NME says the libertines are the most culturally significant band in the UK today (or something) - thoughts?

significance = "The state or quality of being significant" e.g consensus held be a large number people belonging to sub-culture

Cultural = culture "patterns, traits, and products considered as the expression of a particular period, class, community, or population"

e.g Joy division 1979/1980 [Joy Division albums sold well throughout the 80s and become an era defining band for many]
e.g The Smiths 1983 - 1987 [massive suport: NME/Melody Maker/ Sounds - readers & writers]
e.g Tricky - Maxinquaye [defined trip hop sound of the mid 90s]

Tricky: Maxinquaye was more a landmark album compared to Massive Attack: Protection

The Stereophonics are NOT culturally significant ;-)

Sorry, you're both wrong, Portishead was the album that people tried (and failed) to copy the most.

Body: Ok, so my good friend turned me onto this new band The Libertines. And may I say... freakin' AWESOME!! It has been so long since I heard songs sooo good and sooo rockin' that I have to blast it and actually jump around and dance and shake my booty! Seriously, this band rocks, and I mean that cool old fashioned funk edgey raw type of rock, with the catchiest hooks, but pure music all the way thru. An album that will make your head bop and foot tap involuntarily, for sure. Everyone should run out and buy it NOW!! You will NOT be dissappointed!

best selling single in UK last year - Busted
best selling album in UK last year - Coldplay

HI DERE

significance = "The state or quality of being significant" e.g consensus held be a large number people belonging to sub-culture

Cultural = culture "patterns, traits, and products considered as the expression of a particular period, class, community, or population"

Coldplay and Busted are more culturally significant than grime or whatever. Bland Retro music can be culturally significant too.

i should say though, that while wiley and dizzee are very exciting to me,
so are the libertines. theyre one of the few bands who DO *excite* me.

With NO direct weekly competition to compete against: NME has free reign to control a certain type of agenda. [e.g i don't see Kerrang as a direct competitor - as it mainly focuses on a niche: loud rock music primarily aimed at teenagers]

Also online in term's of music NEWS - there are a very few UK websites that publish original/ breaking music news - throughout the week - that have a significant readership base.

If a publisher had the guts to launch a diverse music weekly backed up with a well resourced daily updated website - with higher expectations - only then would the NME be under pressure to change.

Until this happens NME/ NME.com - have unfortunately the brand awareness - to a certian extent - to control the mass media agenda for [rock] music in Britain.

I carry on the spirit of opposition [re: Melody Maker/ Sounds] to the NME's bullshit agenda on my blog in 2004 - and Razorlight, Keane, Libertines, Kings of Leon, Jet, The Ordinary Boys and hundreds of other NME poxy approved bands - don't register !

OTM sickmouthy. wiley is a producer, not an MC.

If Wiley and the Libs exist in different worlds (which they don't) then why bother harshing on the Libs for innovativeness? It's guitar rock, and there's not all that much leeway within it.

x-post; yeah they do and I do.

I've never heard Up The Bracket but this is probably very true. Massive point in the Libertines' favour - they're not Oasis. It could be worse, it could be 1995 all over again.

Just.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA. Wooooohooooooohahahahahahahahahahaaaaaaaaaa. Heeeeheeeheeeheeeheeeeeeeee. Oohahahahaha. (Wipes eyes).

Hahahhhahahha if only you knew. I have friends who were at the so-called "oasis riot" at newcastle riverside back in the day. see that paper bag? tougher than the gallaghers!

Really, how old are you? If you're a Sleeper fan you must be at least 25. Jesus.

But maybe people don't want to be told that much about their own lives? And see the Libertines as an escape?

I like The Sugababes but people don't go hay-wire over them and they don't EFFECT people's lives in the way The Libs do/ have done.
Watch their audience when they appear on CD:UK or TOTP! I can't think of any way in which the Sugababes don't affect people's lives where the Libertines do.

But the majority of the audience are *girls*. Calum doesn't like girls.

"...they bring out the poet in people, uniting that legion of lost romantics drawn to the artist currently being swallowed beneath a sea of smack withing pete docherty"

made me want to knock the writer flat on his fucking back. In the end, I couldn't hate or even dislike the band, even though the sound like probably my second least favourite british band ever, but the fukcing bullshit hype that surrounds them? You know, I mean americanb new-age artists have been playing internet-advertised house gigs for how many years? How long have fucking marillion been hawking themselves on the web, and pushing their band and their fans as some kind of community? But no, in order to have any meaning, it has to be yet more 1/2 baked punk revivalism. It's fucking sad.

That NME quote is a fucking disgrace.

x-post

Yeah, but a band who combines that sense of intimate community with actual marketing potential is a very rare thing indeed. Devil's advocacy in full effect, you understand, but that's how it is

Are you seriously saying that DD weren't literate? They had a lot more going for them than hairspray, eyeliner and billowing shirts. (OK, so "Girls on Film" isn't Shakespeare....)

Writing is only that person's particular opinion. A lot of "fucking writers" prolly love DD just as much. (If all writers loved the same bands, where's the fun in arguing?)

P.S. Ned was at a Placebo concert. Placebo Vs Libertines? No contest.

sounds like it's YOU who is upset that some people may actually disagree with you and, worse, are capable of arguing why much better than you can.

You can't blame him surely?

1/oasis play at newcastle riverside

2/they are piss, as in he sound like they can barely be bothered playing.

3/a person, unknown to the audience, gets up onstage and punches noel gallagher.

there are 2 theories extant as to who this person is:
a/ someone from sunderland
b/ an associate of the band who has been put up to it b/c they can't be arsed to play

4/oasis leave the stage, grumbling
(exit, pursued by a mackem haha)

5/ my friends, A BUNCH OF FLOPPY-FRINGED INDIE KIDS, go out to remonstrate w/the band, apologise for the violence, ask them to continue playing.

6/ oasis, en mass, piss themselves with ph34r, get into their van, and drive away at speed, actually crashing their van into a parked car in their haste to get away from the terrifying threat of A BUNCH OF FLOPPY FRINGED INDIE KIDS.

7/ the story of this event has grown in the telling. What is related above = WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED.

8/ conclusion - oasis = SOFTIES hahahhahaahhahahhahhahahhahahahhahah

all of the floppy fringed indie kids are either friends or aquaintances of mine. I had this plan to interview them all, and write up an article abt the whole event, but meh.

ps. head shirley collins other day. am-in-love!!

And I thought you were married?

I reckon Liam would still chin you mate. He was probably just afraid of getting scurvy from some Geordies. Know what I mean?

The Libertines reunite for 2010 Reading And Leeds Festivals...

http://www.nme.com/news/the-libertines/50432

... and a reported £1.5m

pete-bashing here already:
The Rolling "Pete is Back in the Libertines" thread...

And while the NME waffles on about dull-arsed indie rock, da kids are listening to music that sounds like robots fighting, made by eighteen year-olds in their council estate bedrooms.

― Wooden, Thursday, 22 July 2004 12:29 (5 years ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

good times, great memories

"I like The Sugababes but people don't go hay-wire over them and they don't EFFECT people's lives in the way The Libs do/ have done."

"Watch their audience when they appear on CD:UK or TOTP!"

if this is the case, bryan adams must REALLY touch people, considering the rapturous response with which I and the rest of the TOTP audience greeted all SIX renditions of one of his dismal latter-day flops.

(sorry for digging up the past...just read through this thread, and the above quote amused me greatly. it's essentially arguing for canned laughter as a marker of cultural significance. but yeah, the libertines and all associated musics are godawful and always were.)

Aren't the Council Estate Bedrooms some shit backpacker rap crew?

Thinking about starting a generic thread for complaining about magazines targetting their core market, not sure what to call it yet. "OMG TEH MNE LIEKS A THING" or something

In my day we used to make dull-arsed indie rock in our council estate bedrooms

da kids I know are equally fond of dull-arsed indie rock AND music that sounds like robots fighting.

I think the nineties revival is going to herald a return to dull-arsed indie rock. kids are going to rediscover what made that style of music so great, but inject it with their own, new dull-arsed ideas.

didn't that already happen in the first half of the '00s?

i wouldn't really call that a revival, more a hangover from '90s dull-arsed indie rock. the tweenies dull-arsed indie rock revival is going to be a sea-change in dull-arsed indie rock stylings.

great. can't wait. I've pencilled it in in my diary.

the fuck? mountains of dull indie rock in the 00s, maybe i just got to these guys first and that's why i love them so. it was nice of them to stop after 2 albums, though.. no need for some gunky uk american idiot thing

Why is it that musos despise songs with key changes, chefs want to stab people who put ketchup on their food and ILM-ers hate the Libertines?
It's obvious the NME were always going to love this band because there was enough soap opera to keep music journos busy for the first half of the decade. Added to that, they looked great on the cover - from Carnaby Street to junkie chic in two albums.
But irritating as it may be (to some), Doherty wrote great anthems and they played them with the excitement of the young Who. They really had something.
Sometimes they veered into cockernee knees up muvver brown territory, but so did Blur, who seem to have been forgiven their sins now.
Just because the NME like them, it dosen't mean you have to hate them.

This band completely passed me by. Can you show me some great anthems played with the excitment of the young Who?

The young These Animal Men maybe.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlrSwHHkCoc

Ha-ha. Colonel Poo OTM.

http://www.nme.com/news/the-libertines/50477

The Libertines play guerilla gig together in London

Band reunite in front of the world's media to play pub gig
March 31, 2010

The Libertines played together tonight (March 31) for the first time since announcing their reformation, taking to the stage in London for an impromptu show.

The band were originally supposed to be holiding a press conference at north London pub The Boogaloo to discuss why they decided to reform to play this year's Reading And Leeds Festivals. However, after a 25 minute chat with the press, Pete Doherty, Carl Barat and John Hassall all strapped on guitars and played their first songs as The Libertines since 2004.

The band, with drummer Gary Powell standing in the wings, kicked off with a cover of old standard 'Georgia On My Mind', seaguing the song into 'The Good Old Days' from The Libertines' debut album 'Up The Bracket'.

Doherty and Barat shared vocals - as well as sly winks and jokes - throughout the set, with Hassall also chipping in from time to time. Playing a range of tracks from their career, the band aired the likes of 'Death On The Stairs', 'France' and 'Can't Stand Me Now'.

Band friend 'Rabbi' John Connor - a regular at early Libertines gigs - also joined them for a run through of sea shanty 'Sally Brown'.

After playing a short segment of the solo from 'Time For Heroes', Barat instructed the audience he was "going for a piss", and with that, the rest of his bandmates decided to finish the gig.

Check NME.COM later for video footage of the gig and press conference.

The Libertines played:

'Georgia On My Mind'
'The Good Old Days'
'Music When The Lights Go Out'
'France'
'Death On The Stairs'
'Sally Brown'
'Can't Stand Me Now'
'Time For Heroes'