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Goo Goo Dolls

Date: Oct 29 2007

Themes: Music

Intro

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2. Read and Prepare - Read the introduction and prepare to hear the audio.

Ask David Hasselhoff. Once your career is over in the United States, it has just begun abroad. This star of Baywatch was washed up here before the ‘90s hit, but around the same time he began a successful music career in Germany.

Punkers gone pop, The Goo Goo Dolls, are no different. Though their popularity has severely decreased since their hit 1995 album A Boy Named Goo, they are still doing well overseas and still contributing to movie soundtracks.

Dialog

1. Listen and Read - Listen to the audio and read the dialog at the same time.

2. Study - Read the dialog again to see how the vocab words are used.

Marni

Mason

Marni: So, what do you think about the Goo Goo Dolls? They’re this band that sort of…I lump them in this sort of genre of bands that’s like, “Wow, you still have a career?”

Mason: Yeah, I put that in the like, bands-I-liked-when-I-was-in-junior-high category. But they do really well internationally.

Marni: They do. And I think they have talent, I just…it’s kind of the same. Old.

Mason: I mean, I remember when they first came out, hearing an interview with the guy, “Yeah, I wish we could change our name but then we kind of got big.”

Marni: Well, they have changed their name. They were called something else, some like, Sex Maggots or something…

Mason: Oh, ‘cause that’s better…

Marni: Well, they wouldn’t print up the fliers so they changed it to the Goo Goo Dolls, which is actually based on a real character. But they were sort of like…whatever…they were supposedly punk and then they sort of morphed into this very radio-friendly...They have a new song…They have a song on the new Transformers film.

Mason: What was that song they had on the City of Angels movie?

Marni: “Iris”?

Mason: That’s totally what it was.

Marni: Big hit though, it was a big hit.

Mason: Such a friggin’ tear jerker.

Marni: Well, you know, people like it.

Quizzes

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Discussion

Like many people who grew up with the Goo Goo Dolls, Marni is amazed that they are still playing music. Mason writes the band off to groups he used to like when he was a pre-teen.

But Marni insists the band has talent. Maybe their silly name has a lot to do with how they aren’t taken very seriously in the US. Apparently they wanted to change it but it was too late because they were already famous. At least the Goo Goo Dolls is better than the first name they used: Sex Maggots.

And even though Mason thinks it’s ridiculous that the Goo Goo Dolls are still at it, they have a new song on the Transformers soundtrack. Luckily it’s not as sentamental as “Iris,” the band’s song from City of Angels.

Are there any bands you like that you would guess most Americans are totally over?