Dave Matthews Band : Name Your Reasons Why They Are So Bad & Hated.

Oh well. *sigh*

- "I Shall Be Free No. 10", B. Dylan

Secondly, I think the lyrics are stirring and evocative; they make me feel the emotion that the song is trying to convey. I also think that Dave Matthews is a very honest songwriter - he really seems to feel what he is writing. As to the lyrics being misogynistic, I don't see any evidence.

RE: the fans - I am not an attorney nor am I an accountant; I am not in college presently, and I have never been inside a frat house (personal choice). I also bathe daily, brush my hair, and find patchouli nauseating. I have never been nor will I ever be a hippie.

Enough said on my part.

... all of them mediocre at best.

Why do people hate him? EZ: He sucks.

Who do so many peole like him: EZ2: He sucks.

I swear to the deity of your choice, I was *NOT* quoting "the Simpsons"! I haven't even watched "the Simpsons" since about 1996. Get over it!

DMB and Mayer are rilly nothing alike aside from the "guy with guitar" thing and even that's pushing it given DMB's lush orchestration and Mayer's uh... lack of that.

DMB's earlier stuff rilly was quite unique sounding but ultimately it frustrated me coz every single was "unique" the same way and Crash was as pleasant a song to idle a summer away to as any Belle and Sebastian and most importantly I would FAR prefer DMB to Wilco, GY!BE, Sigur Ros, or any other "dreamy" semi-popular hip alterna-dross out there.

Not that I listen to any really, but.. I mean haven't we gotten over hating a band for its audience? Tho i suspect that the real root of the hate is that fratboy whatever types listen to DMB and feel "deep" and the gulf between the claim of "deep" and the not really that deep followthru or between "musically inventive" and the okay-not-really-that-inventive followthru is what puts foax off -- "Oh my god! People are looking for MUSICAL INNOVATION and getting THIS instead!" when in fact people are looking for something like DMB and getting precisely that.

I mean, fratboys put on Roxy to feel "sexy" -- does that make Roxy Music bad?

Nope. DMB still eats, though. Rather than saying they're better than Godspeed/Sigur etc., I'd prefer to equate them. ;-)

To that freaking hippie, can you not see Dave Mathews Band suck my farty wind?!?! How can you not feel the vibe!!?!

The Rhino Frat Rock box set is much better than any DMB I've ever heard.

What I liked about the song: Well, first of all, these guys are a real band - ie., they can play their instruments, they get a groove going, they are tasteful. The song had a nice loose-limbed, live feeling despite being a studio recording. Unlike a lot of the studio confections on the rock charts, it doesn't have that grisly Dr. Frankenstein after-taste of being patched together in Pro Tools and then zapped into life. (Not to say that there isn't a place for studio confectionery, but it's refreshing to hear alternatives to it.) No doubt these guys can also play their songs well in a live setting, which is a definite plus if you like live music (which I do).

What I didn't like: I mentioned being tasteful as a good thing in the previous paragraph, and to a certain extent it is, but it can also be a bad thing, I think, when it shows that the band is reluctant to take chances. My favorite type of music to see in a live setting is jazz, and there are some similarities between this music and certain types of jazz: the celebration of musicianship, the emphasis on rhythm, soloing over a repeated chord progression. However, none of the solos I heard (and again this is only based on one song, so take this with a grain of salt) really excited me. The soloists seemed reluctant to stretch out and take center stage, so to speak. As a result, the music ended up seeming kind of faceless. You don't hear the individual personalities of the musicians coming through. Perhaps this is an intentional decision to give the group jam priority over the individual expression, but if you're not going to have interesting solos, what exactly is the purpose of repeating a fairly uninteresting chord progression so many times? I think the answer is probably is that this is a form of dance music - because this is a structure that you often find in dance music. The purpose of the long repetitive passages is to give people the opportunity to dance. Which is fine, I guess, if you like to dance, but it can get a bit dull when listening just for the sake of listening. Anyway, that's my take on the music. As for the singing, well, I must admit that Dave Matthew's singing style is a bit mannered for my taste. He is a member of the Eddie Vedder school of masculine emoting through tasteful bellows and groans, except that he occasionally throws in a yodel, which is just odd. The lyrics also do little for me. The central conceit of this song is that he is asking a bartender for the drink of the wine that brought Jesus back to life. There's one nagging flaw with this conceit: namely that nowhere in the legend of Jesus is anything mentioned about any drinks of wine bringing him back to life. So the symbolism doesn't really go anywhere.

Because the first rules and the others do not. Or rather, the first puts me to gentle sleep with a smile on my face, the second puts me to sleep, period, and the third makes me think, "Can't I just listen to some In the Nursery instead?"

Wrong. LISTEN TO MAYER'S VOCALS!!!!! It has nothing to do with the guitar.

-- katie41414442222

Clearly not someone who regularly reads ILM.

Divide and conquer...

Come to think of it, everything else about them kind of fits that sound as well.

AGH! Ohmigod this is so so true. I'm appalled that these things are so common. I had a very hard time finding an acoustic guitar that had an electric pick-up that *wasn't* one of these shitty-sounding models with the plastic body and the little sliders on top. The sound is indeed godawful - really thin and useless. I don't understand why people don't stick with decent wood acoustics and just use good contact mics.