Placebo, Classic or Dud?

Could work...

Sorry 'bout that. Yeah it took a while to sink in but I now realise my erroneous vitriol was slightly garbled. I mean really, how silly do I look, getting all excited like that and getting Brian Malkovich's name wrong!

I'm most dreadfully embarrassed...

Perhaps I should keep it simple: Placebo and Brian Molotov are for shit.

But couple of years ago I was queuing to get into a felafel restaurant in Paris for a Sunday lunchtime snack when I realised the guy standing in front, patiently waiting in line, was Molko. The As du Felafel is a tiny place, everyone crammed into tight spaces. Had a table for 2 had freed up before a table for 4 we'd have ended up sharing a table with Molko and (I assume) his girlfriend. As it was they ended up sharing with a very ordinary looking middle-aged couple in their late fifties. In no time at all they were speaking away animatedly, the couple telling him that their son also played a band, apparently on the local pub circuit in East Anglia. I thought Molko handled himself beautifully, utterly friendly, showed a genuine interest in what the couple had to say, and at no time tried to imply that his band was successful on a different level from their son's. (Although the fact that his companion was about 3 inches taller than him and looked like a supermodel might have offered a clue).

i'd heard something-or-other of theirs years ago and hadn't cared for it. something about the way Molko came off in interviews annoyed me at the time, too, so i kinda didn't care. kinda blew them off and thought no more of it.

then, a couple of years ago, a friend of mine and i exchanged mix CDs. we hadn't previously been friends, but these CDs are actually what did it. on her CD was a bunch of Placebo, amongst other things (including the utterly gorgeous Trembling Blue Stars "Little Gunshots" and Perfect Pop Moment "Don't Falter" by Mint Royale featuring Lauren Laverne). and while goddamnifhisvoicewasn'tawfullynasalandannoying, i couldn't help being carried away by the utter bombastic Crush!Angst!Giddiness of "Special K." some of the other songs of theirs were alright, but that's what made them stick in my mind.

what made me actually go buy some, however, was another friend's inclusion of "English Summer Rain" on a mix CD she put together not long ago (well, obviously). i ended up looping that over and over for quite some time. that bass slide. exquisitely tasty. mmmm.

so eventually, i ended up with the special edition of Sleeping With Ghosts, mostly cos i wanted to hear "Bigmouth Strikes Again" (which is a huge disappointment, BTW. :P). there's plenty to irritate on the disc itself, and plenty to appreciate in that sort of big, dumb angsty way. the thing with them is that it all sounds so good, even when the lyrics aren't particularly so. yes, bits are derivative, but they do it so well and take such obvious pleasure in it, and are (more to the point) v. good at transmuting that pleasure into something audible.

anyrate, surprise favourites on the disc ended up being their covers of "Running Up That Hill" and "The Ballad of Melody Nelson." they're really, really flipping good.
so, i do want more. am not a rabid fan and probably never will be, and i don't know that i'd call it a complete conversion, although i've changed my mind. now the interviews mostly amuse. then again, most things do these days, because i find it v. hard to take almost anything seriously. XD
(as to the cover of "I Feel You," it actually hurts me quite a lot. that's the one thing i skip over on that disc with regularity after having sat through it once. *shudders* urrrrgh.)

The person whose fandom of them surprises me the least right now is Anthony, in that I think there's a very good case he might be able to make linking Placebo, Interpol and the Killers, though I don't want to be said to be reading his mind. ;-)

Extremely, having seen them twice. The Wiltern show in late 2003 was monstrously good, and based on the clip on the Once More With Feeling DVD I need to get that Soulmates Never Die DVD -- that's a fuck of a HUGE crowd they're performing in front of!

Hehe, Sundar. :-) But it's good to see that tastes can change, in either direction! Sometimes I am guilty of never changing them, which isn't cool of me if I've not given something new a chance. But other times they mutate as they do. Have you heard the single from last year, "Twenty Years"? *Not* what I expected from a greatest hits collection at all!

Thank ya, Lovebug. I'd be interested to hear your thoughts. I was tickled and pleased to see Chuck E. likes 'em, it actually doesn't surprise me per se but I wouldn't have thought to consider him a fan until he said so.

I just had to toss SWG from my collection cuz Bonecrusher pushed it out of the 20 Albums From 2003 That I'm Keeping In Their Entirety but here's the 10 tracks I couldn't do without from the 22-track double CD:

English Summer Rain
This Picture
Sleeping With Ghosts
The Bitter End
Special Needs
Second Sight
Protect Me From What I Want
Running Up That Hill
Johnny & Mary
20th Century Boy

I wholeheartedly recommend this tracklisting to any curious person out there with soulseek.

I can see this, partially because Placebo are so (intentionally) produced as to be incredibly precise when they want to be. "The Bitter End" sounds like a song assembled for maximum impact -- reminds me in a way of what Tim Finney once noted for Garbage at its most mechanistic. But live the band, how you say, brings it as a band, pretty strongly.

Yeah, that's a sharp summary. I'd also suggest their covers of "Daddy Cool" and "Jackie" (the latter is a very good example of how they can rework a song's arrangement, which I think they did spectacularly for "Running Up That Hill")

My favorite tracks:

Brick Shithouse
You Don't Care About Us
Every You, Every Me
Without You, I'm Nothing
Pure Morning
Come Home
Nancy Boy
The Bitter End
Bulletproof Cupid

Wow! That's a comparison and a half -- I'd never've thought of it but you are quite OTM.

Molko in particular is a thorough and admittedly college rock geek as filtered via Europe in the late eighties/early nineties. The Pixies worship in particular makes PERFECT sense.

Placebo >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Interpol

My good friend. :-)

This is the song in the essay that I talk about which introduced me to the band, since the debut was the first thing I heard. It was such a frenetic rushed mess, like the drums were trying to outrace the rest of the band and then the rest of the band followed at higher speed -- but again, somehow still *very* precise.

I just looked over the hits comp tracklisting and it overlaps with the picks here enough I'll probably get it. I think we may have the debut at the radio station so I'll still get to hear "Come Home."

(Wait, do you live in/near NYC? I could bring ya one this weekend.)

My favorite Placebo track is "Slacker Bitch" (or maybe "Slackerbitch"), a b-side I've never found on CD.

I've got "Slackerbitch"! A lot of the B-sides deserve some praise, and I'm currently pondering what would go on a CDR of just them. I really need to get the singles I'm missing...

And, uh, here's an actual VIDEO video...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y5cZvbOisk4

Narrated by Bret Easton Ellis! GREAT.

mmm pink vinyl best of

http://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/1393/3949/products/boxset_01_1024x1024.jpg

http://www.placeboworld.co.uk/#aplaceforustodream

not so sure about the sleeve mind

I still like the first two albums!

A second best-of, hm. Well it includes tracks from Meds at least where the other didn't by default.

Listening to Without You I'm Nothing for the first time in ages.

Forgot what a great album this is.

References to weed, coke and boobs = absolute gold to my 8th grade friends

First new Placebo music in five years just came out:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KudGpbfWYrI

There is a promise of more new music on the way as well...

Huh. Will have to give a listen later.

I can't help but liking this album again - the last one I liked was Sleeping With Ghosts but then I kinda lost interest for a while

... I don't know what the point is? Their new album is all recreated songs like this one

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OcL7MPfkr84

how many new songs did you expect to be on the 30th-anniversary reworking of the master tapes of their debut album with new parts