yep, saw that Slowdive/Cranes double header at the Grand in London, an inspired pairing.
― my father will guide me up the stairs to bed (anagram), Thursday, 30 August 2012 17:09 (eleven years ago) link
Well, also reading stuff into the fact that he doesn't play Slowdive material and refuses requests, etc.
Also, "market forces" vs "what band members really want to do" is not always an unloaded choice.
But, y'know, who am I to stand in the way of a bunch of people reliving their youth.
― my god it's full of straw (White Chocolate Cheesecake), Thursday, 30 August 2012 17:34 (eleven years ago) link
It's not about reliving one's youth, it's about hearing the music live again! Because it's good!
― my father will guide me up the stairs to bed (anagram), Thursday, 30 August 2012 18:08 (eleven years ago) link
I mean, the Velvets really sucked when I saw them in '93, but I've never once wished they hadn't done it or I hadn't seen them.
― my father will guide me up the stairs to bed (anagram), Thursday, 30 August 2012 18:11 (eleven years ago) link
I was born in 1988, I'm reliving nothing.
― formerly EDB (ed.b), Thursday, 30 August 2012 18:11 (eleven years ago) link
hahahaha great revive
― 2x hockey sticks (blank), Thursday, 30 August 2012 19:32 (eleven years ago) link
"please don't"
Slowdive is head and shoulders above almost all other shoegazer bands, though maybe just a head above medicine, and a head and half a shoulder above MBV.
― Poliopolice, Thursday, 30 August 2012 19:48 (eleven years ago) link
With that, this thread revive is officially not Ned friendly.
― Evan, Thursday, 30 August 2012 20:04 (eleven years ago) link
well, i'd say that MBV is a good torso and genitals above the next best shoegaze band.
― Poliopolice, Thursday, 30 August 2012 20:06 (eleven years ago) link
Then Ride be just below the sack?
― Evan, Thursday, 30 August 2012 20:09 (eleven years ago) link
OK, you and sense just clearly parted company a long time ago.
x-post
― my god it's full of straw (White Chocolate Cheesecake), Thursday, 30 August 2012 20:09 (eleven years ago) link
I went through a huge shoegaze phase, and discovered that most of these jokers are terrible-- Ride included.
― Poliopolice, Thursday, 30 August 2012 20:34 (eleven years ago) link
You know who I'm gonna ask first, when it come to an opinion on what the best shoegaze bands are?
Someone who ~doesn't like shoegaze~
Yup, that'll work.
― my god it's full of straw (White Chocolate Cheesecake), Thursday, 30 August 2012 20:37 (eleven years ago) link
was anyone here saying they were entitled to a slowdive reunion, or any other reunion? has anyone actually ever felt entitled to that kind of thing? is there a possible scenario where slowdive are in any way being forced to do this, or is it more likely that they want some $$? and is anyone here being forced to go watch them cash in on nostalgia for a few shows, other than professional music critics who are tasked to attend by their bosses?
just let them reunite and suck! jeezus
― Thanks WEBSITE!! (Z S), Thursday, 30 August 2012 20:42 (eleven years ago) link
for 2 years i sat there and pretended shit like pale saints, ride, swervedriver, and chapterhouse wasn't total crap, but eventually i saw the light. xp
― Poliopolice, Thursday, 30 August 2012 20:43 (eleven years ago) link
Hey, stop FORCING Slowdive to reunite, already!
― formerly EDB (ed.b), Thursday, 30 August 2012 20:48 (eleven years ago) link
i work hard, i pay my taxes, i love my family ... i deserve a slowdive reunion!
― tylerw, Thursday, 30 August 2012 20:49 (eleven years ago) link
http://i46.tinypic.com/1zo9kdi.jpg
"alright, listen here Neil Halstead. you're going to play Catch the Breeze, you're going to play more transcendentally than you've ever played, and you're going to like it, you hear me??"
― Thanks WEBSITE!! (Z S), Thursday, 30 August 2012 20:54 (eleven years ago) link
^would see that show
― ayonanas (Matt P), Thursday, 30 August 2012 20:56 (eleven years ago) link
play machine gun or you get a machine gun in your face, halstead.
― tylerw, Thursday, 30 August 2012 20:59 (eleven years ago) link
There would be other kinds of protests as a result.
― Ned Raggett, Thursday, 30 August 2012 21:08 (eleven years ago) link
hahahaha
well it is true that i haven't considered the second-order consequences of a reunion
― Thanks WEBSITE!! (Z S), Thursday, 30 August 2012 21:09 (eleven years ago) link
Neighbors say the masked gunman was a normal guy that just loved his family. "Times are tough, but sometimes when you can't get the guitar bliss you feel like you earned, especially in this economy, well I guess some people just snap"
― Evan, Thursday, 30 August 2012 21:15 (eleven years ago) link
Obama stole my grandma's Slowdive
― Poliopolice, Thursday, 30 August 2012 21:20 (eleven years ago) link
> shit like pale saints
steady...
― koogs, Thursday, 30 August 2012 22:17 (eleven years ago) link
float like a butterfly, sting like a bee, shit like pale saints..
― beautifully in with its outness (electricsound), Thursday, 30 August 2012 22:39 (eleven years ago) link
See this is why I'm wary of the taste of people who say their favourite showgaze band / the only good shoegaze band is Slowdive.
And let me reiterate, I don't dislike Slowdive! I own several of their albums!
It's just that when people who don't really like shoegaze slag off shoegaze, all those negative qualities they use to slag it off - droney, boring, repetitive, mindless prettiness, sexless, middle class. Slowdive are, like, the utter epitome of those qualities. They are quite quintessential of a view of shoegaze that 1) really quite annoys me and 2) doesn't represent anything of ~what I loved~ about shoegaze.
So when someone tells me that Slowdive were the best shoegaze band, I just think "you are looking for a very different thing in music than I am."
Also, if you are over the age of 15 and ~pretend to like~ any kind of music, you really are a tosser.
― my god it's full of straw (White Chocolate Cheesecake), Friday, 31 August 2012 08:11 (eleven years ago) link
Yeah, but who here's doing that?
― formerly EDB (ed.b), Friday, 31 August 2012 08:20 (eleven years ago) link
hmmm I'm way over 15 and I think to this day Slowdive is still, as back then, my favorite "shoegaze" band. I don't see how they epitomize "droney, boring, repetitive, mindless prettiness, sexless, middle class" - for me Souvlaki is the opposite of all that.
― licorice oratorio (baaderonixx), Friday, 31 August 2012 08:28 (eleven years ago) link
for 2 years i sat there and pretended shit like pale saints, ride, swervedriver, and chapterhouse wasn't total crap, but eventually i saw the light. xp― Poliopolice, Thursday, August 30, 2012 8:43 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
― Poliopolice, Thursday, August 30, 2012 8:43 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
― my god it's full of straw (White Chocolate Cheesecake), Friday, 31 August 2012 08:45 (eleven years ago) link
I took that to mean "tried to convince myself" which is fairly different I think. tbf I do not claim to have a window into the soul of Poliopolice
― it's-a me, irl (DJ Mencap), Friday, 31 August 2012 09:06 (eleven years ago) link
When I see people use a word - like "pretending" - I tend to think that they mean what they say, or they would have phrased it differently.
But I have this argument every time we talk about Shoegaze. That if someone thinks that Slowdive are the ~pinnacle of shoegaze~ and bands like Pale Saints are "crap" - that person is clearly looking for something so different in music than what I loved about shoegaze that it would be pointless for me to use their tastes as reference for anything meaningful to me.
― my god it's full of straw (White Chocolate Cheesecake), Friday, 31 August 2012 09:12 (eleven years ago) link
You mean you find Pales Saints are any less pretty, sexless and middle class? hmmmm...
― licorice oratorio (baaderonixx), Friday, 31 August 2012 09:15 (eleven years ago) link
They are less *mindlessly* pretty - i.e. the prettiness in their music has a purpose, and is usually used as a counterpoint to psychedelic noise of confusion. They are definitely less sexless (rowr) and middle class I don't know about, but they were from Leeds instead of the Thames Valley so the Northern perspective was more interesting than yet another OxfordReadingLondon band.
Yes, yes, I'm being facetious, but their music had a scrappy spikiness amidst all the prettiness that I found texturally just much more interesting.
― my god it's full of straw (White Chocolate Cheesecake), Friday, 31 August 2012 09:20 (eleven years ago) link
Also Spoonfed Hybrid >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Mojave 3.
― my god it's full of straw (White Chocolate Cheesecake), Friday, 31 August 2012 09:21 (eleven years ago) link
Glad to see someone defending Pale Saints, a great band. I love the little motto on their "Flesh balloon" EP which read "Scene but not herd". So many great aspects to them - their roots in C86 indie (their first demo was reviewed in the short lived indie "Underground" mag from 87), the way they merged dreamy with spiky, the layers of sounds, Ian Masters' slightly skewed basslines, and Spoonfed Hybrid is one of my favourite albums ever. As shoegazing was at its height in 91 they really weren't there, their Northern slant meant they weren't seen to be with the Ride / Slowdive / Chapterhouse crowd. Certainly the inkies at the time never mentioned them in the same breath as the other "Scene that celebrates itself" bands.
― Rob M Revisited, Friday, 31 August 2012 10:57 (eleven years ago) link
Oh and pinnacle of shoegaze = Moose's first two EPs, imho. Hard to believe that 20 years after the fact people are still arguing about what shoegazing is / was.
― Rob M Revisited, Friday, 31 August 2012 11:08 (eleven years ago) link
Pale Saints toured with and had intra-band links to Lush! Hence their STCI connection. But Lush are another band who have been unfortunately and unfairly pushed down the shoegaze canon.
― my god it's full of straw (White Chocolate Cheesecake), Friday, 31 August 2012 11:32 (eleven years ago) link
As shoegazing was at its height in 91 they really weren't there, their Northern slant meant they weren't seen to be with the Ride / Slowdive / Chapterhouse crowd. Certainly the inkies at the time never mentioned them in the same breath as the other "Scene that celebrates itself" bands
The way I recall it, it was Ride - Ride EP, Lush - Mad Love EP, and Pale Saints - The Comforts of Madness all released in quick succession at the start of 1990 and shown on Snub TV and those bands were often talked about together. The rest came later.
― I've been to Suffolk (Nasty, Brutish & Short), Friday, 31 August 2012 11:44 (eleven years ago) link
Don't you think Poliopolice was using the word "pretending" in hindsight? Like now that he realized he is very over those bands and his change of heart makes him feel like he was fooling himself the whole time. Just a guess. I mean when I hear people say pretend in that context they generally aren't letting you in to some conscious poseuring they'd participated in at some point.
― Evan, Friday, 31 August 2012 12:46 (eleven years ago) link
yeah, you're taking it too literally. by the time i was into this stuff, the whole shoegaze thing was over by nearly a decade-- therefore, not en vogue at all. when i said 'pretend', it's not that i was trying to attach myself to a scene (because there was none by then), but that i was trying hard to appreciate that which was described to me as great examples of that genre after having gotten heavily into MBV and Medicine first. for that reason, i wanted to like Ride and Pale Saints so much, until i discovered, after much effort and money wasted, that there was really not much depth or staying power to most of them; they were just bands whose names were repeated, perhaps because there simply weren't that many notable names in the genre to begin with.
so does this mean, as you charge, that i don't like really shoegaze because i think the vast majority of bands in that genre were kind of bad, and thus i'm a shoegaze poseur and have no credibility? i'm willing to concede that some people might think that, but as least i can honestly say that i spent an extended period exploring the genre thoroughly, and drew my own conclusion that most of it really isn't that good. that's just my opinion; no one has to agree with it!
― Poliopolice, Friday, 31 August 2012 13:29 (eleven years ago) link
No, what I'm trying to get through to you is that "I don't like this" is not the same as "this is bad."
Saying "this band has no staying power" when there are people ITT who still get those records out occasionally, 20 years later, is just a tad of an arrogant thing to say. It's fine for you to not like it. But you don't get to redefine the boundaries of a genre that was established 20 years ago, just to suit your particular tastes.
― my god it's full of straw (White Chocolate Cheesecake), Friday, 31 August 2012 13:32 (eleven years ago) link
Yes it is. When someone says "this is bad", it is implicit that what they are really saying is "I don't like this." All opinions are relative.
― my father will guide me up the stairs to bed (anagram), Friday, 31 August 2012 13:39 (eleven years ago) link
Did I miss something? When did Poliopolice try to change everyone's opinion about shoegaze? Is he also the one forcing Slowdive to reunite? Poliopolice, just let shoegaze be!
― Evan, Friday, 31 August 2012 13:46 (eleven years ago) link
But seriously he is just talking about his own opinions on shoegaze. As much as I disagree about the horrible things he says about Swervedriver!
― Evan, Friday, 31 August 2012 13:47 (eleven years ago) link
Shoegaze isn't really a genre tho
― albvivertine, Friday, 31 August 2012 14:08 (eleven years ago) link
It's like squares and rectangles. All squares are rectangles---not all rectangles are squares.
If you say, "This is bad," then you are always saying, "I don't like this." (Although, I would argue against that.)
However, when you say, "I don't like this," you aren't always saying, "This is bad."
Katy Perry is bad = I don't like Katy Perry.
I don't like Led Zeppelin /= Led Zeppelin is bad.
...I'm just arguing to argue.
― dronestreet, Friday, 31 August 2012 14:48 (eleven years ago) link
droney = good thing, boring = good thing, repetitive = good thing, mindless prettiness = good thing, sexless = good thing, middle class = pretty meaningless thing in relation to music
― just one little Tayto (Noodle Vague), Friday, 31 August 2012 14:54 (eleven years ago) link
At this point I would pay good money to see see slowdive play a full reunion set consisting entirely of them arguing about taste and the semantics of not liking things. And I would pay even more if I knew Neil halstead didn't want to do it.
― formerly EDB (ed.b), Friday, 31 August 2012 15:13 (eleven years ago) link