The Calling - Wherever You Will Go

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I know it is pointless to get so upset by something so harmless and meaningless, but I find this song faintly creepy - it's just the sheer studied *ordinariness* of it, the certain knowledge that its perpetrators are aiming squarely at people whose only desire is to hear music made by people exactly like themselves, that they themselves could have got up there and sung. Complete indistinguishability between the band and the audience.

Do people really like it, this feeling that they could merge into the band they're listening to and vice versa? Because it is something I have *never* felt or understood at all.

― Robin Carmody, Tuesday, 18 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Depends what your perspective is. Yours I would assume is the Doves/Carter USM "ordinary blokes" perspective, as opposed to the more threatening angle of reflecting back to people what they MIGHT be capable of, and being rejected. I remember seeing as a teenager the Pop Group getting bottled off stage (the Mars Bar in Pollokshields?) and a bunch of skinheads coming on stage yelling THIS ISNAE MUSIC WE WANT PUNK ROCK, picking up the instruments on stage and MAKING EXACTLY THE SAME NOISE but not even being aware of it.

It's the sort of thing I wish existed more in improv, though the problem with the latter is that you could never have the kind of crossover that operatives like Centipede and the People Band achieved (through middlemen like Bob Fripp and Ian Dury) because the audience for improv gigs these days is so ossified and reluctant to interact except in a first-year music class kind of a way ("when I put my middle finger up, you all whisper" etc.). The Martin Davidson/Emanem thing of "this is purity, this is the truth" which just shuts off lots of doors.

But that's going off-topic somewhat. It's the worst legacy of punk - not that anyone could do it, but that anyone DID do it. And all the audience want is their stodgy meat and potatoes, from blokes just like them, rather than vision and awed silence inspired by someone who, to quote Eminem "you'd give one lung to be."

As for the Calling? Like practically everything else these days - taking up space, clogging up the aorta, make do and mend. Even the name sounds like a failed post-New Pop mullet band from about 1986.

― Marcello Carlin, Wednesday, 19 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

**It's the worst legacy of punk - not that anyone could do it, but that anyone DID do it**

If we had to have The Drones and The UK Subs to get The Buzzcocks and The Subway Sect, then I'll live with it. It's the nasty side effect of the drug which cures you.

― Dr. C, Wednesday, 19 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

I was going to start a thread about this song for almost exactly the same reason. This is the true dregs of bad rocks music. Really bad. I don't know what it is that makes it so bad - maybe the faux Eddie Vedder croon - maybe the way the band members looked like they were hand-picked by Peter Waterman - maybe the fact the main riff is directly nicked from something really obvious i can't put my finger on. Total rubbish

― dog latin, Wednesday, 19 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

It's okay. It's throwaway.

― jel --, Wednesday, 19 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

The only opinion I have on this song is that it would be so much better with a glockenspiel accompanying the acoustic guitar at the beginning. I'm completely serious. I hear a brief, stray "chiming" sound from the guitar and I keep wishing they'd actually follow through with that fortuitous accident.

― Michael Daddino, Wednesday, 19 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

The Calling? Is this what you elaborate on when you've really run out of engaging topics of discussion, or was the bringing up of this issue just a subversive ploy itself to comment on the non-issue within?

― maria, Wednesday, 19 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Do people really like it, this feeling that they could merge into the band they're listening to and vice versa? Because it is something I have *never* felt or understood at all.

It took me awhile to figure out which song this thread was referring to; I think I've got it, the one that sounds and looks just like Lifehouse, right? I think I know exactly how you feel Robin (not that this song bothers me at all); it's almost like if I allowed myself to admit that, yeah, band x is projecting an image I'd feel comfortable merging into (whether this means Crass or Toby Keith or Wu Tang or anyone else selling a lifestyle), I'd lose my entire identity as a person and listener and basically be admitting that I'm a total loser just like everybody else. Although when Busta Rhymes talks about "don't this hit make my people wanna jump", I do feel like he's including me and it doesn't bother me at all; he is a very rare exception.

For the most part I wanna be on the losing team. Winning is for losers. I wanna lose to the losers, beat them at their own game.

― Kris, Wednesday, 19 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

Maria grasps the precise reason for this thread's existence.

― Robin Carmody, Wednesday, 19 June 2002 00:00 (twenty-three years ago)

five months pass...

If you like Alex Band, visit my site:

http://www.somethingaboutalex.com

― Shannon, Wednesday, 20 November 2002 02:35 (twenty-three years ago)

one month passes...

At first, I didn't much care for the song....but I admit..it grew on me. I try not to read too much into it except that it is a love song. I prefer their song "Stigmatized".

http://www.natewood.net

― kaytey, Saturday, 18 January 2003 18:56 (twenty-three years ago)

best Creed song ever.

― Anthony Miccio (Anthony Miccio), Sunday, 19 January 2003 23:40 (twenty-three years ago)

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