Bands You Can't Imagine Anyone Being A Fan Of

[Neville Chamberlain]

It's funny, a lot of people whose musical taste I admire mention Elbow in reverent, hushed tones. Personally, everything I've heard of them has been beyond execrable, just one step-up from yer Mumford & Sons and about on a par with Coldplay and whatnot, so I guess their magic really must be in the first couple of albums...?

I'm also suspicious of singers who close their eyes while singing, and yer Ed Garvery or whatever he's called is far too prone to that.

[Lisa Jesusandmarychain]

I've seen Elbow live, too. I think it's safe to say I can imagine them having fans, despite the rubbish name.

[dex]

Blazin' Squad

[Neomod]

I heard that Elbow song Empires this morning on t'radio and it's reet good. Never been a fan but yeah.

[Brundle-Fly]

Hi! Big fan here. I'm also in a band with a guy who's currently moonlighting as their tour guitarist, but my fandom predated that.

Fair enough. I only know that one hit single which I couldn't bear at the time. It made Wake Up Boo seem like something Alan Vega composed.

[Brundle-Fly]

I love Britpop, and we're surely way past the stage where it can just be blanket dismissed as 'shite'. It's practically classic rock these days.

No, it's virtually mandatory to be sniffy about Britpop on CaB and then to bang on about Autechre or avant-garde metal?

[Famous Mortimer]

Grateful Dead/Phish/Widespread Panic/The Dave Mathews Band

Because I've not really heard much by this band _{These bands?} but have seen their fans mooning around in tie-dye tshirts and flip flops I may be unfair in dismissing them all as shitty, unfocused, jam nonsense. I always image being a fan of these bands isn't really about the music _maaaaan more a social thing where like minded suburban 50 year olds from expensive private colleges discuss hiking and unfashionable footwear and swap boring stories about getting high.

Someone in the family is a huge fan of the Grateful Dead, he almost cried when a few of us bought him a portable hard drive with every single bootleg on it in the best possible quality. He tried to play me a few songs and it was miserable. It's just...there, like something which sounds like music but doesn't have any of the other qualities you'd normally hope to get from the experience.

[JesusAndYourBush]

That's a real Triggers Broom right there!

[Famous Mortimer]

No, it's virtually mandatory to be sniffy about Britpop on CaB and then to bang on about Autechre or avant-garde metal?

Is anti-elitism any better? At least you didn't bring up how many records they sold as a mark of quality.

I grew up with it (I was 18 in 1994) and although there was an occasional decent song, it was backwards-looking, boring, mid-tempo crap with barely a good idea in the whole lot of it. I remember Melody Maker dismissing some of it as "dad-rock" at the time, but now I'm the age my dad was then and I still think it was awful.

Clearly, there are fans still. But the idea of someone, even in the 90s, putting on an Ocean Colour Scene or Cast or Gene or Shed Seven or Menswear record for pleasure is something my brain cannot countenance.

[boki]

So, I'll draw your attention to Todd in the Shadows take on this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zUPH_Aj-GGE

Only became aware of this lad about a week ago (even though he's been doing it for years) and I've absolutely been caning it.

[ajsmith2]

I wouldn't call loving Britpop anti elitism if you genuinely love it any more than genuinely hating it is elitism. Back in the day the old media might have more chance of artificially influencing you one way or another but if your genuine distaste endures to this day then fair enough.

Me, I have a weakness/rare appreciation for jaunty cheeky chappy rinky dink sub Kinks stuff. I absolutely love it in fact. And unfortunately for me, my perspective is that I only really started to get into contemporary music in 1996 when it was beginning to be on the outs and so I spent what should have been the peak of my foolish music loving youth (1997-2001) seeing it fade from my grasp while being told by the NME etc that Britpop was now embarrassing old hat and I should be digging the tedious smelly jobbies that the likes of Mogwai and God Speed You Black Emperor! were shiting out instead. Not the usual experience you hear about music fans having during that period, but it's mine and I love to have a good moan about it whenever anyone disses Britpop.

[Famous Mortimer]

I spent what should have been the peak of my foolish music loving youth (1997-2001) seeing it fade from my grasp while being told by the NME etc that Britpop was now embarrassing old hat and I should be digging the tedious smelly jobbies that the likes of Mogwai and God Speed You Black Emperor! were shiting out instead. Not the usual experience you hear about music fans having during that period, but it's mine and I love to have a good moan about it whenever anyone disses Britpop.

I was at a very early Mogwai gig (after they'd done their first 7", supporting Urusei Yatsura) and I really liked them then. Saw them years later at...somewhere big-ish in London?...and there were people in the audience shouting at them to get on with it after the third song in a row dragged on with no interesting ending in sight.

And yes, I was perhaps being slightly facetious. But fuck me, that was a miserable time to not be a fan of that sort of music.

[Lisa Jesusandmarychain]

We all remember Mogwai's " Blur: Shite" t- shirts , of course.

[kalowski]

Train.
American Authors.

I must admit that I sometimes watch the BBC coverage of some festival like Glastonbury or T in the Park and gaze in amazement at the rapt audience singing along passionately to beige landfill guitar bands I've never even heard of like Don Broco. Does my nut in.

I can only assume they project the lyrics on screens at the front. That can only be the way people know lyrics to stuff by The Courteeners and Blossoms.

[thecuriousorange]

I wonder if Athlete can still draw a crowd.

[Brundle-Fly]

We all remember Mogwai's " Blur: Shite" t- shirts , of course.

Embarrassing. Always could never abide Mogwai or Godspeed! You Black Abbott. Of course, a lot of Britpop was crap but there's always a lot of crap in any NME genre.

[Dusty Substance]

I wonder if Athlete can still draw a crowd.

About seven or eight years ago, an old college friend put on Facebook - "Only a few weeks until the Athlete tour. So excited! - To which I snarkily replied - "Haha!Are they still going? That's hilarious!". Turns out, his band was supporting Athlete on the tour. We're no longer Facebook friends.

We all remember Mogwai's " Blur: Shite" t- shirts , of course.

Mogwai always seemed like a bunch of laddy cunts to me.  I'm basing that entirely on a couple of TV interviews with them from 20 years ago.

[a duncandisorderly]

Cardiacs

I know! Ooooh look at all this clever stuff we can do, but we're not prog no siree we're punk oh yes widdle de widdle de deee urr urr urr grrrr widdle i'm a naughty english boy sir pond fishy pondy kiss sharky fish look jim done a wee wee widdle widdle wi-ddl-eeee urg urg urg la la la la la la laaaa, la-la-la la aaaaaaaaaaa eeehhh screeeeeeeeeeeeeee dum dum dum ooof.

Truly the nadir of British music. I can vouch for the fact that every single one of their fans are complete knobheads

a lot of love for cardiacs among the mathrock crowd I once ran with, but I never got them. details elsewhere, but... I confronted smith in the red eye once, about a show he aborted at the garage (it was jammed to the rafters) when a rented fostex multitrack with backing tracks on it let them down. it was the third time that year I'd been persuaded to see them, & each time I thought that something of what I liked about sea nymphs, or his production of the monsoon bassoon or levitation albums, was going to help me unlock whatever it was all my mates saw in the band. but no. & on this occasion, there hadn't even been a full song, let alone a full set.
I asked him- "you had seven or eight people on stage- why couldn't you do the show without the tapes?"

& he said "the arrangements, dear boy..." & ponced a quid off me to finish paying his round.

[snip]

(*& now I think on it, for fuck's sake what were they doing with a fostex in 1998 or whenever it was?)

[Neville Chamberlain]

Sounds like typical Cardiacs behavior, the clueless chumps.

So when was this gig? If it was any time from 2000 onwards, I have absolutely no recollection of Cardiacs ever aborting a show due to a dodgy multitrack. While they did do the odd "tour" in the 2000s, any gig they did at the Garage would not have been missed by me (at least I don't think so - I'm pretty sure I'm not misremembering anything...). Maybe ask around the Cardiacs FB forum. I'm sure that cavalcade of complete berks will be more than happy to help you out.

[Brundle-Fly]

Sounds like typical Cardiacs behavior, the clueless chumps.

So when was this gig? If it was any time from 2000 onwards, I have absolutely no recollection of Cardiacs ever aborting a show due to a dodgy multitrack. While they did do the odd "tour" in the 2000s, any gig they did at the Garage would not have been missed by me (at least I don't think so - I'm pretty sure I'm not misremembering anything...). Maybe ask around the Cardiacs FB forum. I'm sure that cavalcade of complete berks will be more than happy to help you out.

I can't work out whether you hate Cardiacs or love them.

[Nice Relaxing Poo]

Embarrassing. Always could never abide Mogwai or Godspeed! You Black Abbott. Of course, a lot of Britpop was crap but there's always a lot of crap in any NME genre.

I loved Mogwai, GYBE! and Blur/Suede/Supergrass etc back in the day. I thought The Blur are Shite t-shirts were a real cringeworthy moment, they were singing the praises of those dullards Oasis at the same time which just comes across as being a bunch of contrarian cunts. Tbf I think almost all of it was down to Stuart Braithwaite.

[Jockice]

I wonder if Athlete can still draw a crowd.

I saw Athlete at the Leadmill in Sheffield around 2004. There were girls screaming. What on earth was going on there?

[sevendaughters]

I've got one of the Mogwai Blur: Are Shite t-shirts. It was funny. Still is to me. I grew up on that combative era of music journalism and miss it quite a bit (sometimes the writing about the music was more potent than the music). And Mogwai's nature as a bunch of neds who played very serious sounding music is interesting, a ready-made counterpoint to people saying they're pretentious wankers when actually they smash tins of Tennants and go to watch Celtic. They're less interesting to me now they've settled into being Cool Dads in Berlin, but for a while they were something a bit of a contradiction and that pricked up my ears.

I can never understand British people who get into that LA 80s sleaze aesthetic like Motley Crue, denim combination, bandanas, holding a bottle of Jack Daniel's, but on Vitamin D deficient Brits. there are people like this in every reasonable-sized town's scene for sure. fine if you like the music but going the whole hog? nah.

[Lisa Jesusandmarychain]

D'you think a band benamed "Cool Dads In Berlin" would garner a lot of fans?

[Cuellar]

It's a pretty great name for a band tbh

[Lisa Jesusandmarychain]

Conversely, do you think bearing witness to people claiming to be fans of the band Dogs Die In Hot Cars would force you to snarl out the statement "fucking state of it" ?

[Cuellar]

Yes.

You can also sing 'Cool Dads in Berlin' to 'Brown Girl in the Ring'

[A Hat Like That]

Tra la la la la

[Absorb the anus burn]

Climie Fisher.

The Goombay Dance Band.

[buzby]

I was a big fan. Those first two albums are masterpieces - beautiful, intense and unsettling. The live performances were something else too. Then Guy Garvey fell in love and everything from their third album onwards has been music made for people who hire string quartets to play One Day Like This at their wedding.

Their recent setlists and best of album have seen them completely disown those early albums.

Same here. I first came across them supporting New Order for one of their Get Ready comeback warmup shows not long after Asleep At The Back was released, and bought the album off the back of it. I would extend it to their third album Leaders OF The Free World though, written after he and Edith Bowman had split and which fed into lyrics of songs like My Very Best, The Stops, Puncture Repair and Great Expectations. The fouth album Seldom Seen Kid was where it started to slide into Radio 2 stadium pleasers, though it still had Grounds For Divorce.

I heard that Elbow song Empires this morning on t'radio and it's reet good. Never been a fan but yeah.

Yes, I heard it on Radio 6 last week and it does hopefully signal a return to form after a rather insipid period.