Pre-"Iris" Goo Goo Dolls - C/D?

TMFTML
http://intonation.blogspot.com

Both Hold Me Up and A Boy Named Goo are great albums. In fact I like them a lot better than most 'Mats albums. So nyah.

"living in a hut" was an old favorite back when they were a PUNK band!

so basically (i haven't seen the VH1 BTM) the fat ugly guy stopped singing and the pretty guy started and they went from Pop to Punk.

Thus:

Pop = Pretty
Punk = Ugly

Turn on the football game right now and say BOOOOOOOOOOO!

Just watched that bullshit. Way to ruin the holiday friends!

I feel dumb reviving this just to try to get people to watch a mediocre band perform the last 2 minutes of a halftime show, but still, the part where Rzezniznikz yelled "Where are you?" to the audience in a pathetic beg for a crowd reaction was priceless.

just a little under classic for me.

"Jed" is exactly what a pop-punk album should be--fun, with catchy melodies, and crunchy power chords (and a bunch of out of tune wanna-be shredder guitar solos? lol). Poster boy Johnny Rzeznick only sings lead on two of the songs if my memory serves me correct--Robby Takac growls his way through most of the album. "Out of Sight" and "Up Yours" are classics. Sadly I haven't heard the s/t debut yet.

Hold Me Up is really an improvement of sorts on Jed because the songwriting improved from the prior album and the vocals are more equally shared by Takac/Rzeznick. Haven't heard SuperStarCarWash, but A Boy Named Goo was an enjoyable album as well.

No comment on the crap they do now.

i don't know what's weirder to me, ned expressing goo goo dolls affection or the fact that this band put out records on METAL BLADE

i don't know what's weirder to me, ned expressing goo goo dolls affection or the fact that this band put out records on METAL BLADE

yeah, that puzzled me too! I hate them.

i saw them live on a semi-date, as a sophomore in high school, trying to impress some girl by accompanying her there. i thought it was a decent show at the time, and hey, it led to me discovering the replacements, so nyah.

For butchering "A Million Miles Away" by the Plimsouls, they'd already earned my eternal ire well before the sonic offal that was "Iris" etc.

Comparing the Goo Goo Dolls to the Replacement is a fucking sacrilege.

How could they lead anyone to discovering the Replacements?

That puzzles me too!

I recently had the semi-involuntary misfortune of revisiting this band at the halftime show of the football game on Thanksgiving and could not have been more revolted by them. Don't buy or sell, it's crap.

I love Hold Me Up more than any Replacements album too. Shrug.

And I sorta like "Iris" as well.

Mackro and I know.

Saxby--were you familiar with them before they played the abortion pop songs they do now?

I have their first demo tape.

"Livin' In A Hut" is pretty okay. Is that record still in print?

$150 on Amazon. Guess not.

watching videos from Hold Me Up on youtube now - totally ruined by the whiny guy singing. Should have stuck with the original fat dude.

WE ARE THE NORMAL

i have hold me up, it's pretty good, i wasn't tryin' to diss, i just think of the replacements type stuff as anti-ned.

does anyone remember the junk monkeys? they were kind of in the same vein as early goo goo dolls.

Can we all agree on how good 'Aint that Unusual' is?

So I finally d/led SuperStarCarWash, but have owned Jed/Hold Me Up/Boy Named Goo/Dizzy Up the Girl for years. Really really like Jed - ABNG, but Dizzy was where they lost me. Just had a penchant for writing hooks,a nd I liked that for a while they switched between poppier material with Rzeznick singing and more rocking material with Takac singing until later on they both started to sing the same kinds of songs which made me wonder why they used two vocalists at all.

their cover of Gimme Shelter is kinda "meh" if you think about it

For butchering "A Million Miles Away" by the Plimsouls

Oh dear... did this really happen?

I will rep for "Broadway" and a few other singles. "Iris" has a good chance of becoming another "Don't Stop Believin'" retro pop-cheese hit.

The only quibble I have with this video and song is the recording quality, but I suppose that is to be expected.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptMxb438mRk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptMxb438mRk

Full-on Replacements adoration.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojMgn8UwUAQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80W5BgJtuIM

Five years ago I was memorably reprimanded by my boss because I said that Mercury Rev might've been the biggest band to come out of her hometown of Buffalo. "Um[rolls her eyes]...I think you're forgetting the Goo Goo Dolls.

This is possibly the last song they did that I really liked.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c66WZtvKmI4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c66WZtvKmI4

I loved the Goo Goo Dolls back in the day. Saw them a bunch of times in tiny places and interviewed them. They were unpretentious and used to totally joke around from the stage all the time. I had to review their show as part of I think CMJ coverage and it was at a new place at the time that became better known - I think Brownie's but I could be wrong. I was up front scribbling notes and Johnny was mocking himself and the band by commenting on what I was writing... "This band won't ever go anywhere..."

A couple years later and I was seeing them at the Cat's Cradle in Carrboro, NC, still before they broke big but they were certainly bigger than before - I guess it was around when "Boy Named Goo" came out. They were more serious but loved the fact that a buddy of mine who I went with wore an ancient shirt of theirs (he was a Buffalo native who saw them in the formative years).

I have a pretty soft spot in my heart for the band and Robby is a really genuine dude from what I was able to ascertain (and I hear he still is post-soccer mom domination). I was cool with their success given all the shitholes they played. None of that means I would ever willingly listen to any of that crap. But still, good going, guys.

that's funny.

(and I hear he still is post-soccer mom domination)

I remember girls in college were still wanting to go see them in concert as late as 2007. He probably pulls women 25-55 -- really a man for all ages.

love pretty much all of superstar car wash and a boy named goo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2mVYrjLpa9w

I brought them up on the Soul Asylum/Husker Du/Replacements poll thread a couple of months back... Saw them in 89 or 90 and they were great and hilarious - lots of fun. The 30 or so college students in the audience who went in having not heard them before all left as fans. I do wish I could stumble on a copy of Jed in the bargain bin to see if it's anything close to what I remember. The first couple of lines of "Up Yours" still pop into my head every now and then.

"so far away" bridges the replacements and sunny day real estate/foo fighters.

OTM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQgiLgxHtVQ

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yP4qdefD2To

i like this

"slide" was overplayed as shit at the time but a few years ago, after not hearing it for a long time i decided i really like it. also "black balloon" retrospectively became one of my favorite singles of the late 90s, altho that one didn't get as much radio play.

YES

IT'S LEGIT GOOD

if i were this dude

and my kid came up to me and was like, "dad sorry but i broke the tv"

i'd go

YEAH I'M GONNA LET IT SLIDE

maybe it's finally time to express my appreciation for gutterflower

maybe not tho

the whole record? i have never listened to a whole goo goo dolls record.

i must've heard iris a million times when it was on mtv tho. they played that a lot.

my first girlfriend had a huge crush on rzeznik. gutterflower came out during a time i've described in retrospect as a 10-month-long breakup. maybe that accounts for it

this is a really gorgeous song imo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3oF0iY0z_Bs

i get this song in my head whenever i read about the record label big machine

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1l3reTBiLeY

listened to dizzy up the girl today for the first time since... high school? this song is astounding

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2truqp9nf8U

Sorry for oversharing but today I was at a party and cried to fucking “Iris”.

This review from a user on rym actually resonates a lot with me:

So I guess the big question, not just for this song in particular but basically for my entire existence, is this: how can I keep pretending to be a distant, hardened cynic when it turns out that every single fibre of my being, even bone and sinew and organ, is set ablaze and torn asunder by shit like this? Fuck the 'I just want you to know who I am' lyric, I'm not even sure I know who I am anymore

“name” is really good

The way you overcome the feeling that you are a wimp or simpleton for liking "Iris" is that it is in a very unusual guitar tuning. Tada! Instant hipster snobbery.

the albums Jed, Hold Me Up, and Superstarcarwash are great. so is A Boy Named Goo, albeit it's more commercial.

then they broke up and some adult contemporary band reformed with their name

i think they annoyed me (more out of ubiquity than anything) at the time, but i've come around on Name and Iris. and as goofy as it is p sure i stanned Slide from the jump

hehe that's a beautiful find moka

a lot of their songs including the big hits had weird guitar tunings iirc

my favorite is "black balloon" but i also think "slide" and "name" are classics as well. "iris" too but less so than the others for me, tho i understand + support others getting blubbery for it

these guys made solid albums up to and including gutterflower

after that though, yikes

of course i'm all over this thread lol

I remember getting a promo cassette of Jed at my college paper and listening to it mostly because they were from Buffalo (I grew up outside Rochester). I liked that they were obviously indebted to the Replacements but were at that point more scrappy and punky than the Mats had grown up to be. Never occurred to me they'd be anything more than a bar band from Buffalo, much less end up having the big hits Westerberg never managed.

I've forever been a big fan of "Slide," because I have a soft spot for songs that use "marriage" or "wedding" in the lyrics despite never having been or even really wanting to get married.

Band gets less and less recognizable to me

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESIEG6gFcsQ

Like you're not Mel Torme Johnny

"Fallin' Down" is very good and should be mentioned here at least once. So yeah, there it is. The guy loved Westerberg.

The first CDs I ever owned were Nirvana's MTV Unplugged and A Boy Named Goo. Loved both equally back then (I would've been 11 or so) but, if pushed to it, would've held on to the Goo.

And while I appreciate Kurt Cobain more nowadays (though my favorite part of the Unplugged is and always was, by far, the Meat Puppets tribute section), I do still like me the Goo. I love the vague but affecting sadness of the Boy Named / Dizzy Up the Girl / Gutterflower "we are morphing" trilogy. And I love Robby Takac. His guilelessness is so sweet. Johnny got more and more superstar, Robby kept on writing in exactly the same goofy and openhearted way he always did. I was really disappointed by Let Love In and kept trying to fool myself into believing that they hadn't given up the ghost... but the ratio of Johnny to Robby numbers became too much even for me... still, I saw them live on the Something for the Rest of Us tour and was surprised and happy to see how much ass they kicked live. Power trio arrangements. Johnny went at the songs like a punk. Robby was 100% joy. The new songs sounded really good in that context too, and inevitably less so on record.

Gutterflower is my favorite of the three!

Revived this thread because last night I was looking up at the sky and think-singing to myself "Why can't the moon stay full forever?!"

I love that there's other ILXers who love this group (at their best) as unabashedly as I do. I think they're the kind whose sincerity encourages more of the same.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yWBuvaMvdt4

Dizzy UP is where I got off the train. adult contemp Goo doesn't do it for me.

really love everything up to ABNG though and half of Dizzy is ok

Ha! Been decades since I last saw the Naked vid!

And that's exactly what they were like onstage in 2010 too. They're good cats.

omg they were naked onstage?

The greater part of Johnny's torso was indeed.