GOLIKEHELLMACHINE

GOLIKEHELLMACHINE @golikehellmachine.com [ View ] Jul 03, 2024 at 20:22 UTC

i mean, he tried, and they told him to eat shit (he wrote a bit on the second record that’s such a mess), which is a major strike against both 1 and 2

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GOLIKEHELLMACHINE @golikehellmachine.com [ View ] Jul 03, 2024 at 20:16 UTC

i mean, that’s what mclaren had in mind, but mclaren never had a grip on them at all, and the thing that makes it hard to parse is that both lydon and mclaren are and were shameless liars

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GOLIKEHELLMACHINE @golikehellmachine.com [ View ] Jul 03, 2024 at 20:15 UTC

not mutually exclusive

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GOLIKEHELLMACHINE @golikehellmachine.com [ View ] Jul 03, 2024 at 20:14 UTC

yeah, i have no idea what to make of it and won’t try until there’s more out about it, but conor oberst is typically the exception, not the rule

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GOLIKEHELLMACHINE @golikehellmachine.com [ View ] Jul 03, 2024 at 20:08 UTC

fwiw, my criteria is: 1. plays music written by producers/managers/label 2. public/personal life largely controlled by label (this one is subjective, i know, but important) 3. are part of a marketing strategy to sell items other than music the pistols only meet 1/3 here

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GOLIKEHELLMACHINE @golikehellmachine.com [ View ] Jul 03, 2024 at 20:05 UTC

the reporting comes from a podcast that i have no knowledge of, and i have no idea of the veracity of their reporting (i literally mean just that, i take no opinion one way or the other)

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GOLIKEHELLMACHINE @golikehellmachine.com [ View ] Jul 03, 2024 at 20:03 UTC

1. had a questionably consensual relationship with a 23 year old nanny, 2. had a less consensual relationship with a 20 year old fan who had met him when she was 18

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GOLIKEHELLMACHINE @golikehellmachine.com [ View ] Jul 03, 2024 at 20:01 UTC

anyway, my main take on sex pistols: boy band or no? is that you have to come up with a consistent set of criteria that a group meets to be considered a boy band, and the pistols were so inconsistent that it’s impossible to see how you could apply it to the without applying it to basically everyone

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GOLIKEHELLMACHINE @golikehellmachine.com [ View ] Jul 03, 2024 at 19:58 UTC

right, oldham’s book makes a pretty good case for the stones having been, in at least some ways, a boy band up until they cut him loose, but in a lot of ways, the term doesn’t really fit, either

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GOLIKEHELLMACHINE @golikehellmachine.com [ View ] Jul 03, 2024 at 19:45 UTC

i mean, the beatles weren’t really the first, though, that was just how the label system worked, like, look at american rock or R&B bands from the 50s, and that’s really common

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GOLIKEHELLMACHINE @golikehellmachine.com [ View ] Jul 03, 2024 at 19:43 UTC

there are two categories of people who say it: people who don’t really know what they’re talking about, and people who really, really do and have an objective set of criteria they can apply (but it applies to a *lot* of bands not typically thought of as such)

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GOLIKEHELLMACHINE @golikehellmachine.com [ View ] Jul 03, 2024 at 19:42 UTC

this is where it gets messy, because once they start doing their own writing and arrangement, are they still a boy band? also, the pistols were doing their own writing from the beginning, which is another reason i think the label is inaccurate for them in particular

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GOLIKEHELLMACHINE @golikehellmachine.com [ View ] Jul 03, 2024 at 19:40 UTC

fuck you, vox

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GOLIKEHELLMACHINE @golikehellmachine.com [ View ] Jul 03, 2024 at 19:39 UTC

songwriting is probably the biggest one, they weren’t playing the producer or the labels’ songs. like, the sweet were a boy band, and it’s fair to call them up that up until fox on the run, after which, i don’t think it really is.

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GOLIKEHELLMACHINE @golikehellmachine.com [ View ] Jul 03, 2024 at 19:36 UTC

labels and managers had so much more absolutely control over artists’ lives at that point, i don’t think there are any american or european groups you could point to now that are comparable, and haven’t been for at least two decades (south korean acts are more comparable)

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GOLIKEHELLMACHINE @golikehellmachine.com [ View ] Jul 03, 2024 at 19:35 UTC

i push back on this because i don’t think “boy band” in the 1960s is really applicable to “boy band” in the 2020s, but if we’re making that argument, it goes back further than the beatles

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GOLIKEHELLMACHINE @golikehellmachine.com [ View ] Jul 03, 2024 at 19:33 UTC

right, mclaren was interested in selling merch and causing chaos, but any plain reading of “boy band” indicates a pretty heavily controlled public image, which was absolutely not how the pistols actually worked

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GOLIKEHELLMACHINE @golikehellmachine.com [ View ] Jul 03, 2024 at 19:32 UTC

this is a controversial argument that i don’t really agree with, but if it applies to the pistols, it applies to the beatles and the ramones and the stones at various points in their careers, too

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GOLIKEHELLMACHINE @golikehellmachine.com [ View ] Jul 03, 2024 at 19:31 UTC

oh no problem, i thought that was the case, just wasn’t sure

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GOLIKEHELLMACHINE @golikehellmachine.com [ View ] Jul 03, 2024 at 19:30 UTC

i mean, in one sense, yes, they were a “boy band” in that they were assembled by a producer who was overtly interested in merchandising. but mclaren didn’t have the kind of grip on them that any other studio or label or producer controlled band had

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GOLIKEHELLMACHINE @golikehellmachine.com [ View ] Jul 03, 2024 at 19:29 UTC

yes and he was horrifically abusive toward them, dee dee in particular

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GOLIKEHELLMACHINE @golikehellmachine.com [ View ] Jul 03, 2024 at 19:29 UTC

which argument? because this seems like it’s complimentary to mine, unless i’m misreading you

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GOLIKEHELLMACHINE @golikehellmachine.com [ View ] Jul 03, 2024 at 19:27 UTC

yes, *and*, once they were together, mclaren had far less control over them than “boy band” typically denotes. johnny ramone had a much tighter grip on the ramones and managed them in a much more conventional “boy band” fashion

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GOLIKEHELLMACHINE @golikehellmachine.com [ View ] Jul 03, 2024 at 19:23 UTC

like, if the pistols were a boy band, then the ramones were very definitely a boy band, and they fit the stereotypical mold for that a whole lot more (and for a lot longer) than the pistols did, but no one ever dismissively writes off the ramones as a boy band

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GOLIKEHELLMACHINE @golikehellmachine.com [ View ] Jul 03, 2024 at 19:19 UTC

lydon is now and was then a liar, but most of NO BLACKS, NO DOGS, NO IRISH has been checked out as legit, and he wrote it during a period where he was far less invested in being a troll, and it paints a very complex picture of what the fuck everyone thought they were doing

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GOLIKEHELLMACHINE @golikehellmachine.com [ View ] Jul 03, 2024 at 19:18 UTC

guffawed in real life

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GOLIKEHELLMACHINE @golikehellmachine.com [ View ] Jul 03, 2024 at 19:18 UTC

the long and short of this is that “boy band” is inaccurate unless you’re classifying most bands before the mid-80s as boy bands or girls groups, and that malcolm mclaren, vivienne westwood and each individual member of the pistols all had entirely different motivations for being involved

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GOLIKEHELLMACHINE @golikehellmachine.com [ View ] Jul 03, 2024 at 19:14 UTC

on the other hand, it’s better than biden old

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GOLIKEHELLMACHINE @golikehellmachine.com [ View ] Jul 03, 2024 at 19:14 UTC

oh god, no, not sex pistols discourse again, please, no, i can’t do another fucking round of discourse about a complicated story that has multiple interpretations depending on who is doing the telling

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GOLIKEHELLMACHINE @golikehellmachine.com [ View ] Jul 03, 2024 at 18:44 UTC

oh sure, i don’t think anyone is counting this as a serious indicator of anything, it’s just a tiny anecdotal data point

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GOLIKEHELLMACHINE @golikehellmachine.com [ View ] Jul 03, 2024 at 18:42 UTC

there were like maybe two stories on desantis’ unusual (and disastrous) decision to outsource almost the entire campaign to a PAC, a strategy that trump is following almost to the letter

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GOLIKEHELLMACHINE @golikehellmachine.com [ View ] Jul 03, 2024 at 18:34 UTC

the polls are weird this year and don’t line up with anything, and frequently don’t even line up with each other. either campaigning fundamentals are horribly broken or polling is.

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GOLIKEHELLMACHINE @golikehellmachine.com [ View ] Jul 03, 2024 at 18:33 UTC

right, i don’t give it any predictive credence at all, it’s just an anecdotal data point, which is worth nearly nothing. but in the aggregate, it’s not worth *absolutely* nothing.

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GOLIKEHELLMACHINE @golikehellmachine.com [ View ] Jul 03, 2024 at 18:26 UTC

do you mean to tell me that lara trump may not have the best instincts for putting on a party convention

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GOLIKEHELLMACHINE @golikehellmachine.com [ View ] Jul 03, 2024 at 18:24 UTC

we aren’t even seeing the usual washington state schmucks blazing through town with their flag trucks

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GOLIKEHELLMACHINE @golikehellmachine.com [ View ] Jul 03, 2024 at 18:22 UTC

it’s mostly a grift, either the times or the post recently had a story about how much money they’re taking in, but also, i think flynn has always been moderately insane

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GOLIKEHELLMACHINE @golikehellmachine.com [ View ] Jul 03, 2024 at 18:22 UTC

right, like, his rallies are doing worse now than they did *in the middle of covid*

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GOLIKEHELLMACHINE @golikehellmachine.com [ View ] Jul 03, 2024 at 18:20 UTC

the last non-loyalist out the door at the RNC was their experienced SME for election law

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GOLIKEHELLMACHINE @golikehellmachine.com [ View ] Jul 03, 2024 at 18:19 UTC

some of them are threatening to try to fight trump at the convention if he doesn’t choose flynn but i suspect it’s all talk

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GOLIKEHELLMACHINE @golikehellmachine.com [ View ] Jul 03, 2024 at 18:17 UTC

donald trump is spectacularly unpopular and appears to genuinely believe their own bullshit about peeling black voters away from the democrats, which will lead to terrible strategies (insofar as they even have strategies)

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GOLIKEHELLMACHINE @golikehellmachine.com [ View ] Jul 03, 2024 at 18:13 UTC

i would not put it past trump to nominate flynn, to be clear, but it seems like they’re telling the truth about this being fraudulent.