The Libertines - The Good Old Days !!EXCLUSIVE!!
'There are fewer more distressing sights than that of an Englishman in a baseball cap', sang The Libertines on early hit Time for Heroes. As true as that may be, watching a once vital band try and fail to recapture their glory days also has to be up there.
The Libertines - The good old days
But if you've lost your faith in love and music the end wont be longBecause if its gone for you then i too may lose it and that would be wrongTried so hard to keep myself from fallingBack into my bad old waysAnd it chars my heart to always hear you callingCalling for the good old daysBecause there were no good old daysThese are the good old days
Or any other strange but totally relevant connection you can make to the band. For example Johnny Borrell of Razorlight played bass in the band in the early days, but we are sure you know that already.
BETTIE SERVEERT: Log 22 (Palomine) A bigger andlooser band than the one that made its name with Palomine in alt'ssalad days--brawnier, brainier, sweeter, more direct. But where oncethey were the future, now they're near forgotten, because what fortheir admirers was a game, a phase, or a fleeting passion, for CarolVan Dyk is a life. Alt's college cheerleaders have matured. Van Dyk'sjust gotten older, embracing soul and skill but not the mainstream:"Smack in the middle of ridiculous places, smack in the middle where Ishouldn't have been." Of course, part of their gimmick was how altthey weren't. They've always gravitated toward straightforward tunesand guitar voicings, which is why horns that would obtrude in anyordinary alt-fledged band seem natural horning in here. So please,somebody make me feel stupid and tell me what '60s solo they quoteoutright on the eight-minute "White Dogs" jam. It's driving mecrazy. A MINUS
THE LIBERTINES: Up the Bracket (Rough Trade) Forget allthe well-meaning comparisons to good bands present and especiallypast. Every guitar-based four-piece with enough sidelong flair andI-don't-care gets those nowadays, and these Londoners have more talentand panache than most if not all of them. They're plenty songful ifyou give them half a chance, which is hard because they conceal such abewildering wealth of compositional tactics within a fast, loose,lyrical, vulnerable sound that's their own even if they've never givenit a moment's thought which is what the sound wants you to think, andwhich I very much doubt. Let the past take care of itself. They wantthe world and they want the handcar it's going to hell in. A
Sadly, despite appearances, Kane had not yet been subject to his quota of fate's arbitrary cruelties. Just 22 days after his triumph at Meltdown, he checked himself into a Los Angeles hospital, believing himself to be suffering from severe flu. Kane was diagnosed with leukaemia and was dead within two hours, aged 55. New York Doll ends up being an eloquent study of the ego-crushing horror of the unreconciled post-fame life, and a tender send-off to a broken man who, right at the end, nearly, but not quite, disproved the central assertion of his former bandmate Thunders's most famous song: that you can't put your arms around a memory. 041b061a72