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Re: Douche Rock

Douche Rock
February 23, 2011 05:53PM
A category of rock that has already been mentioned in Del's post. Actually, it's been a long-standing genre, but it lacked a name until now. A low IQ music best exemplified by Journey, Loverboy, Bon Jovi, Night Ranger, Survivor, Starship and, in Del's words, all the rest of that lot. And I have noticed some common elements.

The word "love" must be mispronounced in at least a couple songs. Bon Jovi does this, and I think another band back in the late 80s had lyrics like - "I lav you, though I never get a chance to lav you" -- don't know what that band is. Help me, guys.

It's the kind of music that's played around weightlifting equipment, with conversation like:

Dude, she wants to get married.

Dude, what are you gonna do?

Don't know. Dude, let's get tanked before you propose to her.

Dude, let's get some hookers before I propose to her.


On second thought, it's any music that's pumped into corporate gyms like Ballys. Anyway, I'd like to add that we should not forget about hardcore Douche Rockers like Kixx, Winger, Dokken, Whitesnake and Krokus. When the fog of the past recedes, it's easy to look back and say that, indeed, is Douche Rock. So I ask you, who are today's inheritors of the Douche mantle? It's not so easy to define in the fog of the present.

I will say this, Justin Bieber is too obvious. He's too young and too lightweight. The full-fledged human Douchebag is in his 20s and 30s. Bieber is pre-Douche.

I'll get the ball rolling and say John Mayer is solid Douche.
Reply Quote
Re: Douche Rock
February 23, 2011 06:29PM
Quote

So I ask you, who are today's inheritors of the Douche mantle?

Misspelled rap/metal: Korn, Linkin Park, Limp Bizkit, et al.

Sublime was the band of choice in the '90s for all those MTV spring-break/ "Girls Gone Wild"-loving douchbags, the ones who took their song "Date Rape" the wrong way: " 'if it wasn't for date rape, I'd never get laid' - ha ha, dude, where's the roofies?! Partyyyyy!!!"
Re: Douche Rock
February 23, 2011 08:57PM
Daughtry and Nickelback (already mentioned) top my list of said genre.
Re: Douche Rock
February 23, 2011 09:14PM
The tween army notwithstanding, Justin Beiber is talented. Last night on Ferguson, John Waters called him a prodigy. I do think he'll be around a long time (Beiber, not Waters. Hopefully Waters too). Maybe Bieber will become an outright crooner a decade from now and have his own casino for bluehairs in 2070s Las Vegas.

I vote for adding:

Black Crowes
Kings of Stone Age
Queens of Leon
Cake

The thing is, douche rock has to be made by guys for guys. Am I right? But guys aren't buying the music-product right now. The expendable income keeping brick-n-mortar afloat is from the female tweens. So, bit of a challenge to find the current douche. Just look at the charts right now:

Lady GaGa
Katy Perry
Rihanna
P!nk
Britney
Nicki Manaj
Kei$sha

plus Bruno Mars
(maybe they're the douche?)

-------
Destroyer and Deerhunter were both excellent on Fallon/Letterman last night. Mountain Goats on Letterman tonite.
Re: Douche Rock
April 29, 2015 06:35PM
none of these bands are my kind of music , but in the interest of full disclosure I do have to admit I don't immediately flip the dial when Linkin Park's "Crawling" or "In The End" comes on .
Re: Douche Rock
February 23, 2011 07:29PM
Dude, but what if she finds out I been screwin' around?

Dude, I'm tellin you, bring the Nelson tape. You gotta set the mood.
Re: Douche Rock
February 23, 2011 07:46PM
Creed, Nickelback, Three Days Grace, 3 Doors Down, Breaking Benjamin, Daughtry, Yellowcard, Seether, Chevelle, Finger Eleven, Hoobastank, Taproot, Staind, Fuel, Our Lady Peace, Seven Mary Three and pretty much anybody produced by Howard Benson. (Except Motorhead.)

Also Matchbox 20.
Re: Douche Rock
February 23, 2011 09:53PM
Quote

Creed, Nickelback, Three Days Grace, 3 Doors Down, Breaking Benjamin, Daughtry, Yellowcard, Seether, Chevelle, Finger Eleven, Hoobastank, Taproot, Staind, Fuel, Our Lady Peace, Seven Mary Three and pretty much anybody produced by Howard Benson. (Except Motorhead.)

Also Matchbox 20.

I'm tellin' you ... you're building that Bizarro TP. Brick by brick and (aptly) link by link.

...

They're all strangers to me (except Motorhead - I heard their new one at the local mom 'n pop and it rawked).

What it is about the very names on that list that makes the bile rise up in my throat? I cannot even say for sure if I've heard tunes by some of them. The names convey and signify.
Re: Douche Rock
February 23, 2011 10:15PM
If you've ever heard a song on the radio and thought, "Man, Pearl Jam's not even trying anymore," it was probably Creed.

The thing that really drives me crazy about these bands is that they're almost interchangeable. They use the same chord progressions, have the same raspy macho singers, have allegedly meaningful songs about somedamnthing that get blown up to impossibly huge proportions to cover up their essential vapidity...and Howard Benson (a man who claims he won't work with an artist unless they're at least aiming for multi-platinum sales) produces 90% of them, giving them all the same guitar tones, the same drum sounds, the same "radio-ready" mix. And dudes who like to pump their fists in the air during shows love them.

Unfortunately for me, my girlfriend also loves them. Which is why I've heard at least one song by almost all of them. She's made mix CDs that sound like it's all the same band.
Re: Douche Rock
February 24, 2011 01:28AM
Michael Toland wrote:

> Unfortunately for me, my girlfriend also loves them. Which is
> why I've heard at least one song by almost all of them. She's
> made mix CDs that sound like it's all the same band.

You poor, poor bastard. You have my sympathy.
Re: Douche Rock
February 24, 2011 04:50PM
Quote

She's made mix CDs that sound like it's all the same band.

I still have the old mix tapes that old high school girlfriend(s) made for me back in the day. Dokken ... Ratt ... Cinderella. May I call it "Der Totalkrapmusik?"

That certain metal-head gal dropped all of those douche-metal bands the very same day she got a copy of "Licensed to Ill" - and she never looked back. She ended up getting a degree and becoming a urologist. I checked.

...

Mix tapes. I miss mix tapes. 90 minutes to show how just much you care. You could never do that with an 8-track, right? Or am I wrong about that? Isn't that what K-Tel was for?

...

In a related aside, I can remember walking away from Alice In Chain's set at Lollapalooza after seeing just how "douche-metal" their act was. I already hated the music, but the presentation was just as dreadful. You remember how the bassist for Ratt used to prance about? It was quite like that.

Thank Gawd for the second stage:

Verve.
Unrest.
Royal Trux.
Babes In Toyland.

Or was that all a different year?
Re: Douche Rock
February 23, 2011 07:51PM
Oh, and the Sammy Hagar version of Van Halen.
Re: Douche Rock
February 23, 2011 08:20PM
I guess the old "you know it when you see it" saw applies.

Re: Douche Rock
February 23, 2011 09:15PM
I think the "lav" band in question was Europe. It may have been White Lion. In either case, one can blame the odd pronunciation on the fact they weren't native English speakers. Maybe.
zoo
Re: Douche Rock
February 23, 2011 09:43PM
Michael Toland wrote:

"Our Lady Peace"

If one of the criteria is (per the OP) "A low IQ music best exemplified by Journey, Loverboy, Bon Jovi, Night Ranger..." then I'd like to respectfully challenge the nomination of OLP with one caveat. At one point, they were actually a thinking man's band. Their album Spiritual Machines was inspired by Ray Kurzweil's book The Age of Spiritual Machines about artificial intelligence and future of humanity. Not your average douche lyrical content. And not a bad album, by the way.

That, of course, was their last good album, and they can probably now be safely called douches. I don't think there's any turning back the intellectual clock at this point.



Post Edited (02-23-11 17:44)
Re: Douche Rock
February 24, 2011 01:37AM


Not yet mentioned : Trapt

Watch this and tell me you don't literally feel yourself dying a little on the inside for humanity.

[www.youtube.com]

Re: Douche Rock
February 24, 2011 04:33PM
Yes, that was truly heinous, mats. I could only endure about a minute of it. On the bright side, any song that elicits laugh-out-loud comments like this one at least serves some purpose in the world:

I'ma aboutta fight this chick because of the shit she keeps telling me and I won't stop listening to this until that bitch is fucking dead!!!
Re: Douche Rock
February 24, 2011 01:41AM
Pearl Jam themselves.
Re: Douche Rock
February 24, 2011 05:23AM
You poor bastard. We feel your pain.
Re: Douche Rock
February 24, 2011 01:25PM
> ... I've heard at least one song by almost all of them. She's made mix CDs that sound like
> it's all the same band.

Michael, thank you for that post. Wow! That statement really goes a long way toward defining (or at least describing) this strain of rock.

I think back to the mix tapes my high-school friends (and, later, some of my college friends) made back in the late '70s and early '80s — tapes full of songs by all the bands mentioned in the initial post above. And they all sounded alike! Same vaguely feminine male singers, same guitars effects guaranteed to scrub all the grit out of the fretwork, same frosty keyboards and over-amped (and never too busy or exciting, thank you) drums, same glossy production. This was the "disco sucks" era, but jeez, these bands sounded every bit as formulaic and predictable as disco.

And I still prefer the term "fake rock," even if it's just for the connotation it carries for me, personally. But "douche rock" gets the point across well, too.

Re: Douche Rock
February 25, 2011 03:35AM
Unsuspecting Douches. They didn't mean to be, but they Douched it - Spin Doctors.

And don't tell me that Steve Miller, after decades of flying under my Douche radar, ain't a Douche.

Buzz, buzz, buzz, you're wrong!
zoo
Re: Douche Rock
February 25, 2011 12:41PM
Steve Miller '67-'73 (pre-The Joker) ain't no douche. His crazy mix of country, psych, blues, and spacey freak-outs was pretty cool IMO. Then, pop and the doucheness that followed.
Re: Douche Rock
April 29, 2015 11:46PM
I'm writing a parody of "The Joker."

Aside from "skin tag" and "roof slag" ... what else rhymes with douche bag?

Thanks in advance for any and all help.

.
.
.

Related Addendum: Marc Riley would like you all to be aware of how many ex-members of the Steve Miller Band are listed at wikipedia:


Sonny Charles
Lonnie Turner
James Cooke
Lance Haas
Tim Davis
Jim Peterman
Boz Scaggs
Glyn Johns
Ben Sidran
Nicky Hopkins
Richard Personett
Bobby Winkelman
Charlie McCoy
Jack King
Ross Valory
Gerald Johnson
Dick Thompson
Jim Keltner
Roger Allen Clark
Gary Mallaber
John King
David Denny
Greg Douglass
Byron Allred
Ross McLochness
Norton Buffalo
John Massaro
Billy Peterson
Ricky Peterson
Bob Malach
Leo Sidran
Jay Bird Koder
Joey Heinemann
Michael Carabello
Adrian Areas

...

To paraphrase a wizened sage:

"If it's Steve Miller and your granny on Moog, it's a Steve Miller Band gig."
Re: Douche Rock
April 30, 2015 02:55AM
Douche bag - Heidi Montag.
Re: Douche Rock
February 25, 2011 12:44PM
I saw Steve Miller last night. (Don't ask.) During "Jungle Love" (the last song), all the middle-aged ladies came out of their seats to dance. They were then joined by their husbands...who high-fived each other on the dance floor.

And I'm sorry, Zoo...he played "Space Cowboy" and "Living in the USA" as well as the more well-known hits, and they fit in just fine with his Douche material.

He diligently sucked all the life out of several blues classics.
zoo
Re: Douche Rock
February 25, 2011 03:27PM
Michael, you have to listen to pre-douche live versions of those songs, not ones by the post-douche artist.

Once a douche, all past work can become tainted.

This became clear to me as I was looking for a live clip on YouTube of Simple Minds' "Thirty Frames a Second." I found a 1997 video that had Derek Forbes on bass after he briefly rejoined the group. SM, as much as I love their early stuff, were douches by this time, as much as it pains me to say it. Let me tell you, Jim Kerr's vocals were so lame compared to the intensity of a 1981 recording of the song I heard. He and Burchhill's stage presence were those of arena rockers. Very disappointing.
Re: Douche Rock
April 05, 2022 04:56PM
zoo Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I was looking for a
> live clip on YouTube of Simple Minds' "Thirty
> Frames a Second." I found a 1997 video that had
> Derek Forbes on bass after he briefly rejoined the
> group. SM, as much as I love their early stuff,
> were douches by this time, as much as it pains me
> to say it. Let me tell you, Jim Kerr's vocals were
> so lame compared to the intensity of a 1981
> recording of the song I heard. He and Burchhill's
> stage presence were those of arena rockers. Very
> disappointing.
Then, there's this photo from 1986 of Jim Kerr...

Rocking a full MEGAdouche look like he owned it [and he did…after stealing it from Bono].



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 04/06/2022 08:43AM by Post-Punk Monk.
Re: Douche Rock
February 26, 2011 05:02AM
"doucheness that followed"

I like that phrase.
-------------
Quote

They were then joined by their husbands...who high-fived each other on the dance floor.
People misuse the initialism "LOL", but I LOLd. I'm also embarrassed for them. I had this image:

PA: "Whooa-oh-oh big ole jedare linah. Docah reemee do far away".
Douche Rocker 1: "Dude! High Five! Woooo! Say, are those Dockers?"
DR2: "And a polo shirt, but I wore my Chuck Taylors so that people know I still enjoy good music!"
------------
Quote

Once a douche, all past work can become tainted.
So, rule #345b:

The hands of the douche-clock are non-reversible.
OR
There's no pre-douching

Re: Douche Rock
February 27, 2011 03:41PM
I agree w/zoo about Steve Miller; the first four albums are mostly pretty good, and I saw them live during that period (very good). Regrettably, 5 sucked, and when he re-emerged with the Joker he was douche en flagrante. (I saw them on the Joker tour but could not bear more than a couple of songs; I had really come to see the opening act - King Crimson! What a bill, at Bill Graham's Winterland - the opening openers were I think Tufano & Giammarese - douchy - and inbetween sets there was concert footage of the Grass Roots sounding totally UNdouchy - they rawked!)

I can't vouch for Ratt - the name alone embodies the hairband idiocy of the era - but I still really like Round and Round. (Everything else of theirs is pretty much mush to me.)

As for Bieber, it may be too early to say. Plus, he is good in the commercial with Ozzy, and he was pretty good getting shot to bits on CSI.

Re: Douche Rock
April 30, 2015 10:26AM
Wasn't Tres Douche a member of the Beastie Boys?
Re: Douche Rock
May 01, 2015 09:36PM
I think Michael's list above pretty much nails the modern fake-rock gestalt: generic-sounding, faceless, predictable ... Rock that neither excites nor offends.

And here I am, waiting for a few buddies to meet me for happy hour, and Journey has just started on the jukebox. That'll teach me to get here early.

Re: Douche Rock
May 02, 2015 11:29AM

Douche roots, a historical perspective.

[www.youtube.com]
Re: Douche Rock
April 06, 2022 07:48PM
Survivor are so good though. Van Hager and Night Ranger all put out some solid tunes. Sometimes a little douche rock hits just right.
Re: Douche Rock
April 06, 2022 08:11PM
Nice cast, I reckon the fish don't seem to like your choice of bait though.
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