Get Your POLL On, Baby: ILM Artist Poll #109 - The Afghan Whigs

my pettiest beef with 1965 is the decision to split "vampire lanois" into its own track, thus forcing me to splice the mp3s together lol

can it just be my ears? GUYS DON'T MAKE ME GO ON STEVE HOFFMAN FORUM

only song i have problems with is (probably controversially) "somethin hot," which does feel ultra-compressed to me. guitars sound like "larger than life" by the backstreet boys, not ideal.

there's a 12'' mix floating out there that's a bit deeper that i prefer

now I wanna hear dulli's take on "I Want It That Way"

lol he would annihilate "everybody (backstreet's back)"

The 1998 Bowery show is astonishing - I'm sure I've heard it before but it's wonderful to revisit.

I will admit that some of dulli's banter/persona in this period gives me pause lol

https://soundcloud.com/dperis/afghan-whigs-regret-new-order-cover-live

in addition to dulli's piano cover of "regret" there's also this full-band live version from 1994, which is fine but not one of their best covers

oh man that 1998 bootleg, great to hear their "ex-factor" in such nice quality

any notable bootlegs kicking around on slsk or whatever? I poked around the web archive but didn't see anything

There's a full soundboard recording (or at least a CDs-worth) of the 1997 New Orleans show used for the Live At Howlin' Wolf EP

Random Desire is really great, for me the only thing holding it back is that, to my ears at least, Dulli sounds a bit weird on it from time to time, esp in the more animated sections (ie "The Tide"). the songs are uniformly strong and his sense of pacing and sequencing remains uncanny

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKcEPQ46B_8

this is the only version of the Blackberry Belle bonus track I can find, it's real good

Bowery 2012 is very good. Have downloaded 1998 to check out later.

I never saw the Whigs the first time round, saw the Twilight Singers in Glasgow a couple of times, but passed on the I'll Be Your Mirror show in London in 2012 because I figured they'd be back with Rick and play shows further north...nope! Have seen the current iteration a couple of times though.

Will try and put in an entry to the poll - was going to listen through everything again but I could probably produce my lists from memory.

wow the Black Love review on allmusic is a travesty

Jesus christ what a band:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=im2fGcu7B5k

random desire is super solid. dulli was really reinvigorated by the whigs reunion tour it seems like because everything he put out since then has been great, and a big step up from dynamite steps, which wasn't bad or anything but it did feel a bit like twilight singers by numbers

it kinda falls apart at the end but the first 5 songs + "beginning of the end" are pretty great

there's just nothing on it that excites me as much as "there's been an accident", "i wish i was", or "bonnie brae" from powder burns, or the majority of blackberry belle

https://soundcloud.com/creationbaby/afghan-whigs-miss-world

hope no one misses this hole cover, it was a b-side to the "66" single iirc but isn't on streaming or youtube anywhere as far as i can see. just dulli on piano with a horn section backing him & it's gorgeous

All I ever really knew of these guys was the Gentleman video on MTV back in the day, which I always liked, but about two months ago I had a brief flirtation with them, then this poll popped and I've been listening to Black Love non-stop.

this is the best whigs cover, probably because it's the best song ever, and i can't find a video, so: afghan whigs - i'll be around (live)

ooh that's fantastic, adding it to my ballot

When I listen to 1965, I often wonder what would have happened if this exploded like Californication did (months later)

they're definitely a band that was really made for playing arenas despite never really getting close. it's a shame, they just had constant label trouble

Payola...this stuff never got bribed into the airways as much as say I dunno Creed or maybe Live would be my guess.

There is something very cinematic and anthemic about them.

idk they had a few songs that I could see making more of a dent but the single choices were often odd and idk that there was much room for dulli's vision to expand saleswise

honestly in terms of label support it seems to me they fared better than many

as a music store manager circa that time, i can say that 'the soft bulletin' (released seven months later) got a *lot* more label support. that might be down to differences between WEA and sony/columbia but tbh i never ever understood warners' steadfast love of the flaming lips

One of the things that (sorta) hurt 1965 was that during the first leg of the tour Dulli got banged up pretty bad after a show in Austin, and some shows were cancelled.

https://www.austinchronicle.com/music/1998-12-18/520831/

Afghan Whigs singer Greg Dulli was in the hospital with a fractured skull following an altercation with a Liberty Lunch stagehand after the Whigs' show there on Friday. Dulli has since been released from Brackenridge (the hospital itself declines comment), and reports are that he's OK, but the big question around town since last weekend has been, "What the hell happened?"

...

Lunch representatives say their lawyers have told them not to comment on the matter at this time, but previously published reports quote the club's co-manager Mileah Jordan saying that Dulli was the aggressor, first threatening and then attacking a stagehand. Witnesses say Dulli, apparently angered over a confrontation earlier in the day, stayed after the club closed to take care of "unfinished business" with the worker, going after him with a two-by-four, at which point the stagehand hit Dulli once and caused the singer to fall backwards and hit his head on the pavement. Police reports seem to back this story as no charges have been filed against anyone, but needless to say, lawyers have been burning the midnight oil on what could turn into another long, drawn-out case involving the troubled Liberty Lunch.

Dulli--who was reportedly in a coma for two days after the incident--sued but the case didn't get anywhere because (as forecasted in the link) the venue went out of business the following summer.

Forgot about that. One time one of the security guys was a wee bit aggressive in denying me entrance to that place, but I guess I got off easy compared to GD.

I’m definitely only referring to 1965 - the first half of that album should have ensured it sold millions.

Black Love is a denser record and ‘Honky’s Ladder’ doesn’t scream ‘first single’

iirc with black love it was the classic situation of the a&r guy at their label who signed them had left the label and now their label didn't care at all about them & didn't support them at all, so the album flopped instead of building upon gentlemen's mild success. dulli also said "honky's ladder" was the label's choice for single which he strongly disagreed with, idk what he wanted but "my enemy" always sounded like the clear single to me?

then they tried to sue their label to get out of their contract & ended up getting columbia to buy out their contract, but it didn't seem like columbia really pushed them that hard either idk. the first side of 1965 really sounds like it should have all been big radio hits.

i thought 'honky's ladder' was a good single! oh well

It was imo but I think Going to Town would have kicked things off better

HL - follow up single

Actually id go for Going/Enemy/Ladder in that order

^ yeah

"Algiers" is their most-streamed song on Spotify by a pretty fair margin. soundtrack placement?

How do people feel about Congregation?

very good album let down slightly by weird production. voted for fewer songs from it than i expected but i have always been more into the three records after it tbf

singles are all amazing tho

What were they aside from "Conjure Me"?

"turn on the water" and "miles iz ded"

("miles" wasn't released officially as a single but it does have a promo video)

How do people feel about Congregation?

the production on that hurts my ears - sounds like lots of guitar on it with open strings just ringing away, and it's all just way too high in the mix. feel like it's very of-its-time, loads of sonic youth-inspired bands flooding all the frequencies with guitar, makes me think of steelpole bathtub or someone. i'm sure there are plenty of less obscure examples of that aesthetic but they're not sprining to mind right now. swervedriver kind of did the same kind of thing with a load of guitar parts going off all over the place, but i think they're a good example of where that approach actually works really well. all the parts seem so focussed on their stuff, it's a really cool knot for your ears to untangle, but 'congregation' just feels like there's a whole exhausting layer of extraneous noise. the shift from that to 'gentlemen' is huge, they stripped it down and it's got so much more room to breathe. got some cool songs though!

"Algiers" is their most-streamed song on Spotify by a pretty fair margin. soundtrack placement?

― intern at pelican brief consulting (Simon H.), Sunday, May 30, 2021 6:09 AM (three hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

according to the youtube comments it was on an episode of ray donovan

“Turn on the Water” has a melodic fragment borrowed from “I’ll Be Around.”

congregation feels like their real debut album - you can hear their classic sound for the first time but it's a little rough & not as fully formed as the later albums, and the production is pretty bad yeah.

"miles iz ded", "i'm her slave" and "let me lie to you" are all very good

“Turn On the Water” is such a jam!!
Whigs rhythm section was unstoppable and way better than like 99% of their peers

I like Congregation but the cover image is definitely cringe. Lotsa good songs and I like the JCS cover. It shows a lot of promise.
Up in It sounds fairly conventional but Congregation solidifies the appeal of the Whigs sound. No other band I’m aware of would have made that album.