Silkworm: C/D?

It really is.

the "AIN'T YOU EVER BEEN ALONE IN YOUR LIFE?" part of the chorus to "Treat the New Guy Right" might be my favorite moment in any rock song ever

So hard to pick just one moment though. Really loving the "Ooh La La" cover, so good. Why the hell weren't these guys ever huge?

yepppp

they were huge. for me.

cutty otm

Why the hell weren't these guys ever huge?

I think part of it is that, for the press, they weren't a band that presented any kind of really appealing built-in "story angles"...you know, like for instance Animal Collective or Joanna Newsom or Bonnie Prince Billy or Pavement etc etc

like three/four workmanlike midwest regular dudes playing rock that split the difference between 90s indie and 70s classic rock but not in a flashy way

but isn't that basically GBV's story, too? And they had more success than Silkworm ... I guess GBV had Pollard's bajillions of songs + hard drinking live show as a story hook.

Also Pollard's former life as a school-teacher was a pretty big hook too, especially when you read 90s interviews.

gbv was catchy. i love silkworm's pretty lackadaisical approach to writing choruses.

yeah also GBV were such a drunk circus live

Silkworm was a huge band for me too. I was more of a Libertine/Firewater fan than Lifestyle, but "Treat the New Guy Right" is definitely one of their best songs ever.

also a big fan

I finally got around to seeing Bottomless Pit live about 4-5 months ago and it was great. I can't get into the records as much as Silkworm but it was just amazing to see Midgett and Cohen, they're an intense live band.

the "AIN'T YOU EVER BEEN ALONE IN YOUR LIFE?" part of the chorus to "Treat the New Guy Right" might be my favorite moment in any rock song ever

dude we are fucking soulmates & I wish we could see this song played live at the Triple Rock or Minneap venue of your choice so that we could @ 4 beers deep yell this line in unison

that would be awesome

damn i'm gettin' all melancholy now, i miss this band!

I've probably said this before but I think my entire guitar soloing "style" (such as it is) is based on trying to sound like Andy Cohen (and failing).

fucking love the solo in That's Entertainment

All this love makes me so happy!

I've always loved the solo in "Miracle Mile." It blew my mind that it was this despondent acoustic-guitar-and-vocals tune and then two minutes in you hear this CRACKLE CRACKLE as dude plugs in the electric guitar and then it's just like a minute of BRRREEAAAAAOOOWWW blaring electric guitar solo before cutting back out and he finishes the sad song.

rocking "empty elevator shaft" right now, a favorite & the one I would cover if I could find that passing chord in the second half of the verse

all right I'm in full Silkworm fanboy bloom now...TANGLED IN YR WEB, TANGLED IN YR WEB

also:

possibly fewer percentage of female fans that even Rush

silkworm is serious dude rock.

lol, that is true of so much early/midnineties midwestern indie! shows at the empty bottle ca. '95...all dudes

except my gf obv

so true--though my empty bottle days were more ca. 2000.

j0hn didn't u live in iowa too? did you know gabe's in ia city?

gabes was 2.5 hours from us, but we went there a little...most notably I drove in to see High on Fire circa winter 2000. like forty people there I'd guess. fucking epic.

gabes! i went there a few times as a grad student.

Are you guys into the Bottomless Pit stuff? I love their LP but I cannot get enough of their Congress EP. I feel like the songs are compositionally more fleshed out than the Silkworm material. Really its all wonderful!

except my gf obv

haha and my wife. and my friends' wives. I know a lot of female Silkworm fans actually!

love "Miracle Mile." one of those songs where I had the words memorized before I had ever encountered the New York places named so whenever I'm over on Avenue A half the time that shit pops in my head. "he was fucked in his lung, got shot on Avenue A sucking on some slut's tongue"

I think J0hn was referring more to the mid-nineties Empty Bottle crowd than just Silkworm fans. I can't speak for that myself, I was young and more of a Fireside Bowl kid at the time.

haha and my wife. and my friends' wives. I know a lot of female Silkworm fans actually!

*waves* Hey there!

consistently surprised how most people prefer later silkworm to the joel phelps era. i don't get it.

Both eras were great.

Hey remember when Andy Cohen was a member of Bush?

Man every single time I play Lifestyle I'm...

Yes. Their best record. It was irritating that it didn't make any best-of-decade lists because surely it's one of the best guitar rock albums of the last 10 years.

Right now I'm really into their cover of Let's Kill Saturday Night.

aww damn i missed a skwm lovefest last night i see

my contrib: tracks 1-6 of developer is my favorite sequence of music ever.

i guess i have to reevaluate their later work. really liked bottomless pit, though.

yeah! bottomless pit is great. i hope they put out some more stuff.

Fuck, now I'm stuck at work and badly want to dig out their recs and play'em

Again, I really loved the Congress EP. Anybody else feel like Bottomless Pit have melodically for fleshed out songs than Silkworm? I love both.

I need to check out Bottomless Pit, just haven't gotten around to it yet.

agreed that bottomless pit continues to improve, i like both but yeah "Red Pen" off congress is so amazing..

listened to Blueblood, Lifestyle, and Italian Platinum last night.

goddamn what a band.

michael was such a great drummer ;_;

i think his death is the saddest rock death ever to me. so unfair.

also...cohen is such a weird/awesome lyricist:

There are kike jokes and then the street mimes
In times like these no one seems to mind
But just you wait ‘til the pendulum swings
Toward the inevitable decline

Crossed-eye talk and a halting walk
Blind Willie is down the block
He will never see again

Right after the thread action last night I was going to the gym and I put every Silkworm album I own on my ipod to listen to on shuffle, it was great.

THE GREAT SILKWORM LOVEFEST OF 2010

thank you bookmark function

xp otm--i think recognizing how incredible cohen's lyrics are was a major turning point for me and silkworm

rocking "empty elevator shaft" right now, a favorite & the one I would cover if I could find that passing chord in the second half of the verse

― Lee Dorrian Gray (J0hn D.), Thursday, March 4, 2010 12:09 AM (15 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

j0hn...

i was thinking of this last night and if i may humbly suggest...maybe you could try "Roots" off lifestyle...i could kinda hear that in your steez.

so many killer choruses too

"Was it YOU-OOOOO-OOOoooOOooOOoO-OOOO? You were WOOOOORLD PROOF!"

you guys ever see the video of them doing LR72 with no drummer after dahlquist was killed? chilling, really sad.