dropkick murphys got a very small amount of notice outside of the normal circles of people who would pay attention to this stuff when "walk away" was used on the OC. not much notice, but it was the beginning of something bad. ask mofo, i've always had this unvalidated hatred of that song, even before i knew this. like, from the day the damn album came out.
"tessie" secured them a spot as favorites amongst frat boys who needed a soundtrack while they rioted after the red sox won or lost anything, be it a normal season game or something more important in terms of pennant races.
"shipping up to boston" was a dreadful B-side on the "fields of athenry" 7" picture disc. i bought it for the novelty of collecting 7" singles, because i used to be really crazy about that. i listened to it as well as the live cover of "if i were a carpenter." it was just part of that whole thing they did when they went into the unrecorded woody gutherie vault that got them the title track off the blackout album, although it didn't come out good enough for them to put it on the actual album (hence its status as a b-side). didn't really think much of it other than the beginning sounded like jaws dun nuh dun nuh...then they came out with an amped up version that REALLY sounded like jaws in the beginning that was featured prominently in the commercials for the departed. honestly, the only time i ever remotely liked that song was in the context of that movie, because as so often with scorsese films, the music works masterfully.
anyway, my point is that their worst songs were what brought them varying levels of popularity outside of punk rock. granted, long before "walk away," they were considered sell-outs, "not as good as they were in 1996," and all other absurdness that goes with being a punk rock band when people decide you've sold out. expanding from a 4-piece to 7 complete with a bagpiper...guest vocals from shane macgowan himself on a song...all those things marked sing loud sing proud as the sell-out point. the worst part? most of the people who got into the band as a result of tessie or shipping stand there during SLSP songs at shows like they're hearing these songs for the first time. i nearly flipped my shit at a kid one time on the bus back to school after a show who said they played too many songs from their first album in regards to a setlist that was very heavy on the SLSP side. no, i didn't choke the kid out while screaming that's the band had two albums, an EP, and a handful of split 7" singles out before that album came out. but at the time, i probably wanted to. that shit used to make me angry. now it just makes me sad because if the most recent dkm album is any indicator, any subsequent albums will sound exactly like shipping up to boston, whereas it used to be that the song was a uniquely worst song in the band's very good overall catalogue.
but this is a thread about the black keys. this is a thread about the album, the name of which, is brothers.
i was actually just going to say something about how most bands that i like that are reasonably popular and have the disctinction in their fanbase between rabid fans and the casual ones that only know the singles, those singles are very rarely even remotely my favorite songs of theirs. and leave it at that. instead, you got my dkm essay.