Tonight’s selections from The Afghan Whigs’ 1993 album, Gentlemen.
Greg Dulli sings about some fucked-up shit on the Afghan Whigs’ fourth album and major-label debut, 1993’s Gentlemen, a harrowing song cycle chronicling the death throes of a relationship. [...]
Memphis figures prominently on Gentlemen, even if the album opens with the buzz of car wheels on the John A. Roebling Suspension Bridge in the band’s hometown of Cincinnati. The Afghan Whigs had long been incorporating the sounds and fashions of black soul, funk, and jazz into their buzzy indie rock, which lent previous albums like 1990’s Up in It and 1992’s Congregation a sense of taut rhythmic urgency. The band had previously covered Al Green’s “Beware” and the Elvis hit “True Love Travels on a Gravel Road”, and they chose Tyrone Davis’ “I Keep Coming Back” for Gentlemen, proving their well of influences went much deeper than the usual alt-rock fare. While their contemporaries drew from indie bands like the Raincoats and the Meat Puppets or from classic rock acts like the Who and Neil Young, Dulli was much more interested in Stax and Motown, in Curtis Mayfield and Isaac Hayes. [...]
Over two decades Gentleman has most often been described as a “song cycle,” a term that distinguishes it from a concept album or a narrative album (although both terms are to some degree applicable). If that idea persists, perhaps its due to the word “cycle,” which seems apt: Gentlemen ends more or less where it begins. Scene-setting overture “If I Were Going” opens the album with a slow fade-in finally interrupted by [Steve] Earle’s stop-start drumbeat, and “Brother Woodrow/Closing Prayer” closes the affair with a long, cinematic fade-out, with a dissonant cello echoing the migraine drone of the Roebling Bridge. The sequencing shapes the album beautifully, creating a sense of emotional fatigue while only hinting vaguely at redemption. Thematically, however, that cycle implies a romantic fatalism, as though every relationship is doomed to end painfully. — Pitchfork
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If I Were Going [1993]
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You've probably heard me talk about my adoration for this band. Perhaps you've heard me say that The Afghan Whigs changed my life. That sounds profound and unbelievable, but it's true. At the very least they changed my taste in music forever. Prior to the discovery of this band, my musical taste leaned mostly towards hair-metal, with a healthy dose of Prince and a dab of grunge. I grew up in a rural area about an hour from Cincinnati. And I had absolutely no attachment to or awareness of the "local scene" in Cincinnati until I was in my mid-twenties.
Luckily, my best friend, Robbie had moved to the city and had much better musical taste than I did. Whenever we got together we would talk about music and exchange cassettes, CDs and good old mixtapes in hopes of swaying the other's taste. He had been listening to lot of "alternative" music on 97X, this weird radio station in Oxford, Ohio whose signal couldn't quite reach my hometown. I distinctly remember when he would carry on about this band and I'd heard their name mentioned on one of the Cincinnati stations (though they didn't play any of their songs).
In the spring of 1994, Robbie insisted that I should see my first Afghan Whigs show. They were playing an arena show in Dayton, Ohio along with The Breeders and Guided by Voices. A week before that show, Robbie and I had one of our regular music exchanges. I gave him my copy of the Type O Negative CD Bloody Kisses. In preparation for the show, he loaned me his copy of Gentlemen. I had never heard anything like it before. Sure, the metal I had enjoyed for so long talked a lot about drinking and sex, but not like this. This was something cerebral, yet darker — something with real depth and disturbingly honest lyrics. — The Current
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Gentlemen [1993]
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I'll warn you
If cornered
I'll scratch my way out of the pen
Wired
An animal
The claustrophobia begins
You think I'm scared of girls
Well maybe
But I'm not afraid of you
You wanna scare me
Then you'll cling to me
No matter what I do
Tell you a secret
We shared a needle once or twice
I loved her
She loved me
We slept together a couple of times
- What Jail Is Like
Have I mentioned this is a dark album?
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What Jail Is Like [1993]
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Most of the time when I reveal my affinity for the Afghan Whigs, I am met with one of three reactions: People who have never heard of the band, people who love the band, and people who only know the band because Gentlemen‘s “Fountain and Fairfax” was on the My So-Called Life soundtrack album. Considering what a ratings disaster that show was, it’s astonishing how many people owned that soundtrack. — EW
Fountain and Fairfax is an intersection in Los Angeles. A church on one corner is well known as a place where the famous (and/or infamous) attend AA meetings.
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Fountain and Fairfax [1993]
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WHO’S TALKING TO WHO?
Jimmy Kimmel: Charlie Puth
Jimmy Fallon: Billy Crystal, Emilia Jones, Normani
Stephen Colbert: Daniel Craig, Doris Kearns Goodwin (R 2/16/22)
Seth Meyers: Hugh Dancy, Paul Feig, Larnell Lewis
James Corden: Jenny Slate, Murray Bartlett, Teddy Swims (R 2/14/22)
Trevor Noah: Tiffanie Drayton
SPOILER WARNING
A late night gathering for non serious palaver that does not speak of that night’s show. Posting a spoiler will get you brollywhacked. You don’t want that to happen to you. It's a fate worse than a fate worse than death.
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Screaming Trees :: Nearly Lost You [1992]
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Mark Lanegan :: Where Did You Sleep Last Night [1990]
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