Hmm.. I don't really think they sound anything alike personally. Besides power chords, they don't really have a single thing in common.

The first two Green Day albums are somewhat listenable.. not really good, but yeah.

Screeching Weasel - Anthem for a New Tomorrow is a great album.

Trite comparisons are thinking for the vacuous.

Who cares if they play good music? They look soooooo cool!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3fZP7QC4PE

so that makes midnight boom their shittier than worst?

I like all their albums, I'm easily entertained like that.

prolix is a smokescreen for the lackluster

straight biblical greek eh?

wasn't it more that everyone loved the idea of royal trux but they spent their career trying to make an exile on main street (which they were just too mangled off the horse to do, so all their records sounded strange and new so everyone thought they were crazy and way edgy) until they reached their apex and actually did made a record that sounded like exile on main street and then everyone went "that was it!" and got on with their lives?

:)

I love no wow, saw them ( the kills that is) last week at rough trade and they were pretty great, enjoyed it more than the show at koko, i got them to sign my diary (i know, but i was drunk and it was kind of a dare, and i just wanted thank them for all the free beer, I'm not making excuses) and they were indeed very sweet people. better on record than live for me (over a headline set a drum machine lacks the emotional dynamics necessary to really tear my roofs off) but for a half hour in a smaller venue they ruled. new one is great wonky pop record so just up my alley.

oh, what is prolix?

Why have we spent 3 pages talking about this dull band?

Prolix = very nasty medical condition.

Eh?

oh, yeah i had that once, when the doctor told me i thought it was a description of my oral sex technique.

and that's another reason i really like the kills. On paper i should get a rash about them what with all their 'cool' and their 'edie sedgwick' and "uh, were totally junkie losers on a fast train to pretty corpse-ville" stuff but somehow i don't and therfore my personal prejudices and notions of "cool" are reflected back at me and i find myself challenged to dismiss a band solely because they aren't cool enough for me??!! it's a delicious conundrum and makes for sweet pop.

prolix?

I think that you confuse being 'cool' (and The Kills have the 'right' look) with the fact that their songs aren't up to scratch for the sort of thing that they would like to project on their (potential) fanbase. They remind me of a section of the crowd that went to see Royal Trux live at the time of 'Accelerator', their NME kinda brakthrough album, and were met by dissonance in the middle or inbetween the familiar songs. They like the danger but are too scared of getting their hands dirty.

DICTIONARY.COM

no, i was making a wry and self-depracating gag about my own post.

plus, in what dimension of rock does a long fringe and wearing the same jacket for ten years constitute 'real' danger? there was real danger that jennfier herrera might walk into a lamp post or burn a nightmare blim in her yashmak but that was kind of it.

Stop being pedantic, you know that I meant musically and, why not, perhaps doing smack and living a nomadic lifestyle that doesn't involve the safety of Primrose Hill's wealthy parties while you make dark and caothic rock music might constitute some form of disagreement with what is generally regarded as acceptable social behaviour in society.

that joke was so funny i didn't realise it was a joke

thanks, i do it a lot, you should see some my early work.

Royal Trux's supposed Exile obsession is a bit of a myth (and fulfilled for Hagerty back in his Pussy Galore days, when they covered the whole album.) Royal Trux weren't a problem for the industry because of their drug intake, so much as Hagerty's increasingly oblique take on his influences. When a record company has this idea that the band they're marketing is some kind of Stones fixated Kurt and Courtney roadshow, and then get delivered records that sound more like Yoko Ono covering Santana, they're screwed.

It's clear that Herrema was just as confused and frustrated as the record companies when it came to Hagerty's apparant inability to project the band via a straightforward set of reference points. He always said the 'wrong' things in interviews. When Herrema would mention Motley Crue (ironic cool), Hagerty would throw a conceptual spanner in the works by bringing up Taj Mahal.

The Kills provide the very audience described by Sarramkrop with a much more managable concept, where all the reference points are ever-present and, importantly, correct. It's interesting that since Hagerty left Royal Truxa and Herrema has taken charge of RTX, they too have become a much more straightforwardly marketable band.

Hagerty is often likened to Keith Richards for his image and drug intake, but in many ways he's closer to Brian Jones: a genuine musical talent that could never really understand the demands required of him to become a commercial success. Howling Hex is a little like Jones' ill-fated Jajouka project in this respect. I always think that above all else, Hagerty, like Jones, is a musical outsider far more than he is some-kind of life-style maverick.

I'm aware that I'm generalising massively here, by the way.

it's true and i'm sorry (i know i'm being an ass here but i am trying not stab myself up the nose with two pens at work so ..) but the only people i my experience who live anything like the lifestyle you describe are exactly the same people that when they do lay their hats, do so in Primrose Hill or whatever the parrallel of primrose hill might be in Washington. I should also add that my distaste for that is based purely on envy.

i tell you what, if yoko ono ever did do a santana cover I would buy that shit like mad.