In the hate thread I just said how I like Bastille because one of them supports the same crappy unfashionable football team as me. Couldn’t give two hoots about their music, such as it is. So then, Afterword, who else have you got a soft spot for even though their records are rubbish?
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Kid Dynamite says
->
Jim Cain says
I remember liking the Kaiser Chiefs because two of them were interviewed on E4 and seemed like nice lads.
ganglesprocket says
The Darkness
The music is terrible but they are a bunch of sweet idiot boys from Lowestoft. Were myself or any of my friends when younger in a successful band, we’d have been just as uncool and idiotic.
Foxnose says
Really like Iron Maiden for much the same reasons.
James Blast says
Throbbing Gristle and all offshoots/tentacles. They’re just an interesting combo, Gimp-O can’t sing for toffee, Sleazy got better the older he got, Chris & Cosey have done good stuff. Neil Megson’s still a dick but a really interesting and funny one.
A quote from one of my friends who’s a keen ellpee buyer – “I was at this record fair and I saw a TG bootleg and I thought, ‘how bad can it be’? Got home, made a cuppa sat down, put it on and went ‘Shite! I forgot’.
Kaisfatdad says
Great idea for a thread Kid.
I can’t for the life of me remember their name just now, but I was dragged along to see an American middle league metal band at Roskilde a few years back. The music was very loud, shouty and thrashy and not really the kind of stuff I would listen to. I’m a very delicate plant.
But the atmosphere between the band and the audience was fantastic. I got the impression that the band were rather nice blokes who really cared about their fans and would be fun to have a beer with. There’s a friendly, tribal vibe at a lot of metal gigs, (not that I’ve been to many). Very inclusive.
Lodestone of Wrongness says
McBusted- I love them!
davebigpicture says
I took my very young son, maybe 6 or 7 years old to see McFly. No swearing, played all the hits and generally seemed like nice lads who were just happy to be successful.
Carl says
Sting.
Many years a go I was acquainted with a guy who worked on the local paper in Reading.
He was covering the Reading festival for the paper in the year The Police topped the bill. For younger readers, they were massive at the time.
Anyway he was backstage and saw Sting, who was also holding a young son, and went up to him and asked for an interview. Sting was totally obliging, took him to the bar, bought him a drink and then sat down and talked. There was little in it for Sting, but nonetheless he did the interview. So hats off to him, and despite years of music that, let’s be polite and say has not been to my taste, I retain a soft spot him.
ganglesprocket says
I have said this before, I have met Sting and he was extremely nice and polite to everyone. Genuinely not a bad guy at all.
DogFacedBoy says
Sting gets a pass just for being in this
Baron Harkonnen says
Sting? That bastard let me down in my hour of need ; ))
ganglesprocket says
I GOT THAT! HAVE AN UP!
Kid Dynamite says
Did you change your name back just to do that? If so, it was worth it
Beany says
Barclay James Harvest.
Back in the 70s I went on safari to a strange place called Harlow New Town. The friend I was visiting took me over to an even stranger place called Chelmsford where fellow northerners “the BJH” were performing. We spotted “the lads” going into the venue and they were delighted to meet fellow travellers they could converse with in their native Lanky. I even got their autographs after the one named Woolly japed, “let me finish me butty!” Gradely.
retropath2 says
Hawkwind, Arthur Brown, Pink Fairies, all that shite. (OK, early Hawkwind were good and Fire is still fun, along with one track on a Kingdom Come LP) They just looked so raddled and, um, freaky to my teenaged boarding school eyes.
Same is true, I guess, for Zappa, dissipated instantly after a listen to anything other than most of Hot Rats. (Willie the Pimp, of course, was always shocking nonsense, courtesy some tramp he brought in off the street to interpret the lyric.)
Beany says
For me it was Emerson, Lake & Palmer. I loved them after reading their first interview in the Melody Maker before even hearing a single note of their music. They were the coolest looking rock band to my teenage eyes.
JustB says
Pearl Jam. I know that they’re absolute musical kryptonite for almost everyone else I know. I know they’re earnest, and plodding, and the voice makes people want to hammer cocktail sticks under their fingernails just as a distraction. I know they’re the unacceptable face of grunge, which is itself largely unacceptable (and they’re not even really grunge: they’re just a guitar band from 1990s Seattle).
I know. I bloody know.
But I’m so fond of them. I like Jeff Ament’s stupid hats and his fucking 12-string bass. I like skinny little Mike McCready for having had a period about 15 years ago during which he looked like Meat Loaf’s fatter cousin. I like the fact that Stone Gossard looks like a sociology teacher and gives every impression of being a bit of a prick. I like that they know they’re no fun to watch so all their live DVDs have a “Matt Cam” bonus feature because Matt Cameron is the most thrilling rock drummer alive and watching him is better than almost anything. And here’s the thing:
I like Eddie Vedder.
I like his painful earnestness when they got famous. I like his suicidally reckless stage-climbing antics around the same time. I like that he got embarrassed about being a singer because he worried it was “undignified”, then publicly called himself an idiot for it a few years later. I like that he surfs (ha HA!). I love his voice, especially when he roars. And he seems to have grown up into a really really nice man that I’d like to have a pint with.
I was 14ish when I got into them, which is the only reason to *be* into them. Haven’t bought a record since Binaural. That was shit so I stopped. But I still love them.
Bingo Little says
Up, up, up.
I feel exactly the same way about them, and particularly re: Eddie Vedder. He’s self evidently a very nice man, and he surfs pretty good too.
JustB says
Yay! It’s you, me and my mate Ross. We’re in it together. 🙂
Locust says
Well I like them, but I’m disqualified because I actually like their music… 😉
JustB says
I like their music too, but that’s not the main reason I like them!
Locust says
Ah, but the OP says nothing to do with the music, and I’m obeying the rules…
Vincent says
The Fall.
Anti-rock catalogue clothes, sarky and sardonic lyrics, intelligent front-man not afraid to look his age and lifestyle.
Rigid Digit says
John Otway
Has he released a truly great record?
Even his bona fide latter day hit Bunsen Burner was a piss-take/parody/novelty.
Wouldn’t be without his records, but they’re not exactly the first things you reach for.
The bloke is a true British loony and his live shows are an absolute blast
Gary says
Has he released a truly great record?
Most definitely yes! This:
Tiggerlion says
The Cure. Or, more specifically, Robert Smith.
I’ve never actively listened to their music nor purchased any of their product. However, I saw them on Siouxsie & The Banshees’ Join Hands tour, the one when The Banshees’ guitarist and drummer did a moonlit flit. After completing their support set, Smith and The Cure’s drummer played with Siouxsie. My recollection was that The Cure were quite poppy (they had recently released Three Imagnary Boys). However, Smith played with great power when he was a Banshee. The transformation was startling.
After the gig, I went backstage in an attempt to meet my heroine. She was in a black mood, quite understandably. Robert, however, was welcoming and charming.
He was a real friend in need for Siouxsie. I hope she still appreciates it. I do. And, I love his rubbish make up, his bird’s nest hair, his witty self-deprecatory approach to interviews and the fact he also has given a job to Bowie’s old henchman, Reeves Gabrels. God bless him. It’s such a pity I don’t like his music.
ganglesprocket says
Also Lily Allen.
Because I was at a Glastonbury when she was just starting out, and I saw her basically hanging out with a couple of, evidently, starstruck boys (who looked about nine) and she made their festival. I thought it was really sweet of her, and I’ve had a soft spot for her ever since.
Diddley Farquar says
Noel Gallagher
Arthur Cowslip says
Ooh good one. Dislike the music, but I quite like the guy. Good balance between being erudite, cynical, funny and self effacing.
chiz says
The Beach Boys. They’re just such an unlikely bunch of pop stars. Look at their prime years front line; Shorty, Fatty, Barmy, Baldy. They sang about surfing and cars and girls but they looked like they’d never experienced any of those. One bona fide mad genius aside, they should have been supply teachers. Then there’s the drink, the drugs, the sandbox, the TM, the obnoxious twat beardy beady singer, everyone suing each other, the cabaret years, the only cool one drowning himself, fucking about with Status Quo and the Fat Boys, and still somehow they are pop/rock royalty. Good on them, I say.
Diddley Farquar says
Springsteen. A decent, likeable man. Does his best to entertain, think of his fans. His music ticks all the boxes but lacks something. I rarely feel the urge to reach for the albums of his I have. He’s a bit dull much of the time. Lacks anything arty, or weird in his make up, which intrigues, nothing far out. I always like that certai psychedelic element in my music, he doesn’t have it. A Hepworth fave with all the right worthy qualities of correct rock n’ roll and soul influences married with a maturing approach to meaningful, moving lyrics. Hepworth notably a bit of a Bowie sceptic – that is telling. But clearly as likeable a rockstar as you could hope to find.
ianess says
Bryan Adams and Meatloaf. Both had horrific childhoods because of alcoholic, abusive Dads.
They both seem decent guys, though with a touch of that appeasing nature common to abused kids. I feel sorry for them.
Sitheref2409 says
Bryan Adams hangs out with incredibly beautiful women. sithereftrufact
Sympathy tempered. He was great in 87 Into The Fire tour
Sewer Robot says
Y’see kids, that shockingly bad acne you’re so worried about is no impediment to snogging supermodels..
Mike_H says
Elton’s music has never exactly started any fires in my soul.
The way he’s recovered from being a totally up-himself, obnoxious drug-addled git to become a pretty decent cove is admirable. Plus he’s a complete music-obsessive with loads of enthusiasm for the stuff, and that can’t be bad.
Paul McCartney’s post-Fabs music mostly leaves me cold, but I admire him for being a remarkably well-rounded person considering the towering height of his profile. I suspect that like most of us, if you caught him on a bad day or gave him reason to be pissed off with you, he might be a bit short with you but I’d bet that most of the time he’d be a pretty good bloke.
niscum says
St Etienne. Nice people with good taste. Charlatans the same.
Sewer Robot says
“Nice People With Good Taste”: words spelled out by the arrangement of corpses of Afterword members following the mass suicide of this creepy cult.
And just days before the shock news of the reunited XTC’s new album and tour…
Mavis Diles says
Lisa Stansfield.
Always comes across well in interviews, genuinely likeable and down to earth. Evidently has principles and I like how she invested her first record company advance in a studio so she could carry on working from close to home. I think her music, whilst not my taste exactly, has a certain warmth to it.
H.P. Saucecraft says
Whigfield. Never cared for her music but she was fantastic to me in the carpark at Wallingford Corn Excghange. I still have the teddy bear,
Beany says
Don Estelle signed an LP for me in Middleton Shopping Centre. At my request he dedicated it with my friend’s full name. The very friend who runs a record shop in Burton upon Trent and was ever so please to receive this gift as he will never be able to sell it.
retropath2 says
That shop still going, Beans? Haven’t visited it for a while.
Carl says
I’d forgotten when reminiscing about Sting, above, that I also have a soft spot for Queen’s Roger Taylor.
I’m in the “no redeeming features” school when it comes to Queen’s music, yet there are millions who unaccountably love them.
One such was a lad I worked with many years ago in Chester. He was a Queen fan and went to see them in Birmingham.
In the general mayhem that ensued at the gig he lost his wallet. After the gig when the hall had cleared (in those days we called concert venues halls – today they are always referred to as rooms) he and his mate were searching the stalls for the wallet, which also had his train ticket back to Chester in it.
A shout from the stage interrupted their search. RT and another guy had appeared. They went down to the front, climbed onto the stage and got chatting. He told RT that he’s lost his wallet, at which RT got his own wallet out and gave him (I think) £5 (a sizeable sum back in those days – I guess it would probably have bought at least 20 pints of beer) to get his train ticket.
Good man.
I just wish the music was as nice as him.