The Darkness

I never heard the original bands much either, and am certainly not familiar with them, but the whole poodle-haired cock-rock thing is tired anyway. I always took the 'joke' to be that The Darkness were so bad and so overblown with it that it was mildly funny, and that it was such a caricature that it had to be tongue-in-cheek. Even if it was tongue-in-cheek it would have palled after two songs anyway, because the thing with so-bad-it's-good is that it swiftly just becomes bad.

The joke has long worn thin. They are still here. Bah.

strokes, garage rock (the hives), ac/dc inspired rock (datsuns etc) and then the darkness (comedy robbie williams metal, full on eighties rock), where does it go from there? the pop cycle. and with the present hype, after awhile, the darkness will die.

This might be the most upsetting thing JtN has ever written *if* what I heard in Probe in Liverpool the other week was The Darkness.

I heard who someone who sounded like a not-quite-into-it Bruce Dickinson bawl their way through a set of pancake-thin pub-band demos. It was ugly and forgettable like a subsiding Maryport semi. If this isn't The Darkness, I apologise.

just bcz a punk rock fan doesn't like 'em does not mean they are classic or dud. must try harder.

And isnt Tom, like thirty two or something? Not really down with the kids unless you are a paed.

this line is funny on many levels. not perhaps the ones it was intended to be funny on.

ps: Tom, if that's the case then I am happy to have 5 years of listening to great music before it all goes pear.

(Actually one of the reasons I like the 'Ness is that they are the brilliant return of everything that was left out of the Creation "international guardians of rock and roll" canon.)

explain??

ps. yer sources must be really old - mcgee has been djing the crue and ratt since 2000.

Is it because AWK & The Darkness use guitars prominently that the realness/irony issue irks some of you?

What puts me right off the darkness is the same as what puts me off about the strokes, anyway, this sense that i have of listening to an "also ran" act, but w/o the big act that they are an also-ran to. Like, I, being old and crap, remember seeing Girl on top of the pops. Girl were this glammy pop-rock band, who were an also ran to def leppard. The darkness remind me of girl, and there is no def leppard. Also, whenever there is a hype band like the strokes, or gay dad, or the darkness, there's always this bit of me that wants them to blow my cynicism into the weeds. Gay Dad were the most frustrating of these bands, because in retrospect I can see how if they'd been just a little bit better, they'd have been really good, but they just weren't good enough. With both the strokes and the darkness, there isn't even that for me. I get all cynical about them, b/c of the stupid hype, but what I really want inside is for them to live up to the hype. What I really want is for the darkness' album to be as good as boston's first album, or asia's first album, but there's just nothing there. What they should have done, and I'm totally serious here, is ditch all their shit songs, and get diane warren to write them a set of awesome power-ballads in the style of "nothing's gonna stop us now", or "sole survivor", or "more than a feeling" BUT THEY DIDN'T!@# AND THEY =k-SUX0R!!!1!!!@#

(btw doom-e, i finished the popol vuh piece, and have nearly compleded this long stream-of-conciousness rant on human league. will mail them to you tomorrow or saturday.)

Other easy answer - you might already have all the Hanoi Rocks records you want. I don't though.

Maura to thread, btw, as she and Jel are about the only people whose opinions I respect on this kind of music.

I don't understand the appeal of the do they mean it frisson.

I mean surely it makes as much difference to the sound of a record as oh I don't know, whether the artist writes their own songs. Sorry that was low but it's casual day and I forgot

It's a frisson because it's not telegraphing its intentions quite as boringly as a 'novelty' or 'serious' record - it's only a frisson when you can't properly answer the question, unlike the instruments thing where there's a fact of instrument-playing-or-not waiting to be discovered.

You can't properly answer the question of intention with loads of records, I always felt the do they mean it/don't they question to be something indie fans did in their quest for cliched ideas of what passion is. This is a bit like that inverted, I'm not saying it's stupid, I just don't really understand where you're coming from and hence am trying.

You may be right, basement jaxx acid love to thread. (which maybe you should check out!)

That about sums them up for me. I watch them with a big silly grin because I can't believe what I'm seeing but they seem to have the songs to back it up. I think they'll be a short term thrill, I'll be surprised if they come up with something as good for a second record and lord knows I don't want the music press to start some kind of new hair metal scene around them, but right now they're a lot of fun and who cares if they don't follow it up. Similar to Junior Senior in fact. They make me smile.

Plus, I hoped when I first saw them that they took themselves seriously. It would have been disappointing to find that to them this was just an ironic piss take, another Spinal Tap or Bad News. It's more interesting for them to be serious and doing this style of music and performance when it is so out of place. I like them because there is no Def Leppard.