Spacehog: A Rock Hogyssey

First I want to say that I did not make up the word "Hogyssey" as a joke.  This band actually released an album called The Hogyssey in 2001, five years after their one radio hit.  I kind of wonder if they had given up on writing serious music and turned to self-parody.  Watch how David Letterman grits his teeth when saying the words "Hogyssey" and "Spacehog" and see how just much respect this band commanded by the end of their career.

It wasn't always this way for Spacehog.  "In The Meantime," their hit in 1996, was one of the few good songs I remembered from this time period.  It was nothing special, just solid power pop with a neat bass line and not-excessively-stupid lyrics.  A hidden gem.

Well, this is what I thought until I revisited the song on youtube and found this live performance where the lead singer completely douches everything up.  First he moves like he's being electrocuted, which only David Byrne and Thomas Dolby can pull off without looking stupid.  Then, once he opens his mouth, he sings with the most obnoxious wannabe Eddie Vedder voice I've ever heard.  It's a reminder of how awful it was putting up with that style of singing for ten years.  

Despite their ridiculousness, doucheyness, and general lack of talent, the band garnered a surprising amount of fame and credibility during their short career.  This really new "website" on the "internet" called "pitchfork" gave their first album a very respectable 7.6/10 and even predicted it would be reissued one day "in a green-tinted jewel case." (?!?)  Royston Langdon (the lead singer) even met Liv Tyler at some point, as evidenced by this photograph:

That must have been nice for him, right?  I'm sure he was a big fan of her work.  She was the bomb as Arwen in Lord of the Rings.  It must have been nice, too, when they GOT FUCKING MARRIED IN 2003.

There's the well-known cliche that girls like pissing of their dads.  So if you're a girl and your dad doesn't like, say, Chinese people, you're totally bringing home a Chinese guy.  This is the only way I can rationalize Liv Tyler marrying the dude from Spacehog.  Her dad is one of the most famous rock stars in the world, and how better to piss him off than by marrying a lame guy from a really lame band?  

Spacehog broke up in 2002 after The Hogyssey flopped.  However, they played two reunion shows in 2008 and now there's talk of a full reunion tour and album.  Very interestingly, Royston Langdon's marriage to Liv Tyer lasted until 2008, overlapping exactly with Spacehog's hiatus.  I see three possible scenarios:

1. Being married to one of the hottest women in the wold distracted Langdon from his shitty music.
   
2. Tyler dumped Langdon, and he turned to his "art" to cope.
   
3. Langdon dumped Tyler because she was getting in the way of his rock star lifestyle.  This would have been a terrible decision on Langdon's part, but this is also a guy who released an album called The Hogyssey.