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Author: nosepail
Date: 04-13-10 00:08
Is anyone into this band and can explain their appeal? I just saw them live for the 3rd time. This time the crowd was really into it b/c their latest record has buzz, but I find nothing titillating there. Is it me?
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Author: Michael Toland
Date: 04-13-10 08:53
I honestly think it's an age thing. I saw them at SXSW this year in a packed house full of 18-22 year olds who were enraptured, singing along with every lyric. To me TA sounded like just another emo band, maybe with better song construction. Nothing wrong with them, really, just nothing compelling for me.
It actually really bothers me that more and more I'm left unmoved by what the "kids" are listening to these days. I don't want to be come one of those old farts who bitches about how music was better in the old days (whatever they may be), but that seems to be happening.
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Author: Jermoe
Date: 04-13-10 09:37
Their debut was recommended to me on eMusic, based on my previous purchase history or something. Since I was getting 75 downloads a month at that time, I bought it, because any band that's goofy enough to name themselves after what is arguably Shakespeare's most widely disliked play (and deservedly so) is a band I want to hear.
I had not seen any hype about them. I think they're alright. They try a bit too hard for my tastes. I've had a similar response to Lift to Experience and The Anniversary (two random examples)...
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Author: breno
Date: 04-13-10 10:17
Well, Shrew runs afoul of changes in gender roles in the last 400 years. I remember years ago when the BBC & PBS were doing tv versions of Shakespeare and they did Shrew with John Cleese in the leading role, and before the broadcast PBS chose to run a disclaimer about how they did not endorse the idea of breaking a woman's spirit in order to make her a suitable wife, or something to that effect.
So that's where the animosity towards Shrew would come from - I don't know that anyone would consider it Shakespeare's worst written play or anything, but some would consider it as perhaps his most unenlightened.
I have a soft spot for 10 Things I Hate About You, though.
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Author: Michael Toland
Date: 04-13-10 10:48
It's been way too many years since I read Shrew, but I never thought of it as unelightened - I thought of it as a satire. But then I think Merchant of Venice is a black comedy that satirizes racism, a view not shared by anybody, as far as I can tell.
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Author: Delvin
Date: 04-13-10 10:59
My wife and I saw a comedy piece last month: The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Abridged. The actors named Troilus & Cressida as the Bard's worst play. One of them referred to it as "Toilet & Crappida."
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Author: breno
Date: 04-13-10 11:16
Ah, but as discussed on another thread here - the sharper a satire, the more likely it is to be completely missed or misunderstood. When U2 satirized the entire concept of rock stars selling out with the PopMart tour, the most common grumbling heard was that U2 had sold out. (And most of the grumbling came from people who wished that the band had just kept re-recording The Joshua Tree instead of those weird albums they made in the 90s, which of course would have actually been selling out.)
So whether or not Shrew is unenlightened or a pointed satire of gender relations doesn't actually matter to the people offended by it. If it was intended as satire, they don't get it.
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Author: Delvin
Date: 04-13-10 12:14
U2 lost a lot of my interest with The Joshua Tree; if the group had kept rehashing that disc, it would've lost my remaining interest PDQ. The band regained my loyalty with Achtung Baby, an all-killer-no-filler disc that's kept jumping back into my CD player ever since. Pop was a mis-step, but U2 has been pretty sure-footed ever since, IMO.
My only grumbling about PopMart was that I couldn't afford a ticket. Same for the Zoo TV tour.
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Author: Heff
Date: 04-13-10 12:28
A Midsummer's Night Dream both the 2nd most popular and 2nd least popular???
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Author: Jermoe
Date: 04-13-10 12:28
I watched It Might Get Loud last night...it's well worth your time, if only for the look on Jack White's face toward the end of the film as he seems to realize, "Hey, wait a second...I'm jamming with Jimmy Page here."
The other really remarkable scene is when The Edge pops in an old unidentified cassette and says he doesn't know what it is. He presses play and we're hearing the various guitar parts that he ended up arranging together for "Where the Streets Have No Name"...it's like he's looking at baby pictures. For a second, I thought he was going to cry.
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Author: erikalbany
Date: 04-13-10 13:56
The fact that they didn't even mention King John proves my theory that it's the least favorite. I can't remember the last time I heard of someone mounting a production of it.
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Author: Jermoe
Date: 04-13-10 16:44
Thanks to this debate, I will be sitting down with my Bevington and Riverside Shakespeares this evening. With any luck I will report back tomorrow.
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Author: nosepail
Date: 04-13-10 17:27
We didnt even mention that the band's latest album is some kind of rock opera based around one of the warships in the Civil War. That should send you scurrying for your American History textbooks!
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Author: Nile
Date: 04-13-10 20:02
One of my favorite parts of that movie is when Page puts Link Wray's "Rumble" on the turntable and, grinning from ear to ear, explains what Link is doing as the song progresses. He can barely contain his glee.
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Author: erikalbany
Date: 04-13-10 22:04
I voted King Lear, baby. And If ya'll don't, I will steal your lunch money on the playground.
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Author: breno
Date: 04-13-10 22:28
I originally had Macbeth and Lear chosen, then at the last moment switched Lear to Henry V. I'm a sucker for that damn St. Crispin's Day speech.
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Author: Jermoe
Date: 04-14-10 10:10
He's like a kid sharing his favorite song with his friends, hoping they will understand it and appreciate it the way he does.
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Author: erikalbany
Date: 04-14-10 22:05
That St. Crispin's day speech is pretty cool--St. Crispin is actually the patron saint of shoemakers, so there's a real wry level to it. And I love Westmoreland (who he delivers it to); he's like the typical, entry-level disgruntled worker. If I staged Henry V, I'd have him in a cubicle.
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Author: nosepail
Date: 11-17-11 11:54
Ugh, this band is opening for the Drive by Truckers tonight in Boston. Why cant I get away from this band? It is the 3rd time I've seen them as an opener. They're like a bad penny.
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Author: Delvin
Date: 11-17-11 15:06
Denver has a band like that, named Call Sign Cobra. I've seen them as an opener several times. They keep changing their band line-up and the format of their music: first they're a rock trio, then they have a horn section, then they add a keyboardist, then another ... So much effort to find a style that works, expended by musicians with so little talent.
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Author: hoip chiggs
Date: 11-19-11 12:33
You may be getting old, but rock has been dead for years, it's just that some poseurs are reanimating the corpse. I'd say the death knoll for rock rang when the first School of Rock opened up. When you have to go to school to play rock, you know something's wrong. And when bands become copies of copies of copies of the originals, it's time to call it quits.
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Author: nosepail
Date: 11-21-11 12:00
Titus was so smarmy and obnoxious. I hated to see all these foolish young people launch into furious headbanging every time the band launched into some meaningless, double-time, two-chord mock-thrash.
The Truckers were freakin' great though. Twice as good as they were when I saw them on the last tour. (I guess there was no Flying Wallendas to drive the show to a grinding halt)
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Author: nosepail
Date: 03-19-12 19:20
They have a new song called "Upon Viewing Oregon's Landscape With the Flood of Detritus". Man, I like these guys less and less all the time.
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Author: Jermoe
Date: 03-20-12 09:30
The new song is from their forthcoming split single with Diarrhea Planet. I am not kidding...
http://titusandronicusllc.tumblr.com/post/19561316079/titus-andronicus-llc-mixtape-vol-1
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Author: Michael Toland
Date: 03-20-12 09:53
I saw them again this past week, opening for the Jesus & Mary Chain. They were a lot looser than the first time, took themselves a hell of a lot less seriously, and seemed to be having more fun onstage, rather than being Serious Artistes. That said, I didn't like them any better than the first time. There was a 30-something couple beside me that was enraptured, though.
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