What year is it? Actually, what decade is it? I can’t tell anymore, given this gig guide is littered with bands that apparently broke up long ago. Every festival seems to have at least one or two on the bill.
It’s often referred to as the throwback circuit, or maybe – if the artists are a little older – the nostalgia circuit: broken bands growing up, burying their assorted hatchets and making like it’s 1989, or even ‘79, or maybe just ‘99. Flesh is pressed, media releases distributed and tours booked – around the school holidays, naturally.
Sometimes the results are everything you could hope for. Dinosaur Jr.’s recent output makes you think J Mascis should have gone grey sooner, and My Bloody Valentine received rave reviews after deciding to reform for a series of live shows in 2007. Just last month, the recently reunified Soundgarden turned heads at Big Day Out.
But too often your favourite band getting back together ends up being a gin show of broken expectations and half-arsed performances. Maturity for many musicians can mean a slide into the comfort of middle age and a subsequent dousing of the fire that made them so special in the first place. Too often “unfinished business” and “for the fans” really means a pot of gold without the accompanying rainbows of rock glory.
So TheVine have done you a favour and rounded up ten of the worst reformations in music history. Trust us: if someone invites you along to one of these shows you’ve definitely got some tapes to return.
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10 - Happy Mondays
A lot of people caught their breath when The Stone Roses recently announced their impending reformation. But Madchester’s baggiest should probably take heed of cross-town compadres, Happy Mondays, who have at times made getting back together look about as fun as fiddling yourself with a razor blade.
The first attempt in 1999 led Paul Ryder to declare he’d never again perform with his brother, Shaun. During the same period, Shaun himself would often take to the stage with a specially designed autocue, lest he sing the lyrics to the wrong song. Or the wrong band. Since then Happy Mondays have released 2007’s Uncle Dysfunktional, a middling album that might have worked if Shaun had bothered to write some decent lyrics, and continued in a capacity that’s more off-again than on-again. At least things with the band are apparently a little more peaceful these days. Shaun’s still using the autocue, though.
Happy Mondays - Live at Fuji Rock 2007
9 - Ultramagnetic MCs
In the rarefied air of rap royalty, Ultramagnetic MCs have few equals. Or should we say, had few equals. Unfortunately the speed of thought has slowed considerably for this Bronx collective, to the point where they figured it would be a good idea to get back together in 2007 and release a new album. But The Best Kept Secret most likely should have remained exactly that, being a jaundiced b-side run through the kind of sexed up soliloquies Kool Keith could recount in his sleep. Still, an apparently solid performance at last year’s All Tomorrow’s Parties in Asbury Park gives you hope.
Ultramagnetic MCs - Live in Brooklyn 2010
8 - Smashing Pumpkins
Infamous egotist Billy Corgan told Rolling Stone last year that the original line-up of Smashing Pumpkins could never reform. Bad news for us, but the Samson of rock music could have had the decency not to salt the wound by continuing with a different band under the same name (pictured). Who are these jackanapes? Because they’re not Smashing Pumpkins. Reviews of recent shows have hardly been encouraging, and it doesn’t help when Corgan has a habit of regularly mocking his audience.
Smashing Pumpkins - Live in 2011
7 - INXS
What do Ciaran Gribbin, Jon Stevens, Jimmy Barnes, and Terence Trent D’Arby – Terence Trent D’Arby?! – have in common? Like J.D. Fortune, they’ve all at one time or another suffered the ignominy of fronting INXS. For a bunch of musicians who divided people in the first place, INXS have been burning through the goodwill in recent times. Like it or not, gents, your band shouldn’t exist without Michael Hutchence; if you insist on making music, at least have the good grace to do it under a different name.
INXS - With JD Fortune in Sofia 2007
6 - Bad Brains
I have a cousin who back in the '90s broke his collarbone at a Bad Brains concert (somebody stage dived on top of him). Shitty luck, you’d think, and an opportunity lost to see one of the world’s great punk bands. But – absurdly – he ended up sticking it out for the entire performance…in the mosh pit. “It was a good show,” my cousin wheezed when we eventually found him in an emergency ward. That’s how dedicated your average Bad Brains fan is.
But even the Washington, D.C. punks’ most loyal supporters are likely scratching their heads at the Brains’ recent musical direction. What do you do when you’re an incendiary punk band getting back together for the third time in sixteen years? Do you aim for a new reggae-driven sound, or do you reconstitute the cacophony that made you so special in the first place? Whatever, you don’t do what the Bad Brains have done, and go for something in-between. Don’t get me wrong: Bad Brains’ recent output is fine, but time was when these District punk pioneers would’ve never tolerated something that was simply “fine.”
Bad Brains - Live at Fuji Rock 2009
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