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Articles, Running

Running Playlist Song #3 — Common People

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Playlist Song #3
William Shatner — Common People

I admit it: I’m a Trekkie through and through. Back in the day, I saw Vancouver TheatreSports League‘s Star Trick musical no fewer than two dozen times, and wrote a front page story for the WestEnder about it, to boot. I ain’t no fan of the Ferengi, but I’ve wasted more than my share of hours watching TV, movie and fan fiction productions of at least three different Star Trek shows. Hell, ask Chris: I’ve played William Shatner’s Rocket Man over public address systems at college basketball games.

It’s not the cheese factor, though, that brings me to pump William Shatner’s 2004 cover of Pulp’s Common People into my earbuds on the hoof.

Cover of William Shatner - Has Been
William Shatner’s 2004 Has Been is full of surprisingly solid tunes, thanks to imaginative the production of Ben Folds.

Produced by Ben Folds for Shatner’s adventurous album Has Been, this track just plain kicks ass whether you’re at the gym, at the track, or driving the highway. Musically, rhythmically, socially, you name it — Common People is anything but a common track. Shatner delivers an angry fuck-you spoken-word vocal, perfectly set to irritable guitar, simplistic keyboard and indie rock drums. Folds blends Joe Jackson’s sublimely whiskeysour vocals into the chorus. Between the three of them, Folds, Jackson and Shatner make us believe they all have been trounced by some uppity rich chick who just wants to slum on the other side of the tracks.

I can’t get into the original Pulp version, musically, but damnation the lyrics here are fantastic. I’m a sucker for writing that tells a complete story effectively; if someone can do that in the context of a pop song, count me in. Jarvis Cocker nails the phenomenon of class tourism so predominant in the 80s and early 90s — think Fight Club for a participatory exploration of hitting bottom. Later, reality shows like Honey Boo-Boo would allow “normal” viewers to point and laugh at those they perceive as less intelligent, less developed, less rich or just less.

“Everybody hates a tourist, especially one who thinks it’s all such a laugh.”

“Laugh along, even though they’re laughing at you and the stupid things that you do because you think that poor is cool.”

Album: Has Been
Release date: 2004
Beats per minute: 178
Subject: Class / Money / Sex /
Content warning: None
Video (Shatner cover):

Video (Pulp original):

Previous songs on the playlist:
Lady Gaga – Poker Face
Gioachino Antonio Rossini – William Tell Overture Finale

 

Articles, Running

Running Playlist Song #2 — William Tell Overture Finale

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As a new runner, I need all the help I can get. Here, I’ll talk about the songs on my running playlist and what makes them — and me — tick.

Playlist Song #2
Gioacchino Rossini — William Tell Overture; Finale

One of the most recognizable snippets of classical music, the Finale of the William Tell Overture has most famously been used as the theme for the Lone Ranger since its days as a radio serial during the Great Depression.

Despite its official title (March of the Swiss Soldiers), the piece utilizes successive triplets that mimic horses at a full gallop rather than the tromp tromp tromp of a traditional march on foot. Rossini’s original 1829 opera doesn’t include any horseplay, but instead nods to the galoppades, or country folk dances, that were popular in Paris, Vienna in that decade. The footloose melody makes the Finale’s pairing with the famous cowboy lawman a natural fit; it has come to define Rossini’s final overture in the modern era as symbolic of the Wild West.

In truth, the full Overture is 12 minutes long, and includes four movements — that prancing pony part that you know from popular culture is just the last three and a half minutes — so I snipped the Finale in GarageBand for running purposes. My running version starts with a trio of trumpets heralding the galop, and ends with about 90 seconds of increasingly dramatic false endings before the final TA-DA.

Usually when random order hits up this track, I bump up the pace by about 30 seconds a klick. Those false endings are like Rossini coaching from beyond the grave — “keep pushing, you soft git… No, you’re not done yet! There will be no stopping!”

Queue it up, and it’s hi ho silver away, indeed.

Album: Great Rossini Overtures; the London Symphony Orchestra conducted by Piero Gamba
Release date: 1988 CD remaster of 1950s recordings
Beats per minute: 138
Subject: War / History / Classical
Content warning: None
Video: 

Articles, Running

Running Playlist Song #1 — Poker Face

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As a new runner, I need all the help I can get. Here, I’ll talk about the songs on my running playlist and what makes them — and me — tick.

Playlist Song #1
Lady Gaga — Poker Face

Look, I’m no fan of Top 40, but when I’m looking to hoof my lard ass from point A to point B, sometimes I need some motivation. Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta, better known as Lady Gaga, happens to put together tunes that get me moving. Comparisons to Madonna are obvious, even trite — Gaga, seemingly a personification of New York ambition, emerged from a Catholic background to manufacture image-based, sexually charged pop music — but even with Born This Way being pretty much a carbon copy of Express Yourself, I find just as much Freddie Mercury in her work as Material Girl.

Poker Face runs at 120 beats per minute, which sites like jog.fm suggests will pull you in at about eight minutes per kilometre, but I find personally that it’s the perfect driving beat for 5:45 klicks.

Album: The Fame
Release date: 2008
Beats per minute: 120
Subject: Cards / gambling
Content warning: Sexual innuendo / repeated use in chorus of profanity (so subtle is Gaga’s insertion of the f-word, however, that the overwhelming majority of radio stations do not use the edited version in their broadcasts)
Video: