They feel music left them behind, and Nickelback is all they have left

May 20, 2016 11:08 AM

Nickelback won the 90s culture war
posted by acb (86 comments total)

Hahaha! No.
posted by Cookiebastard at 11:16 AM on May 20, 2016

Foo Fighters are worse.
posted by Coda Tronca at 11:25 AM on May 20, 2016 [5 favorites]

Thanks, Canada.
posted by Going To Maine at 11:25 AM on May 20, 2016 [1 favorite]

So it’s not a huge surprise that in 2013, readers of Rolling Stone voted Nickelback the second worst band of the ’90s in an online poll, sandwiched right between Creed and Limp Bizkit.

Even leaving aside the issue of 90s vs 2000s music, I think some of these readers are really forgetting how terrible Limp Bizkit really was.

Of course, just reading the words has triggered the weird part of my brain that needs to hear "Rollin' (Air Raid Vehicle)" every six months or so, so I'm off to find a towel to hide my face from God.
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 11:26 AM on May 20, 2016 [24 favorites]

A few years ago, my company held its annual picnic at a nearby amusement park. Said amusement park had an outdoor arena for sports and concerts, and on this particular night Nickelback was the featured artist. Thankfully, the sound did not carry very well into the park, but the park's closing time and the concert's end roughly coincided.

So instead of driving smoothly out the nearest exit to return to my home, I was stuck in about an hour of gridlock because Nickelback fans were clogging the lanes. I stopped at a gas station about two miles down the road to fill up, and I was surrounded by carloads of Happy Nickelback Fans wearing their Official Nickelback Concert T-Shirts and loudly discussing the Amazing Nickelback Show they'd just witnessed.

Friends, I am not a violent person by nature. It is out of character for me to go to the back of my car, pull out the Tire Iron of Truth, and strike a series of heavy blows on behalf of music, culture, goodness, light and All Good People. But on that night, I came very close to that, and no jury would have convicted me.
posted by delfin at 11:28 AM on May 20, 2016 [23 favorites]

Bawitdaba da bang da bang diggy diggy diggy, I tell you what.
posted by infinitywaltz at 11:29 AM on May 20, 2016 [14 favorites]

I remember seeing (or maybe hearing?) Bob Goldthwait do standup. At one point he started telling the audience a story and he asked "What's the name of that band that sucks?" and the audience immediatly answered "Nickleback", as if they are the official Band That Sucks.

Here's the story he told.
posted by bondcliff at 11:34 AM on May 20, 2016 [9 favorites]

Seriously though, 1000 musicians don't show up to play "How You Remind Me".
posted by Talez at 11:35 AM on May 20, 2016 [4 favorites]

What's next, are we going to reconsider Phish?
posted by Nelson at 11:36 AM on May 20, 2016 [1 favorite]

What's next, are we going to reconsider Phish?

Hey.
posted by brennen at 11:38 AM on May 20, 2016

My son thinks Linkin Park is rad.
posted by Johnny Waterbed at 11:43 AM on May 20, 2016

So anyway. The article. The article was actually pretty good. Probably the best "so Nickelback sucks, right, but what does it mean" piece I've read.

I don't know how I feel about this being a genre.
posted by brennen at 11:49 AM on May 20, 2016 [3 favorites]

That article brought to my attention the existence of both the musical group Attila, and the fact that they have a Vevo channel.

Those two facts are all you need to know about the state of the music industry.
posted by Apocryphon at 11:49 AM on May 20, 2016

That was an interesting article but I don't think it really addressed the thesis expressed in the title except to briefly say Nickelback is a symptom of the culture wars that rose to prominence in the 90s.

Spend enough time in the comment-section salt mines, and you begin to notice that a lot of fans protest a little too much, and may in fact get off on the Nickelhate and not being hipsters (whatever that means). It certainly seems like the band does.

It’s a strange sensation, wondering if people are listening to a band at you.

So Nickelback is the musical equivalent of "rolling coal". Fantastic.
posted by Sangermaine at 11:55 AM on May 20, 2016 [13 favorites]

Rick Astley won the 80's culture war.
posted by T.D. Strange at 11:57 AM on May 20, 2016 [3 favorites]

I'm clearly somewhere deep in the rocker divide, and the only song of NB's I think I've heard is 'How you remind me'. I don't know how many records they've sold, but I don't really think of them as having won anything.
Plus, if the only person really defending you is Avril Lavigne, and that's pretty much just because she married you, what does that really say about the quality of your music?
posted by signal at 11:57 AM on May 20, 2016

Damn conservatives and their bans on post-third trimester abortions.
posted by nequalsone at 11:59 AM on May 20, 2016

Didn't their breakout song come out in 2001? Why are they considered a 90s band?
posted by I-baLL at 12:01 PM on May 20, 2016 [2 favorites]

Damn conservatives and their bans on post-third trimester abortions.

thatsthejoke.jpg
posted by Talez at 12:03 PM on May 20, 2016

Didn't their breakout song come out in 2001? Why are they considered a 90s band?

Yeah, I feel like Nickelback fits more into the post-9/11 "you're either with us or against us" era of the culture war. That's when they rose to prominence, and that was a really, really divisive time.
posted by Anyamatopoeia at 12:05 PM on May 20, 2016 [5 favorites]

Plus, if the only person really defending you is Avril Lavigne, and that's pretty much just because she married you, what does that really say about the quality of your music?

Avril Lavigne: the Shit Alanis Morisette.
posted by acb at 12:05 PM on May 20, 2016 [2 favorites]

Didn't their breakout song come out in 2001? Why are they considered a 90s band?

Like nu-metal bands, they were part of the post-grunge wave that preceded the brief rebirth of rock by the the bands. (Strokes, Hives, Vines, White Stripes, et al.)
posted by Apocryphon at 12:07 PM on May 20, 2016 [3 favorites]

the existence of both the musical group Attila, and the fact that they have a Vevo channel.

No shit Billy Joel would have a Vevo page.
posted by pxe2000 at 12:10 PM on May 20, 2016 [1 favorite]

Avril Lavigne: the Shit Alanis Morisette.

Alanis Morisette put through The Matrix filter.
posted by Talez at 12:11 PM on May 20, 2016 [2 favorites]

Eventually, they’d just say “fuck it” and hire Mutt Lange to gloss up their album Dark Horse.

Holy shit, I found the answer.
posted by Existential Dread at 12:16 PM on May 20, 2016

the existence of both the musical group Attila, and the fact that they have a Vevo channel.

Whatever you do, don't look up Fronzilla

why do i know about these things
posted by Existential Dread at 12:17 PM on May 20, 2016

Do they have a big label corporate-cultivated Vevo? Because that's the craziest thing about that Attila shit.
posted by Apocryphon at 12:43 PM on May 20, 2016

thatsthejoke.jpg

YOU'LL HAVE TO SPEAK UP! I LOST MOST OF MY HEARING LISTENING TO DROPDEAD, LIGHTNING BOLT, AND ARAB ON RADAR IN THE 90S....
posted by nequalsone at 12:46 PM on May 20, 2016 [1 favorite]

Didn't their breakout song come out in 2001? Why are they considered a 90s band?

The answers to all these questions and more are found in the article...
posted by Sangermaine at 12:47 PM on May 20, 2016 [8 favorites]

Seriously though, 1000 musicians don't show up to play "How You Remind Me"

Goddamn it, I was really hoping that would be a parody video where 1000 people actually didn't show up to play a Nickelback song, and it's just one guy playing bass. But really fucking playing it hard.
posted by uncleozzy at 12:50 PM on May 20, 2016 [8 favorites]

You know who the opposite of cool is in Canada? Former prime minister of Canada, Stephen Harper. You know who liked Nickelback? Former prime minister of Canada, Stephen Harper. 'Nuff said.
posted by Ashwagandha at 12:56 PM on May 20, 2016 [3 favorites]

Plus, if the only person really defending you is Avril Lavigne, and that's pretty much just because she married you, what does that really say about the quality of your music?

I'll go for it. 'How You Remind Me' is an absolute stone-cold classic of pop songwriting, which is ruined for everyone by the clueless Nirvana-karaoke singing style and bad lyrics.

A friend of mine pointed out to me years back that 'HYRM' seemed unstoppably huge because instead of having a verse/pre-chorus/chorus/bridge type of structure, it was just ALL CHORUS ALL THE TIME after the first verse.

It's a similar mess to that other monster soft-rock classic, 'Don't Stop Believing', which famously doesn't get to the chorus until it's about 20 seconds from ending.

'HYRM' starts with a verse but then has the refrain line placed in what is clearly the pre-chorus. Then the actual chorus starts but doesn't mention the title but instead seems to play with the idea of a chorus by having the hook as a madly exaggerated up-down melody rather than a confident thickening of texture. After that you do get the thickened texture of backing vocals which would normally accompany a chorus but with no proper lyrics, just to cool down. (And a little major third added in the second time round, which is like a musical wink at you). And then the second half of the final verse then decides to incorporate the pre-chorus title line anyway! Then before the studio almost blows up we have the stop-time drop out with the killer line 'FOR HANDING YOU A HEART WORTH BREAKING!' which comes out of the radio like a freight train when you're in the car or at work.

That is one way to get the biggest selling single of the year.
posted by Coda Tronca at 1:02 PM on May 20, 2016 [18 favorites]

Also holy shit, As Good As Dead just turned 20? Goddamn I love that album. I am gonna blast it with the windows down on the drive home today.
posted by uncleozzy at 1:03 PM on May 20, 2016 [1 favorite]

That is one way to get the biggest selling single of the year.

Shouldn't this go in the "dark patterns" thread
posted by prize bull octorok at 1:10 PM on May 20, 2016 [6 favorites]

(It’s also worth pointing out that Nickelback are far from the worst band around. Ladies and gentlemen, I submit for your approval: Attila.)

I wish I had not clicked on that link. I used to have hope. Not much, but it was precious.
posted by bongo_x at 1:11 PM on May 20, 2016

Here is Sum 41 covering "How You Remind Me" on MTV's 2001 New Year's Eve show.
posted by mhum at 1:31 PM on May 20, 2016

Here is Sum 41 covering "How You Remind Me" on MTV's 2001 New Year's Eve show.

..featuring another guy who was married to Avril Lavigne at one point. Somehow she's responsible for all of this.
posted by zempf at 1:36 PM on May 20, 2016 [5 favorites]

"Also holy shit, As Good As Dead just turned 20? Goddamn I love that album."

Getting away from the topic, but Scott Lucas is one of the nicest people I've ever met.
posted by kevinbelt at 1:40 PM on May 20, 2016

I used to really dislike Nickelback then Battlestar Galactica used one of their songs in commercials or something and after hearing snippets of it over and over I decided I liked it. So I gave them a bit of a chance and found that I liked several of their songs. They do have quite a few songs that annoy me too, but nothing that will make me want to gouge my eardrums out like Limp Bizkit.
posted by weretable and the undead chairs at 2:05 PM on May 20, 2016 [1 favorite]

Of course, just reading the words has triggered the weird part of my brain that needs to hear "Rollin' (Air Raid Vehicle)" every six months or so, so I'm off to find a towel to hide my face from God.

Holy poops, just you saying that triggered something in me and I had to go listen to it. I'm ashamed to say that the words and every beat of the rhythms were still embedded somewhere in my brain. Also, Good God Damn that song is so bad. So. Bad.
posted by chainsofreedom at 2:06 PM on May 20, 2016

There's also the "mash-up" of How You Remind Me and Someday (How You Remind Me of Someday). They are the exact same song! The verse, the pre-chorus, the chorus, the extended outro-chorus. And not just that, but also the time signature, the beats-per-minute, the rhythm, the meter. All of it exactly the same! Of course these songs would be radio friendly top 40; it's nothing but paint-by-numbers song-writing manufactured by a focus group.
posted by obscure simpsons reference at 2:07 PM on May 20, 2016 [5 favorites]

it's nothing but paint-by-numbers song-writing manufactured by a focus group.

You can't produce pop music with focus groups.

'Someday' is just them duplicating their most successful song to make more money, which is the main purpose of pop music, like Rod Stewart doing 'You Wear it Well' after 'Maggie May.'
posted by Coda Tronca at 2:18 PM on May 20, 2016 [3 favorites]

I just asked my 16 year old what he thought about Nickleback. "I think they get a lot of flack." There's your Millenial perspective.
posted by Biblio at 2:18 PM on May 20, 2016 [2 favorites]

Didn't their breakout song come out in 2001? Why are they considered a 90s band

Their damage to the space-time continuum will keep scientists busy for years.
posted by dr_dank at 2:23 PM on May 20, 2016 [3 favorites]

I-baLL: em>"Didn't their breakout song come out in 2001? Why are they considered a 90s band?"

The article explains that. It's actually pretty good - worth reading.
posted by koeselitz at 2:34 PM on May 20, 2016

This is how you remind me that I need to RTFA?
posted by I-baLL at 2:36 PM on May 20, 2016 [6 favorites]

'Someday' is just them duplicating their most successful song to make more money, which is the main purpose of pop music

Of course. But what makes Nickelback annoying is that they pretend that they are not doing this. They pose as edgy rock stars who are all about the music, not the money. Which is itself a paint-by-numbers way to promote a pop band. Everything about them is fake.
posted by obscure simpsons reference at 2:41 PM on May 20, 2016

um, isn't nickelback pretty over now? - didn't bands like shinedown and breaking benjamin and disturbed take over?
posted by pyramid termite at 2:53 PM on May 20, 2016

oh, and WHAT is how you remind me? - i've been subjected to that damned song for countless years and it STILL doesn't parse for me

at least photograph is a decent song and makes sense
posted by pyramid termite at 2:57 PM on May 20, 2016

Beyond the pop cultural anti-icon dross of the band being examined, the article is a great exploration into grappling the uncomfortable contradictions of the American public- and electorate.
posted by Apocryphon at 3:02 PM on May 20, 2016 [1 favorite]

um, isn't nickelback pretty over now? - didn't bands like shinedown and breaking benjamin and disturbed take over?

Oh hell, DISTURBED? I'm offended at the idea that Disturbed is some sort of spiritual successor to Nickelback.

Breaking Benjamin is pretty spot on though.
posted by chainsofreedom at 3:09 PM on May 20, 2016 [2 favorites]

This Is How You Remind Me (Of How Much Better My Life Has Become Since I Bought An iPod/iPhone)
posted by entropicamericana at 3:15 PM on May 20, 2016

Avril Lavigne: the Shit Alanis Morisette.

I'm guessing that this is on some logarithmic scale of horribleness. People seem to forget just how wretched Alanis' music was/is.
posted by Jessica Savitch's Coke Spoon at 3:35 PM on May 20, 2016 [2 favorites]

I'm guessing that this is on some logarithmic scale of horribleness. People seem to forget just how wretched Alanis' music was/is.

David Coulier will never forget... does this make him the most important comedian of the 90's!? Oh dear God, we've opened Pandora's Box!
posted by 1f2frfbf at 4:04 PM on May 20, 2016

I mean... Nickelback were bad, but I never understood why they were considered exceptionally, superlatively bad. Contemporaries like Creed, Live and Crazy Town were so, so very much worse. Plenty of bands at that time were downright toxic; Nickelback is more like eating cold oatmeal. It's unpleasant and unenjoyable but it's not going to wave it's dick in your face all COME M'LADY COME COME M'LADY over an RHCP sample.
posted by Aya Hirano on the Astral Plane at 5:07 PM on May 20, 2016 [2 favorites]

I'm guessing that this is on some logarithmic scale of horribleness. People seem to forget just how wretched Alanis' music was/is.

She seems to have a good sense of humour about it; rewriting Ironic for the age of Tinder and selfie sticks, and replacing Molly Ringwald as the Grauniad's agony aunt. Which looks like more than can be said about Lavigne.
posted by acb at 5:46 PM on May 20, 2016 [2 favorites]

Nickelstats.

LOOK AT THIS GRAAAAAAAAPH
posted by crazy with stars at 5:58 PM on May 20, 2016

I mean... Nickelback were bad, but I never understood why they were considered exceptionally, superlatively bad. Contemporaries like Creed, Live and Crazy Town were so, so very much worse.

I never understood it either. There is so much terrible music out there. Nickelback is solidly mediocre. They warrant neither praise nor ridicule. They are the Target of music.

In contrast, just being reminded of the existence of Crazy Town makes me kind of angry.
posted by dephlogisticated at 6:03 PM on May 20, 2016 [9 favorites]

I'm sort of contractually obligated to defend Crazy Town because mrsozzy really loves "Butterfly," but I just don't have it in me. It's not good.
posted by uncleozzy at 6:13 PM on May 20, 2016

Contemporaries like Creed, Live and Crazy Town were so, so very much worse

HEY.
posted by XtinaS at 6:20 PM on May 20, 2016 [4 favorites]

creed was unbearable and their drummer drags the beat, which i cannot ignore or tolerate
posted by pyramid termite at 6:22 PM on May 20, 2016

oh, and no fair picking on live
posted by pyramid termite at 6:22 PM on May 20, 2016 [2 favorites]

I like Nickleback.
posted by Deoridhe at 6:34 PM on May 20, 2016 [2 favorites]

1994 was a long, ceaseless stream of Lightning Crashes. You could not escape that song. Like an oil spill, it saturated and polluted everything.

Then, a few years ago, some weird bug caused Windows Media Player to link every song in my music collection to the album cover of Mental Jewelry. I don't even own Mental Jewelry. Live just manages to infect everything it touches.
posted by dephlogisticated at 6:35 PM on May 20, 2016 [4 favorites]

Yeah, I hate Live mostly because "Lightning Crashes" is a fucking Hallmark Channel abomination of a rock song, but they're actually not bad, and I've paid to see them more than once.
posted by uncleozzy at 6:35 PM on May 20, 2016

oh, and no fair picking on live

Am I making the dolphins cry?
posted by Aya Hirano on the Astral Plane at 6:35 PM on May 20, 2016 [5 favorites]

I am not a huge Nickelback hater / liker, but one song of theirs I do like. I encountered it when playing Singstar with my boyfriend. Singstar is a karaoke-sort-of video game that features the actual artists and actual videos and you sing along with them.

Anyway, the video for Savin' Me is amazing, imho. One of my favorite short films ever. (Just ignore the parts that show the band, that's not the interesting part, though I guess it helps with pacing the story parts of the video).
posted by megafauna at 6:50 PM on May 20, 2016

okay I'll just say it so y'all won't have to...my favorite band sucks.
posted by a humble nudibranch at 7:05 PM on May 20, 2016 [2 favorites]

Savin' Me, that was the song I was trying to think of earlier. Was used promoting Battlestar and thus I learned to like Nickelback.

Live had one or two super annoying songs and a bunch of great songs.
posted by weretable and the undead chairs at 7:38 PM on May 20, 2016

I'll say it: I loves me some Linkin Park.

I once wanted to do an ask because I loves me some bands with two frontmen (mmmm Driveby Truckers), but knew if I invoked Linkin Park on the green, I'd get summarily chuckled at.
posted by joycehealy at 8:27 PM on May 20, 2016 [3 favorites]

As a rural working class person who listens to the radio, I resent the implication that I am Nickleback's demographic. I have been thoroughly sick of them since that awful song on the Spiderman soundtrack.

That said, they aren't nearly the worst band of the 90s. Incubus, Creed, Limp Bizkit, all as bad or worse. But the absolute nadir of 90s rock is Counting Crows. I only hope someday Adam Duritz is held accountable for 'Mr. Jones'.
posted by pattern juggler at 9:25 PM on May 20, 2016 [4 favorites]

So many objectively bad 1990s music acts out there to choose from, and Nickelback had to take the bullet as being the archetype of rock awfulness. The 90s in particular were a veritable ocean of awfulness. From Ted Nugent's Damn Yankees at the start to Devil without a Cause at the end.
posted by blucevalo at 9:33 PM on May 20, 2016

I revisited Linkin Park's Hybrid Theory and was struck by what a lovely sugary piece of pop it was, once you look past the surface agitation. All the guitars and synths are lovingly EQed and placed.
posted by solarion at 10:13 PM on May 20, 2016 [3 favorites]

I always mentally mash up Limp Bizkit and Linkin Park into Bizkit Park, the quintessential nu-metal placeholder. (See also: The Kaiser Monkeys: the quintessential 00s NME/Carling indie placeholder, and Assemblage VNV, the quintessential goth-techno placeholder.)
posted by acb at 4:41 AM on May 21, 2016 [3 favorites]

But the absolute nadir of 90s rock is Counting Crows.

Have you seen them live? Adam Duritz puts on a hell of a show.
posted by chainsofreedom at 7:26 AM on May 21, 2016 [1 favorite]

Yes, so long as you are more interested in hearing him ramble about nothing while the band vamps than in hearing him sing songs.
posted by uncleozzy at 7:31 AM on May 21, 2016 [2 favorites]

I don't like Nickelback by any means, but their singles are perfectly written pop-rock songs and the production quality on them is impeccable. It's still my theory that Hum's You'd Prefer An Astronaut and Downward Is Heavenward laid the blueprints on how to mix and master that post-Nirvana sound. I mean, listen to the song "Comin' Home" off the latter album. It's my least favorite song on that album but I feel like that's the sound everyone tried to go for. I feel the same about Creed ever since I heard them in a commercial for Titan AE: not a fan but the work on those songs is amazing. I'd love to take a really heavy, muddy, scooped-guitar-mids metalcore band and basically replicate the engineering and post-production used on Creed and Nickelback on them instead, although I'm sure that's been done by now.

As for Linkin Park, I enjoy their music alongside the production on their songs. They fit a lot of different elements in their songs and they all fit in their respective spots across the spectrum really well. I think the difference is that they're loud, a victim of the loudness wars. That's really the major different between the production on Hum's albums and these ones: everyone wanted the same crispness and for everything to sit properly in the appropriate areas of the audio spectrum, but they didn't want the dynamicism that Hum's records have. Besides, Hum is a much better band anyway.

Limp Bizkit is still one of my favorites and always has been and I don't care what anyone says. They had some sort of energy that wasn't tapped into by other bands, that was like a mixture of "party" and "rage". Like when you go to a party and just want to destroy everything but it's your boy's boys' house so you'll nurse a Monster before you start pounding nattys and after a few cases of that it's time to throw Rollin on the boombox. The video for that song was filmed at the top of the south World Trade Center building almost a year before 9/11.

For what it's worth, Wes Borland is a very inventive guitarist. People always compare Limp Bizkit to Rage Against the Machine. Tom Morello took that funky guitar style and mixed it with some effects pedals to come up with Rage's sound, but Borland really got into the groovy, metal, almost Meshuggah riffs that ended up being Limp Bizkit's sound.

This is a great video of him performing a song on his own, which ends up sounding very ambient and post-rockish.
posted by gucci mane at 9:23 AM on May 21, 2016 [2 favorites]

Oh and here is a song off his solo album that he released in April. It's pretty good.
posted by gucci mane at 9:35 AM on May 21, 2016

I have a deep distaste for the snobbery in our culture. It's everywhere you turn. Music snobs. Wine snobs. Film snobs. Fashion snobs. Tech snobs. Food snobs. Fitness snobs.

It's like someone enjoying or using or wearing or drinking or doing something you dislike automatically becomes this referendum on how cool or in touch they are. Fuck cool. I love the fact that people out there get true pleasure out of listening to Nickelback.

I devour objective critical analysis because it broadens my perspective. But when it crosses into condescension towards people who don't have a similar viewpoint I immediately nope out. It ends up being, to me at least, a flashing neon sign signaling their own insecurity.

To each his own. You do you. How utterly boring this world would be if we all liked the same things!
posted by bologna on wry at 10:07 AM on May 21, 2016 [4 favorites]

I have a feeling How You Remind Me may be a far worse offender than the average Bizkit and Linkin Park track in the Loudness Wars, retrospectively. But acts like Oasis were breaking through with records that were just ridiculously 'hot' at the time and it was something new on your ears at first.
posted by Coda Tronca at 10:49 AM on May 21, 2016

For my money, the best work by Wes Borland is the Strange Fruit.
posted by signal at 11:01 AM on May 21, 2016 [1 favorite]

I really like this article, especially for the way it positions Nickelback within the eternal war within whiteness that constitutes such a large part of our epoch. The way they've become the avatars for a form of cultural consumption and identity we must disavow, lest we be judged uncool or part of the problem. The thing with the repressed, though, is it has a habit of returning, and what fascinates me is the rise (abortive; belated; ridiculous, to be sure) of a rock of pure ressentiment. Interesting, to be sure.
posted by Sonny Jim at 11:20 AM on May 21, 2016 [2 favorites]

All the guitars and synths are lovingly EQed and placed.

Out of curiosity, I paulstretched “In The End” - the result was no “U Smile”, I can tell you that.
posted by Going To Maine at 1:06 PM on May 21, 2016 [1 favorite]

Bawitdaba da bang da bang diggy diggy diggy, I tell you what.

Oh are you referring to the opening titles music for Woody Allen's Manhattan?
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 2:35 PM on May 21, 2016

I was living in the US during 9/11. A few days after the towers came down, they had a 'tribute to heroes' (or something ) concert, where musicians got together to sing and raise money. Fred Durst was one of the people singing, and they did a corny cover of Pink Floyd's "Wish You Were Here". At one point, at the line "How I wish, how I wish you were here", Durst turns to the camera, makes tough-guy puppy dog eyes, and soulfully sings "I'm so glad, I'm so glad you are heeeeeere".

And that's when I knew the terrorists had won.

I'm not saying this is the only reason I moved back to Chile a while later, but it didn't make the decision any harder than it already was.
posted by signal at 3:28 PM on May 21, 2016 [8 favorites]

I once wanted to do an ask because I loves me some bands with two frontmen...

posted by joycehealy at 8:27 PM on May 20 [2 favorites +] [!]

You would probably loves you some Monster Truck. Hard-rocking and guitarist and bassist do a fair bit of taking turns on lead. Can be hard to discern because the two sound almost identical but I've seen them live (very good) and was struck by that.

Sweet Mountain River

Seven Seas Blues
posted by raider at 12:55 PM on May 28, 2016