to the listener. The songwriter proceeds to follow up with an ultimatum; should the subject not make the required changes in their not so 50/50 relationship, the songwriter will, as a result, catch the first train to Mexico. Basically, if you snooze, you loose!

Even the simplicity one could perhaps derive from the lyrics themselves are in a way so powerful in their meaning. The songwriter immediately sums up the main problem of the relationship with the most commonly used line in the song: “You only think about yourself”, and very effectively sounds his feelings of suffocation with the lines:

“You could see me breathing
But you still kept
Your hand over my mouth”

These small yet strong phrases layered over the quick Cello/Viola riffs that fill the spaces between them make a hauntingly relaxed combination as guitarist Mike Einziger uses simple low-note chord shapes accompanied by the resonating open high strings, truly exhibiting the E-Minor key (an obvious choice of key for guitarists wanting to portray a dark but soft, soothing yet menacing atmosphere).

Never did this song make it to the Singles Charts or did it frequent the Mainstream Air Waves of Radio Play, even if it is just a few positions away from some of the album’s successes such as “Warning” and “Wish You Were Here”, but never-the-less, I find this song to be easily one of my favorites from the album, and either way you look at it, it makes an extremely fitting accompaniment with sitting outside under the stars on a brisk gloomy night.

Jay