Why is the Dave Matthews Band so uncool

Okay, without making reference to whatever they've done over the past few years (I haven't bought any of their albums since Everyday since I live in mortal terror of someone discovering how uncool my Amazon purchase history is), what exactly is it that makes the Dave Matthews Band the epitome of what is not cool?

Frankly, the several of their albums I own are quite good. They've done tons of good songs -- Satellite, Crash (Into Me), Ants Marching, The Dreaming Tree -- what the fuck is wrong with that? Their music is complex and interesting, with catchy tunes and skilled musicianship. I don't get what it is that has inspired so much hatred? Please explain so that I can be cool too like all of you.

Dave Matthews makes music for people who want to like music, or at least be seen as liking music, but who don’t actually like music. That’s why a terrible vocalist yodling over hold music jazz is perfect. The guys jamming out on Citibank’s customer service line have some serious musical chops too, but it’s pablum. There’s nothing challenging or interesting about it. It’s taking Paul Simon and killing the talent aspect in favor of the non-offensiveness of it. I’d rather eat a DMB CD than have to listen to one.

See, no. I like music. I like a lot of music that is indisputably real music. So the rationale that it is somehow inferior to "real" music doesn't work, unless you also want to declare that, say, Charles Mingus and Paul Simon and Squarepusher are just "pseudomusic" for the music-hating masses.

That's the thing, I got me a last.fm profile that reveals that my musical taste is plenty sophisticated. Don't try to explain to me that sophisticates don't like Dave Matthews Band, because I'll just drunkenly laugh in your face.

Little Asian girls shouldn't drink. :(

Somewhere along the way, Dave Matthews Band fans were deemed to be "douches" and therefore the music they listened to became "douche music." I honestly don't think it's any more complex than that. It's simply fashionable to be down on DMB.

Same reason I hate Tool. Their fans can be huge douches.

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Originally posted by Xan

Same reason I hate Tool. Their fans can be huge douches.

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His post is my cite.

I find something about their music to be insipid and bland. Also please quit asking to be cool like us, you know that's impossible.

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Originally posted by Jeff

I find something about their music to be insipid and bland. Also please quit asking to be cool like us, you know that's impossible.

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Jeff, I'm sorry you're elderly and don't have good musical taste, but can't you tell that this thread wasn't really an appropriate place for you to attempt to 'contribute'?

Yeah, it's definitely in large part due to the fans. Actually, fans of any band that can reasonably be called a jam band tend to be annoying as fuck (hi, Phish fans).

Also, beginning with Everyday DMB started a trend away from the jam-band, somewhat psuedo-folky twangyness that made Under the Table and Dreaming a breakout hit into a much more polished, produced sound (Busted Stuff. for the most part. harkens back to their earlier stuff, but anything after that? no). See: "American Baby" and "The Space Between". In the last decade, the hardcore music fans have tended toward less polished, and less produced lo-fi bands. I think that is why DMB was cool in 1998, and not in 2009.

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Originally posted by Exy

Jeff, I'm sorry you're elderly and don't have good musical taste, but can't you tell that this thread wasn't really an appropriate place for you to attempt to 'contribute'?

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The Shins are an awesome band.

Please continue to tell me I don't have good musical taste.

Exy, I'm your age, and I agree with Jeff. DMB is bland. I don't viciously hate them, but "complex and interesting" are not how I would describe their music.

Also, I hate douchey fratboys with a vengeance. And douchey fratboys tend to loooovvvvve Dave Matthews.

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Originally posted by Orual

Also, I hate douchey fratboys with a vengeance. And douchey fratboys tend to loooovvvvve Dave Matthews.

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I think this is the key. I don't know any douchey fratboys (except maybe one or two whom I slept with but that's neither here nor there.) I don't see there being anything particularly bland about their music -- it's got complex and interesting instrumentation, the tunes are catchy but not irritatingly simple, the lyrics aren't particularly any stupider than anything else one hears on the radio.

I'm here to challenge your assumption that just because you associate DMB with douchey fratboys (why were you hanging out with those guys anyway?) that DMB itself isn't at least pretty decent. There's a reason people like them.

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Originally posted by Jeff

The Shins are an awesome band.

Please continue to tell me I don't have good musical taste.

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Jeff, tell us more stories about how you took your girl to see the Glenn Miller Orchestra that one time, and how after swing dancing the night away, you eventually won a kiss from her.

Listen son, don't make me turn up this here Skid Row Greatest Hits mix-tape I've got going on.

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Originally posted by Exy

I'm here to challenge your assumption that just because you associate DMB with douchey fratboys (why were you hanging out with those guys anyway?) that DMB itself isn't at least pretty decent. There's a reason people like them.

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I'm sure it's a contributing factor. It's also that I'm not too big on folky/poppy rock in general.

I don't go out of my way to bad-mouth other people's musical taste in real life, though.

I can't really. I like frigging Journey.

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Originally posted by Exy

Jeff, tell us more stories about how you took your girl to see the Glenn Miller Orchestra that one time, and how after swing dancing the night away, you eventually won a kiss from her.

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Don't you be hating on Glenn Miller, now. I'll have something to say about that. :Shake:


I don't consider DMB douchey or uncool--I am not all that into music (actually, I like what I like--whatever that may be. I don't collect songs or albums or obsess about this new sound or that new band or who derived what from whom and who ripped off whom etc--if I like a song, I don't care who it's by, but I digress)

The only douchey thing I know about DMB is that when they were here on tour, their tour bus driver decided to um, purge their tour bus toilet contents whilst driving over a bridge that spans the Chicago river. Sadly, there was an open tour boat just underneath that particular bridge at that moment. IMS, the band did not apologize. :eek:


PS--I like some of Journey as well.

Exy, I don't get it either. I have a couple of their CDs and saw them once in concert because it was free. I don't get where they are so terrible OR why some people love them more than oxygen. They seem too middle of the road to inspire such extremes.

The whole hating on bands that you (the general you) don't like to the point where you act like people who like it are stupid/don't know shit about music is shit that makes me want to kick some scrotum in high heeled cleats.

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Originally posted by Sleeps w/Butterflies

The whole hating on bands that you (the general you) don't like to the point where you act like people who like it are stupid/don't know shit about music is shit that makes me want to kick some scrotum in high heeled cleats.

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I agree. You like what you like and who gives a crap if it's "cool" or not? If you're listening to music because it's cool, you're either a teenager or emotionally retarded. Possibly both, but at least the teenagers have the potential to grow out of it.

There's a few DMB songs I like, though I have really broad tastes so I don't listen to them often since there's so much else I like better. But it's surely not epic "OMG DOUCHMUSIQUE".

Besides, I'm truly, madly, completely obsessed with Darren fucking Hayes. I have no room to criticize others.

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Originally posted by Zuul

I agree. You like what you like and who gives a crap if it's "cool" or not? If you're listening to music because it's cool, you're either a teenager or emotionally retarded. Possibly both, but at least the teenagers have the potential to grow out of it.

There's a few DMB songs I like, though I have really broad tastes so I don't listen to them often since there's so much else I like better. But it's surely not epic "OMG DOUCHMUSIQUE".

Besides, I'm truly, madly, completely obsessed with Darren fucking Hayes. I have no room to criticize others.

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I don't listen to music that others view as "cool". It's just when their fans are assholes I begin to associate the fans with the music in a negative way. It ruins the enjoyment for me. Not the most rational approach I know.

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Originally posted by Xan

I don't listen to music that others view as "cool". It's just when their fans are assholes I begin to associate the fans with the music in a negative way. It ruins the enjoyment for me. Not the most rational approach I know.

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Really though, I'm a misanthrope so really I'm just making excuses about why I don't like someone. "Because they're people and people suck" loses it's effectiveness after the billionth time.

There is, it seems, a trend among some music fans to be really hateful to other people's tastes. Check out the last.fm shoutboxes, for example. I think it comes from not understanding that there is a clear difference between liking a band and that band being good, and accepting that you can love a band to death even though they play poorly, write awful lyrics, etc etc.

Hahahahaha! Dave Matthews himself has done more for acoustic rock in the past decade than any one man. DMB is amazing...btw I'm not a douchey frat boy, I'm a douchy musician.

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Originally posted by Exy

Jeff, tell us more stories about how you took your girl to see the Glenn Miller Orchestra that one time, and how after swing dancing the night away, you eventually won a kiss from her.

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I can't stand DMB, and very little of the hatred is based on their fans being douchey. In fact, I can't honestly say I find their fans douchey on the whole, since so many varied people, not just douches, are in love with them. My reason for hating them is that their music is bland and rambly and generally annoying to me. Yes, they have some great songs. But I just can't understand how someone can listen to a song like this and think it's anything but mediocre smooth jazz accompanied by nonmusical moaning that he's making up as he goes along. Maybe this is a big part of it: he always sounds like he's improvising the goddamn tune for the vocals and not even doing a very imaginative job of it.

Combine this irritating style with the fact that so many people love it more than life itself and it makes me want to smash my radio.

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Originally posted by Unregistered

Hahahahaha! Dave Matthews himself has done more for acoustic rock in the past decade than any one man

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This does not mean what you think it means.

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3191/...56493687_b.jpg

http://images.contactmusic.com/video...-red-rocks.jpg

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2615/...62f42cc1a5.jpg

http://blogs.creativeloafing.com/vib...7/davebt08.jpg

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Originally posted by Exy

See, no. I like music. I like a lot of music that is indisputably real music. So the rationale that it is somehow inferior to "real" music doesn't work, unless you also want to declare that, say, Charles Mingus and Paul Simon and Squarepusher are just "pseudomusic" for the music-hating masses.

That's the thing, I got me a last.fm profile that reveals that my musical taste is plenty sophisticated. Don't try to explain to me that sophisticates don't like Dave Matthews Band, because I'll just drunkenly laugh in your face.

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People who diss the DMB secretly listen to the Spice Girls and Nickelback.

I'll add Stay, The Space Between, Don't Drink the Water, Crush and Everyday to some good fucking songs they've done.

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Originally posted by SeeOhTwo

... Don't Drink the Water ...

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Oh yeah, that is a decent song. "Grave Digger" isn't half bad either.

O and the song "Satellite" makes me want to put on a poofy dress and just twirl, twirl, twirl.

I mix up Dave Matthews Band and Matchbox 20, and Hootie and The Blowfish. I've never knowingly heard a song by any of them but they all sold squillions of albums at one stage before the download monster ate all the music money.

a) As has been mentioned, their fans are tools.

b) There's a "herd mentality" with their fans, a sort of "bandwaggoning". Fans might or might not actually like DMB, but they only started listening to them initially because everyone else in their frat started listening, so, to fit in, they had to too. They're the musical equivalent of peer-pressured Cavaricci jeans and Coca-Cola shirts in the 80s.

c) Their music is bland, boring and appeals to a demographic that will soon think John Tesh and Michael Buble are cool, too.

d) DMB is one of those bands whose fans think that every single song is somehow "deep" or "meaningful", when in fact it's not (see also "The Billy Joel Disease").

e) Reason d has led many of their fans to think they're somehow intellectually superior to fans on other music, which contributes to reason a.

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Originally posted by tunaman

b) There's a "herd mentality" with their fans, a sort of "bandwaggoning".

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:dub: Really, you wanna bring up bandwagons? Come on, people hating on the DMB has a certain self-reinforcing quality to it.

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Originally posted by Exy

:dub: Really, you wanna bring up bandwagons? Come on, people hating on the DMB has a certain self-reinforcing quality to it.

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Well, OK then. There's a DMB bandwagon, then there's an anti-DMB bandwagon.

To be honest though, the time I've spent listening to or thinking about DMB can be measured in microseconds.

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Originally posted by tunaman

To be honest though, the time I've spent listening to or thinking about DMB can be measured in microseconds.

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It took you more than "microseconds" to come up with your five point platform there. :tongue:

Didn't you used to have some mysterious hottie as an avatar, where did that go?

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Originally posted by Exy

Didn't you used to have some mysterious hottie as an avatar, where did that go?

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Ah, yes... my avatar: the "joke that no one got".

The pic was of Paul Weller, lead singer of The Jam. Back in 1982, Weller broke up the band with the old "I'm too good to play with these guys" excuse. Needless to say, that pissed off a bunch of Jam fans. I read somewhere that some fans in London printed by t-shirts that said "RIP Paul Weller 1958-1982" on them (not-so-subtle message to Paul: "You're dead to us").

I thought that was hilarious, so I photoshopped something similar.

I guess it was lost in the migration.

Okay - I haven't posted to Mellophant yet, but been watching for a bit while maintaining my other message-board habits ;).

First - YMMV and all that. You like DMB? Cool; be happy.

Second - They ARE all talented - they know their way about their instruments...but I find that I just don't care. There's nothing edgy or even thought-provoking in what they present - musically, lyrically, stylistically. They're like smooth jazz - they're smooth rock. Again, YMMV...

WordMan! Great to see you here!

:dumbo:

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Originally posted by WordMan

Okay - I haven't posted to Mellophant yet, but been watching for a bit while maintaining my other message-board habits ;).

First - YMMV and all that. You like DMB? Cool; be happy.

Second - They ARE all talented - they know their way about their instruments...but I find that I just don't care. There's nothing edgy or even thought-provoking in what they present - musically, lyrically, stylistically. They're like smooth jazz - they're smooth rock. Again, YMMV...

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What up Wordman? I'm stoked to see you again buddy.

As talented as those musicans are, there's nothing there to challenge a musicians ear. There's no new ground being broken, there's no pushing the limits of the players and their instruments. I know that sometimes music can get too challenging for the average listener, but any decent musican has got to at least try. But DMB is to the jam band world what Disturbed is to the heavy metal world-nothing. Fluff. It's background noise. You don't listen to Dave, you just hear him.

I should add here that seeing DMB in concert was a revelation, if not necessarily a positive one. Live (at least in the late 90s), they stuck to their jam band roots and dragged 4 minute radio singles into 12 minute jams. It was interesting to see your H.O.R.D.E. Tour regulars totally digging the jams, and the faded-backwards-baseball cap jocks and their girlfriends totally nonplussed.

They were not a good jam band, by the way.

Thanks guys.