LISTEN TO IT #27: ORIGINAL GANGSTAS
Feb. 9th, 2011 11:03 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
defrogThere’s been a lot of talk about the Super Bowl entertainments, and how godawful they were.
To which I can only say: this will probably keep happening until they book Social Distortion for the half-time show.
Because here's how that would have gone.
Not that they’d necessarily go over better with the Super Bowl target audience than Black Eyed Peas did. And not that I particularly want to see one of my favorite bands ever play at a sporting event I have no respect for.
On the other hand, I might have more respect for the NFL if they did book bands like Social Distortion rather than obvious mainstream multi-million-selling crowd-pleasers. (Or maybe not, but notice how they almost managed to make even Jimmy Kimmel look hip.)
Plus, it’d be great to see America’s football fans serenaded with songs about heartbreak, death, drug addiction and generally being at the end of yr rope.
Why not?
Anyway, I’ve just finished listening to their new album, Hard Times And Nursery Rhymes, which seems to be a return to their Somewhere Between Heaven And Hell as-close-to-mainstream-as-it-gets era, which in today’s parlance means that they’ll probably get a lot of comparisons to The Gaslight Anthem now.
I have mixed feelings about that (and it’s no coincidence that I thought SBH&H was their weakest album, albeit still pretty good), but there are a number of winners here, not least the above track and a brilliant cover of Hank Williams Senior’s “Alone And Forsaken”.
And anyway, considering the band’s rough history (drug addiction, the death of founding guitarist Dennis Danell, etc) and the fact that they’ve been doing this for over 30 years (Mike Ness is 48, for God’s sake), Social Distortion gets credit just for showing up.
Respect.
Still alive,
This is dF
To which I can only say: this will probably keep happening until they book Social Distortion for the half-time show.
Because here's how that would have gone.
Not that they’d necessarily go over better with the Super Bowl target audience than Black Eyed Peas did. And not that I particularly want to see one of my favorite bands ever play at a sporting event I have no respect for.
On the other hand, I might have more respect for the NFL if they did book bands like Social Distortion rather than obvious mainstream multi-million-selling crowd-pleasers. (Or maybe not, but notice how they almost managed to make even Jimmy Kimmel look hip.)
Plus, it’d be great to see America’s football fans serenaded with songs about heartbreak, death, drug addiction and generally being at the end of yr rope.
Why not?
Anyway, I’ve just finished listening to their new album, Hard Times And Nursery Rhymes, which seems to be a return to their Somewhere Between Heaven And Hell as-close-to-mainstream-as-it-gets era, which in today’s parlance means that they’ll probably get a lot of comparisons to The Gaslight Anthem now.
I have mixed feelings about that (and it’s no coincidence that I thought SBH&H was their weakest album, albeit still pretty good), but there are a number of winners here, not least the above track and a brilliant cover of Hank Williams Senior’s “Alone And Forsaken”.
And anyway, considering the band’s rough history (drug addiction, the death of founding guitarist Dennis Danell, etc) and the fact that they’ve been doing this for over 30 years (Mike Ness is 48, for God’s sake), Social Distortion gets credit just for showing up.
Respect.
Still alive,
This is dF
