I Swallow Words Like A Placebo....

Because I'm in a really Placebo mood... and because I'm too lazy to write a new post about them... and because recycling is so good... and because I consider this a fooking fab post of mine (heh... lack of modesty is always great)... it took me about two hours to write it back them... and people considered me a freak after seeing it... hehe...

I can say I’m a little music maniac… I listen to music all day, I know all those weird indie acts and I read any British(sometimes even French..) mag that falls in my hands… But no matter how many bands I shall discover/listen/put on my “bands I love list”, my favourite will most definitely always be Placebo. Androgynous, glamorous, controversial, with Smiths, Sonic Youth, Pixies, Depeche Mode, Smashing Pumpkins and aforevermentioned Nirvana, the band initially called Ashtray Heart is what I see as a band that embodies the best all that I feel(them and le roi d’indie-pop anglaise, Morrissey, both solo and with The Smiths). I first listened to Placebo when “Special K” came out, back in 2001… My first impression?! WHAT THE FUCK?!?… Who the hell are these guys?!.. And what the hell is that?!(when seeing Brian Molko…great look in this vid, btw…) . The song sounded quite ok and the video had a very nice twist(well, directed by Howard Greenhalgh, as I would find out 5 years later… brilliant director, also did “Black Hole Sun” from Soundgarden… ah?!). Oh, and I also saw the vid from “Every Me And Every You” (yet again… WHAT?!… for those who haven’t paid attention to that vid, both the lead singer, Brian Molko, and the bass player, Stefan Osdal, wear dresses…Molks a black and white one, and Osdal a red one…). As for whatever they were saying in those songs… Come on, I was too small/Linkin Park fan to actually understand/pay attention… Then I heard nothing more about this weird band until 2003 when I was more than satisfied to rediscover what soon became my fav band/my obsession..enter “The Bitter End”… And I was grown up/depressive enough to see what Placebo wanted from their audience…

By the 11 grade, I had three albums and right now… well, I still need 5-6 b-sides… Damn, girl… So, what is Placebo about anyways? Cause it definitely ain’t about hating yr parents…Well, maybe if u rearrange the letters of their lyrics… And the closest Molko reaches this message is “Paycheck”(as I see it…)…. a song off their 1994 demo, guess what, being different….” She's a faker, never makes a sound/Undressed like a soul prayer /Buying shares, pay her by the pound”(maybe a reference to his mother, an extremely religious person, and his dad, a broker….)…. The demo also contains early versions of „Hang on to your Iq”, „Nancy Boy”, „36 Degrees”, „Teenage Angst”, „Bruise Pristine”, an acoustic „Eyesight To The Blind”, and two extremely weird songs, „Kangaroo Died”(bloody sad) and „2468”(extremely funny)….

In 1996 a first single was out… Come Home, the first off a raw and yet so complex album „Placebo”. But the first video was made for „36 degrees”, a song about that state which one has when doing drugs…. The vid, directed by Chris Cunningham(nope, done have any material in front of me…I actually know the bloody names….and all the lyrics…and everything..told u bout that obsession…), saw a very Marilyn Manson-like Molko standing in what apparently was a freezing-water pool and wearing a t-shirt on which it wrote „Lung” an his chest, in the place where the lungs are…Third single, second video, first one directed by genius Howard Greenhalgh….the subversive „Nancy Boy”(i’m planning to talk about it…too much to say..:D…better watch it...and pay great attention, careful not to miss the plastic ass, the cum shot and Molks’ round mouth….)…The song…simple guitar(but,oh,so brilliant),kick ass punk drums ….an hymn to homosexuality and sex…And now we can get to the album…The album revolves around one thing…addiction…To sex(Nancy boy), to other ppl(Bruise Pristine), to drugs(36 Degrees)….Enter the one great hymn of teens…”Teenage Angst”… inspired by what Molks’ mother told him when he was 14, that since we are born we are preparing for death, this song embodies everything a teen is going through…being an introvert, having low self-esteem, feeling that everything goes from bad to worst….”Since I was born I started to decay, now nothing ever, ever goes my way”….Bionic, the 3rd song on the album’s tracklist, is, as Molks puts it, about a robot fuck(„Harder, faster, forever after/None of you can make the grade”)….A fifth song returns to the idea of addiction to drugs…”Hand on to your IQ”(„..and please hang on to me”)….A quite song, „I Know”, talks about the status one has when they are a star, in the position of a spokesperson…”I know you love the song, but not the singer”…The album ends in a brilliant song, with lyrics half spoken, half moaned, and full of ambiguity (but isn’t that what Placebo are all about???)…

And so we reach the storage and so personal „Without You I’m Nothing”… Pure Morning, the first song, is probably the band’s best known… (and a song Molko hates so much because it’s considered to by their best song…)… a song with nonsense lyrics(„A friend in need is a friend indeed, a friend/A friend with weed is better/A friend with breast and all the rest/A friend who's dressed in leather”, but at least they aren’t „I’m feeling supersonic, give me gin and tonic”…as Molks himself puts it..)….”Brickshit House” talks about Molks being in the position of rock star loved by girls and hated by those girl’s boyfriends .”Without You I’m Nothing” made Bowie ask if the band could sing a duet with him at his 50 anniversary in 1998…which they did…”my Sweet Prince” can be seen in two ways…one: Brian’s addiction to heroin(Close up the hole in my vein”)…two: Brian’s relationship with a guy, who used to call him „my sweet prince”, relationship which ended badly….As for the schizoid duo „Burger Queen/Evil Doldo”..it so much embodies everything Placebo are about…The first one is soft, acoustic, mellow…and it talks about this goth junky…a true Luxemburger queen(btw, Brian used to live in Luxemburg…hm…)..and also burger queen is the slang for transvestite…double hm…the second one, is violent, electronic and contains a threat received by Brian on his phone robot….(„ Hey motherfucker, I'm after you. I know where you live. I will fuck you up the ass and I will sneak into your room and cut your cock off, and stuff it in my mouth and chew it up with my little teeth.”)….The videos are in the dear Placebo fashion…in the one for „Pure Morning”, Molko throws himself of a building…in „You Don’t care about us” the band is fed to sharks, while small diabolical kids are happy to see the bloody scene….The other two, „Without You, I’m Nothing” and „every me and every you” are live vids…(oh, in Every Me, pay attention to that girl-on-girl scene….)….

And so we reach the great year 2000….”Black Market Music”…And the great distorted guitar in „Taste in men”, the comparison between the one u love and a drug in „Special K”, the sink in mental disorders in „Black-eyed”(shizo, borderline, bipolar…hm, sounds familiar…wonder why???), the psychology of today in „Blue American”(„I wrote a book about the self, said I should get expensive help, put my neurosis on a shelf….but I don’t care bout myself…”), the loneliness one feels in „Hemoglobin”, the obsession in „Peeping Tom”….

And then, our little borderline placebo fan is awarded a great album in 2003…”Sleeping with ghosts”(title taken after Don McCullin’s photography book…a very shocking and painful book, because it shows the cruel truth in poor countries and poor areas in big cities…). The band says that when they chose this title they thought of the idea of living through memories of the ones u’ve loved and it revolves around the idea of relations…with another person or with yrself…Whether it’s the fucked up relation in „This Picture”, the feel u found the one in „I’ll Be Yours”, the feeling you’re a bastard in „Second Sight”, the desperate need u had for someone in „Protect me from what I want”, I thing each song on this album is beyond perfect…

In 2005, the trio celebrated 10 years of existence with a singles collection, „Once more with feeling”, on which two new songs were added….”Twenty Years”, a retrospective on Brian’s live and hopes for the future…and a electro-pop love ballad, „I Do”…a song that could make one think Placebo have started to believe in ever-lasting love…The end makes me think twice..”I wanna say I do, the question is do you”(there is still that fear of being turn down…)….2006 saw the launch of Placebo’s most anticipated 5 studio album, „Meds”…. more electronic, but yet returning to the raw sounds on their debut album, the band is clearly more mature and more aware of all their faults….”Staring back from the mirror's a face that you don't recognize/It's a loser, a sinner, a cock in a dildo's disguise”…A song with the ubber-sexual VV from the Kills(Meds) and a duet with Michael Stipe of REM on a song about an affair „Broken Promise”( Brian is the woman in the couple, while Stipe is the man…)…My favourite songs are „Post Blue”( Bite the hand that feeds/Tap the vein that bleeds/Down on my bended knees”), mainly because of its electronic touch and „In The Cold Light Of Morning”….And what more can I say, but the fact that placebo are as good now as they were back in 1996…Oh, and we must not forget Brian’s side projects…with electronic music makers(Alpinestars, Timo Maas, the Metric System),or with adventurous singers like Jane Birkin….just as daring as any other placebo tracks….Cause this is all Placebo is about….daring to play with yr image, with the image people have about you, with sex, with mental diseases….