am i really the only person who doesn't care about reunions/reunitings/new music by old bands, like, at all? is there something wrong with me?

do people still go see belle and sebastian in 2024? i mean do they sell out big places. i know they tour. i have no idea about them or their touring history or when they even last put an album out. but i know they played dates here recently.

i love Souvlaki to death. i have always listened to the u.s. version with the extra? different? tracks on it. since whenever that came out. i do like the first album a lot. never listened to the third. listened to some of the reunion stuff on Youtube but never went back to it. i can totally believe that they are awesome live at this late date.

Belle & Sebastian appeared on the Simpsons this season.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9ZU0fGoQ00

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmhrky7ZJTA

There is something to the fact that the same show has had Michael Jackson and Belle and Sebastian appear on it.

homer simpson, smiling politely.

it won't happen, but a Spacemen 3 reunion would be amazing.

Agree but im also hopeful for sonic boom’s second career as sunglasses model

do people still go see belle and sebastian in 2024? i mean do they sell out big places. i know they tour. i have no idea about them or their touring history or when they even last put an album out. but i know they played dates here recently.

Belle and Sebastian have gone through some lineup changes over the years, but they've never broken up AFAIK. That said, while they've continued to put out albums every few years, I feel like nobody except the die-hards really cares much about anything they've released in the past decade. Based on recent setlists, they haven't *entirely* surrendered to becoming a nostalgia act, but they only play two songs from their most recent album, and the majority of the set is made up of tunes from 1996-2006.

(I thought about seeing them in Kalamazoo a few weeks ago with friends who live there, and the main reason I didn't is that the show was on a Monday.)

do people still go see belle and sebastian in 2024? i mean do they sell out big places. i know they tour. i have no idea about them or their touring history or when they even last put an album out. but i know they played dates here recently.

― scott seward

They're in the "never stopped" category. I go see them every time they come through town (and listen to each new album a few times), and probably will continue to do so until they stop, out of habit and loyalty and not having to make the effort to get into some upstart synth duo. But it's diminishing returns for sure.

I mean, the Pixies also were that rare band that influenced an entire movement and then broke up before they could properly capitalize on it and subsequently became way more famous in death than in practice. Like they broke up without ever having a Gold record or a charting single and came back as a band who had songs in like Fight Club and Gilmore Girls and the OC.

the one time I saw Pixies (2007) it was the first time they ever toured Australia and the vibe was actually pretty incredible - lots of pent-up Gen X love offered up from the crowd, the band seemed slightly taken aback by the response

(that show also had an absolutely fantastic opening salvo - In Heaven / Wave of Mutilation (UK Surf) / Bone Machine - just masterfully withholding the money shot until the third song but really bringing it when it was time to bring it)

after that I never felt the need to see them again - but I would also never begrudge their need to pay the mortgage and people seem pretty happy to keep showing up

another consideration - sometimes it is only a particular collection of people that can make a particular sound - and there is something joyous about watching them do it & celebrating it, even if they are doing it at a diminished level - I am very glad to have seen a version of Pixies with Kim Deal in it - and I think this somewhat explains the excitement around the recent Jane's Addiction shows, it is just how much better it sounds when Eric Avery is back in the band, and the versions that had a ringer were always a bit compromised

I regret not shelling out for VH with DLR, but generally i don't care

i never actually saw pixies in their heyday despite being a big fan but i do remember people seeing them and not being impressed? telling me they were stiff or just going through the motions. but i don't have a great memory and this is the very definition of anecdotal.

I saw them in Boston after Doolittle came out and they rocked out, much more exciting than the first reunion in 2004.

maybe i just heard from people back then who saw bum nights. everyone has bum nights.

i do really wish i had seen galaxie 500. they totally played in philly when i lived there but i was just becoming a fan in 1989 and there was a small window to see them. would i see them now....??? okay i think i would. they are all still upright. i saw D&N at a summer bbq last year and they looked fab.

emsworth was that the Sydney show? if so I was there too! I remember being amazed that Kim could smile so brightly and continuously for so long. And although they absolutely nailed everything - every note, every scream, every solo, every fill - it was somehow bizarre how exact the reproductions were. In a way very Pixies-ish.

I saw galaxie 500 open for Cocteau Twins, two bands that will absolutely never reunite. I’d certainly see either of they did. I can’t see either doing it for the money.

I saw the Pixies on one of the more recent tours, just pre-COVID, and really enjoyed it. Very conscious of it not being THE Pixies, but that's a good catalog and they played a ton of songs.

Not sure if the My Chemical Romance reunion is still active, but I would see them for sure.

bands like bloc party or franz ferdinand probably could be doing successful reunion tours around now

it’s almost time for the FFS ten year reunion!

emsworth was that the Sydney show? if so I was there too! I remember being amazed that Kim could smile so brightly and continuously for so long.

we may have all had the same conversation before but I saw them the night after the Luna Park show and STILL regret leaving the storming homo-packed party at the Pet Shop Boys stage to catch all of the low-energy Pixies set to a no-energy hillful of 34-year-old parents waiting to get back to the babysitters

Kim was BEAMING throughout though, a joy just to watch her, and it underscored how proper it was for her to tag out of the reunion once it wasn’t making her happy anymore.

I saw B&S just… six weeks ago? I acknowledged to myself that Stuart/Stevie might be the strongest co-frontmen in the legacy act circuit. Great show!

saw first big star reunion tour in nyc at tramps and arthur lee/love post prison gig (actually 2nd) at the knitting factory in la and both felt special since both guys had been away/ran away from their legacy and sure it was partial cash in but a lot of very good vibes from the audience seemed to really inspire great performances. did not go to any further gigs from those reunions because i knew it couldn't be topped.

Not sure if the My Chemical Romance reunion is still active, but I would see them for sure

MCR is doing a full front to back Black Parade set at When We Were Young '24, so they're probably carrying on.

i guess reed/cale songs for drella fits here too, saw that at st. ann's and it was great. thinking bout it, 60s guys revered by gen x who came back in the 90s in a big event style was my thing, anything outside of that hasn't had any appeal to me

emsworth was that the Sydney show?

yeah! definitely a lot of that good energy was coming from Kim. re exact reproductions, I guess that is kind of what I was expecting? like those songs are pretty precisely constructed, with not a lot of room for variation night-to-night I wouldn't have thought. but I am not a man who has ever knowingly heard a Pixies live recording! so no idea how this might or might not have differed from their OG era.

we may have all had the same conversation before
story of my goddamn life

and ATCQ. pretty much the standard for how to reunite and still be really damn good.

― A So-Called Pulitzer price winner (President Keyes), 2. juni 2024 17:44

should perhaps take this to the controversial opinions thread or a "well-intentioned and well-executed music that you couldn't care less abt" thread but... yeah, I've no idea why I would ever put on their reunion album

Weirdly, the only MBV album I really care about is the reunion album. I always appreciated the first two, but they never fully resonated with me.

I finally listened to the mbv reunion album a few days ago. It sounded a lot like Loveless. That's good, I guess.

lol, just now opening this thread to say that the MBV reunion was the only one I could think of that I can remember caring about at all. And Cocteau Twins is the only theoretical reunion I can imagine caring about. More power to the folks who return to rockin' in the free world, though.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/20/No_Cities_to_Love_cover.jpg

I like reunions because I like seeing people play music I like. isn't much else to it tbh

that said have seen more than a few that should probably not have bothered but that's well outweighed by the many gigs where I had a great time

probably a bit less interested in new music by reunited bands but I will usually give them a listen at least once just in case. sometimes it's a nice surprise

basically this thread is just people saying over and over that reunions are lame except for the ones I care about

I think the first ever reunion show as such I saw was the Damned in 1991, when the Captain came back after a couple of years away following the dissolution of the mersh-era incarnation and Paul Gray was part of the lineup again, essentially recreating the Black Album/Strawberries lineup. So it was already of-an-age in a certain way, but I am truly amused at the fact that after everything and anything with them it's once again THAT lineup that's now touring after three decades.

Gang of Four OG lineup (including Dave Allen and Hugo!) in the early 2000s was a great show. I still beam at remembering Jon bashing a microwave with a baseball bat in time to the beats of "He'd Send in the Army".

basically this thread is just people saying over and over that reunions are lame except for the ones I care about

Why that is because everyone else is a sad person wallowing in their middle-aged crisis whereas I, a distinguished critic, am analytical and appreciative about the qualities of musical art over time by its practitioners. (Attempts to reframe this position from anyone else's point of view is mere copycat behavior by the desperate.)

we saw Go4 last year and he was still doing that lol

(they were great fwiw)

lol, ned.

does anyone know of a disastrous attempt to get a reunion going with a band and having it fall apart? i have to imagine drugs might be a factor. would probably make a good movie.

Stone Roses

probably cases of individual artists in bad shape dragged out on tour and having it end badly. i still have flashbacks to the nightmare time someone brought little howlin' wolf to play at my store. oof...that was rough. afraid to even type his name. he might come back and get me...though he actually liked me which was also kinda scary.

oh wait nevermind he died last year. can't believe that anything could kill him!

https://chicago.suntimes.com/obituaries/2023/10/13/23911261/james-pobiega-little-howlin-wolf-saxophone-player-busker-michigan-avenue-bridge-chicago-river-cruise

The least likely reunion I ever thought I'd see was one of the Cream shows at MSG in 2005. It was good! It helped that I didn't pay for the then-insanely-priced ticket, which was $300-plus iirc — a friend had a spare and gave it to me. It would probably be $2,500 now or something. I mean, if it were still possible to have a Cream reunion.

Having seen Clapton a few times before, it was a bit revelatory. He didn't seem to be phoning it in at all, I think the tensions within the band pushed all of them to work at it, nobody wanted to be shown up. It was pretty cool to hear those songs by the OG guys, even if Bruce's never-great vocals had deteriorated significantly.

FWIW, I think I've formally written about this kind of thing twice specifically -- once for the OC Weekly back in 2007, centered around a particular tour but more about the wider subject, and I tried not to let myself off the hook in the end:

https://www.ocweekly.com/music-all-of-this-and-nothing-6365954/

More recently for my Patreon, a little more indirectly but even so:

https://www.patreon.com/posts/when-youre-of-92658315

does anyone know of a disastrous attempt to get a reunion going with a band and having it fall apart?

Bauhaus?

does anyone know of a disastrous attempt to get a reunion going with a band and having it fall apart? i have to imagine drugs might be a factor. would probably make a good movie.

― scott seward, Tuesday, June 4, 2024 7:45 AM

this post made me say out loud, "uggghh, remember BANDS REUNITED on vh1?"

i don't really remember it but now i want to see it.