bus vibes #20 - kasabian

hello there

as i started, as of today, reading a book that's some 500 pages long, look you see, this could well be the last bus vibes post for a bit. unless, of course, i get a bit bored of the book and opt for some tunes. doubtful, but you never know.

you will also have to forgive me not bothering to put the ipod into the docking station to record a few seconds of each song. too tired, and it's Game Of Thrones night tonight. just a bit of video off of that amazon music player thing will do, i would suggest. 

Kasabian, as hinted at in another post, was the choice for Friday, then. and why not, as David St Hubbins would say. Friday should be a day of rock and roll.

i got things underway, at about 7:22am, with Velociraptor!, an album named as such because, if i remember what the band said at the time, a velociraptor was the "most rock and roll of dinosaurs".

this, oddly, brings back memories for me of the time that Primal Scream pulled out of Top Of The Pops at the last minute when they discovered that the flight to the studio would land at Luton Airport and Bobby Gillespie, in his ultimate wisdom, declared that Luton Airport was "not rock and roll enough" for the band to land at.

Kasabian should be one of the bands i love more than any other band. musically they are just staggering - pure rock and a cool sound, one that echoes and draws upon the legends of music before them but is entirely their own in a way that a Noel Gallagher can only dream of. lyrically they are smart too - aggressive, witting, punchy, you name it. 

sadly, and perhaps uniquely weirdly for a band that has got as big as Kasabian has (they did headline Glastonbury without being a black American, after all), for me at the least their singer holds them back from ultra-greatness.

anyway, here's a snippet of I Hear Voices off of the album, via all that amazon music player thing.

i don't have a clue what the name of the singer off of Kasabian is. everyone knows Serge, or Sergio if you like, the cool, 70s rock looking guitarist. he's the rock selling point, hence him featuring so prominently on the Velociraptor! album cover.

yeah, this is a lone can of Red Stripe by the side of the road, presumably empty. why is it here? to keep certain readers, in particular Spiros, interested.

the vocalist off of Kasabian, whatever his name is, is just bland, free of accent, lacking passion and with nothing distinguishing about his style at all. no matter how awesome the lyrics are, he just delivers them in a sort of by the numbers sort of way, a bit like that fella off of Coldplay does.

i can only guess that at some stage in their rise from clubs to record contract that some sort of pressure was placed somewhere to get a singer that was "a bit more rock and roll" in. or maybe not, with the label deciding "actually that dull fella off of Coldplay is rich and married one of them actress ladies, so it must sell to the kids". whatever the reason, credit then to the band for sticking with him, but it does let it all down some.

after enjoying (bar the vocals) the joys of Velociraptor!, it was on to last year's release from the band, 48:13. the absolute best thing about this album is that the name really upset Billy Bragg, a man seemingly still bitter that being as right-on as he was not quite being enough to make him as popular or as successful as, say, Weller or Bono.

one year later and it's still a damned good album whatever the name of it is. solid, atmospheric and ambitious sounds and cool rock glory blemished only by the presence of a vocalist that seems woefully out of his depth but is committed to plodding along all the same, thank you very much. plodding along, at the least, mixed way down into the sound as far as they could get away with. no way would the vocals be as downplayed as they are on a Kasabian album as they would with any other rock band.

i should stop bashing the singer, he's better than me at the least. here's a smart snippet off of 48:13, a track called Stevie should anyone called Stevie be reading.

so, there we go. two, on balance, really awesome records, with only a minor quibble to them. it shall probably, going on their approach to date, be another year or so before we get another Kasabian album. nice one when it comes, and if the vocalist, whatever he is called, decides to give it a bit of emotion or some umph, well then so much the better.


i will do my best to do something of interest, as in non-bus related, soon to post here. thanks for sticking with me in the mean time.




be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!