IF YOU CAN’T DO IT LIVE, DON’T DO IT

I think we’ve made this point either explicitly or implicitly on MetalSucks many times before, but the following e-mail from reader Barry Cavanaugh inspired me to re-iterate the concept: If you can’t do it live, don’t it. Period.

Here’s Barry’s e-mail:

“While you guys are a mainly metal website you guys do cover rock once and a while, and I think you should do something on the new my chemical romance. People can call them emo or whatever they want but the black parade was a straight up rock album, and an amazing rock album at that, probably one of the best rock albums in the last 10 years I would say, I would even go so far as to list it as one of the greatest rock albums of all time, don’t get me wrong I listen to mostly metal, but I know a great rock album when I hear it and the new one by mcr could be awesome. With that, please cover it or do a review on the album, trash it, do whatever you gotta do.”

My Chemical Romance is that rarest of flowers — a modern day mainstream rock act the appeal of which I actually understand. The studio versions of the songs I’ve heard by the band are generally as catchy as whatever is swimming around inside of Courtney Love this week, and to a certain kind of person in what I imagine is a certain age group, they are probably most appealing.

Unfortunately, I’ve seen the two below videos side-by-side:

So if metal fans are looking for a good rock band, they should pay attention to Muse. My Chemical Romance, not so much. They can’t do it live. So they should just cut it out already.

-AR