The History Of Pop Part 36 aka So much for all your highbrow Marxist ways

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

AROOOO! AROOOO! GOTH ALERT! Yes, it's Now: The Placebo Years, or Now: 1997 as you might otherwise call it. I remember this as a deeply fallow time for pop but then I was living back at my parents' house, working sub-minimum wage (OK there was no minimum wage back then) and listening to EARLY MANICS records. Oh to be 23 again (not in a grillion years). Other new faces include Mansun, Sash and the Chemical Brothers. And TEH FIRST EVER INTERWEB NUMBER ONE. Well, it was if you were reading USENET.

Now 35 saw the Spice Girls triumph at the second time of asking, "Say You'll Be There" beating Pulp into a close-ish second, with Suede, the Pet Shop Boys and Undiesworld tying for third. It also saw a sudden dip in the number of people voting, probably because they were all on holiday, or because the late-90s were rub. But they weren't really, where they? Were they??!!


[Poll #708236]


VOTE ME GOOD!

Comments

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

I hate Placebo almost as much as I hate Oasis. It disgusts me that Brian Molko exists in this world.

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

"Nancy Boy" was for some years a real honest-to-god Guilty Pleasure, I would put it on jukeboxes in pubs and then pretend it wasn't me. Eventually the magic world of TEH INTERS WEB came along and I downloaded it and realised that actually I hated it.

I have never felt anything other than helpless larffter at any other Placebo track.

[boyofbadgers.livejournal.com]

I bought Teenage Angst after hearing it an record shop, and then spent the next year trying really hard to like anything else by them. It didn't work, and I don't even like TA anymore.

[catsgomiaow.livejournal.com]

Beng put the first album on the other day, and I still quite like it but spent the whole time thinking "how did they become so DREARY!?!"

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

What is the appeal, to people who do like them, I mean?

[juror8.livejournal.com]

Well, a lot of their (original) appeal was what I guess Culture Club's was in the early 80s, a kind of "Wow they're singing my sexuality" appeal (except with coked up gayness replaced by post-britpop bidesperation).

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

ODDLY THE ONLY GAY PERSON PRESENT DID NOT "GET" THIS!

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

as local spokesman for pre-britpop bidesperation all i can say is "i weep for your generation d00dzOrZ"

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

androgyny from str8s => wvs

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

I am not sure that was C Club's appeal tho, all the "I'd rather have a cup of tea than sex" stuff from Boy George was basically an attempt to persuade the public that he wasn't gay without actually having to say he wasn't. I think Culture Club had crossover appeal from their second single or thereabouts.

[boyofbadgers.livejournal.com]

I realised mid-way through the one time I saw them live (it was Ben The Goths birthday) that they were genuinely good at distilling a decade or so of US alt-guitar bands down into an easily digestible glam-pop packages. Which could have been a good thing, only they by and large forgot the tunes, innit?

[braisedbywolves.livejournal.com]

They're very teenage, they're extremely dramatic, sarky front guy. They're sort of like a goth Undertones.

[dorsalstop.livejournal.com]

I bought a Placebo single once, "You don't care about us". But that was basically a cover version of New Order's "Age of Consent" (or one of the Hook-bass melody-type N.O. songs anyway).

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

Yes your second point is very much seconded. Re the first point, it never got to that stage with me but I do admit that just possibly, if every trace of Molko was surgically removed and there were better instruments, 'Nancy Boy' might be, if not good, then mildly tolerable.

[juror8.livejournal.com]

HOMOPHOBE

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

wasn't the horrid molk str8? we don't want him, anyway.

only good thing about his existence = d&c pwnage

[juror8.livejournal.com]

Molko was bi. The drummer was straight. The guitarist who looked like a Hitler Youth member was a gayist.

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

I am proud to say that I never focused on this revolting band for long enough to notice the drummer or guitarist.

Molko is the closest the human race has got to a Gollum of its own.

[boyofbadgers.livejournal.com]

I tht that was Tiny Graham

[alexmacpherson.livejournal.com]

They are vile in very similar ways.