Friday, April 29, 2011

I've Never Bagged A Babe. I'm Not A Stud.

In high-school I had a ton of friends that were all crazy about Fall Out Boy. First one of my friends started to listen to them during what I assume was their Take This To Your Grave-period. It was common on MSN messenger to have a handle at the start of your screen name that you always keep there (mine for example was just "timmy", which I would then usually follow with lyrics from a song or a movie quote) and his was something like [Fall Out Boy] (keyboard symbols were so fucking cool back then). The band then put out From Under The Cork Tree which won them a pretty huge audience in the "emo" scene (I think I've explained the quotation marks in the past, rest assured I'm familiar with what "real" emo is). They had a string a very successful albums which really solidified their place in the mainstream. Though the band is met with mixed opinions, it's a hard fact that they were one of the most successful rock bands of the last decade, with their last three albums all going at least platinum in sales.

In high-school I was a ska-kid and was thus required to automatically hate the band because I was narrow-minded and a moron. Sort-of recently though I've heard a lot of people say that their debut album, Take This To Your Grave is more or less a typical pop-punk record from the early 00's and pretty good. I really think their later stuff is bad, like really bad. Not just from my standpoint, but music in general. "I Don't Care" basically uses a Nickelback riff for the entire song. But this blog is basically just my thoughts on what a lot of people my age consider a "classic" album.

The first time listening through it I did a kind of Jack Black in High Fidelity moment, putting my face into my hands and thinking "Fuck...It's really good", because of how embarrassed I was to like. But generally with me, every time I find an album I like I think it's a classic through the first few listens, but come to my senses after a while. So that period passed and now I'm able to gather my thoughts on it.

Musically they run through every cliche Drive-Thru pop-punk cliché in the first two songs. Double-stops on the G and B-strings, one-drops and beating the hell out of the "pop-punk T". I can't really hate on this though. Firstly, I like that type of music, so it seems fucking stupid to say "This band sucks because they play music the way that lots of bands I like play music". Secondly, why hate on a band when the songs I write are usually pretty sonically similar? This is pop-punk, not a fucking ELP record.

I guess one of the big things about the early records are girls swooning over Pete Wentz's lyrics because they think he's a cute tortured soul and they find that adorable. And also dudes swooning over Pete Wentz's lyrics because the girl they made a mix for made out with a jock at a party. Wentz was obviously the biggest attention grabber of the band and him writing the lyrics for the songs kickstarted that I suppose (why doesn't everyone love Steve Klein then?) (I also found out that Patrick Stump also did a decent chunk of the song-writing on this album) (Another side-bar: I think I'll write a blog about Wentz in the future, I find him kind of interesting). I'd say that roughly a third of the lyrics are clever and pretty good while the rest is kind of laughable. I find that he mostly preoccupies himself with trying to sound like the male lead in a John Hughes movie ("Maybe he won't find out what I know, you were the last good thing about this part of town") and I guess most Fall Out Boy fans hadn't seen Sixteen Candles when TTYG came out so they thought it was really endearing. I don't want to totally rip him though, he does have his moments. Being the type of record that it is and coming out when it did, the whole thing is obviously about shit getting sour with a girl, which I'm always down with. "Let's play this game called when you catch fire, I wouldn't piss to put you out"? That's alright.

I constantly find myself thinking that if the band was made up of four hardcore kids from New Jersey instead of the actual roster, it would have been a really good record. Though in their beginning the band was essentially four hardcore kids from Chicago, so I don't know how valid that is.

I guess long, useless blog short, they've got some pretty good songs, but I really don't understand what the big fucking deal is.

And why would you want someone who watched No Strings Attached last night's opinion?

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