The NFL regular season wound down yesterday, which left me pretty excited seeing as the Baltimore Ravens have made the playoffs and have a pretty good chance of taking their season beyond their Wild Card spot. The Detroit Lions have finally gotten national attention where there was none previously by becoming the 1st team to go 0-16 since the season was expanded from 14 to 16 games. Just as the Patriots were celebrated for their undefeated regular season last year (which we all know the ending of), the Lions have gained a bit more publicity than any other season in the past decade… and they go out without tarnishing their defeated season as the Pats did last year (tarnish depends on your perspective of the Pats from the fan’s seat).
There’s something so endearing about the state of teams/players in competitive sports, where the losers get just as much attention and adoration as the winners do. Even in a state of mind where there can only be one winner, there are so many stories that fill a season/year, because otherwise, we might just be bored with the competition. But the “loser” narrative is so intriguing, mostly because it isn’t celebrated by its fans.
In music, there’s nothing quite like it. Sure, “loser” became a catchall term for the grunge/alternative scene of the early 90s, epitomized by Sub Pop’s flagrant hype machine printing out t-shirts of the term by the truckload.
But the question I’m thinking of remains: who celebrates a “loser” band, aka a bad band? No one would willingly plunk down any money to go see a band they absolutely hate (never mind one’s own limits for spending money on bands one likes). But there must be some celebrated band that people love to hate, and I’m not talking just Nickelback (they still manage to sell millions of albums and play amphitheaters). I’m talking a band that sucks so much that people off all backgrounds detest them with the mightiest passion, hate every song, buy their merch just to burn it. Methinks – and probably because the underlying subject of this blog might tip it off – of an emo band immediately, as there have been hundreds of thousands of bands to soil the name of the genre in no time. But nothing stands out in particular, and even what I feel are the most idiotic and contemptuous emo groups have their own devoted, rabid fanbase, ready to tear apart haters at a moments notice. But there must be one out there…
So where is this mythologically bad band?
I can only think of Manowar, but come on, their whole package is too hilarious… or maybe that’s the right qualification…
