Gus's Top 100 Bootlickin' Nonce Anthems

[shakahislop]

I'm on the A and our girls dasha and anna are on about how Mr brightside is better than rap

 

[catalog]

I don't agree that a good thread = lots of pages, that's idiotic. But fair play in terms of baiting and taking a lot of cussing.

 

[sus]

I don't think it's idiotic and I didn't say "equals"; I think page count is a simplified and flawed indicator, like all indicators, and that I challenge you to find a 200+ page thread that wasn't a real part of board history/culture. Mind you, ABCM ain't there yet, not claiming the honors—but like points and player skill in basketball, the correlation's far from perfect; exceptions abound; but the relation is strong all the same

 

[sus]

I am just trying to help us all transcend our opposed positions in the field of cultural capital, and recognize our kinship as players, and that this (partially fictional) antagonism draws eyeballs. We all know this. Rich plays pickup soccer with the boys, he knows this

 

[sus]

Conservatives do really not hate liberals; they love them.

Nor are the two all that different, really

 

[sus]

You can pretend in public to the board you don't have to admit it the play doesn't need its 4th wall broken, but I want to make sure that you can at least admit it to yourself

 

[catalog]

What I mean is that there are a few really long threads on here and you sometimes sit down and read them, find yourself going this way and that, it can be like reading a decent book, but I'm just saying there's also the odd really nice little orphaned one, five pages, like the cathedrals one, everything in it perfect.

 

[catalog]

You can pretend in public to the board you don't have to admit it the play doesn't need its 4th wall broken, but I want to make sure that you can at least admit it to yourself

Well we are onto a different point here but yes I agree these binaries are not very useful. Shiels had a go the othef day with extremophile. Accelerationism is the most famous example. No one's is saying there's not something in that.

 

[Murphy]

Yes, you Lads have spent 15 years meticulously charting the political fault lines and aesthetic micro-gestures and subcultural sub-divisions of your own youth culture. I don't understand why you're confused why Americans half your age might occasionally try to do the same with theirs

you had access to the entire history of recorded music and yet you muck spray better than a Connaught heffer

 

[luka]

Is it not so universal in the UK? It is the number song for normies in america, so much so that theres a bit of post modern awareness about it for them which is rare in that group.

ive never heard it before. its insanely bad. like a unique torture. reminds me of linkin park.

 

[IdleRich]

(20/100) The Killers, "Mr Brightside"

I like this song but it's not on the list because I like it, it's on the list because this is universal pop culture for people my age. I just had coffee with someone last week, they broke their foot at a wedding when "Mr Brightside" came on. Everybody likes "Mr Brightside." Nobody doesn't like "Mr Brightside."

I've read about this song, about how it is some kind of unstoppable anthem for a certain demographic, that when played in the right bar people are literally unable to stop themselves from dancing. Like, if they were in fear for their life, silently hiding from a serial killer or something, desperately holding their breath, crouched utterly motionless in a secure cubby hole and this came on the radio they would be powerless to prevent themselves from leaping out of their safe hiding place and jumping around like a loon even as they were being repeatedly stabbed to death.

And when I read that I was naturally curious and so I listened to it. And I realized that I had heard it before but... I dunno, it didn't get me, I can't remember how it goes. I'm gonna listen again to check this. But I think that it's something incredibly specific, in fact, with respect I think you're dead wrong when you say "Nobody doesn't like Mr Bright side" - maybe the people you know lie overwhelmingly within the demographic but to me, and I suspect to many others, it's not a stance or anything like that, it's just that... I mean, perhaps if you said "noone hates it" you might be on to something cos to me too bland and unmemorable to hate. I actually think it's the opposite of universal; it's clearly very powerful, even all-conquering to those who get it, and that group is surprisingly large - which is what you want if you're writing a tune, massively popular with a massive group - but to those outside the group it's just mush, I don't get it all, it just sounds like the acme of landfill indie, having listened again I couldn't pick it out of a line-up of radio guitar tracks.

I realise that that sounds something like a contradiction when I say it has a huge but precise appeal, but I'm trying to say that it's got an almost lazer like focus on a massive group, while one mm outside that group the energy drops off almost instantly to zero.

Of course, I could be wrong. But I don't think so, first off, I can't imagine it's hugely popular on dissensus, but maybe that's not fair and we should exempt us lot from such polls, but out in the real world, I don't know anyone who likes that song, I've never heard anyone say anything positive about it, so my feeling is that your view of the song is distorted by how you're positioned relative to it. As is mine, but I'm not making any universal claim so it's not such a problem.

 

[IdleRich]

I genuinely don't. Always really hated it. Someone bought me the album when it came out as a leaving gift or birthday present and I was like "this music is the anti-me".

What???? Who on earth did that? How is that possible? Is it someone I know?

 

[IdleRich]

Is it not so universal in the UK? It is the number song for normies in america, so much so that theres a bit of post modern awareness about it for them which is rare in that group.

Yeah that's what I was trying to get at above. That there was a sort of recognition of its extraordinary popularity which had become a thing in itself.

 

[shakahislop]

i was 15 i think when the killers came into existence and i read the NME website every day looking for gig listings etc, so caught (smelly) wind of the killers on the upswing. got used to it but it's a bit weird that they're a massive festival headline stadium gig band but probably there is a well established cultural practice of going to see anthemic guitar bands by now, its part of the furniture, part of the normie furniture. mr brightside is not my kind of sound unsurprisingly and everything like this from that period sounds like shit production-wise. but there is a place in the world for a song expressing anguished sexual jealousy. i mean surely that is why people like it, coz its getting at an emotion which isn't touched on very much, turning it into a kind of communal anthem, digging it out and sanitising it or at least talking about it, helping people deal with it, letting people know that other people are feeling the same things you are not alone etc etc

also there is a genuinely great joke in this song, which is where he says and they're going to bed / and my stomach is sick / and its all in my head / and she's touching his......chest'. the non-rhyming fakeout saying chest when you think he's going to say dick, i've always liked that

 

[IdleRich]

I do wonder why you're doing this. Ugly, terrible music, that's culturally ubiquitous anyway...why shove it in our faces?

What? I don't get that at all Dan. The point of these threads is about so much more than the music in them. I haven't read this whole thread, but the bits I have read are interesting cos they throw together all these kinds of stuff - a mixture of personal history thrown together with insights into one aspect of growing up in the US. I mean we've had this thread and @wild greens's thread overlapping and neither are really about music that is to my taste, or at least it's not stuff I listen to (actually, as it happened, it turned out that I liked a lot of the Funky stuff in the other thread when I listened to it, but it wouldn't have mattered at all if I didn't cos the writing was so good).

And the nature of a board like this is such that if there are ten or so songs on a page you read the page much more quickly than you listen cos you can only listen to one thing at a time and you can get through a whole page while one tune plays through. And so ultimately it's more about the writing than the music.

And to me it's interesting to learn that Gus experimented on himself to see what heroin withdrawal was like, and it's also interesting to hear someone say "everyone likes Mr Brightside" for real when I've only ever seen that in memes like those things above. To see a passionate defence of Arcade Fire is completely new to me - and I'm also enjoying this looking back through (slightly) older and wiser eyes, the struggle Gus has at times to understand why he liked something which he doesn't like at all now - and then once he's figured that out, a second struggle to bring that to us.

The contrast between this thread and WG's is instantly interesting, and of course it's both totally obvious and endlessly fascinating to see such a powerful demonstration of how much where and when you grow up influences your taste. And to what extent should one look beyond that. Cos a lot of what made WG's so interesting was how close he was to music that I know nothing about and the, for want or a better word, authenticity that came from that was brilliant. But imagine if someone like me who grew up in the countryside did the same - I was about to say that I would have a kind of dilemma in that if I wrote about the music around me as a yute then it would be terrible, and so straight off I would face a choice between writing about good music that I discovered cos I read about it but which was in no way mine OR writing about utter shite... except it's actually worse than that cos there was no music that is authentically mine. And of course I've known that on a conscious level - but Greenie's thread made me feel that really on a deeper level, it actually made that lack realer than it had ever been, that's how involving the writing was.

But Dan mate, I'm surprised you just go "I don't like The Killers this is shit" - I never seen you miss the point like that before.

 

[IdleRich]

@linebaugh You've got soul, but are you a soldier?

Is that where that line comes from? I remember hearing that song on the radio and being instantly overwhelmed by powerful sense of embarrassment for everyone involved with it. When you hear something like that you think "how is it possible?" - someone wrote it down and showed it to their friend and then they agreed on it together and put it to a tune and then the drummer heard it too and they actually sang it... out loud! To other people! And then they went to a studio with engineers and producers and all that and it got recorded - and through that whole long laborious process with all the people involved in it, how can it be that noone stepped in and did something about it, I don't understand how something like that comes about. I suppose this is where rock star confidence comes in, the bullet proof brashness to push through something so palpably terrible that any normal person with a standard issue sense of shame would curl up and die of shame for even thinking it in the deepest depths of their unconscious.

 

[IdleRich]

i was 15 i think when the killers came into existence and i read the NME website every day looking for gig listings etc, so caught (smelly) wind of the killers on the upswing. got used to it but it's a bit weird that they're a massive festival headline stadium gig band but probably there is a well established cultural practice of going to see anthemic guitar bands by now, its part of the furniture, part of the normie furniture. mr brightside is not my kind of sound unsurprisingly and everything like this from that period sounds like shit production-wise. but there is a place in the world for a song expressing anguished sexual jealousy. i mean surely that is why people like it, coz its getting at an emotion which isn't touched on very much, turning it into a kind of communal anthem, digging it out and sanitising it or at least talking about it, helping people deal with it, letting people know that other people are feeling the same things you are not alone etc etc

also there is a genuinely great joke in this song, which is where he says and they're going to bed / and my stomach is sick / and its all in my head / and she's touching his......chest'. the non-rhyming fakeout saying chest when you think he's going to say dick, i've always liked that

Very droll. But all I heard while that song was playing was something like uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh for four minutes, amazed that you could (be bothered to) extract some meaning from it. It never crossed my mind to try and do that, in fact I never really thought that it might have anything as substantial as an actual meaning.

 

[Murphy]

This is purposefully awful though Rich, it’s not chance, it’s intentional because Gus is all about the troll and glorifying/deifying the detritus of 21st century US/western culture. The fact a horse reference gets thrown in is, frankly, irrelevant. I get you hosted the lad, you’ve a decency that doesn’t shirk straight talking, but c’mon

You wouldn’t buy these tracks, would you, and you wouldn’t want to be in a room/venue where they were played sequentially either. Likewise, you wouldn’t want a write up about Arbees or Red Robin or Boston Lobster or insert corporate gruel name with reviews from Sheboygan

Bad form kicking off a 100 while WG was in his stride too, that’s what grated more initially, the whole look at me Dad schtick repeated (again)

Anyway, back to the tracks

 

[Murphy]

Still waiting on the exploits of Sugaree, which instrument(s) were played, tracks covered and why

At least outlining the dynamics of trying to play with your mates, in time, together, would draw you/us in around the proverbial campfire of anecdotes

Gus can write and hear but can he actually listen attentively? Long way to go, maybe there’s a transition coming

 

[shakahislop]

Very droll. But all I heard while that song was playing was something like uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh for four minutes, amazed that you could (be bothered to) extract some meaning from it. It never crossed my mind to try and do that, in fact I never really thought that it might have anything as substantial as an actual meaning.

probably helped to be 15 the first time i heard it, there was so little music about, i didn't have the money to buy CDs and my parents had basically one oasis CD and one bruce springsteen one, and my older sister had about 10 CDs, didn't grow up in a musical household so my ears were really open to anythng. well and basically when you're 15 you're more open to this kind of thing anyway.

that whole era of guitar bands i think i've said on here before there's so much resignation in it, it says alot about the structure of feeling in the uk at that time i think that so many particularly middle aged people wanted to hear that kind of sound and those kinds of sentiments, all that stuff is about making the best of a bad situation. like this one below, it wasn't teenagers that were into it it was crowds of men who had the money to go to glastonbury or pay 60 quid to go see them at the Doncaster Eco-Power Stadium. that era is totally over now, totally gone, everything has a more self-effacious tone, personal empowerment and all of that rather than being resigned to your fate