Cliches and Expensive Beer

So I spent all day running around doing this and that and then off to see “The Limit” at the Waltz Astoria. Hell they asked and it’s within walking distance so off I went.

Nice show good stuff all around – Still one song bugged me – in it’s rather, well, there isn’t a good way to say this, in its ham handed use of cliché. The song revolves around a couple who fight, reasons are not important here, he storms out and later she “realizes she was wrong” (actually the song starts there with her thoughts).

Okay right there Houston we have a problem - or I have a problem. In my, alas, vast experience with interpersonal conflicts, blame tends to fall pretty damn evenly between the two parties as long as one of them is not a sociopath. And even in the times I’ve dealt with crazy people (no I’m not going into the details) I know there were things I could have done differently that while, they wouldn’t have solved the problem, at least it would have kept things calmer before I was able to get out of that situation (being vague enough for you guys?).

Then there is some of the standard He’s looking she’s needing kind of language. It’s a cliché and it bothered me a bit, cause, well, these guys are good and they sound good so it bothered me to hear them phone the lyrics in. (Def Leopard I don’t give a damn what the hell they sing about, and it is painfully obvious neither do they).

Then they got the part that lost me – The guy is driving along and per the song he reaches into the glove compartment for a cigarette and he takes his eyes off the road” (these are not exact quotes I only heard this song once. And it was all I could to from yelling “Oh for god’s sake!” In a loud exasperated voice “beat us over the damn head why don’t you?”

Death via crash has a long history in rock and roll, Dead Man’s curve, Leader of the Pack et al but oh sweet lord you have to do it right, otherwise it comes across as just heavy handed and manipulative. Because we’ve heard this song before, that’s the thing, we’ve heard it a million damn times before. Again it was because their sound was so good that it cheesed me off to hear the cliché parade. And I couldn’t help shake the feeling that there was some passive aggressiveness in the mix, that ‘now she’s really sorry cause I’m/He’s dead.

Other than that the evening was very nice, the music and the singing top notch. Hell the guy running the Martz even talked to me about having the band play there one evening as a part of a trio of ‘different’ bands. It’s a poss, but I am not sure how our fans, who typically demand strong drink and lots of it before, during and after the set would react to the wine and cheese vibe of the Martz:

“What the hell do you mean there is no gin?”
“Stacy sing Stacy!”
“Some one Else!”
“Insect Heads!”
“What kind f—king place is this without gin?”
"Stacy!"
"Gin Woman, Bring me Gin!"

We love our fans, but they do scare us just a bit.

And I have to check with the Enemy Below before we commit anyway.

It could be that I’m oversensitive but I, we, the band, we live on clichés. It’s a part of what we are, we take advantage of them shamelessly to lead the listener in one direction and then kick the chairs out from under them – at least our best material does, some of it is just trying to sing about things you don’t normally hear songs about, porn, meetings, small yippy dogs, handguns etc. again there are millions of love songs, but not many about brain eating.

Have a fine day.