November Has Come

November Has Come
November Has Come (Demon Days Live)
November Has Come (Escape To Plastic Beach Tour, with "MF DOOM")

"Russel: It was actually Murdoc who managed to get MF DOOM on this track, funnily enough. He was running around with his "talent-catcher butterfly net" ensnaring unsuspecting musicians that lay momentarily dormant. He would creep up, put the net over them and then spray them with his homemade seduction spray, "Ambition For Men". That was it. They were hooked.

Murdoc: And also it was a fantastic opportunity to work with some real characters. MF stands for Metal Face and it's in some kind of tribute to (Fantastic Four's) enemy Dr. Doom. So the rapper wears this metal mask the whole time. But whatever the bloke just came to Kong Studios and was, like, head-banging the walls, opening cans of beer with his mad metal face. Absolutely nuts! But he gave a good tune, so it's all forgiven. Right, right, right?

Russel: It's straight down to Earth on this track.

2D: The beginning sounds like an old Wham! song

Murdoc: But really in time. When DOOM recorded (the first verse), I had a stopwatch and I said "see how many words you can say inside the first 30 seconds." Boy, oh boy, did he deliver!!"

Now if you're a long time reader of this blog, you may be wondering why I decided to use this quote from the characters. Usually the quotes I use from the fictional entities in the band relate to the making of the song and not their usual cartoon hi jinx. Well here's why I decided to use this quote:

I think this track with MF DOOM just might be the greatest collaboration in the Gorillaz canon.

Of all the guests Gorillaz have gotten over the years, MF DOOM is really the only one that fits in the band's realm of cartoon chaos. MF DOOM, like Damon Albarn, is another musician who hides behind a mask (albeit this time literally) and references it constantly in his songs. He's very committed to the idea that he just may be a Marvel super villain having a go at the rap game. And in his performances he wears the mask the whole time, sometimes in performances he doesn't even go on stage, he sends another person in the mask to rap his songs instead (a la Dr. Doom's army of Doom Bots he sends out). He dedicates his live shows to the fact that he's a super villain pulling a heist on the crowd, he sends out a DOOM BOT to do the show for him, getting away with the money and striking disappointment in the hearts of his audience. This is similar to how Gorillaz used to do their early live shows where the members were either silhouetted by lighting or behind a screen (a la masterpiece band Public Image Ltd.) to give the idea that the characters are actually there. The two fictional entities work perfectly on a track together delivering (in my opinion) one of the greatest tracks in the Gorillaz discography.

My guess is that Danger Mouse brought MF DOOM into the Gorillaz studio as they were working on a project for late night cartoon network, Adult Swim, called DANGER DOOM (which Gorillaz would have been perfect on, if you haven't heard this project, check it out). The song itself opens with Danger Mouse's handclaps on top of Jason Cox's steady bass line and some whirring synths done by Damon. Soon James Dring's drums enter, doubled by Danger Mouse's drum machine, giving the track a steady groove. As the track progresses, Damon adds what would be the song's main features, electric guitars which duet with a soulful organ to provide the beat's main melody. Damon does away with the gospel choir for this one, doing all the backing vocals himself in full falsetto. The way he sings it is so layered, some of his vocals riff soulfully over others in classic 2D falsetto proving that Damon's voice works for smooth soul as well as it does for manic trip hop and post-punk. Now this is all well and good, but let's get to looking at MF DOOM and Damon's lyrics...

Now it's important to realize that pop music in 2005 was really bad, but rap music was even worse. This was at the height of the "ringtone rap" scene which gave us horrible "snappy" songs with "crunk" beats. So MF DOOM's lines are pointing towards how bad rap was then and how they were ruining African-American culture by drawing on stereotypes. He at one point compares these new "gold hits" that "sound dumb" to "free coffee from the banks", "draw from the poor". The rappers are not only putting messed up thoughts in kids' heads (at one point he says a really great a line about school shooters, "Aw send em a gun and tell em clean it. Then go get the nun and say the son didn't mean it") but they are feeding off the personification in which the African-American community are forced to live under, drawing on primal instincts so they buy the record, making them even poorer. Of course, DOOM does this still in the character of a super villain. He will come over and destroy you "thugs" showing he's the best one around and his sympathy for those who bought into the craze, no matter how poor and in need they are, is close to none. He thinks everyone involved should be ashamed. It's a loaded message made lighter by the character DOOM plays, which is of a heel.

Now Damon's hook is a bit trickier, he could be connecting to DOOM's verse with "november has come" meaning the dawn of the collapse of rap is coming, as opposed to December, the final month, when the collapse would be upon the world. But I think Damon's hook connects to the things 2D and the band were going through in the first half of the record. The world was trapped in an endless night, stuck in fear after 9/11 and the wars on Iraq and Afghanistan. 2D was looking for answers, ways to be okay in this time of fear ("Feel Good Inc."), he even tried talking to God on a couple tracks, asking for forgiveness for all the wrong he's done ("Last Living Souls", "O Green World") as well as a way out ("Every Planet We Reach Is Dead"). When morning finally hit the town ("El Mañana") and nothing changed, 2D gives up.

Now what happened in November the year before this album came out?

The man who caused all the chaos with the never ending wars in the Middle East, President George W. Bush, was re-elected, the man whose dark doings put the nation in even more peril ("Dirty Harry"). He striked the fear of "terrorism" into the hearts of many, including our blue-haired boy briefly ("Kids With Guns"), and he did it so much that he convinced the paranoid nation to elect him again. He won out of fear, even though he caused the fear to begin with.

Something had started that day,

Where did it go?

What do you want it to be?

Well you know,

November has come

when it's gone away.

"November Has Come" was played live during the "Demon Days Live" showcases where MF DOOM was broadcasted over the screens as if he hijacked the group's visuals, and while I usually say  the "Demon Days Live" band did the album's songs the best, I gotta say that I think the "Escape To Plastic Beach" band did this song better. The drumming of Cass Browne and Gabriel Mauris Wallace add a looser groove to the song as opposed to the tightly wound and orchestrated work of Danger Mouse's percussion. The trio of Jeff Wootton, Simon Tong and Mick Jones do some masterful guitar work on the song and the string section add a new counter melody to the song giving the song more of a DANGER DOOM feel with it's loose funk groove and cinematic strings. The two times they played it on the tour, "MF DOOM" was there in full masked glory reading his lyrics from a story book like an evil narrator telling a dark tale from the world's past (which he kinda was doing, since in 2010 it was about two years since the fiasco mentioned above ended). Whether or not this was the real DOOM or just a DOOM BOT we will never know, but whoever it was did a fair job on the song.

"November Has Come" remains a fan favorite to this day, and it's impact will remain on the many who cherish it. When Damon Albarn was doing a radio interview on Sway for the album "Humanz", one caller called in just to tell this to the man himself, "What certified my belief that you guys are true artists is when you collaborated with MF DOOM on "November Has Come". That song changed how I thought about music itself... amazing".

I could not agree more.