FAINT WAVES

This week, it’s a long-time favorite of mine I’m sharing. This is Song of The Week: “Loaded” by Primal Scream, from the album ‘Screamadelica’.

An untouchable classic and quintessential bridge between the 80’s and 90’s, this Madchester gem was just recently featured at the front of Love Story: John F. Kennedy Jr. & Carolyn Bessette, used to prominent effect as a sort of tone-setter for the decade it’s set in and the absolutely impeccable soundtrack offering to come. Ryan Murphy produced programs, there are too many of them, and they all more or less feel the same and suffer the exact same problems; no matter how hands-on or hands-off he may be. That said, the more biographical programs he’s had a hand in always veer closer to greatness. Whether it be the incredibly bleak and unsettling Dahmer or the positively gorgeous and emotive Halston, his dramatized takes on real life events and persons have at least some artistic merit and are almost always fashionable and alluring, whether it be in casting, costuming, or music (music especially is never shafted). Love Story is no exception, it takes two real life figures who I had no investment or knowledge in and presents a narrative and a world that is engrossing, and if nothing else? It has an unbelievable soundtrack. I digress, but hearing “Loaded” right when I started the aforementioned program recently certainly went a long way in earning some favor right out of the gate.

Loaded is a Primal Scream tune with something of a strange origin, as it’s a sort of grab-bag of pre-existing elements thrown together to create something new and striking. Mixed and produced by Andrew Weatherall, Loaded is a remix (using that term very broadly) of an earlier Primal Scream song called “I’m Losing More Than I’ll Ever Have”. It features a prominent audio snippet taken from The Wild Angels, a vocal sample from the Emotions’ “I Don’t Wanna Lose Your Love”, a drum loop from an Italian bootleg remix of Edie Brickell‘s song “What I Am“, and Primal Scream’s Bobby Gillespie singing a line from Robert Johnson‘s “Terraplane Blues”. It’s really all over the place but musically, it’s brilliant, and has served as both a song of inspiration and a song of solace for me in the last decade. I associate the song closely with times in which I was taking inventory, reminiscing, ruminating on my friendships and the memories I made. There was a stretch of time between 2022 and 2023 where this tune (and more importantly, Andrew Weatherall) was a chief musical inspiration on some things I was working on, I was trying to get to the root of a feeling and trying to learn by example. It was an effort to re-contextualize parts of my past that I don’t view so favorably through music, instead celebrating the fact that I’m still here and still have all the friends that were there for the good times and the bad times.

None of that material really came together in a way I deemed satisfactory and to date, none of it has been released. Some songs made around the same time have seen the light of day, like Acid Blue and Velvet Star, but that’s as far as it’s going to get. Sometimes, you just make something for yourself, and it’s otherwise a musical dead end. Nevertheless, I associate this tune heavily with my friends, my memories, and that period of the 2020’s I’m talking about. It’s a classic, it and its genre have informed modern music, and it’s a great pick for a 90’s-centric soundtrack.

Away, baby. Let’s go.

Thanks for reading.

~ FW.