Wednesday, May 23, 2007

Musical Neuter II: Return Of The Puss

Bad music is like a weed, it sprouts up everywhere. Good music is like weed, it gets you high. These bands are so awful that you’d have to be high to like them. High like angel dust high.

Maroon 5

I had originally planned to include these ladies in with the last batch, but I got distracted by the awesome mega-wattage of weakness form the other bands that I forgot. Before they softened up, they used to be called Kara’s Flowers (any hint there where they’re headed musically?) and did a watered down version of grunge. Years later they reformed, renamed, removed their testicles, and put out Songs About Jane. Naming your album for the ex-girlfriend who just broke up with you is cool…if you’re in junior high. What an amazing narcissist the singer was to suggest it, and what a sackless bunch of lemming the band was to go along with it. It should have been called “I’m A Whiny Bitch-Boy Who Cries A Lot” – that says exactly the same thing and cuts right to it.

And how their drummer had to quit because the excessive touring because he "deteriorated to such a degree that both [of my] arms were pretty much useless" is a new level of laughable. I know that listening to that music is crippling, but I figure you’d be immune playing it. That’s the most spineless way to back out of playing such bad music I ever heard.

Typical Female Fan: virgins, girls who wear crucifixes (not for fashion), single white women who work in bookstores

Typical Male Fan: guys who watch American Idol, heartbroken lovesick guys who write poetry to ex-girlfriends

Musical Opposite: Nashville Pussy – southern fried rock out of Georgia whose core songwriting subjects are sex, drugs, drinking, and fighting

Matchbox 20

The patron saints of pop-tinted sucking, they too were spawned from an earlier, equally lame band (Tabitha’s Secret – wow, now every girl named Tabitha is ashamed and they haven’t even heard your crappy music) before finding their formulaic brand of low dosage “rock”. When I was a younger man, I had hoped to come across these dorks and challenge them, band to band, to a fight, the winner getting their recording contract. Lucky for them we never crossed paths, but unfortunately for everyone else, they established Adult Contemporary music in the mainstream. If you play guitar, it should be taken away if you play AC music, just to be sure that no rock accidentally gets in there.

Eventually, their pompousness led them to change their name from Matchbox 20 to Matchbox Twenty…y’know, to be more adult…and contemporary. Their music is a nothing more than a sped up ballad at best, with no teeth or bite to it, and strangely the two places you’re most likely to hear it is in an office or a strip bar (don’t ask, but it’s a fact). And with singer Rob Thomas getting “Smooth” with Santana, now there’s no limit to the bland.

Typical Female Fan: strippers, women who drink beer (watery American swill like Bud and MGD), girls who wear cowboy hats

Typical Male Fan: guys who shop at J. Crew, college student at schools without football or basketball programs

Musical Opposite: Rollins Band – 100% pure rock and roll intensity, complete with a buff, shirtless guy screaming his lungs out

Nickelback

Canada gave us Rush, but they also gave us Nickelback, and goddamn, it’s still hard to say if that’s a fair trade. Rumor has it that Kurt Cobain could see the future, and that he went down on a shotgun because he saw the rise of Nickelback. If Canada is the friendlier, polite version of the United States, then Nickelback are the weaker, cheesier version of rock music.

Truly, in the post-grunge era, their faux-anthems passed for hard rock music because pop music had become so widespread. It was, though, hardly hard or rockin’, merely plodding along until Indie music got more raw and heavier (hybrids of metal) music made a return. Much the same way the purse-holders in Good Charlotte are a paint-by-numbers goth-punk band with their designer eyeliner and still-wet tattoos, Nickelback are the bastard offspring of a past era with their stale goatees, downtrodden looks, and dull edge. Their music is the equivalent of cardboard – boring as hell.

Typical Female Fan: girls who work in sports bars, your fat cousin

Typical Male Fan: Canadians, NASCAR fans, guys who think Staind are a heavy metal band

Musical Opposite: Faith No More – this defunct quintet did a bizarre yet palpable combination of funk, metal, rock, and alternative and was as unpredictable live as they were from song to song

Creed

We can’t mention how much Nickelback sucks without also bringing up the mighty Creed. Looking like they came from a sale at Hot Topic, these poseurs took terrible music into un-ventured territory – Jesus. They were not the first Christian rock band, but certainly the biggest. The fact they existed and garnered any kind of success or fame is proof enough that God is dead. Same goes for Allah, Buddha, and Vishnu. And if Jesus had anything to do with them, other than play the role of Creed masturbation material, he better think twice before deciding to come back…

The most annoying, nay, indigestible part of Creed was their asinine front man Scott Stapp. When Bono acts like the messiah, he does it with cool charm. When Stapp does his holy prancing, it reeks of falseness, showmanship and manufactured piousness. Being the dickbag leader of a former Pearl Jam cover band from Florida does not give you credibility or any shred of talent to use to blow your ego unholy proportions. Everything bad that happens to you is the result of your amazingly out of control self-importance…what does Jesus say about karma?

Typical Female Fan: Christians, virgins, Christian virgins, deaf girls

Typical Male Fan: guys with mullets, Camero owners, Christians

Musical Opposite: Marilyn Manson – the Anti-Christ Superstar also hailed from the panhandle state, but took a decidedly more artistic, and devilishly creative turn as a musician

3 Doors Down

Baby brother to Creed and Nickelback, these nancies are pretty much unremarkable in everything they do. So why are they able to make a career out of lazy, southern alterna-pop? Beats the hell out of me. If the band that won your high school talent show were actually as good as they thought they were, they would still be light years ahead of this shitty band. Composers and musicians say that music is not about how many notes you can play, but the space in-between the notes, and that sort-of holds true for 3 Doors Down – the enjoyable part is not the songs, but the silent spaces in-between them.

Typical Female Fan: women missing teeth, single moms under 24

Typical Male Fan: high school students who fear bullies, albinos, anyone who lives in a town with more dirt roads than post offices

Musical Opposite: Deftones – sometimes ambient, sometimes aggressive, but always intensely melodic and unique

1 comment:

Idle Eyes said...

I felt gross and guilty the longer i watched each video, feeling my testes shrivel up the longer i let it go on. Hallelujah my brother for continuing to lambaste these bands that too many people love. Shame on the masses, they know not what they do.