Strange Conversations: Part Ninety-Four
Posted 4 March 2009 in Strange Conversations by Catriona
Always the subtleties of musical genres and movements escape me:
ME: This is horrible!
NICK: What?
ME: This! It’s incomprehensible thrashy guitar and a completely inaudible vocal track!
NICK: Treen, it is My Bloody Valentine. They’re the original shoegazer band.
ME: That is a total lie!
NICK: It is not!
ME: You look me in the eye, and tell me that that band whose name I’ve forgotten—Joy Division! That they weren’t the original shoegazer band.
NICK: They weren’t.
ME: He stared at his shoes all the time!
NICK: But they weren’t shoegazer.
Previously: Bracebridge Hemyng Was A Doctor Who Villain
Next: Rain. Streetlight. Frangipani.
Share your thoughts [11]
1
Wendy wrote at Mar 4, 10:17 am
“shoegazer”… my new word for the day! I luv it….who else would fit into this niche? is it the precedent for this “emo” that i keep hearing so much about? or is this passe as well now?
(we’re a bit behind up here out of the capital cities! I require metropolitan guidance…)
2
Nick Caldwell wrote at Mar 4, 10:25 am
Eeek! No, not Emo. Think slow, wail-y, dreamy sounding bands like Lush, Cocteau Twins, or the Jesus and Mary Chain, or even goth/dance/rock hybrids like Curve.
Emos are basically bogans who dye their hair black. (ooh, controversial!)
3
Catriona wrote at Mar 4, 10:33 am
I think should have added that he did not make up the word “shoegazer.” It’s silly, perhaps, but unlike Bracebridge Hemyng, it has its own Wikipedia page.
I may not like shoegazer rock, but much of what I would enjoy as “swirly guitar pop” is often listed as “shoegazer,” like Ride.
4
Wendy wrote at Mar 4, 10:35 am
ok…good…gotcha…now I understand….
but what about bogans who have dyed their hair black and think that makes them a goth? (we get quite a few of them up this way) what then? are they some kind of rare hybrid? or just foolish? does it matter if they don’t realise there is a difference?
so many questions….
like…can you be an emo without black hair?
5
Matthew Smith wrote at Mar 4, 11:22 am
Yes you can have brown hair and be emo as long as the fringe is in your face. Not sure what to do if you’re blonde.
I’m not a huge shoegazer fan but Sonic Youth apparently qualifies. The Diamond Sea is a fave song (it’s on youtube).
6
Catriona wrote at Mar 4, 12:32 pm
Coincidentally, we just spent ten minutes bad-mouthing Sonic Youth. I like what they did to bring unsigned bands forwards—Nirvana is the big example of a band that benefitted from that—but their music does not interest me.
7
Wendy wrote at Mar 4, 09:15 pm
i think i’m the same..i appreciate the idea of sonic youth but i don’t feel the need to listen to their music (although i have guitar heroed to kool thing…i don’t think that counts though..too busy concentrating to gaze at any shoes)
emo…so it’s all about the fringe regardless of hair colour with the exception of blonde…it’s all becoming clearer now
8
Tim wrote at Mar 5, 02:52 am
No, emo is goth gone mainstream.
9
heretic wrote at Mar 5, 03:11 am
Meh, emo’s not goth gone mainstream. More like mainstream gone mopey and wet.
The emo litmus: when goths tell you to cheer the fuck up… you’re an emo.
10
michelle wrote at Mar 5, 05:00 am
Funnily enough, just yesterday I was walking around on campus and looking at the Young People, thinking, “Hmm. Boys don’t wear Husker Du t-shirts anymore.”
I think the thing about Sonic Youth is, you have to have listened to them a fair bit without actually trying to like or understand them (for example, you need to have had a flatmate play them a lot). It’s the same sharehouse appreciation-by-inculcation thing that happens with cask wine and bad stir-fries and the relative sexual attractiveness of the people who live with you or visit. Over time you stop thinking, ‘that’s shit’, and start thinking, ‘gee, that’s really quite appealing’. And even years afterward, that song or stir-fry style or sexual encounter is no longer something about which you can say “it was bad”. You only know that it defines a whole era for you.
So what’s my point here? Not much. I just wanted to say that I really liked Dinosaur Jr. I think my friend Egg and I went to see them play in a big tent at West End one year. And yo la tengo are great. They aren’t bad stir-fry at all.
11
Catriona wrote at Mar 5, 05:34 am
Now, Dinosaur Jr I can get behind. I was never a big fan—though I think Nick is—but I always enjoyed what I did hear. I think they’re the ones who did a great cover of “Just Like Heaven,” too.
Also? Whenever anyone asks me what Sonic Youth are like, I’m going to say, “They’re like sleeping with that flatmate from your undergrad. years whom you thought was a bit gross originally but then found strangely appealing.”
I think this will clarify the situation for people.
(To be fair to Sonic Youth, we were bad-mouthing their cover of Robert Palmer’s “Addicted to Love,” which I still think is genuinely awful.)