21st Century Riff

My daughter has been going to guitar lessons for quite a few months and has been picking up the art of the guitar riff – the repeated musical phrase that forms the hook in much of rock, blues and jazz music. Radio 2 had a vote of its listeners to pick out the best guitar riffs of all-time with some frankly baffling choices although I had to agree with them about Led Zeppelin’s Whole Lotta Love winning as it is fantastically well known (it is, essentially, the Top Of The Pops theme) and probably one of the first cases of the riff actually being the song (seriously – I’ve heard it without the riff and it is one of the most peculiar things ever recorded.) Even when performed by others it is instantly recognisable as seen in this clip of the recently departed Prince:


Anyway, I had a discussion with my daughter’s guitar teacher about what riffs they wanted to learn and we came to the conclusion that all the popular guitar riffs tend to be, well, rather old. Just as an example we had Louie Louie (1963) Day Tripper (1965), Satisfaction (1966) Sunshine of Your Love (1967) Iron Man (1970) Smoke on the Water (1973) Rebel, Rebel (1974) and Highway To Hell (1979). We tried to think of some decent modern riffs and it is a struggle. There are plenty out there but how many are really the “Household Names” of the riff world?

I think part of the problem is the current vogue for either laptop produced pop music or rather insipid singer-songwriter acts. In the end the teacher chose Coldplay’s “In My Place” as a modern riff. Dating to 2001 it just qualifies as a 21st Century riff. (I did also see “Talk" from 2011 suggested and it does have a very catchy riff. Unfortunately, Coldplay took it from Kraftwerk’s 1978 album Mensch Machine.)


So what other riffs are there out there that have found their way into the common consciousness. Little earworms that have burrowed into every skull? There are actually a surprising few that have arrived since the turn of the century. The first one I came up with was Queens Of The Stone Age - No One Knows from 2002. This is a great example because I couldn’t have told you what it was by the title but the second it is played I immediately thought, “Oh, it’s that one.”


The next one is incredibly familiar to anyone who has watched football in the last 10 years, The White Stripes – “Seven Nation Army”  from 2003. Aside from the migraine inducing video, this is probably another case of the riff being the song.


And for the last of the killer riffs I’m going to go with Franz Ferdinand’s “Take Me Out”  from 2004. It takes a bit to get going but that’s one of those ones where I’m now trying to think of another Franz Ferdinand tune and failing. In fact if you play other tracks by them many are familiar but the ear worm of “Take Me Out”  doesn’t like company.


So there are brilliant riffs from the 21st Century but all the ones so far are more than 10 years old. I was trying to think of newer ones and Rammstein came to mind. I’m not sure that they are well enough known outside Metal fandom to qualify except for a few tunes that are too old to count for this. However 2011’s Mein Land is a colossal riff so I will include it.


Getting almost up to date yet still very familiar is 2014’s "Do I Wanna Know” by the Arctic Monkeys which has a superb riff, somewhat harking back to the great 1970s blues rock bands.


Then there is the Marmite band of modern rock that is Muse. Personally, I like this band as they are largely bonkers but even for the haters they have produced some superb riffs over the years. One of the more recent offerings was last year’s Psycho which seems to confirm that the art of the killer riff is alive and well. Will it become as familiar as Whole Lotta Love, though?



So there are still great riffs out there, if you know where to look. I think part of the problem is that a good riff needs exposure and that means fate will favour the old guard. Maybe it’s just down to the elephant missing from the room: bring back Top Of The Pops.

High Hopes

Outside Linlithgow Palace

As I was off last week I thought I’d take advantage of my Historic Scotland membership and visit somewhere new. Having looked around the near vicinity, I noticed that I had never been to Linlithgow Palace. This sounds very grand but it is actually the ruins (or, at least a well preserved shell) of the former royal residence and was also the birthplace of Mary, Queen of Scots. For once this is actually a reasonable connection to Mary Stuart as pretty much every building In Scotland that was built before 1587 will claim some sort of connection to her. Those built after that will claim a link to Robert Burns; and those built after his death probably have a spurious correlation to Billy Connolly or someone.

At the top

Anyway, after admiring the fountain in the middle of the courtyard we proceeded to explore the various chambers via the vast array of stairways. Some areas are fenced off, which is just as well as they don’t look particularly safe but it is possible to climb up to the top of one of the towers. The view from there is pretty impressive but I have to say that I felt rather apprehensive about being so close to the edge of a rather old stone wall, even if it does have a metal barrier to prevent the unwary from falling off the edge. According to my daughter, this is because I am afraid of heights.

It's a long way up there.

Now, I would not say that I’m afraid of heights. I’ve been up mountains. I’ve even been up in aircraft and I can say that the height didn’t bother me in the slightest. I’m pretty sure that it is the ground which has the capability of killing you but, even then, I’m not scared of the ground either as I tend to spend most of my time with my feet attached to it. What bothers me is being on the wrong end of a distortion of space-time that is trying to accelerate my body very rapidly to the hard and massive body that is causing that gravity well in the first place. So, far from being scared of heights, I’m actually terrified of Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity.


Anyway, despite the good view I was rather glad to get back down to ground level and managed to get this rather nice picture of Scotland’s national animal on the fountain.

Unicorn on Linlithgow Palace Fountain.

Cheap Lasagne

I was accused of being a miserable bastard this week. This wasn’t due to my usual reasons of back ache, idiot intolerance or some vague, low-level metal illness (or “employment” as I think it is also known) but because I refused to participate in the office sweep stake for the Grand National. To my mind, the “National” consists of two things I really don’t enjoy, namely gambling and animal cruelty. In the past I would have joined in to avoid being completely anti-social but for quite a few years now I have boycotted anything to do with this event and I don’t see that ending any time soon.

When I was younger, this was one of those events that people looked forward to but that I really couldn’t be bothered with. I had an elderly aunt whose house backed on to Aintree and the race could be seen from her upstairs window in the sort of detail that would make radio coverage essential. One of the family, usually one of my uncles, would take bets from the family and place them at the local bookies. I would reluctantly place a small bet to join in and, if I was lucky, would hear my chosen nag’s name in the garbled commentary once before it fell at an early hurdle.

This carried on for quite a few years until one year I placed a bet on a beautiful grey horse for no other reason that I might have a chance of seeing it on the TV coverage. It fell at the third fence and broke its neck in hideous detail on the BBC’s Grandstand coverage. That was the last time I had anything to do with placing bets on this race and it is quite a few years since I have seen the slightest bit of coverage.

For the record, I am not opposed to horseracing or equestrian events as such. I am happy enough for people to participate in such sports or to go along and place bets on them. I even appreciate that accidents can and do happen. However, it is in everyone’s interests that the welfare of both horses and jockeys is placed as the highest priority and every possible measure is taken to avoid harm to those participating whether human or equine. The Grand National’s fences are so inhumanely different to anything that the horses will normally experience that tragedy is almost inevitable. In fact this almost seems to be part of the attraction of the event.

After the horsemeat scandal of 2013 there were lots of black jokes mocking the Aintree event as “sponsored by Findus” and the like. I enjoy a bit of dark humour and I think these comments pretty much caught my feelings towards the race entirely. If they can improve the standard of the circuit to the point that not only the horses survive but are also expected to finish unharmed then I am prepared to give it another go. Until then I will refuse to have anything to do with it and I will certainly not regard it as some national treasure to be celebrated.

Ragged-Trousered Philanthropists

I heard about a thing called “Clean For The Queen” a few weeks ago via the Daily Mash (the popular satirical news website) and assumed that it was a piss take based upon the comments of some old duffer somewhere. I have just discovered that it is actually a real thing and involves cleaning Britain for the Queen's 90th birthday. Apparently it is supported by the Keep Britain Tidy campaign and is the brainchild of Country Life which most people will recognise as that magazine that one will find in the waiting room of a low quality GP’s surgery and can be used as a fair indication that the medical practitioner is shite.

Now this is something that I should actually approve of given my opinion that Britain has been rendered into a complete toilet by the amount of litter that is strewn about the place. In fact if they were wanting to organise people to remove litter I would be quite happy - there are a few local environmental charities that organise this kind of activity as it is. It’s just the condescending attitude of the people behind it that makes my blood boil.

I don’t have particularly republican views: whilst I wouldn’t suggest instituting a monarchy if we were setting up the country from scratch, I tend to regard our monarchy as an amusing anachronism. I certainly don’t regard them as a threat to democracy: one only has to look at the shower of shite in the Palace of Westminster for that. However, it is the idea that the little people should bow down and scrub the floors of their lords and masters that makes me want to haul a guillotine down to the nearest exclusive gentlemen’s club.

So I, for one, will not be cleaning for the bleeding Queen or for any other privileged bastard that is more than capable of paying someone a decent living wage to do the task. What I am prepared to do is to spend time cleaning up for my local community and the people I live and work with. If anyone wants to organise that after this bollocks for the Queen has finished I’ll be the first in line. Maybe we could dump all the rubbish at Buckingham Palace afterwards?