fire up/ the middle eight

Paul Wellerのインタビューがありました。90年代から2000年代にかけてのイングランドのロックバンドに大変大きな影響を与えた人物です。今回はここから英語表現を拾います。

フィリー・ソウルなどに影響を受けたウェラーは、当時組んでいたネオモッズ・バンドに新しい風を吹き込みました。ジャムをした後に、ソウルから影響を受けた音楽はグルーヴに満ち、それはfired upされました。このfire upは、「(コンピュータやプログラムなど)を始動させる」という意味のほかに「（想像力など）をかきたてる」「（人・気持ち）を奮い立たせる」さらに「（人）をかっとさせる、興奮させる」という意味があります(『ジーニアス英和辞典』)。ここでは「興奮させる、奮い立たせる」、LDOCEでいうところの“to make someone become very excited, interested, or angry”という意味で使われています。

ちなみに、文中のthe middle eightは、いわゆるブリッジのことで、ヴァースの間に挿入される８小節程度の間奏を指します。(Othello)

How we made: Paul Weller and Bruce Foxton on Town Called Malice | Music | The Guardian

At the same time, I was getting into black American soul music. I'd heard a lot of Motown and Stax when I was a kid, but the more well-known end of it. On Jam tours, we had a DJ called Ady Croasdell, who ran a 60s club. He turned me on to underground stuff and what people call northern soul. It just blew my mind. We'd already moved on from punk very quickly, and by [fifth album] Sound Affects there were a lot of disparate influences. We'd been a three-piece for years, and there are only so many variations on the guitar/drums format. So, rightly or wrongly, I was getting into brass sections and female vocals and keyboards and trying to expand our sound.

I'd never read the Nevil Shute novel, A Town Like Alice, but I must have seen the title. The music came from us jamming, which we were always doing. I remember us first hitting that groove and being fired up by it. Then I added the middle eight and sorted the song out, adding the organ. It was all done pretty quickly. I remember feeling good about it, and when we played it to friends in the studio, everyone went "wow". The song's a strange contradiction. It's got an uplifting feel, almost like a gospel song, but it's also got a very hard realism about it.