Bands that suck.

And unfortunately people think they don’t.

Every decade has its share of shit. And most of the bands that I’ll mention in this entry were born in the 90’s, and we still remember them because they’re fresh in our minds (shiver). I have to say it’s not their fault, well, not entirely their fault. People who like them or think these bands are even remotely close to being good have to be blamed as well. Sadly, decades are remembered for bad bands. A lot of people have the perception of the 80’s being the worst decade for music, that it was full of bad pop acts and one hit wonders. Well, ever heard of Punk? Or New Wave? Brit Pop? Have you ever stopped to realize that the bands that you fancy today are mainly influenced by bands that were born in the 80’s? Yes, the 80’s had a lot of crap in the mainstream popular side, but it had genius in the other, that by the way was often popular as well.
Now let’s move forward to the 90’s. Turns out grunge was a double-sided act. The good side is conformed by the original grunge bands, you may or may not like grunge but you can’t ignore their relevance in musical history. Hate the game, not the players. The evil side of grunge was its legacy. It left us an outstanding number of really bad bands all wanting to be Nirvana, Kurt, Pearl Jam and Eddie. And so the 90’s were marked by (again) bad pop, a pseudo-alternative genre to triumphantly culminate with Nü Metal (chill). Again, most people missed the scene. The 90’s are awesome, even though we’ve been trying too hard to erase them from our memories. The famous indie term was originally coined in the 80’s but popularized in the 90’s, so was college rock. The 90’s went on to produce musical geniuses that were discovered by hipsters early this decade.
With no further ado, here is the list of the bands that suck and people think they don’t.

Creed.
And anything that comes close to sounding like Pearl Jam or imitate Eddie Vedder’s voice in any form.
Telltale sign of sucking: Popularizing Christian rock.

Live.
Telltale sign of sucking: Just the fact of being labeled “alt rock” is bad enough for them and any other band like them.

Counting Crows.
A professor I had in College, who by the way was a musical connoisseur, adored the Counting Crows and spoke of them as the unappreciated genius act of 90’s American music. I looked for something that might hint to that in their music and never found it.
Telltale sign of sucking: Everything that’s not Colorblind or Round Here. And every time someone sings Mr. Jones at a karaoke bar.

Korn.
There’s so many wrong things with Korn I don’t even know where to begin. The fact that they created Nü metal might not be worse than creating a long line of “poser” bands that pretended to be “hardcore” and then dated Britney Spears (which with time turned out to be pretty hardcore.)
Telltale sign of sucking: They spawned bands like Limp Bizkit and Linkin’ Park, and we can thank them for Nü Metal.

Limp Bizkit.
Tell-tale of sucking: See “Korn”

Linkin Park.
Telltale sign of sucking: See “Limp Bizkit”

Sum 41, Blink 182… and everything that sounds like them. And they all sound the same.
This is the part to say “who the fuck invented the term alternative?” Whoever tried to find a place in the world for bands like these.
Telltale sign of sucking: They make a joke out of their music and then they sound so cheesy when they want to go serious. If you’re going to make a joke be like Ween.

Bon Jovi.
Do you remember singing “Blood on Blood” from the top of your lungs when you were young? I do. Wasn’t it cool? No, it never was. But it felt like it.
Bon Jovi is the quintessential “I thought they were good back then” band. It’s like a robber entering your house at night, he opens the window silently and then triggers the alarm when he’s about to take your TV. Sadly, some people don’t have good alarm sytems and Bon Jovi has even stolen their refrigerator.
Telltale sign of sucking: The creation and later exploitation of the “rock-mantic ballad”, i.e. “Bed of Roses”, “I’ll be there for you”, “Always” and the list can go on.

My Chemical Romance / The Offspring.
Too much attitude, very little to offer. Back in the day I thought of the Offspring when I thought of Green Day. They were contemporaries and maybe, maybe shared some of their sound. But I was so wrong (thankfully), Green Day turned out to be good, The Offspring turned out to be a bad joke. My Chemical Romance shares the same problem, we can’t take music so generic seriously.

Spin Doctors.
No comments.
Telltale sign of sucking: Wrote “Two Princess”

Hootie and The Blowfish.
I was shocked to learn that Darius Rucker (former lead vocal of Hootie. Hell, he is Hootie) is now at the top of the country charts. HATB is the perfect example of a band that was so bad it could not even be redeemed by its commercial success.
Telltale sign of sucking: Rucker’s push-cause-I’m-running-out-of-breath singing style. And he’s consequential career in country music. Yuck.

Matchbox 20, Barenaked Ladies, Lifehouse, Goo Goo Dolls.
Is this Creed? No. Exactly.
Thanks to these bands the 90’s can be seen as darker than Medieval ages. They had no contribution to music whatsoever. They made lame songs with lame lyrics played by lame people to lame people. God, the 90’s could have been so lame. Well, they were to a lot of people.
Telltale sign of sucking: You can’t tell from one band and the other.

Bonus mention: Phil Collins (and for that purpose Genenis post Peter Gabriel). Phil Collins playing the drums. Phil Collins singing. Phil Collins acting.

The most obnoxious people in TV.

There's two types of annoying advertising: There's the big leagues, with the likes of Cash for Gold or GoDaddy with beyond-annoying Super Bowl appearances, and then there's the everyday stuff, companies that can afford to buy space in the shows we watch. This is prime time garbage. Prime shit.



The woman from the rollover minutes.
Bad concept + Bad acting = An obnoxious mom who will remind everyone who had an obnoxious mom about their obnoxious mom.




The yelling bitch from Progressive.
How much of this can you take? I go for mute when I see the blue and white screen on. Her voice has the power of projecting what hell must be like.




The guy from the Verizon network.
Who the fuck is he? No. Seriously.




All the people who have ever appeared singing "5 dollar footlong" on Subway ads.



Enough said.


John Schnatter (Papa Johns' CEO.)
It's so archaic to think that having the company's CEO will add either value or credibility to your message. It's something that only local businesses that don't know better do (for those of you living in Richmond I can reference the guy who sells cars in a gown.) But a nationwide pizza company could be a bit more engaging than having this guy say "Better ingredients. Better pizza. Papa Johns" at the end of every commercial.




The money you could be saving with Geico.
OK, we get it, really, we get the jokes. But do you have to shove it up our asses every 10 minutes and run the ads back to back? We put up with the over exploited cavemen (thankfully I never saw the show), then with the Gecko (and the asshole that followed him around) and now the money with plastic eyes. Bonus points for having heard the radio ads.




The asshole from Shamwow.
If we owe anything to Billy Mays and Tony Little is enabling assholes like this to pollute our screens everyday. Vincent, so I learned his name is, has even gone as far as beating the hell out of a prostitute (true story) and became a scandal. If his sad TV act is not enough to get him off the air, this should.




BONUS: The asshole from Shamwhow, Spanish version. (AKA: El pendejo de Shamwow)

Oh Shit.

Thanks to a twitter post from my friend Joey Camire (you can read his and other Brandcenter student blog posts at www.blommit.com) I learned that this kid named Ben is the most subscribed-to person in Youtube.
Before I say anything else, please take a look (and then tell me how long you lasted.)



Now, this touches on a couple of subject I recently wrote about. The one being the contemporary Warholian 15 minutes of fame and how these days they refer to Youtube and not necessarily to TV and mainstream media. Point proven.
The second one was about this morning's post, which was about great TV. And the video shown above is discouraging me from thinking that TV was headed towards a good direction. Well, I overlooked a small detail, TV. And the fact that the latter is now widely watched through the Internet, and there's plenty of user generated content to compete with the traditional content.

This kid, who I estimate has to be no older than 16 years old has produces videos that are sometimes watched by as much as a million people. That's scary. I love the fact that anyone can have access to a million people, it's the world we live in, the media democracy. But, is this what other 15 year olds are watching. And maybe you're thinking "yes, as opposed to be watching other crap-MTV shows or bad reality TV" and maybe you're right, it is after all a vicious circle, viewers watch what's out there.
Is there a way to make everyone watch the shows that are truly interesting and worth watching? I don't think so. No more than we can convince people that this type of music is better than another, or forms of literature, or films. It's a matter of taste. It's the eternal mainstream VS quality issue (which I personally think that it's sometimes bullshit because they're not mutually exclusive, at least not all the time.)
Yes, it sucks. No, there's no answer as to why the world functions the way it does. It's just a matter of taste. You have to take whatever you think is good, and I truly hope you don't think this way of using YouTube is.

Great TV.

There's good TV and great TV.
Thankfully, we're living in times where great TV is more common. TV has evolved well as a media. Or maybe it's the fact that it has grown to such diversity that we don't necessarily have to look at shit anymore. Although sometimes it's hard to escape it.
Either way, the time and money spent on making good quality TV is better nowadays than it was say 20 years ago. More good actors from films are interested in venturing into TV, when some years back it meant your career was over.

Good TV is the one that entertains. The one that's not bad in content, but it's not exceptional either, but above all it has the ability to not piss anyone off. But greatness, that's different thing. Great TV is the one so realistic that you fell you'll run into the characters on the street. Like if you're eating at a hip LA restaurant and you see Ari Gold or any of the Entourage crowd. Or run into the guys from The Wire in Baltimore.

About The Wire, I know I'm a bit late to the prom on this one but it might be one of, if not the greatest show I have ever seen in my life. It might not be my favorite. But when it comes to building a smart story, with great characters and performances, well done and produced and definitely one of the smartest critiques to the system and governance I have ever see in any form of entertainment, The Wire has to be my pick.
It might just be the standard of great TV. And it's not for everyone. Greatness never is.
It's the kind of show that will make you see things that maybe you don't want to see. That will make you think when maybe you seek TV not to think.
TV has evolved to a medium that used to be the "idiot box" to shows that are pushing the envelope and are trying to be smart and entertaining at the same time. It can be done. And even when they will not find instant commercial succes, this is becoming a trend. There's obviously people to thanks for it, and they're called HBO.

If you haven't seen The Wire, do it. It will make you see a TV you've never seen. Don't expect a 24-like show, where Jack Baure saves the world over and over again. Expect to see a real portrayal of an American city and the people in both sides of the law, where you don't always tell who are the good guys and the bad guys.

The Fatalists.

Hard to believe, but there's people and media companies who insist on comparing the swine flu outbreak with the one in 1918, also dubbed "the Spanish flu." History tells us that nearly 20 million people lost their lives back then, with a flu very similar to today's. They also say that it began in the late spring and then came back in the fall, when it was much more devastating.

Sources and reports are vague. I've seen the numbers from the 1918 flu dance from 20 million to, according to a CNN article I just read, 50 million (they preceded it with the word conservatively.)
Again, people just trying to be alarmist and scare the shit out of others.

Context. Facts.
Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin in 1928.
Though the study of antibiotics started in the 1880's, they were not widely used until the late 1930's.

Two medical components that are not only basic factors for treatment but rather common nowadays did not exist back when the Spanish flu attacked.
It would be outrageous to suggest that the world today is as vulnerable as it was 90 years ago. I am not disregarding the fact that this is a serious situation, but in no way we can make this kind of comparison.
Once again, the problem of disinformation is attacking the media.

Infonoia

Did information made us paranoid? Or paranoia made us informed?

It's hard to run away from information in the world we live in. Even if you don't want to be informed there's the TV with 24/7 news channels, there's your computer with all the information in the world. It's tempting not to be seeking information every 30 minutes. Especially when there's something like the swine flu we have going around the world today.

Where's the media's responsibility? Naturally, the first and foremost principal of journalism is to stick to the truth. But, where does the truth and the necessity to inform every step become too much? Where is the line? Where does the responsibility of avoiding collective panic start? And where do we identify a point where we have to be extremely careful to keep everything in context?

The latter is the main issue when it comes to information that can cause panic. And it's not always the media's fault. Sometimes we only listen or read the headline, or we drop an article after the 1st paragraph. That's why it's imperative that journalists be extremely attentive to how they write their headlines. A lot of them want to write the shocky kind because "it will attract more readers." But it will also scare more readers, because a lot of people will stop reading and keep only the information included in the lead.
I read an article in one of Mexico's most prestigious newspapers yesterday, the headline read: "Alarm on rising swine flu cases in Canada." The second paragraph went on to explain how all of the cases mentioned were found benign and none of the patients were in grave danger. There's an obvious disconnect between the headline and the rest of the text. This is irresponsible journalism.

The inspiration to write about this comes from the swine flu outbreak in my country. I want to say that I'm really sad to know that my hometown is going through rough times. That people are not leaving their houses, that the streets are empty, people scared, sick and some dying.
The World Health Organization has just raised the alert level to 5, one before this is declared a pandemic. These are reasons for people to be nervous and can obviously cause paranoia. But we also have to reason and use the information that has been given to us to understand what exactly is going on. The virus itself is treatable, so that tells us that we should seek attention when the 1st symptoms show. The cause for international concern comes from the fact that it's an unknown strain of the virus, which may even go away by the end of the flu season (reports show that it's likely to come back for the winter when, hopefully, a vaccine will be available.) It's more likely to attack people with weak immune systems, so stay healthy and take your vitamins. Be extra cautious when it comes to hygiene, wash hands a lot, this can protect you up to 99% against the virus and other germs. And if you do get sick go see a doctor, there's thousands of flu cases every year and not to minimize the impact of this specific one, but the cases and deaths are still proportionally small.

And the main recommendation is not to panic, be well informed (but not over-informed) and for the media, keep in mind that the collective conscience lies in your hands. Don't be alarmist but useful and helpful.

Cinismo.

La Real Academia de la Lengua Española lo define como:

1. m. Desvergüenza en el mentir o en la defensa y práctica de acciones o doctrinas vituperables.
2. m. Impudencia, obscenidad descarada.

Para definir a ciertos políticos mexicanos a mi me gusta más la segunda.
De acuerdo a una nota publicada esta tarde en la página de Internet del periódico Reforma algunos senadores como Beltrones, Monreal y otros destacados perredistas no están de acuerdo con la manera que el Gobierno Federal ha manejado la crisis de la influenza.
Carajo. No puede ser.
Es una "obscenidad descarada" el querer tomar una situación tan delicada como ésta para hacer una zancadilla política. Acuérdense que estamos en año electoral.
Por fin tenemos al Gobierno Federal y del DF colaborando intensamente, un trabajo que han aplaudido autoridades de otros países y de la OMS. Pero eso no les basta a esta bola de animales.
Lo único que les interesa es hacer ruido. Porque lo que hacen no es otra cosa. No ayudan en nada, no proponen nada, sólo hacen ruido.
Hace falta gente que se una a la lucha, sin importar de quién y qué partido pertenezcan aquellos que ya están luchando. Que se pongan a trabajar. Y que dejen de ser gente que sólo se dedica a apuntar el dedito cómodamente aposentados en sus curules.
Es el colmo.
Senadores, diputados y integrantes ilustres de la clase política mexicana: Nos importan madres sus elecciones y sus problemas, grilla, en este momento. Lo único que queremos es que la gente esté sana, que paren los contagios y las complicaciones y que el País regrese a su ritmo normal. Nos conviene a todos. A nosotros. Y a ustedes.
Pónganse a trabajar y dejen las trampas políticas chafas y sucias para cuando no haya gente sufriendo en este País. Que para términos prácticos es nunca.