can't believe how bad the Libertines are

k-punk

Spectres of Mark
Must confess that the Libertines have passed me by. Only really heard them tonight when Kirsty Wark's interview with Doherty was repeated on BBC4, curiosity piqued by the blanket tabloid coverage. Absolutely stunned by the vacuity of Doherty and by the sheer cheap crapness of the Libertines sound: like a fourth on the bill sub-Jam pre-C86 post-postpunk band in 1983 playing inept Kinks copysongs. Was spared Babyshambles thank god. But the heavy-breathing media desperation surounding Doherty is really quite disturbing: here is a mediocrity whose delusions of being a creative artist-poet are indulged and cossetted by journalists who are just slavering for a British Kurt Cobain. They're practically offering him heroin, clearly desperate for him to die.

Yeuchhh......
 

jenks

thread death
the complicity of the media in this sorry farrago is seriously unpalatable - i am put in mind of the coverage of boy george all those years ago, the tabs must've been furious he didn't kill himself. (the broadsheets too)
 

Woebot

Well-known member
i just assumed they must be ok actually! kinda of like the strokes or summat.

im something betwixt appalled and unsurprised to hear this (presumably accurate) diagnosis.

ought to get round to hearing them meself nonetheless.
 

Woebot

Well-known member
henrymiller said:
they aren't so hot. simon reynolds likes 'em.

well thats why i gave them some creedence actually, but maybe hes just trying to wind up farts like me by saying he likes them. who nose.
 

Grievous Angel

Beast of Burden
I'm always happy to reveal a liking for popular / unpopular / take-yer-pick music -- I mean I like and have bought records by Coldplay for example, which puts me some way beyond the pale of most Dissenssians -- but I just don't get The Libertines or BabyShambles. It's just limp crap. It's devoid of fun and energy, it's just this pre-teen whining committed to record -- it's like when my mate Pete's 12 year old boy starts having a tantrum, shouyting "BUM" over and over again. In a 12 year old, that's quite cute and quite understandable on a Sunday afternoon. But Pete Doherty pretends to be a man. And he isn't.

I won't try to better K-Punk's description of the music, it's right on the money -- the songs really are poor. And there are a million radio-friendly rock and pop acts that are a million times better -- the Zutons, say, or even the Stereophonics (who know their way around a tune better than Doherty will ever know). Compared to a pungent pop talent like Robbie Williams -- who, even if you don't like himl does at least have some traction with tunes like sexed up or let me entertain you -- Doherty is a nowhere man.

And if we want our pop stars to behave badly for us, are we really so lacking in ambition and mischievousness that we want him to dissolve into anti-libidinal smackdom?
 

Flyboy

Member
I think that of the current crop of mainstreamy-indie guitar bands these days, you can do worse than the Libertines: Muse, Keane, Kasabian, Razorlight, Athlete, the list goes on. But that's not saying much as all those bands truly are godawful abominations.
 

Rambler

Awanturnik
Athelete. Hell's bells they're horrible.

Agree about the unpleasant obsession with the personal disaster that is Pete Doherty. He's a very dull, slightly talented individual. Put him in rehab, wrap him up warm, give him some hot soup and leave him alone. Please, before the poor bastard gets worse.
 

DJL

i'm joking
Dismissed Doherty/Libertines/Babyshambles ages ago as a waste of time but was forced to listen to some of the songs round a friends house and admit I do like some of them.
 

Blackdown

nexKeysound
this a reason why i find rock journalism so tedious. there's so many formatted myths that rock stars must conform to (groupies, hotel room trashing, drug abuse, untimely death) that it seems so fake. while the rock press lap up these acceptable forms of rebellion, if rock stars ever did anything truly rebellious or beyond the law the rock press would be the first to act like shocked parents...
 

LRJP!

(Between Blank & Boring)
Hearing the singles on daytime radio i have to admit to seeing the attraction (Kilamanjaro(sp?) was lodged in my head last month). However the media coverage is bleak and twadry in the extreme - faux concern, vicarious narcotic glamorisation/demonisation, nudge-nudge moralising…
 

mms

sometimes
jacket with jeans is the thing my english teacher at junior school wore on a day off.
i just cant take this shit seriously, i'm thinking of reviving some mods and rockers type shit.
 

k-punk

Spectres of Mark
Don't people think this has hit a new low though? Indie just seems to be getting worse and worse, you seem to have to do less and less to become a 'major' award-winning artist. I agree that the Libertines aren't the worst - christ, Elbow would have a good shout for that, and, theoretically speaking, there must be bands even worse than them, though I can scarcely credit it. 90s Indie must be the most complacent and retro popular music ever; it makes Trad Jazz seem like Jungle circa 93. Will Indie ever be destroyed, or are we cursed with its apparently infinite capacity to get more mediocre, more retro, more cliched FOREVER?
 

mms

sometimes
k-punk said:
Will Indie ever be destroyed, or are we cursed with its apparently infinite capacity to get more mediocre, more retro, more cliched FOREVER?

was talking about the effect of the beatles the other day, seems the beatles just really spawned the worst type of conservative empty rock ever in europe, their pioneering experimentalism and often well made songs have been left untouched apart from in places like brazillian tropicalia.
Indie rock is dire, totally empty of ideas and stupendously boring, just xerox on a bad machine, but so popular, no idea why, possibly cos it is more avaliable, jesus even warp have signed a franz ferdinand soundalike.
 

h-crimm

Well-known member
mms said:
jesus even warp have signed a franz ferdinand soundalike.

no no no, thats a _post punk_ band, everybody knows even the word indie is too dirty to touch,
but the concepts are so universal heartwarming and comfortable, jeez you music lover types! just relax and enjoy it
===> okay that last said tongue firmly in cheek. <===

its kindof upsetting about the renormalization of the representation of the word 'punk' to legitimise the narrow boredom of boy indie rock
i suppose its all about 'punk' revival about now (+/- five years) cos the boys who bought the second wave, marketed, surface-punk records as kids are now the ones running the business...

i was trying to explain to my friend the other day why i think ruff squad is more punk than franz furryland... i dunno what logan would say to that :)
 

DJL

i'm joking
Most people like "Indie" music because they say "they're actually playing instruments". Ignorance is so funny.
As much as I despise most guitar based music there is some good stuff out there and you can't forget the punk movement which was really the most exciting thing to happen in music since Jesus was born.
 

k-punk

Spectres of Mark
But punk was more about getting past R and R; certainly post-punk was (cf Simon's new book). Keith Levene of PiL was quite upfront about wanting to destroy rock and roll. Slits, Banshees, Raincoats, Fall, Magazine, Gang of 4, none of this had anything to do with jingle-jangle maudlin melodic whining. That's one of the depressing ironies about the unbelievably crap Franz Ferdinand (they sound so stiff-jointed that I always want to reach for the WD40 every time I hear them): there was a pre-Brits puff piece on them in which they were celebrated as the 'return of real rock' or somesuch. Yes, quite, that shows how their utilization of post-punk influences is not only utterly bereft of imagination, it is actually directly contrary to everything post-punk aimed for.

Whatever happened to modernism?
 

DJL

i'm joking
For me punk is about just doing what you want and not being "cool". So yeah agree that it goes past Rock n Roll in that sense. I think it is a lot bigger than that as well though. A recognition of something fundamentally wrong with the world.
 
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