Song Obsession Vol. 3: "How About This For My Hair" by Laddio Bolocko

This entry into the Song Obsession series is a long time in the making. I've been minorly obsessing over Laddio Bolocko for a few years now and "How About This For My Hair" in particular. But re-watching the live rendition again today finally compelled me to write something about the song.

It started with last.fm

I was introduced to Laddio Bolocko via one of last.fm's auto-playlist features that would slip in new recommendations to your genre playlists based on your listening history. It was a great feature, but I eventually drifted away from last.fm because their song library wasn't huge and you'd end up hearing a lot of the same songs over and over.

One of the songs I'd hear multiple times was Laddio Bolocko's "The Man Who Never Was," a sort of low-key, acid-jazz number that builds into a saxaphone freakout. Maybe that doesn't sound great to you, but the song eventually seeped into my brain far enough that I thought I should check out the rest of the band's catalog. And I'm so glad I did...

Drummer Dreams

I've always secretly wanted to be a drummer. It's not by chance that many of my favorite bands feature incredible drummers. I especially enjoy drummers that can maintain that sweet groove as they're showing off. As you might have gathered from the video, Blake Fleming from Laddio Bolocko nails that balance quite well.

"How About This For My Hair" puts the drummer at the center, allowing him to throw everything at maintaining the groove while leaving the other musicians to develop the song over 11 minutes (on the album it's in two parts - A and B - clocking in at almost 17 minutes). Maybe these track lengths make it seem like a slog, but after re-watching the video above again, my sentiments hold: 11 minutes is simply too short.