Coheed & Cambria

Niveous · Post by **Niveous** » Fri May 19, 2006 1:30 pm

If you've looked over at the Collaborations thread, you know I'm working on a concept album. And in doing so, I've been doing research. It's like I was told in college, you should read if you wanna be a writer. I wanna write a concept album so I should try out some. So I've been listening to stuff like The Who's Tommy, Queensryche's "Operation Mindcrime I & II", Fear Factory's "Obsolete", MCR's "Three Cheers For Sweet Revenge" and Coheed & Cambria.

I was wondering what members of the community thought of the band and more specifically, if they were Coheed fans, what they thought of the Bag On Line Adventures. The more I've been listening and researching, I'm beginning to think that either Claudio is a really bad writer or perhaps just a really crazy one or he's just making this stuff up as he goes along.

C'mon- It's supposed to the story of a couple named Coheed & Cambria. Coheed gets stung by a magical dragonfly and that activates the Mon-Star virus in his heart. Then there's all sorts of other twists and stories out of order and a talking 10 speed bike and robots called IRO-Bots... This has to be a joke, right?

TheNedPlimptonOrchestra · Fri May 19, 2006 4:06 pm

those guys are friends of mine. everytime claudio has talked to me about the plot of his music, he's been very drunk and i dont really listen.

Adam! · Post by **Adam!** » Fri May 19, 2006 6:11 pm

I always assumed C&C were a tongue not-so-in-cheek parody band. "Parody band" is the wrong phrase; "intentionally ridiculous" is what I mean, I suppose. Everybody I know who likes them takes them seriously, which blows... mah... mind.

JonPorobil · Post by **JonPorobil** » Wed Aug 09, 2006 6:08 am

I always thought they were too pretentious for their own good.

Niv, are you listening to Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots? There's the concept album of our time. WOO.

Niveous · Post by **Niveous** » Wed Aug 09, 2006 7:08 am

With my work on Septemberian (my concept album), I have been taking in lots of Trade Paperbacks and Concept Albums. And yes, Yoshimi is one of them. If this were a class- Yoshimi would be one of the textbooks.

Post by jb » Wed Aug 09, 2006 7:29 am

Generic wrote:I always thought they were too pretentious for their own good.

Niv, are you listening to Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots? There's the concept album of our time. WOO.

and the lips aren't? they DEFINE pretense.

Phil. Redmon. · Post by **Phil. Redmon.** » Wed Aug 09, 2006 9:19 am

Niveous Devilchild wrote:MCR's "Three Cheers For Sweet Revenge"

Is that a concept album? I must have listened to that a thousand times, and I guess I thought of it more as "a bunch of songs about the same thing."

I really enjoy Coheed an' Cambria. Such a cool density, with a little herky jerk.

Maybe I don't know what a concept record is.

Niveous · Post by **Niveous** » Wed Aug 09, 2006 9:41 am

Three Cheers For Sweet Revenge is a concept album. It's the story of a couple who dies when their town is overrun by vampires (that part of the story is in the previous story). The guy then makes a deal with the devil to get both his and his girl's souls back. All he has to do is bring the devil the soul of 100 evil men.

It starts with Helena which is the funeral and then the hunt is on. Then at the end he succeeds, which is the song "I never told you what I do for a living". Not every song on the album follows the plot, but most of it does.

mr_lostman · Post by **mr_lostman** » Wed Aug 09, 2006 12:01 pm

Sure the lips are a bit pretentious, but Yoshimi is still a great concept album.

My friend is a huge fan of Coheed and he'll tell me about the story and all but every time we get into it, we just end up laughing at how ridiculous it is. Granted some of their songs are pretty cathcy and live they are hard to beat, but i do agree that in order to be a true coheed fan you have to be pretentious enough to laugh at them and still enjoy the music, or dumb enough to believe what they are doing is genius.

jute gyte · Post by **jute gyte** » Wed Aug 09, 2006 2:04 pm

mr_lostman wrote:i do agree that in order to be a true coheed fan you have to be pretentious enough to laugh at them and still enjoy the music...

Exactly what is pretentious about this?

Not a Coheed & Cambria fan, by the way. I like concept albums though.

Oh, and Niv: For another (much cooler) "concept band", check out Bal-Sagoth.

WeaselSlayer · Post by **WeaselSlayer** » Wed Aug 09, 2006 2:55 pm

The Lips have never come off as pretentious to me. Wayne Coyne even once said, "All our good ideas were in our first EP, we've been running on fumes ever since." That doesn't really sound like pretention to me. That sounds like outrageous humility, considering that those "fumes" gave us Clouds Taste Metallic and The Soft Bulletin.

fodroy · Post by **fodroy** » Thu Aug 10, 2006 1:07 am

I think the Flaming Lips are far too fun to be called pretentious. They've always come off as pretty genuine weirdos to me.

Post by jb » Thu Aug 10, 2006 6:48 am

I dunno, dude comes out and smears fake blood on his head at EVERY SHOW, while surrounded by people in bunny/fox/etc costumes. Fake blood and bunnies= pretentious.

IMO

Albatross · Post by **Albatross** » Thu Aug 10, 2006 9:13 am

jb wrote:Fake blood and bunnies= pretentious.

Not always...

WeaselSlayer · Post by **WeaselSlayer** » Thu Aug 10, 2006 10:08 am

I feel like the fake blood and bunnies are just too ridiculous to be rooted in pretention. Besides, I've heard from everyone who's seen them that they put on one of the greatest live shows ever, so if people are digging it...

Anyway, concept albums. I personally love the notion that Aeroplane Over the Sea is a concept album about Anne Frank being in love with Jesus. And Pedro the Lion has done two very cool concept albums, Winners Never Quit about a religiously zealous politician who steals an election and kills his wife when she finds out, and Control about a stressed-out number-crunching businessman who cheats on his wife and gets stabbed to death in the end by a jealous wife. Both excellent.

fodroy · Post by **fodroy** » Thu Aug 10, 2006 11:10 am

jb wrote:I dunno, dude comes out and smears fake blood on his head at EVERY SHOW, while surrounded by people in bunny/fox/etc costumes. Fake blood and bunnies= pretentious.

IMO

I read an interview with Wayne Coyne recently in which he called that stuff entertainment. It's not supposed to be an artistic statement. He was even trying to set up vibrating panties to hand out to audience members before the show and trigger the vibrations from the stage.

Here is the interview.

WeaselSlayer · Post by **WeaselSlayer** » Thu Aug 10, 2006 1:31 pm

I was listening to Dirty Projectors' The Getty Address and thinking "god damn is this album good," and then I remembered that it's just about the most complex/nuttiest concept album I've ever heard. Something about a man named Don Henley journeying through strange lands and leading birds and kangaroos in a revolt against technology and dying and having his blood poured into a bowl by kangaroos. Anyway, incredible incredible stuff conceptually and musically. There are even some awesome music videos to go along with some of it:

Really awe-inspiring stuff.

Coheed & Cambria

Coheed & Cambria

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