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I didn't fit their demographic the first time around and I can't say I am that bothered now. I have seen a bit of Matt Goss's crooner act that he does in Vegas and he seems to fit that role a bit more comfortably than as a pop star, but as far as the group's history is concerned there are gaps in my knowledge that I am not in any particular hurry to fill.
I would recognise one or two of their songs, and I know that there was once a non-Goss member at some point, Ken, who is now something big in the music business. I also know that they are responsible for a very lucrative little business I had going on when I was about twelve. My dad took over a pub and the cellar was full of crates of empty Grolsh bottles so I sold them at school for people to put in their shoes. My final bit of information is that they went into financial trouble and vanished, Matt does his aforementioned Vegas thing and Luke is a jobbing actor for who the phrase 'straight to video' could have been created.
With this apathy in mind it would probably not have occurred to me to watch the documentary When The Screaming Stops that broadcast on BBC4 before Christmas. Initially not a big ratings winner, word of mouth and memes helped to make this a big hit on the iPlayer.
On the surface it does like Matt and Luke were stitched up by a cool AF filmmaker who wanted to make a name for him/herself by editing together the batshit crazy witterings of two has-beens before going off to the Groucho Club to tell everyone about it.
We first join the Brothers Dim doing some plot exposition by showing us around their American homes and lives. Once we get the formality out of the way we get down to the business of trying to out-Spinal Tap Spinal Tap with a liberal sprinkling of David Brent type quotes for good measure. When Luke Goss gazes wistfully into the sea and pinpoints what he misses about London, "Big Ben, The Embankment, cab drivers", I was half-expecting him to say 'jumpers for goalposts' but he didn't. Matt has a painting of his dog with a pint of beer, which was my cue to pause the documentary and laugh so hard I nearly went to the toilet in my clothes.
In their defence, Bros were worked into the ground on the pop music treadmill during their initial fifteen minutes of fame and once they had outlived their popularity they were thrown unceremoniously down the dumper and forgotten about and left to seethe whenever New Kids on the Block or Jason Donovan appeared on the television. By the time the wheels fell off they were skint and presumably as jaded and fucked up as it is possible to be. Matt and Luke apparently didn't speak for around twenty five years and the tensions were plain to see once they got together, especially during band practice. Matt threw a strop when Luke suggested something, Luke threw another strop, and it began to look like the reunion gig would never happen. You could argue that it didn't really happen as a great deal of arena shows (including Nottingham) were cancelled for no reason. Perhaps the scale was a tad ambitious, so they ended up doing one show.
Among all the fall outs and rows we see the genuinely emotional moments when Matt and Luke talk about the deaths of their mother and sister. While I take my hat off to them for opening up in this way, it jarred with the unintentional comedy of the programme. A massive set-to backstage at This Morning during which Matt called Luke a cunt actually made me root for the guys even more. Yes they came up with some moments of bonkers quotes which have been meme'd to death, but deep down when we saw how much they mean to each other despite their rift, you wanted them to succeed and get the gig over with.
When Will I Be Famous? Matt once asked. Now, but not entirely for the right reasons.
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