Why did Screeching Weasel have to start sucking. God dammit.

[Scrod Prickknee]

I'll take the Wax Museums and Nobunny records, thanks.

[ski shoes]

I'll take those too along with the first two Sicko lp's, The High Fives,  Sloppy Seconds, Brents T.V., Sweet Baby, Sewer Trout, Riverdales, Nar, The Lizards, The early Queers, Boris The Sprinkler, The Bananas...I am sure there is more.

[Scrod Prickknee]

Some of those are good, of course, but I have no interest in listening to Sloppy Seconds or Boris the Sprinkler, for example. Part of it is where I lived when the pop punk thing went down (my throat).

[bazooka joe]

Im so sick of people trying to look cool on here.  BORING.  Guess what, Weasel was a great band.  Some people are totally afraid of pop-punk and try to pretend there was nothing good that came of it.  I understand.  But there's no way the band sucked until way way later. 

i'm so sick of people rallying around their own bad taste.

now playing: pink floyd "meddle"

[ski shoes]

I hear ya there too. I think the whole country was affected by the pop punk thing and there were a million shitty carbon copies inspired by these bands. Believe me I got it on the west coast as well and I had to take a break from most of those bands. Now though I can pull it out and have a great time listening to it again. If anybody cares you should check out the new band here in Portland Called the Mean Jeans. They are doing the pop punk  Ramones,Weasel, Samoans thing and doing it right!! Somebody needs to do an Album for gods sake!!!

[Hugh Jass]

Some of those are good, of course, but I have no interest in listening to Sloppy Seconds or Boris the Sprinkler, for example. Part of it is where I lived when the pop punk thing went down (my throat).

I think enough time has passed that I could now listen to (and enjoy) some of the better pop-punk bands that I loved in my early-mid 20's. I don't know if I could say the same about the bulk of the Estrus catalog, which I also loved at that time and haven't listened to in about 10 years. I'm guessing the Mono Men "Wrecker" LP won't sound as exciting to me today as that Sweet Baby LP.

[ski shoes]

Your listening to Pink Floyd and saying we have bad taste. Barret or not what a bunch of silly Hippies!

[bazooka joe]

ironic, ain't it?

[ski shoes]

I saw the Mono Men several times and all I can say is they were really, really, loud had no good songs and were like all Crider's bands... very boring. The early Estrus stuff still kicks ass over the latter when it seemed all that was on that label was  southern jam boogie blues hammer bands with about 30 minute solos and two drummers.

[Scrod Prickknee]

Some of those are good, of course, but I have no interest in listening to Sloppy Seconds or Boris the Sprinkler, for example. Part of it is where I lived when the pop punk thing went down (my throat).

I think enough time has passed that I could now listen to (and enjoy) some of the better pop-punk bands that I loved in my early-mid 20's. I don't know if I could say the same about the bulk of the Estrus catalog, which I also loved at that time and haven't listened to in about 10 years. I'm guessing the Mono Men "Wrecker" LP won't sound as exciting to me today as that Sweet Baby LP.

The only problem with this is you're comparing the "better pop punk" with a poor "garage" band. I'll take Oblivs & Mummies & Supercharger over any pop punk. But Sweet Baby is definitely still sounding cool.

I lived throughout the boom in Green Bay, home of Boris the Sprinkler, second home to the Queers and you-name-it. I don't even want to go into this, but it was everywhere and those GB kids are all now 20-somethings in Milwaukee and they still flip over pop punk (new & old bands), and it's a really limited genre...I've had enough. And a couple of the old GB kids have been playing in Ben Weasel's band lately (he lives in WI now).

[bazooka joe]

ben weasels voice makes me sick.

[TTT]

alright, i know im taking this too seriously, but whatever, if you want to read it fine, if not no biggie, dont read it. 


Well, I will admit that I am a total sucker for things that are unpopular.  These days pop-punk is hated.  Which means I'm very prone to give it a second chance. 

As for Weasel, I wouldn't say I love every track on every album or anything.  But I certainly wouldn't say the band sucked.  But whatever, I mean that's an opinion thing anyways.

Now as for the stylistic points of a band, you know fitting a rectangle into a square....sure they look similar and have four sides and all.  But they are really different.  For example SW is not an annoying run of the mill 15 year old copycat type band, and they wrote way better songs than Boris the Sprinkler did.  I mean, that's just the breaks.  I dont even see them in the same league. 

There's lots of different kinds of stuff on Wiggle for example.  So I don't really know if they should be lumped into the whole "they are playing in a limited genre" thing.  Yeah, I mean garage and hardcore can be seen that way too.  Metal.  Everything can be seen as "playing inside those limits".  But when you are not the run of the mill band, you kinda carve your own idiosyncrasies into it and just flat out make better sounding music that keeps just a bit of the base.  A bit of the back-drop.  A lot of the songs on their early albums, like My Brain Hurts... woulda been a lot of other bands best songs in terms of writing. 

They made songs that lots of times had good lyrics, either on the "dumb" smart side, or the "smart" smart sides of the fence.  And they were certainly able to develop some great melodies while retaining some type of edge to it.  Lots of pop-punk does not have any bite to it, but lots of Weasel did. 

[goneoffdatlean]

Anthem is the one SW record that is alright.  All else is boring outside of some of Boogadax3

I still have a copy of Thank you Very Little. 

I don't hate them but com' on SW was never a great band.  I'm not a total pop punk hater either...I love the 2nd Riverdales record but nigga please Screeching Weasel was only ok at best.  Let's stay focused, let's get real and trust me I gives a motherfuck about most of the horseshit people on this board hype.

Obscurity=homosexuality.

[Scrod Prickknee]

I'm not a total pop punk hater either...I love the 2nd Riverdales record but nigga please Screeching Weasel was only ok at best. 

Same here. Riverdales actually did age fairly well, for some reason. "Garage" as it's classified now is everything from the Hunches to the Sneaky Pinks to Human Eye to Reigning Sound to Wax Museums to the Barbaras to Gentleman Jesse to Terrible Twos to Holy Shit! and beyond (according to the ass-hats who are primarily into indie, metal or hardcore), so hopefully you're talking the American teens in '66 version, and even then...if you think the Back From the Grave bands worked with the same sized palette, fine, you may have a point. But there's no way that foundation (tightly post-post-Ramones) is as rich a mine. Not in a million years. I've heard all pop punk has to offer. But if there's a good tune here and there, great. Screeching Weasel has predictable songwriting, especially after that many releases. I'm filled up to here with SW tunes. Spilling over. Too many other things I want to hear that might surprise me.

[TTT]

you guys have good points and its nice to hear you are just being honest too.  feels respectable. 

im not a pop-punker or anything and dont get into it at all most of the time.  but i like certain bands a lot.  i think the fact that Anthem For a New Tomorrow's last two songs are "Claire Monet" followed by the title track is a pretty damn good stylistic spread.  Both have aged perfectly.

2 main things to understand why I talk like this:

1. Writing-wise....songs like "Claire Monet" or "Three Sides" (i think thats the title) would be A-sides on any stellar 45 today.  If they were recorded by a different singer or whatever....more lo-fi...whatever....to taste.  The writing is there.  And that's what I love the most.  The band is kinda just the scraggly vehicle for their thoughts.

2. I know this is totally theoretical "in a vaccuum talk" that is in no way applicable ok...but if every single record ever made came out on the same day and no records were ever made after that day....people would look at them a lot differently and like more things out of their usual suspects I'd bet.  Now I know somebody's bound to be like "yeah but they were influenced by this band that band etc, and thats part of it....its watered down".  And to that I say give them the benfit of the doubt at first.  Maybe they just like doing a style and it's simulataneously coming together, like Jung's collective unconscious thing (I think it was Jung, whatever).  And I don't think the first crop of pop-punkers in the main Lookout! family circle were ever trying to be that incestuous about it.  Lookout! just honed in on the bands that did the sound.  The Queers are very different from Weasel.  VERY.  You will never hear the Queers play This Bud's For Me.  I mean you won't. 

I just don't think the original crop of these bands is at fault for not aging well or something because they did what they did the best, and that was their zone.  In art history you don't flip through the book to French Rococo interiors and say "that didn't age well".  That's the POINT dudes.  It's what it was and it's why it's in the book being covered for it's initial impact.  It doesn't mean I'm painting my kitchen like a whorehouse.  And it doesn't mean I love pop-punk.  It means I respect the ones who did it well for what they did to develop it.

Next rant: Hard-bop.