Salem - What kind of music genre is this ?

got this yesterday

initial impression - they're atari teenage riot for 2010

White Moth is ATR for 2010

my thought from Youtube clips was "what if My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult had been into dub and hip-hop rather than horror movies"

then I saw that wretched live performance that made the rounds and I stopped caring

everyone's allowed to suck from time to time

not like that, they aren't

http://i53.tinypic.com/xaxo2a.jpg

looooooooooool

eh, i've seen comparable bullshit from john maus and ariel pink (though with a large dash of "i am crazy and/or intend to suck"). salem weren't ready to play, maybe won't ever be ready to play. i don't give a shit, doesn't affect my opinion of the recorded music. plus maybe their mom died that night. there could be factors to consider.

that'd be a great post-show interview question

I've seen neither John Maus nor Ariel Pink and own nothing by either of them; if I saw a half-assed, poorly constructed show like that from either, I'd have no incentive to even investigate them.

I mean seriously. If they really weren't ready to play, they could have just triggered prerecorded backing tracks at an actually audible volume and drowned dude's vocals in reverb; that would have been about a bazillion times better than watching someone wander around stage looking lost and imitating some anonymous emcee while the person behind the decks plays one note on what sounds like a Casio preset patch.

i love the girl smoking the cigarette and just staring blankly at her gear lke it's a tv

I blame the Fader Fort sound guy, any band would sound shitty with that mix. dude could have done exactly what HI DERE suggests (unless Salem brought their own mixologist, which would move it into the realm of intentional Andy Kaufman dadaist trolling).

I am not ruling the sound guy out as the culprit there but I have to assume that if he was that across-the-board incompetent, their terrible performance wouldn't have stood out in a day chock full of terrible performances.

look let me spell this out for you guys on how this whole thing went down

band with interesting sound & small amt of buzz, maybe w/also a manager, gets offered a spot on the Levi's Fader stage. let me point out to anybody who thinks It's All About The Music that this stage is sponsored by one of the last successful magazines standing & a brand with worldwide name recognition & permanent cache, i.e., people whose pockets are deep. is the picture becoming clear to you? this stage will not be a place where a band with an interesting sound & small amt of buzz, and maybe w/also a manager, will be playing for free. in fact, the offer this band's manager has gotten is probably more money than any member of this band, what to speak of their "manager" i.e. their homie from high school, has ever seen on one after-show shared-hotel-room coffee table at once after playing one stinking show. one show for all that fucking scratch! what do you think we are, stupid? sure, we don't exactly know how to pull this off live, and sure, every other club we've ever played in had such shitty PAs that we sounded muffled & drowned & fucked-up without even trying. but whatever, right? we are talking about thousands of dollars here.

anybody here who would not be willing throw the dice & maybe end up looking like something of an asshole for many thousands of dollars can cast the first stone, but I'm guessing that if I had a lie detector test and a stack of hundreds that climbed up past ankle level, most of us here would be "where do I bust out the shitty rap?" Salem sucked because they don't really know what they're doing yet & hadn't really thought about playing outside of their element. In about a year they'll sound live like they sound on record & the only person who'll remember the Fader Fort performance will be markers.

I don't disagree with any of that (especially the "GIMME MONY" bit, although I did turn down an incredibly minor named role in an Opera Boston performance because I wasn't sure I could handle it so sometimes sanity will prevail). That doesn't change the fact that they did go ahead and do it and sucked hardcore and now I don't really want to go any deeper into their sound when, on paper, this is a band that I should have been all over MONTHS ago.

In about a year they'll sound live like they sound on record & the only person who'll remember the Fader Fort performance will be markers.

this is assuming tommy lee jones zaps whiney with one of those men in black memory eraser space pens right?

(especially the "GIMME MONY" bit, although I did turn down an incredibly minor named role in an Opera Boston performance because I wasn't sure I could handle it so sometimes sanity will prevail).

to be fair you have never been a homeless prostitute, as far as i know

the only person who'll remember the Fader Fort performance will be markers

O_O

@ HI DERE: yeah I agree with you! I was enjoying their recorded shit a lot until I saw the Fader deal myself, and then the air just leaked quickly out of the tire. I do think the "EXPOSED!!!" line that's esp. prevalent in this thread is a little - like - rockist? like, you know who else can't really deliver the goods live: lots of people in 2010. "You suck live" is sort of does-not-apply imo, though bands who're gonna suck live might do well to think about whether a one-time payday for a maybe-this'll-work show is worth the potential tradeoff.. I mean, cards on table, I have heavy rockist leanings and think that anybody who can't deliver the goods live is an asshole who should get out of the way for those of us who are willing to put a little blood & sweat into our live show. but I'm too invested in that whole idea to really count as impartial.

@ ilxor well you gotta admit markers has probably got a tattoo of the Fader Fort screencap at this point

as an ardent defender of the recorded music of taylor swift, i haven't made any judgments of salem based on that performance, aside from lols & also saying that the performance itself is pretty much racist

to be fair you have never been a homeless prostitute, as far as i know

YOU DON'T KNOW MY LIFE

(although yeah, never been a homeless prostitute)

you know, after watching that FADER performance and then going back to the recorded version of "Tent", I have no idea what the "oh I don't hear that as them aping a black dialect, you people are making some shady assumptions" were smoking upthread

thing is these guys didn't even coming off like they were trying for that $$$ and failing, what's so funny about out it is how fucking zonked, indifferent and clueless they look

@ ilxor well you gotta admit markers has probably got a tattoo of the Fader Fort screencap at this point

Maybe -- iirc, you're assuming there's room after the full-torso Tapes N Tapes tat?

as an ardent defender of the recorded music of taylor swift, i haven't made any judgments of salem based on that performance

Except that ummmmmmmm, oh yeah!, Taylor Swift is AWESOME LIVE and if you're judging based on YouTube vids and not an actual live performance then you're not *really* judging properly imho.

well i'm judging from the bunch of times that i've seen her perform on tv and her singing is usually terrible

if you're judging based on YouTube vids TV spots and not an actual live performance then you're not *really* judging properly imho.

well i guess i'll just retire from this thread until both taylor & salem both swing around mid missouri

J0rdan u know that only the realest of the real show up in central MO

that's true!

funny enough t swift's social conservatism gets on my nerves more than this dude's occasional "she say i'm down wih huh" schtick.

is t swift a baby mama grizzly or something?

self-righteous twentysomething girls vs. hipster juggalos: which are worse?

poll

jk

J0rdan u know that only the realest of the real show up in central MO

Hah, let's just say I was gonna front but then looked up recent tour dates and now I have to stfu.

you know, after watching that FADER performance and then going back to the recorded version of "Tent", I have no idea what the "oh I don't hear that as them aping a black dialect, you people are making some shady assumptions" were smoking upthread

I guess it just didn't rankle...living in decaying, lower-class Michigan (ie somewhat close to where these guys are from), i've known a LOOOOOOOOT of drug-addled white dunderheads that act like they're trying to be black. Sometimes they don't even have to be into ICP.

I tell you what, if this album is in fact made by bottom-feeding crackhead juggalos, then I'm even more impressed than before...

that this stage is sponsored by one of the last successful magazines standing & a brand with worldwide name recognition & permanent cache

ceut way to say "a branding company that happens to have a magazine"

i don't think levi's owns FADER

Fader is a marketing company. You think they make their money selling bucketloads of magazines with Trash Talk on the cover?

i'm saying that you're misreading j0hn's sentence

ceut way to say "a branding company that happens to have a magazine"

Whiney you & I are on the same HxCx side of the fence I thought -- your lookout probably requires you to know which magazines are connected with which companies etc but i assure you that in my heart it's 1993 and I read MRR and there's only 1 company anyway so why would I parse the connections, this ain't Vanity Fair

wonder what they'll change their name to if one of the umpteen other bands named Salem sends a cease & desist

I vote for "Salem Alaikum"

Salem 66 & Cosloy plotting their revenge from the original Homestead office, now a McDonald's in Uniontown

I asked Gerard to verify and he said "Salem, I hardly know em"

Salem Jr.
Salem From Above 1979
Salem UK
Bottom Feeding Hipster Juggalo Krew

120 Days Of Salem

Hide The Salemy