Does anyone know what Danny Federici died of?

From EW:

Danny Federici, the keyboardist for Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band, died Thursday in New York, following a long battle with melanoma.

There's a lot of clever stuff in there.

"I left my conscience pressed / Between the pages of the Bible in the drawer / "What did it ever do for me" I say"

"You only hold me up like this / Cause you don't know who I really am / I used to waste my time on... / Waste my time dreaming of being alive / (now I only waste it dreaming of you)"

... I'll stop now.

Any cd in particular to recommend?

Taller in More Ways is wonderful and has three tracks that became big hit singles in the U.K. "Push the Button," just might be a perfect pop song. "Ugly" contains a very valuable self-image message. And "Red Dress" manages to be sexy and assertive without crossing the lines.

On the other hand, Three has "Hole in the Head," which is a kiss-off song to end all kiss-off songs. They also have a greatest hits CD, Overloaded. Which has all of the above and several glossy slow dance numbers. Change, their latest, is good but not up to the standard of the three I mentioned.

And if you like the Sugababes, do check out Girls Aloud. Their greatest hits CD is The Sound of Girls Aloud. Not sure what their best studio CD is, but The Show contains the delirious "Love Machine" and a delightful title song. But then there's the title track to Sound of the Underground. And What Will the Neighbours Say? has their cover of the Pointer Sisters' "Jump."

(And just to complicate things, the two groups teamed up on a cover of Aerosmith's "Walk This Way." Which I don't think appears on any of their albums -- it was released as a single, with proceeds to go to the Comic Relief charity.)

"Loaded God complex/Cock it and pull it"

Which sort of fits nicely with "I keep a gun on the book you gave me/Hallelujah, lock and load."

Thanks for the recs, Fred Pete!

Yes, Fred! More music to explore.

Thanks for the info, Sue. I guess maybe Danny Federici's death wasn't so unexpected, but I hadn't heard about him being ill. So sad. The band must be really grieving.

I believe I said this in Aimee's LJ, but....I totally missed the bandom memo. It was like, I was traipsing along, la la la, then one day I looked up and suddenly everyone was into bandom, and I still am not totally sure what "bandom" is.

Or, I should say, I get that it's fandom but with bands. But *which* bands, and why?

(And I thought that MCR was a goth band, but I'm realizing that's not true. Or is it? So. Confused.)

Tep, I got sucked in ... sideways, sort of. I think bandom bands are mostly pop in one way or another, but sort of ... alternative pop? They're not retreads of NSYNC or BSB, you know? They've got more of an edge, and Fall Out Boy, as juliana pointed out, is definitely more *punk*-pop.

It's ... I want to say *smarter* pop, but that's probably not fair. To someone.

I guess you could consider MCR a goth band, but in my heart of hearts it's like the best of bombastic, earnest 80s power bands, with a slightly harder edge and a better aesthetic.

Well, bandom has been around in some form or another since post-Kirk/Spock creation, with the hair bands of the late seventies and eighties into the Duran Duran and REM fandoms. But it was largely based in zines and never really broke into the internet. When NSync and the Backstreet Boys started developing as musical groups that gave rise to their own internet-based fandoms, it carved out a niche for popslash and pop fanfiction that laid the groundwork for other internet-based music fandoms that mobilized from "fan of music/band" to "fan of music/band as fanfiction/fandom objects." Bandom as we know it today really started with My Chemical Romance, with the groundswell of fans that stuck with them for years and promoted them online, and as Fall Out Boy got bigger and bigger it grew alongside but separately from it. A couple years ago, late 2004/2005, there was a kind of, well, detente between the two fandoms (that coincided with the summer tour Warped, for which Fall Out Boy and My Chemical Romance were both billed, interestingly enough) and they kind of collapsed and fell into each other, reforming as bandom.

The other artists on Fall Out Boy's label, Fueled By Ramen (and eventually Decaydance) were kind of on the outside of this and really got picked up when Panic at the Disco (late 2005/2006) got very famous very fast. Their fans were kind of what Harry Potter fans were circa 2001/2002. A fandom arose extremely quickly, and the affection that Fall Out Boy had for Panic extended bandom to them as well. From there it was a kind of snowball effect, so that the majority of the artists on Fueled By Ramen/Decaydance were incorporated as well. My Chemical Romance, incidentally, are not a FBR band; but the fandom in general lumps them all together.

This doesn't preclude the previous use of bandom as a term to describe pre-popslash fandoms, but in general its accepted terminology refers mainly to the Fueled By Ramen/Decaydance Bands and My Chemical Romance, with other bubble fandoms being the All American Rejects, The Libertines, and occasionally Taking Back Sunday, The Used, etc.

RE: MCR--to the best of my knowledge they've never self-identified as a goth band.

Bandom is kind of viral. It seems to attract people from a variety of other fandoms. I, for one, blame the writers' strike.

The most popular bands, at least in the corners that I frequent, are My Chemical Romance, Fall Out Boy, and Panic At The Disco, with a growing amount of attention paid to the bands that fall within the Six Degrees of Pete Wentz, like The Academy Is... and Cobra Starship.

When crack_van (a fiction rec site on LJ) added bandom as one of their rec categories, they posted a pretty informative overview with pictures. It actually has information on the bands, includes discographies, along with the fic-related stuff (which you could just skip over if it's not your beautiful cake). You can find it here.

I'll let Jilli speak to whether MCR is a goth band or not, because her definition will be far more accurate.

eta: x-posted with SA, who should just speak for me all the time.

They're not retreads of NSYNC or BSB, you know? They've got more of an edge, and Fall Out Boy, as juliana pointed out, is definitely more *punk*-pop.

Well, the major difference between the boybands and the FBR/MCR bands is origination, which also extends to marketing and self-promotion. NSync and BSB were both created as artists that could be marketed to a rapidly opening niche in pop. They were more entertainment, and less about self-created music. And that shouldn't be misinterpreted as hating on them, because I love(d) them unreasonably for about five years, so. But prior to Nsync's permanent hiatus, and the Backstreet Boys reformation as an older musical group with more control over their sound, they were very much about putting together an entertaining stage show and radio-friendly singles. They had the vocal chops to back it up, and I don't think anyone who looks at Justin Timberlake's solo work can deny his musicality, but boybands::ready-made (high quality) lasagne:fall out boy::momma's homemade casserole. To give you a really horrible analogy. Sorry about that. I fail at them.

FOB and MCR, by contrast, were formed in and of themselves with no outisde management or marketing; both of their fanbases were built locally and then grew over time to reach the success they have now. They write, compose, and perform all their own music (though people argue about the quality thereof, which I am not touching!) and have considerably more control over their image, such as it is, and their creative visions (particularly MCR) than any of the boyband/pop princess circuit could have claimed to from 2000-2005. Both bands are coming from a different musical background than BSB/NSync--it's notable that Fall Out Boy's first mainstream single was "Sugar We're Going Down," even though they'd put out two albums and an EP by the time "From Under the Cork Tree" came out; and similarly, MCR's "I'm Not Okay" was their entrance into the mainstream even though they'd been touring off their first album for nearly three years by that point. Depending on what you classify as touring.

From a business perspective, Fall Out Boy and MCR were both self-sustaining business ventures, albeit small ones, that rested entirely in the bands' own hands, whereas the pop fandom kids only gained control over the business side of their music after bitter battles with their managers, or through managerial control by parents.

Really, to me, the thing of note is the point behind the two scenes. With pop, it was talent that was marketed into success; with fob/mcr, it was a bunch of guys who wanted to play music and happened to have some business sense that miraculously made them successful. Both have catchy fucking songs, but in very different genres.