Jonathan Fire*Eater (and Stewart Lupton)

haaa the media loved this band and no one else gave a shit

wait are they back together or something?

some posters don't need a reason

What good are reasons?

these guys were sooooo much better than the walkmen

I saw Lupton play a very, very strange solo show (though it was billed as Childballads) this past Christmas in D.C. He played a handful of new songs (half reading the lyrics off papers on the stage, seemingly improv-ing some stuff). One song seemed to be Lou Reed's "Street Hassle" with different words. He closed by reading a long poem. I think the guy's incredibly talented, and has come up with some of my favorite lyrics ever. He's given a couple of slightly depressing interviews in recent years where he talks a lot of trash about the Walkmen, and his years struggling with drugs.
I once saw his pre-Jonathan Fire Eater band, The Ignobles, when I was in high school in suburban D.C.; they were very awesome.

The first two Walkmen records > Wolf Songs for Lambs >>>>> the other Walkmen records.

Tremble Under Boom Lights EP still holds up, and this band were, as Croupier says, way better than the Walkmen, who are a slightly less boring version of the National IMO.

(Dug this out last week because this was what Turn On The Bright Lights really seemed to aspire to want to be, but listening to The Make-Up after my white belt bag discovery this afternoon make me dig it out again, again.)

They really were one of those bands whose *entire* output just diminished from start to finish.

Tremble Under Boom Lights > Wolf Songs For Lambs >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> anything The Walkmen ever did.

I was gonna say they were the Original Suit Band, but they really weren't. They appeared out of nowhere and kind of inserted themselves at the top of the Suit Band Scene.

http://stewartlupton.tumblr.com/

"no one understands you like Mom"

I'm... scared of Stuart Lupton. I keep meaning to check out his solo stuff, but he frightens me a little.

I think he frightens himself at this point

(Oh my god, he is - *impossibly* - still hott.)

This is quite old now, but looks like he's still a nut:

http://www.thestoolpigeon.co.uk/features/interview-stewart-lupton.html

(A completely loveable and frightening nut, but. Wow. It would help it I could spell his name, TBH)

1st walkmen album was the last great Rock album

Pfffffffftttt don't even talk to me about The Walkmen. The Walkmen weren't even as good as French Kicks and if you're not as good as a rip-off of your own band there's no hope for ya.

Upthread correct about what an amazing live band JF*E were, I mean, they were actually *dangerous*. You didn't want to stand to close to the stage because Stuart might fall on you at any moment.

Ha - I was young and thin in 96 when I saw these guys in Leeds. Me and my new uni mate got a mad crush on them and raided our Dad's closets for pressed white shirts. They were awesome.

This was when all I could hear around my friends was bloody Oasis. WE held strong with JFE and The Whipping Boy I seem to remember. Yikes.

I've been racking my brains trying to remember when I first saw them. My memories of the mid-90s are *not* very reliable. I have a fuzzy memory of a band I played with playing with them at like... Coney Island High? It was too late to have been The Mind's Eye but it might have been Garage Rage or something like that? In this cute little scene of all these cute little mod boys in suits doing retro stuff, and Jonathan Fire*eater came on and ate everyone for breakfast.

Then the next thing you know, they're touring with, like... Blur or someone. The just blew up so fast it was astonishing. And then blew it so fast, too.

It's funny how they were so completely retro, and yet they were like 5 years ahead of their time.

Suit bands.

I am feeling about a million years old right now, trying to work out which venue it was, and googling all of these bars and clubs that are now closed, vanished, torn down to put up luxury apartments. This is so depressing.

Well I know I saw them in The Duchess Of York in Leeds which became a Versace shop or some such nonsense soon after. This was 96 or 97. They headlined but we only knew of them cos of the Melody Maker - we weren't that cool. I'm thinking Ligament (!?) supported but I can't be sure of that.

The Duchess was a great place. My first introduction to it was as an innocent walking past and being grab handled by a hairy man who insisted he kicked boys away from the front of Huggy Bear gigs. I must have been impressionable but I was impressed. It was nonsense of course.

(Now getting v v nostalgic for which bartenders at which NYC bars and clubs used to cut me off when I started "talking English", it's hard to believe this was all 20 years ago now. LOL we olds)

RIP Stewart Lupton. he made quite an impression on me when I saw JFE play as a college freshman, a very engaging frontman. i still play and enjoy wolf songs for lambs, and a couple tracks form other acts. this is probably his post JFE peak
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhjBlIj9bCw

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2018/may/29/stewart-lupton-dies-jonathan-fire-eater-yeah-yeah-yeahs

RIP, dude could holler

"a night in the nursery" rules so hard

i still love the shit out of both those records. so much fun.

they kicked ass

who engineered those records? absolute masterclass in implementing retro flare, and it not feeling like a novelty or overly precious

With the greatest acceptance it's nostalgia I think I remember them sounding the same live