This album changed my life. I was all STP and Candlebox in 1993 as a 15 year old like everybody else and then I saw this video on 120 Minutes and I was floored. I was like "WHO IS THIS EVIL MAN JUST SITTING THERE WHILE PEOPLE FIGHT?!" It opened my eyes to a whole other world of music and I've never been the same since. This album has never left my top five since 1993. 100% masterpiece.
I was 17, saw it on 120 Minutes, and thought it was such a powerful song. Bought the album and there are some really incredible songs on it, Debonair was only the tip of the iceberg. The whole 'Gentleman' album still moves me to this day.
Same !!!! I was 15 in 1993 and this album was one of the soundtracks of my life growing up in the 90’s. Such a rad time to grow up. Miss the 90’s. Such an underrated album. Truly a masterpiece
Still remember the first time I've heard this masterpiece. That stupefaction. That sense of wonder which still goes on. Timeless song from a timeless album.
Blake Hewitt You know, in a way they did hit it big. They're all alive, and are still making wonderful music, under the guise of many monikers...I'm not arguing, just kind of positively ruminating. They should have been huge as shit though.:-)
I agree. I heard it on the radio back in the day. I was like: " what the f*** was that?" I remember listening to that same radios tation for 2 weeks with my tape recorder ready to record and eventually , finally, I could press record.
I was moving some CDs a few minutes ago and found this. Hard to believe I had forgotten about it. And that it was nearly 30 years ago when I got it. I miss buying CDs at the record store that isn't there anymore. I miss being in my 20s. I miss the 90s and the years of mainstream alt rock that brought bands like this to my attention
Everytime I'd listen to that beginning riff, I'm instantly transported to the times in the boiling summer haze where I was cruising alone in St. Marks with this song on full blast. Crazy how each song we'd listen to from the past holds a memory.
'Heard this song ONCE on KROQ and dropped everything to run down to Tower Records to by the CD. So much passion & energy-- blistering lyrics & guitar riffs.
Rick's unique and amazing guitar playing was such a big part of their sound and it's a crime they released an album as The Afghan Whigs without him on it.
I could listen to the whole Gentlemen album on repeat for hours and still just be in bliss! Thank you to Ohio. The home of my grandparents and the Afghan Whigs!!!!
aaronjacobwillman Me too that show helped me discover a lot of great music they show Classic 120Minutes on VH1 Hits late at nite but it is not as good though
+James Bell jr. 120 minutes was also my "food for thought + feeling" in Germany back then in the first half of the 90s, until MTV London suddenly canceled it overnight in 1995. What was THAT? I could realize it when MTV was bought at the stock exchange by Viacom in 1998. This "step" dramatically worsened our "western culture". I really miss the MTV of the first half of the 90s. Afterwards "religious" people like Putin or George W. Bush "arrived":...yuck. The Clintons were very naive back then.
im so glad that i had parents and siblings who listened to EVERYTHING.while i was entering my teens in the early nineties i had this good shit to listen to.
Sitting in a coffee shop in late 2023 and this song comes on and sends me down the path - saw them play in cincy back in the 90s. Epic song and the video is unmitigated violence and despair
Taking a trip down memory lane, and I just had to pull over for a minute and wave at Greg Dulli and the boys as they went by. One of my favorite albums that I purchased in the 1990s.
Debonair was an immediate favorite of mine once I first heard it back when it was released on Gentlemen and yet... still til this day... it remains one of my all time favorite songs ever!
I can remember 1993, high school graduation party all nighter, it was dawn and on the tv came Conjure me. I was mesmerized, in love with this band from that day on. Couldn't understand how everyone wasn't in love with them too. So underrated. A hidden treasure.
Man does this bring back great memories of youth. Whigs are the seriously one of the most criminally underrated bands history. Have no idea how they weren't absolutely huge🙄
i saw them live danced right in front. later that night walking around down town SLC my friends and i walked past their bus as they were getting on it. He stopped and pointed to me and said " I remeber you"
Dimitra Kambouris De Hoog That is cool as hell! I'm so glad you shared that story. AW shows were the best?! My friend and I made our way back stage in Cali in '94 when I was 19 and Greg Dulli planted huge red lipstick kisses on both of us. We just about died and went to Heaven.
I was lucky enough to wake up at 4am for a glass of water to see this playing on MTV 90's house videos. Immediately was stopped in my tracks, not because MTV was actually playing a music video for a change but how I managed to miss this band growing up in the 90's! I love this song!
This song just suddenly popped into my head, so I googled it, been rocking out to it, brings back early 90s memories for me, I have the album on a cassette tape, have to dig it out, at least they made a kick ass video for a kick ass song
Love you guys! Mr. Dulli and I almost duked it out once at a show back in the early 90s in Denver. Cooler heads prevailed and a great time was had by all, and I left with great admiration and a cool story to tell.
Totally forgot about this band and this song until Billy Corgan recently mentioned them at a concert, talking about how his band opened for them about 30 years ago.
it's like I'm back there at that sleepy suburb circa 93, at the store with checkered floors; the unseemliness just below the surface. It's not the same now that I can just dial it up and watch it.
Does everything in the 90s look brighter to anyone else? Or just me because i was really young in the 90s and i remember everything seeming so bright and colorful?
Maybe not brighter but everything seems more colorful, so yea I get that too. I thought it was just the fashion and art style of the time but who knows.
First I found Soundgarden, then I found Alice in Chains, Blind Melon, and to a slightly lesser extent, Pearl Jam, and most recently, Screaming Trees and Mark Lanegan, and then Greg Dulli and The Afghan Whigs. Great music all around. Mark Lanegan and The Afghan Whigs went from me not listening to them really to being in the top 5 for these past 12 months.... And I listen to TONS of music, this only could've happened with me listening to even more music lately, and listening to solely them on repeat. Love this kinda stuff. Edit: Also been loving me some Queens of the Stone Age and even moreso Kyuss and Mondo Generator, that stuff goes crazy
Yep that what us Gen X and generation before social media .. we would go hang out in parking lots listen to our rock loud and spend time outside interacting amongst each other
+Ralegh Howes Dulli had a real Lynch thing going on. This song was inspired by the Jackson 5's "I Want You Back" and the Twin Peaks theme song. Take a listen to those 2 and come back to this.
DL Beaven Dulli was focused on the two songs that inspired it and word association, and the lyrics aren't particularly ambiguous in the context of one song being about longing for someone and the other being about a passion murder. Dulli was obviously young when he wrote it, and in that youthful, self-destructive phase he has said that he wrote much of the album in a dark mood. The titles "Gentlemen" and "Debonair" are both plainly ironic, and the lyrics for "Debonair" tell the story of the young man getting into a lustful relationship for all the wrong reasons. Now that relationship is crashing at the point where everyone gets hurt, but that's part of his self-destructive nature and he welcomes it without apology.
David Lynch is exactly right. The video reminded me of Lynch's Lost Highway. Matter of fact, Dulli in this video reminds me of Bill Pullman who starred in that film. Maybe it's the clothing style idk.
I remember listening to the Whigs at the age of about 15 at a mate's house in Guildford near Stoke Park whilst drinking tin after tin of rubbishy cheap Sainsbury's supermarket lager and we went roaring into the park signing Whigs songs and suddenly got collared by some police officers who had the temerity to nick our tins of lager off us just for being three years under the legal age!
Ahh the Cincy/Dayton Ohio music scene that never was back in the early 90's. You at least got The Afghan Whigs, The Breeders, and Guided by Voices But there was more.. It would have rivaled Seattle.
Don’t forget Morella’s Forest and their noise pop masterpiece song “Hang Out”: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-BIOGFA6XQEE.html And the jangle poppers Belreve, especially their heaviest song on the essential “Sulk King” / “Always Crush Me” split 7” with GBV. FWIW, I saw the Whigs play in New Orleans on Thanksgiving ‘97 and this song was by far the most pulverizingly loud one I’ve ever heard in a club setting. Maybe only slightly topped by Swervedriver or Helmet...
They are still around, saw them about 4 yrs ago and got to meet them afterward. Check out a recent track "Arabian Heights" it's better than anything out today.
One of the discs I brought with me to the University of Chicago when I was a first year. Went to see them at the Cabaret Metro as well. Good times! Good memories!
the first time i heard this song i brushed it off as being another 90s grunge song. But I kept thinking about it, and now I love the Afghan Whigs so much, really underrated band
