I am convinced that Rock n Roll was invented soley so that ugly white boys could "pick up" hot looking girls.

Ugly yes but Plain wishy washy surely not. This lot almost invisible as in " are they there I can't tell, is he in the band ? Oh no he's a sound guy" nondescript.

this is a very old picture. This is a little less ancient. And anyway, most bands have almost always been a bit plain, no?

Megan Davies, eh?
But regarding the main thread, does Chris want to snog them or listen to them?
He can tell us, we're mostly reconstructed on this forum.

Did he get some new boxers for christmas...very alluring.

Fair enough, I can see it was a a sort of public service post, then. Had to check, though.
Good looks in rock were never a definitive condition of getting laid. I can think of one 72 year old bass player to back that up.

...but it is a question of charisma, which tends to have a visual component.

It's poor form when you can't tell the band from the audience. Now this is proper Rock clobber

True enough. I just googled Charisma Bypass and blow me down if it didn't come up with a quote from Jan 24th's Independent. Under the heading of 'worst gigs of all time', were the support acts at the recent O2 Zeppelin gig. A sentence begins "Charisma bypass Bill Wyman..."
He must have had something in his pocket keeping other folks alive, though.

http://theundertones.net/upix17.jpg

Of course the Undertones had the whole style thing done and dusted 30 years ago

...the most sartorially intriguing band in recent years is Dengue Fever. I took one look at the photograph below and knew that I had to hear their music.

...I was reading the superb David Bowie biography 'Strange Fascination' and an ex-Melody Maker writer commented on how drab rock had gotten compared to the days when Bowie and others were performing- there was an inference in what he was saying that Nirvana were to blame for it. I never really minded Nirvana so much and I feel it's really a more recent development than that- I see these bands on the cover of NME and yes, they don't really have much charisma (in my personal opinion). The fact that most of them sound equally dull and one-dimensional is even more depressing.

..to those halcyon days when all bands looked like Chicory Tip, Mud, Lindisfarne, Mountain and Slade.
Having said that, how about those Decemberists?
Great songs, but...Sooowee!..Sooowee!

Then...

Now...

It's their fault really.
Go to all the trouble of being the biggest band in the land and then insist on dressing like a brickie.

Didn't this t-shirt with quirky/ironic logo plus jeans look/uniform (now the norm)come in with dance in the 90s then indie bands took it up. Now it's only women that seem to make an effort - Goldfrapp, CSS, Rosin Murphy for example. Where have all the dandys gone? Was it possibly just a reaction to the worst excesses of 80s stylings?

They're an electronic act, not a rock band. Electronic acts are more concerned with the speed of their laptop than the cut of their trouser. Two exceptions in the electronic act game as I can see it: (a) Kraftwerk, whose glamour was down to the almost superhuman, uncanny nature of their normal-ness and (b) the early '80s new romantic synth-fiddlers, although even they were essentially nondescript lookers (Steve Strange, anyone?) in their mum's Max Factor.

The Happy Mondays, Weezer and Blur

.....you are so shallow!! I've not cared what a band looks like since I was a hormonal 13 year old!!

It doesn't matter what they look like as long as they are 'rock & roll', just look at the picture of Keith again. No pretty boy but as cool as f*ck!