Song of the Week #10
The nearly men, the “on the cusp”ers, the people who never quite made it. Whether it’s in sport, music or business, for every Floyd Mayweather, Alan Sugar or Metallica you’ll have tens of thousands of unsuccessful sportsmen, entrepreneurs or bands who never quite made their dreams of superstardom a reality. Then you’ll have the people that came close, the bands that managed to tour the world, even if it was out the back of a Ford Transit and did what most people would (and could) only dream of.
With music more easily accessible and available than ever before, long gone are the days when you would sit at home and listen to an album on repeat on your iPod or CD player, and spend the next week in school talking it over with your mates. Instead people (myself included) will now give an album a once-over on spotify and think “yeah this is great” or “nah this is shit” and move onto the next in an instant. Nowadays for up-and-comers, if you’re not constantly touring or in the process of recording an album, you’ll quickly fade into obscurity without even realising it, regardless of what people say social media has done for music. You can’t simply coast on past achievements, or even give the masses time to digest a new album, because they’ve already forgotten about your last one. Not everybody can be Wishbone Ash touring bars across the UK for their 50th anniversary, taking a nifty cheque every night to pay for beer money alongside their state pension.
It’s amazing that more bands don’t burn out mentally and physically as a result, despite what people say about it being a dream job (which of course, I’m sure it is).
This Song of the Week is dedicated to a band that produced some hard hitting tunes and garnered themselves a small cult fanbase, but eventually after a decade of living the dream, called it a day after a decade in 2019. Feed the Rhino burst onto the scene in the late noughties, and introduced themselves to the UK with 2010’s Mr Red Eye (a most stellar offering). Plenty of solid music followed, but the band were never able to hit the lofty heights I’m sure they had aimed for when setting out as bright-eyed, bushy-tailed youngsters. They announced a farewell show at the Camden Underworld in May of 2019, and having made the journey down from Leeds with one of my best friends to see them, I have to say it was well worth the trip. They left a decade of blood, sweat and tears on that stage. The sound was completely on point, the vibe of the crowd was just right, and the band were fantastic.
The song this week is called Timewave Zero, and was a standout from that farewell show. The image of lead singer Lee screaming himself hoarse with the opening line is so poignant of everything that final goodbye meant to the band and everything they’d worked towards, and it will stay with me for a long time. Unfortunately you won’t be able to catch them at a venue near you, but the blessing is that music lasts forever. Here’s to the nearly men!