Random Music Talk XXI: Check Out This F@&!#%' Shouter

[iron yuppie]

Speaking of U2, someone on EYKIW just claiming that "Love Is Blindness" is U2's worst song. That claim is really pushing the boundaries of what I can accept as one's subjective taste.

 

[IWasBored]

Speaking of U2, someone on EYKIW just claiming that "Love Is Blindness" is U2's worst song. That claim is really pushing the boundaries of what I can accept as one's subjective taste.

yeah, that's troll talk.

 

[GirlsAloudFan]

Everclear is a surprising topic of conversation.

All I remember about them was seeing a couple music videos and thinking that their lead singer had a weird and distinct look to him, and I always thought they were just another garden variety, whitebread, 90s group that had a few big radio hits.

I always lumped them in with people like Lit and Sugar Ray and Third Eye Blind and Eve 6 and all those fuckers.

 

[PhilsFan]

The live version of that song is transcendent. Edge just goes off on that solo.

 

[u2popmofo]

If someone wants to do the leg work of finding that person's address, I will happily introduce them to my musket.

 

[If you shout...]

Everclear is a surprising topic of conversation.

All I remember about them was seeing a couple music videos and thinking that their lead singer had a weird and distinct look to him, and I always thought they were just another garden variety, whitebread, 90s group that had a few big radio hits.

I always lumped them in with people like Lit and Sugar Ray and Third Eye Blind and Eve 6 and all those fuckers.

You are correct, sir. Or I'd say you are, anyway.

 

[IWasBored]

Everclear is a surprising topic of conversation.

All I remember about them was seeing a couple music videos and thinking that their lead singer had a weird and distinct look to him, and I always thought they were just another garden variety, whitebread, 90s group that had a few big radio hits.

I always lumped them in with people like Lit and Sugar Ray and Third Eye Blind and Eve 6 and all those fuckers.

ultimately, they were just a bunch of interchangable white boy 90s rock bands, very easily lumped in with all those other bands you mentioned. i'd leave sugar ray out, but purely from a personal standpoint, because i always hated them. but that's because it was the last bastion of popular, generic-ish radio-friendly rock music before i got into punk rock (and then everything else that followed up to what i listen to today), that actually meant something to me at the time.

third eye blind - pretty vivid memory of sleeping on a friend's couch with the radio on, and it waking me up twice because songs i'd come to like were on. this was a big deal because it was the first time i'd decided i liked music other than the beatles and a handful of other things the local oldies station played. the other song was sister hazel, which i got sick of really fast, but it was mainly because at the time i thought both semi-charmed life and that were the same band.

got another story about eve 6, but this post is getting long. and while they'd at least make a footnote in the same part of my life, lit never panned out into anything past that first album (and unlike where i can still listen to the self-titled third eye blind album, or most of everclear's stuff, for example...outside of maybe 2 songs, i could never really stand that one album anyway), so i'd really put them on the other side of that line with sugar ray.

it was a big deal to me at the time. i was 14, 15, 16 years old. when the second eve 6 album came out my mom still flipped her shit if one of the kids came home with a cd that had a parental advisory on it, and i thought i had a great moral dillemma when i decided to stop at the store after work, and then i thought i was going to get my ass kicked because i didn't have a pocket big enough to hide it in.

 

[IWasBored]

good god, the order in which everclear songs were released as singles and which videos i actually saw when they came out mark the timeline between before and after i moved--before and after we had cable tv--and then up until the point where my mom decided to cancel the cable.



um, i guess thanks, laz? for reminding me i actually used to like that band quite a bit? and can still stand them? or something?

i also used to make fun of everclear...ok there's the dum dum dum du du dum dum dum song, then there's the du du du dum dum dum du du song...and then the one with the du's and dum's just arranges in a slightly different order, but essentially all the same riff. but i still did really enjoy that band.

 

[IWasBored]

oh yeah. their cover of "brown eyed girl" was a pile of crap. forgot that existed.

 

[iron yuppie]

After reading the name "Eve 6," I thought that I had never heard of them. Then I went to sample a few songs at Amazon MP3 and promptly realized that they were responsible for a bunch of songs that I hoped I'd never hear again. That's especially the case with "Here's to the Night" or whatever - that one ranks alongside Hoobastank's "The Reason" as one of the most painfully maudlin power anthems ever.

 

[u2popmofo]

You have no idea how much I hated, and still hate, late '90's and early '00's radio "rock".

 

[IWasBored]

when "here's to the night" turned into the pop radio single was when i stopped caring about the band. "promise" was the lead single, and it seemed to follow the stuff from the self-titled album as well as any generic 90s rock band's second, mediocre, album's lead single should. the bulk of the album was in the same vein. here's to the night was like the token quiet song (the closer as well) that i'd skip if when i listened to it. then it came out as a single, and playing the kind of in-it-for-the-money radio-friendly stuff that they were playing in the first place, the band sort of ran with it. i'm still saying i know they were your late 90s teen movie soundtrack sort of band, don't get me wrong, it's not like i'm saying they sold out because it was never like they had years of building an underground fanbase to have much to sell out from anyway. i still like the first album, and the second minus that song, though.

 

[lazarus]

i could relate a little too well to "father of mine" when it came out.

Whereas Lance only wishes he could.

 

[IWasBored]

You have no idea how much I hated, and still hate, late '90's and early '00's radio "rock".

nah, i think i know. i recall having this conversation before.

 

[corianderstem]

All I know about Eve 6 is that their name is a reference to an early X-Files episode.

 

[GirlsAloudFan]

I want a yellow Stratocaster for christmas.

 

[IWasBored]

hmm. ok, now i remember when i decided i was done with everclear. i got a free copy of slow motion daydream while i was playing college radio dj (cos it was deemed too uncool to keep in the stacks), and it sucked ass.

 

[lazarus]

They lost me with the Brown Eyed Girl cover. As noted above, just awful.

 

[cobl04]

It's great that "All I Want Is You" is back in the set. Arguably my favorite U2 live moment is the AIWIY segue into Streets on the Slane Castle DVD.

+1. despite the fact it's got the worst setlist of all the DVDs, it might be my favourite show (outside of Zootv). the performances are stunning.

Just looking at it for the first time as I write this. I think Round and Round was the last song I was expecting to be number one - not that it's bad, it's just one of many songs from that particular album that have barely registered for me beyond "this is alright". Shutterbug over Shine Blockas or Daddy Fat Saxx is silly. The obligatory Cee-lo inclusion is hilarious. And much as I love LCD and grew to enjoy This is Happening, two tracks in the top 12 is overkill, especially when only one of them is great. As for two Kanye tracks in the top 6, that's a whole 'nother mess.

+1, +1, +1

Stuck in a Masturbatory Noose You Can't Get Out Of

+10

 

[cobl04]

i just listened to that Round and Round song. quite nice. good chorus. best song of the year? please. don't know how My Girls managed to take up half the writeup either.

also Robyn has really bad teeth, which is an extremely huge turn off. that's the first song of hers i've heard this year (throw your tomatoes) and whilst it's good, catchy, upbeat pop (and so much better than 99% of the pop that gets played on radio) it's still not really my cup of tea. the sort of song that i wouldn't turn off if i heard it on the radio, but probably wouldn't go out of my way to listen to.


edit, having said all that, i'm not going to be able to get this Dancing on My Own out of my head for the rest of the day now. gosh darn

 

[martha]

Mister Heavenly is a band. Their bassist is Michael Cera, the actor of Arrested Development fame who then played the same character in several films. The guy from Man Man is their frontman, as my understanding has it. Impy saw them play a show and enjoyed it.

Thank you.

One last time, martha. At least until I re-mention it, at some point. Don't let yourself down and overlook this shit...

and

Let me know if you need some help getting a hold of these shits.

I downloaded the French one; still haven't burned it and spun it. Parson Sound may be more of a problem. I may need some assistance on that one.

Hoobastank's "The Reason" as one of the most painfully maudlin power anthems ever.

I don't even listen to the radio, but I heard that one enough times to make me want to hurt myself. Jesus. Will someone give that guy some singing lessons?

+10

Agreed. Best 'Cock title EVAR.



And why is it only fucking TUESDAY??

 

[cobl04]

And why is it only fucking TUESDAY??

maybe where you live.

 

[martha]

I like the way you think, young grasshopper.

 

[If you shout...]

"Round and Round" is a small, single part of a strange, long-simmering, finally blossoming "indie" trend of mining lite/lite-pop ('70s to mid '80s AM soft rock, film strip-style synths, new age, etc.) sounds to create new music.

I say "strange" not because it's challenging, or whatever, but because it goes very much against the grain of what "indie" music was, by and large, from at least the late '70s until the early '00s. And against the grain of what it kept telling itself it was, during those nomadic years from then to now. Until pretty recently, a lot of people (I'd say, "most people," but my sample size is small and necessarily biased) still came at it as "difficult," or at least "non-mainstream" music. "Indie" going mainstream is several years old, of course, but it is happening more and more, with each passing year; I think it's interesting, in the context of the rest of the shit I'm talking about.

And I say "long-simmering" to refer mostly to the last two-ish years; while this aesthetic has clearly been building since well before then, it didn't congeal in any kind of clearly identifiable or organized way until then. I mean, more or less. But for about two years, everybody from indie-poppers to avant-garde sound collagists to writers at Wire have been playing with a lot of these things in the same way. I guess I first noticed it in full effect when Hall & Oates suddenly started getting name-checked as hip influences...? I find it all fascinating, even though I probably only enjoy the same percentage of "this music" as most any other. Maybe even a bit less, I dunno.

Anyway, it seems like we're finally/conclusively moving past Sonic Youth, et al. That's what I've been coming to. I say that because bands like The National, LCD Soundsystem, etc. are no longer a (small) part of "indie" music--they're the established bands that constitute the backbone of the...what, scene? I don't know how to put it, but you know what I mean. You couple that with the fact that even the fringe elements are now (for the time being) shifting away from the punk/post-punk sound/ethos/practice far more than ever before, and overtly dabbling with both expressly pop and expressly populist techniques, and there it is. New frontiers. Or, well, old frontiers visited anew.

I guess I just can't get over hearing casios and Fischer Price keyboards in drum circle music. I dunno.

 

[If you shout...]

That is an awful post, actually. Ugh.

 

[bono_212]

oh yeah. their cover of "brown eyed girl" was a pile of crap. forgot that existed.

God that cover was so fucking awful I can't stand it.


"Wonderful" was the song for me that hit too close to home, btw.

 

[If you shout...]

I never "got" . . . Boces. Haven't listened in years, though. I guess I should go back and see if I still feel the same way.

Holy shit, this was also a dumb-as-fuck post. This album is psychotically awesome. Jesus. I have been frittering away my years on far, far lesser records. Fuck.

 

[cobl04]

sooooo... you or don't like Robyn?

more importantly, for those of us who enjoy dirty beats, NEW DEADMAU5!!!

YouTube - deadmau5 - Some Chords

 

[IWasBored]

I don't even listen to the radio, but I heard that one enough times to make me want to hurt myself. Jesus. Will someone give that guy some singing lessons?

imagine you're in college and your roommate's cell plays that song for a ringer. she's hardly ever there in the room, but she doesn't bring her phone when she leaves and people call her constantly, so imagine hearing two lines from the chorus whined on as a ringtone at least a dozen times a day.

i think we're talking about the same song. i'd look it up to double check, but i might fly into a homicidal rage if i hear one note of that song ever again, and i'm actually in a half-decent mood right now.

it's a minor miracle i never chucked the damn phone out the window.

 

[cobl04]

What is "four loko"?