Sorry, Dee Dee!
I caught the tail end of Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band’s “Born to Run” while flipping channels on the radio this morning. Have you ever heard that song? In the middle, there’s a instrumental breakdown before The Boss counts the band back into the final verse: 1-2-3-! When I was a teen, first trying to get my head around this phenomenon and trying to find other Springsteen songs that matched the excitement of “Born to Run,” I kept coming back to that count-off. I’m sure, with 82 zillion hours of live performances under their belt (over the course of just a single year of touring) that the band didn’t really need their leader to count them back into the grand finale of the song, but it’s exciting nevertheless. For a 14-year-old boy, or whatever I was, trying to get his head into the mechanisms of how real rock ‘n rollers conduct their business, it was a peak behind the Wizard’s curtain. From that point forward I could become aware of other studio recordings that used the count-off/count-in device, a device that in most cases could have been excised from the final recording, but I guess the artists thought it was as cool to document as teenage me did.
This week’s Last Man Standing does not threaten to be a stingy one. Quite the opposite. As we seek studio recordings including count-offs/count-ins, only a few rules apply:
- Live recordings are excluded.
- All Ramones recordings are excluded, including studio ones, because that could be too easy.
- Songs that happen to include a counting device that’s not related to instructing the band to the song’s tempo do not count (so hold your “All Together Now” and “1-2-Crush on You” entries, Beatles and Clash fans).
As always, your Moderator reserves the right to include new rules as needed.
So “Born to Run” is off the table. Let the studio recordings that begin with count-ins and include count-offs at other points follow!
Back in the 1990s I had a pal who worked at MTV and VH1. They were putting together some clip show and were trying to find all the Springsteen count-ins they could. My friend, although fond of and great at his job, was much more a fan of punk and therefore not overly familiar with Springsteen’s work. “What’s that one where he sings “a-1, 2, 1-2-3-4”?
“That’d be Billy Joel’s ‘A Matter of Trust’,” I told him. He was mortified.
Um… Kraftwerk, “numbers.” This could be a long one.
One of my pet peeves is people performing solo who count off aloud.
One of my favorite occurrences of this is the opening of “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise)”
And of course the first song on their first album, “I Saw Her Standing There.” Or does the fact that Sir Macca seems to say, “one-two-three-f-bomb!” make that ineligible?
Eric Carmen’s One, two, three, four-ah at the beginning of Tonight is monumental.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5ecHynzptc
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, Roadrunner, Roadrunner.
Modern Lovers
Neutral Milk Hotel – Holland, 1945
And “Taxman.”
That is a great one. I wonder if anyone can think of another that goes past 4.
1 – 2 – 1 2 3 4 intro from 20/20’s “Yellow Pills”
http://youtu.be/XjmEj6t0INg
“I Saw Her Standing There” was my first thought. We had the single as a kid, and I always thought they said, “As I held her hand in Hawaii…”
You laugh.
Will you take “Space Oddity”?
If so, (or regardless), did anyone read the send up to Major Tom in a recent issue of the New Yorker? I thought it was sorta lame, but my sister thought it was hilarious. And you?
Woolly Bully!
The middle section of Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue features a count from 1 to 8, but alas The Ramones have been excluded from the challenge.
Interesting. At face value the countdown shouldn’t count, but it actually does countdown to the next part of the song, in which case I guess we can allow it. Well played!
“Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini” — Brian Hyland
The Temptations- Ball of Confusion
I got here late and I see my top 3 are all off the board (Ramones, I Saw Her Standing There, Roadrunner).
That is a cool photo of Dee Dee by the way.
Fellas, I’m ready to get up and do my thing (yeah go ahead!)
I wanta get into it, man, you know (go ahead!)
Like a, like a sex machine, man, (yeah go ahead!)
Movin’ and doin’ it, you know
Can I count it off? (Go ahead)
One, two, three, four!
What do we count as a count-off? What if some sort of rhythm is going already and then the count-off is for the band? Or are we talking clean starts, only?
If the former, I’ll say Slip Kid, The Who.
The slow, dramatic count off in the middle of “7 and 7 Is” by Love.
The Clash – Clampdown!
The Replacements, “I Don’t Know,” has an instrumental break where you can (almost just barely) hear someone (presumably Paul Westerberg) doing a count-in that goes up to 12, before a honking sax brings the band back in.
“She’s the One” — The Chartbusters
Yeah, and what about drumstick clicking? You know,
“click
click
click
click”
“Love Battery” – Buzzcocks
The Howard Devoto version from the expanded version of the official bootleg Time’s Up. He says one, two, three, and then there’s an awkward pause before they start.
The Clash – Jail Guitar Doors
There must be a verbal component. Good question.
Cher, as “Born to Run” suggests, mid-song count-offs are in play.
The New Pornographers: Mass Romantic
The Rascals – Good Lovin’
Rare Earth – “I Just Want to Celebrate”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-QHWXFJTek&feature=kp
Beck – Elevator Music
Song For The Dumped – Ben Folds Five
The Specials – Little Bitch
The whole hook in Pitbull’s “I Know You Want Me” is counting tempo in English / Spanish (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2tMV96xULk) although there is probably no “band” to come in. Just trying to inject a little non-rock into the proceedings. And it really was the next one I thought up.
Move Over Ms. L – John Lennon
I hate the song (and dislike the band), but U2 – Vertigo
The Finn Brothers – Only Talking Sense. Since many of you might not know this song, here it is:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0dAeUXOFORY
I’d never seen the video – don’t watch it, just listen.
Middle of the Road – Pretenders has an 8 count before the last verse to keep the whoooo-ho’s from starting too early
Def Leppard – Rock Of Ages
“gunter glieben glauben globen”
Ah 1 and ah 2 and a bubbly-bubbly-boo-boo-yeah!
T. Rex – Baby Strange
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjqxHM7Zm2Q
Games Without Frontiers – Peter Gabriel
Wilson Pickett only gets to three before the Stax horns kick in on “Land of 1000 Dances”.
New Radicals – You Get What You Give
It’s… Le Freak, by Chic!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cqupk71a-O0
Joe Jackson “Got the Time”. “No such thing as tomorrow / onetwothreefour! “
Hello Again.
Led Zep, the Ocean.
LMS!
The Clash, “White Man in Hammersmith Palais”
Prince – Raspberry Beret
Wild Billy’s Circus Story – Bruce Springsteen
Outkast – Hey Ya
Distorted, but still a count in. Bowie “It’s No Game (pt1)”.
Pixies “I’ve Been Tired.” I think. Maybe it’s a facetious count-off.
There’s a kind of quiet countoff in ELO’s “Don’t bring me down.”
Just heard this at home and realized it qualified for LMS. “Little Bitch” The Specials.
I’m glad that qualifies.. since i already posted that one!
LMS Defense. You are right, very good.
Last ditch effort, I am not sure this will even count but doesn’t Geldof start counting in German after he rips his skin off and becomes a arena-rock Hitler in Pink Floyd’s The Wall? I’m thinking about the movie, I haven’t heard the album in years.
Dang, Cher is not playing around here…
As Wicked by Rancid
E Vittorio E… By Spoon.
Wilson Pickett – Land Of 1,000 Dances
“1, 2, 3……1, 2, 3”
A double count-off makes me LMS twice.
Or maybe it doesn’t since a seconds late rescan shows me I’m about a week late with that entry.
I told myself, several days ago, that I was going to stop on this thread. Then I happened to hear that Spoon song. But now I’m really done!
Old 55 by Tom Waits