defend the indefensible: BROS

And "I owe you nothing' is not to be sniffed at, neither.

you mean 'I Owe You Nothing' (re #1, tho it's not as good as WWIBF itself)

Is there a better first three singles treble whammy?

Ok, probably.

Haha, I'm old and foolish enough to remember/admit with only a tinge of embarrasment plenty of my friends getting this before they realised WHAT IT ACTUALLY WAS. Boybands seemed more interesting, back then. Better tunes.

I can't see the 2010 Sascha Funke equivalent dusting off "Backstreet's Back" somehow. I may well be wrong.

The way whichever Goss it was pronounces "Marx" in "When Will I Be Famous" was a nadir of the '80s comparable only to the miners' defeat and Tiannamen Square.

The way whichever Goss it was pronounces "Stalin" in "When Will I Be Famous" was a nadir of the '80s comparable to the time at school when the kids called me "fatty fat fat" and I knew their parents voted Tory. They had to. Just had to.

You are on the right? I HOPE YOU DIE, EVIL TORY VAMPIRE!

That was as predictable as any Tory sprouting off about the free economy.

Marlin? sounds a bit fishy to me

Oh yeah, cos it sucked!

Good pop, the famous singles at least.

They were a bit creepy.

No mention of "Sister" yet I notice, ammo for the detractors.

I still like "When Will I Be Famous?" so at a minimum that makes them better than Skrewdriver.

"I Owe You Nothing" was voted the best single OF ALL TIME by Radio One listeners in the late 1980s.

My sister used to go out with one of their session musicians. I think he played bass.

I still love their singles. "I quit" and "I owe you nothing" are just classic pop tunes (best not played again, because I do realize those tunes only worked if you were a 15 yr old).

All I remember was that in interviews they kept banging on and on joylessly about "the industry" as though making music was a cleansing process similar to taking a cold bath or being a stormtrooper.

No wonder the bassplayer became a quite successful manager. I think he (or was it someone else in the band?) dated one of the Mel & Kim girls.

And Matt Goss has just not long ago released a bloody fantastic album, where as Luke is doing well in the movie world.

Craig also now manages Pink among others.

have you ever tried listening to music?

Truly inspiring. Somebody photoshop this:

http://cache.viewimages.com/xc/57366604.jpg?v=1&c=ViewImages&k=2&d=8D1A55FA4F4B48DB8E25599DB2E5F5CA284831B75F48EF45

Luckily they didn't last long.
(And I don't give a damn if they were tories. What counts is they sucked musically, unlike great Tory voting musicians such as Mike Oldfield and Rick Wakeman)

Great thread.

(Well. I only revived this because, thumbing through the Chris Heath book on the PSB last night, I noted how obsessed they were with Bros)

They're awesome to hang with for brewskis and bong rips.

It is my favorite song by the artist called Panda Bear.

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2016/oct/05/bros-matt-luke-goss-reunion-london-o2-arena-2017-tickets

Going to watch Bros again. pic.twitter.com/QzLmtkVbXO

— John Rain (@MrKenShabby) December 25, 2018

Currently on iPlayer. DO NOT MISS THIS. Unexpected film highlight of the year. It's like Nigel Tufnel and David Brent had twins.

it was absolutely brilliant.
best thing I have seen so far this festive season.
so many WTF moments.

it's pretty tense. the scenes with them arguing are a bit too real in place

places*

Had to watch it again as there were too many howlers to fully absorb the first time

I've looked at Matt and Luke's Twitters and they appear to be pleased with the documentary (at present)

Any hope of seeing this outside of UK?

Best option might be Rakuten, that's how I saw it.

This film is definitely...something.

Hey Ned, can you explain / link? Googling Rakuten + bros + bbc = ?

it looks like it could stop a bullet without getting even slightly mussed

Re. Anvil, Lips certainly came across as much more of an entitled, whiny prick than Luke imo

Best option might be Rakuten, that's how I saw it.

It’s still on iPlayer for 26 days. You can count towards the ratings!

My VPN has had trouble with iPlayer so I had to do a workaround.

so uh their dying, 60lb mum got on a plane to go and spend her last hours with her boys rather than... them flying to be with her? wtf

The way whichever Goss it was pronounces "Marx" in "When Will I Be Famous" was a nadir of the '80s comparable only to the miners' defeat and Tiannamen Square.

Had to re-listen for this. Who'd have thunk the one line I never made out was a reference to reading Marx!? (I heard the song A LOT at the time, thanks to obsessed siblings and cousins.)

so uh their dying, 60lb mum got on a plane to go and spend her last hours with her boys rather than... them flying to be with her? wtf
― H00kup with Jaundice Singles!! (bizarro gazzara), Sunday, 30 December 2018 21:30 (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

sleep bandana was in the wash

only had crispy bandanas.

Finally finished this and I have to say that although I came in for the LOLz (and there were quite a few), this story of sibling insecurities and resentments turned out to be quite touching. For the first half of the film, I was cheering for poor ol' misunderstood Luke, having to deal with a narcissic cretin of a brother. By the end of it, I found Matt, dim as he is, to be the more sympathetic of the two.

agree with that even tho i feel it must be wrong.

most fucked up thing was their grandad pulling the dart out of one of them and then giving it back to them to play with

No wonder they have no understanding of modern conker laws

there was the part where they were about to go on stage where Matt was trying to get Luke hyped up and he started moaning about him not ad-libbing that made me change my affiliation a bit but i agree with Fizzles.

xxpost

could not get over the fact that they had not spoken with each other for many years, somehow thought they would be able to figure out/practise a big show following a mere 3 weeks of practise sessions with a bunch of sessioners.
and yet, they did.
i suspect a lot of actual hard work was edited out for the sake of the drama.

Wonder why the session guys were fairly old blokes

I kept thinking about how much Luke looked like Ben Kingsley out of Sexy Beast. When Matt had his strop and walked out of the room, I did expect Luke to say "What you swearing for, I ain't swearin?"

Wonder why the session guys were fairly old blokes

So Matt and Luke would look young in comparison? I could imagine Matt for sure insisting on this.

Seasoned vets familiar with diva tantrums are the obvious choice for a backing band here.

which is one aspect of what makes it so entertaining when luke decides he needs to impose some artistic creativity on the keyboardist and then has a meltdown when everyone tells him being a bellend isn't the best way to do that and rather than remembering that he hasn't played drums or apparently done anything musical in the best part of 25 years apart from dive hard into a foo fighters, sound garden authenticity vector response to the bros-h8terz he instead sees this as an extension of the Bros power dynamic and indeed the power dynamic of his entire life where he felt no one ever listened to him or let him say anything or allow him any agency at all.

i did feel a bit sorry for him when he said he went running every evening as a child just to get away from people.

I don't get why he decided to be the drummer in the first place. A boy band can have two singers, the drummer is never going to get any attention, how else was this going to pan out for egotistical twins?

Drums = probably an early sign of the authenticity vector taking hold.

by firing the bassist for drawing attention, then paying him more money than you even have in order to go away

Seasoned vets familiar with diva tantrums are the obvious choice for a backing band here.

During the footage in the rehearsal room where the twins are shouting at each other, I loved how the camera slyly pans away to the right to where the bassist is impassively fiddling with his smartphone.

Research leads me to the fact that producer/co-songwriter Nicky Graham used to play in proto-prog third-raters Tucky Buzzard, which I never knew:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=Bh-6M31Ep38

so did they reduce the set down to that one song then

Noticed a mention of Madison Square Garden, I presume this was as support, there’s no way they headlined back in the day?

(Conspicuous lack of US-specific old Bros footage)

Wikipedia list for all shows played there says not at all. Same list also says Sun City Girls in 1983 so I may have self-clowned there.

I guess if they did play Madison Square Garden it would have most likely been spporting George Michael or Michael Jackson. Can’t see them supporting the Moody Blues.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_entertainment_events_at_Madison_Square_Garden#1980s

NB that for the second leg of last year's reunion, they booked an Australian tour that consisted of one show in one city at a 13,000 capacity venue, and cancelled three weeks ahead of the date having sold a couple of hundred tickets.

Yeah the real kicker about this reunion is that they're just not THAT well loved.

Conspicuous lack of US-specific old Bros footage

They dance around it but yeah there were nothing here. Just a 'what are all these UK people talking about?' reaction. At least Frankie got legit big here with airplay.

might have supported Debbie Gibson on this date?

https://www.setlist.fm/setlist/debbie-gibson/1989/madison-square-garden-new-york-ny-43f1cfd3.html

yep there are a couple of dates listed there showing that they played usa/canada shows with debbie gibson in 1989.

bootleg on youtube: full-length, with a minute of silence here & there possibly to foil copyright robots

The documentary certainly delivers - it was worth them reforming just for this!

This is so endlessly quoteable.

"Then we called ourselves 'epitome'*, which I believe is Latin for 'abstract'"

*(pronounced "eppy tome")

that drew an actual lol from me, but I was surprised to see that many dictionaries include "abstract" as a secondary meaning, and describe its etymology as "via Latin from Greek", so I am schooled by Bros it seems

it's abstract in the academic sense though...

i think it's like abstract in the sense that epitome = the embodiment of a number of things and an abstract is a summary of something larger. i.ee they are both things which encompass other things within them. am i explaining myself well here? this might be wrong

no, that's correct

yay thanks

It's all half bobbins, half a grain of truth..

Matt was on GMB explaining that his family were highly superstitious when he was a kid, and that's why. Of course, he might be enlarging things to back it up.

My favourite bit was the 'conkers' bit.

Also, now we can actually tell them apart no bother.

they always had different faces and Matt had a broader, slightly higher haircut than Luke

It's all half bobbins, half a grain of truth..

what is?

Matt was on GMB explaining that his family were highly superstitious when he was a kid, and that's why. Of course, he might be enlarging things to back it up.

what’s why, which things, and backing what up?

I can’t tell if you’re talking about the definition of epitome throughout or

"We call it the Matt Goss-pel choir"

that drew an actual lol from me, but I was surprised to see that many dictionaries include "abstract" as a secondary meaning, and describe its etymology as "via Latin from Greek", so I am schooled by Bros it seems

"EPPY TOME", thiugh!

*though

that's how they say it around the Embankment.

"Matt Goss-pel Choir" is genuinely funny and the sort of thing I'd come up with while dicking around in the studio (if my name was Matt Goss). I know some people read it as more ego showing, but it's a good joke imo.

The good thing is, you can go anywhere in your mind. pic.twitter.com/YYjkvv0JjK

— Matt Goss (@mattgoss) March 24, 2020

loool

err to the races, i guess?