New (Old) Propagandhi
For those of you that like(d) this band, they’re apparently releasing a few tracks from the How To Clean Everything/Less Talk days and giving the profits to Haiti.
Comments
Awesome news. That’s the last era of that band I like, and I actually love those first 2 albums. I never got down with them once they decided to become a hardcore band (or tried to).
I can’t say I’ve ever listened to them before, but I’ll give it a shot. Punk can be very hit or miss with me. If they sing in that Blink 182 emo nasal bullshit, I’m shutting it off immediately.
Yeah, John don’t even bother. They were pre-Blink 182, but they still have that snotty vocal tone. You’d like the politics and the lyrics but the music would irritate you.
Yeah, for some reason in the back of my head, I think I knew they did. I know that singing style has been around since before Blink 182, but I mostly associate it with them cause I heard them do it first, I think.
So. Punk rock trivia: who did it first? Who was the first asshole to think it’d sound fucking awesome if he sang like he had a cold the whole time? Was it Lifetime? I haven’t heard them either, but I know they spawned a lot of those bands.
I want to track down whoever is responsible for that bullshit and cut their nose off. Then they’ll have a legit reason for singing like an idiot.
It depends. If you’re thinking about it in terms of the way Blink 182 sounds then I’d lay it at the feet of Nofx. Early Propaghandi sounds just like Nofx, so…… Lifetime had the weird sort of vocal cadence but weren’t really nasally or snotty.
The first two Propagandhi records are two of my favorite albums ever. I still listen to them both on the regular. The last three…not so much.
John- listen to them anyway…you’ll probably like it.
John said:Yeah, for some reason in the back of my head, I think I knew they did. I know that singing style has been around since before Blink 182, but I mostly associate it with them cause I heard them do it first, I think.
So. Punk rock trivia: who did it first? Who was the first asshole to think it’d sound fucking awesome if he sang like he had a cold the whole time? Was it Lifetime? I haven’t heard them either, but I know they spawned a lot of those bands.
I want to track down whoever is responsible for that bullshit and cut their nose off. Then they’ll have a legit reason for singing like an idiot.
I’m having a difficult time sticking with you here because none of those bands (Lifetime, Blink 182 and Propagandhi) sound remotely like each other.
Blink 182 = nasally, whiny, I have a cold. I can get on that.
Lifetime = impossible to understand, weird cadenced lyrics with great melodies over hardcore riffs. One of my favorite bands of all-time, but that is perhaps a product of growing up in Central Jersey during the 90s.
Propagandhi = politically driven growling. John K. Samson aside, the main singer from this band doesn’t sound like he has a cold, a sore throat maybe. His vocals are very raspy and awesome.
Kevin, agreed about the era. I stopped paying attention to them after Less Talk, More Rock.
Well, you missed the part, Jay, where I said I had never heard Propagandhi or Lifetime. I was asking if they sing that way or if they started it, respectively.
But now I will listen to both and tell you if you are wrong. Any songs I should seek out?
I saw the part where you say you hadn’t heard them, but I assumed someone was feeding you this information and couldn’t really understand why.
I put some of my favorite Lifetime and Propagandhi songs you know where. I’m really interested to see what you think of them, because I’m pretty sure the fact that I still love these bands is based more in nostalgia than in any sort of real musical merit.
Jay, I agree about Lifetime. Seriously one of my favorite bands ever. But the nostalgia works in reverse and they actually ended up being on par with Metallica as far as a band sullying their legacy. After they broke up the band members I thought spent too much time whining about each other and about not being popular. Then when bands like Fall Out Boy started name checking them they jumped right back in the reunion bandwagon as though “Hey, yeah forget all that stuff we said.” which I have no respect for.
Hello Bastards and Jerseys Best are still rock solid jams though.
Based on the two songs you posted, Jay, Propagahndi, when sung by the dude who sounds like he’s from They Might Be Giants, aren’t bad. Sung by the other guy, and it’s unlistenable. He doesn’t do the snot-nosed bullshit as badly as others, but it’s still pretty bad. Regardless, the songs themselves are pretty goddam boring.
Lifetime’s vocals are FUCKING HORRIBLE. And he really needs to blow his fucking nose. Fuck. I hate this so much.
John said:Propagahndi, when sung by the dude who sounds like he’s from They Might Be Giants, aren’t bad.
That’s funny, because you dislike The Weakerthans so much… which is the band of the dude dthat sounds like he’s from They Might Be Giants.
John said:Lifetime’s vocals are FUCKING HORRIBLE. And he really needs to blow his fucking nose. Fuck. I hate this so much.
That’s funny because this is the same guy from Zero Zero, which have a few songs you like.
Kevin said:Jay, I agree about Lifetime. Seriously one of my favorite bands ever. But the nostalgia works in reverse and they actually ended up being on par with Metallica as far as a band sullying their legacy. After they broke up the band members I thought spent too much time whining about each other and about not being popular. Then when bands like Fall Out Boy started name checking them they jumped right back in the reunion bandwagon as though “Hey, yeah forget all that stuff we said.” which I have no respect for.
Hello Bastards and Jerseys Best are still rock solid jams though.
The Lifetime reunion never happened. Life is much better when you believe this to be true.
Sammy said:
That’s funny because this is the same guy from Zero Zero, which have a few songs you like.
Are you just now realizing that John’s musical likes and dislikes have zero consistency or actual rationale behind them? John’s musical opinions are the homeopathy of musical taste: there are claims made to a somewhat factual, data based rationale. And sometimes it can be correct and those claims can technically be true due to coincidence or the law of averages. But the reality is that it’s just random, scattershot and without any well reasoned or factual basis whatsoever.
I don’t dislike the Weakerthans, I just don’t see what the big deal is. Nothings stands out to me when I listen to them. It has nothing to do with the dude’s voice.
And I don’t know who Zero Zero is. The fact that I have some of their songs means absolutely nothing. I honestly don’t know what a good fifth of the stuff in my library is or how it got there.
Oh AM Gold. I remember this album. Yeah, it’s not bad. His voice is less offensive here, but it’s still not good by any stretch.
Ari from Lifetime used to run a record store, probably the worst record store ever conceived, in Red Bank, NJ. He just filled the place with all this weird shit he, and no one else, liked. He didn’t appreciate it when we expressed our disappointment in Zero Zero.
Jay said:Ari from Lifetime used to run a record store, probably the worst record store ever conceived, in Red Bank, NJ. He just filled the place with all this weird shit he, and no one else, liked. He didn’t appreciate it when we expressed our disappointment in Zero Zero.
I really got into that Zero Zero album. And that guy was pretty much my hero. I used to love that place, particularly because he let me just hang out and talk to him. When I got kicked out of my band he cheered me up by reminding me that they kicked him out of Lifetime.
And then there was the time his buddy told me if I ever needed to remember one thing, it was not to buy women clothes as a gift.
Plus they brought their dogs there, and though the little three-legged one was a dick (probably out of world-spite), that big lab(?) was the sweetest dog ever. I used to play fetch with her in the store.
I definitely took the Ari side in the Lifetime debacle. Dan Yemin just always came off as such a self important goober. Especially the whole playing in socks thing. What the fuck? Who does that? And this recent discovery pretty much cements my impression.