Ludo

Because Nerds Are Sexy.

An alternative rock/'geek rock' group from St. Louis. Practitioners of Neoclassical Punk Zydeco Rockabilly and good old-fashioned Rock Opera. The Other Wiki classifies them as Pop Rock, Power Pop, and Alternative Rock.

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Ludo provides examples of the following tropes:

• Abusive Parents: The main character of "All the Stars in Texas" mentions that his tagalong girl had a crooked father who was both this and The Alcoholic. The main character shot him dead in disgust and took her along.
• Adorkable: Part of the band's appeal.
• Album Title Drop: You're Awful, I Love You is a line early in "Love Me Dead".
• All Girls Want Bad Boys: "Roxy". To a lesser extent in "All The Stars in Texas".
• All Love Is Unrequited: songs like "Roxy" and "Hum Along" sure make us feel this way.
• Bad Future: Broken Bride, namely the songs "Save Our City" and "The Lamb and the Dragon".
• Bishonen: Andrew, Tim F., Matt.
• Bittersweet Ending: the Broken Bride album
• Casanova Wannabe: "Go-Getter Greg"; according to Word of God, "Whipped Cream".
• The Comically Serious: The whole band in the unofficial "Whipped Cream" video.
• Cool vs. Awesome: "Cyborgs Versus Robots
• Department of Redundancy Department: The title of their fourth album,Prepare the Preparations.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: Averted in the unofficial "Whipped Cream" video. The things they put whipped cream on become increasingly ridiculous, and its done with with such seriousness, that by the time they're putting whipped cream in passerby's mouths and each other you're too busy laughing to be reminded of anything.
• Drowning My Sorrows: "Drunken Lament.""
• Fridge Horror: "Lake Pontchartrain". When you realize that the song may not really be describing a supernatural experience but a young man being interviewed about the disappearance and possible murder of his friends, it suddenly becomes a lot scarier.
  • Alternative, a story so crazy it must be true.
    • Missouri still has the Death penalty. Should the narrator be convicted for the murder of his friends, he would be executed. Now, if his story was true, there even more Fridge Horror because that would mean no one would have survived that encounter, and the Lake would be free to kill even more.
• Fish Out of Temporal Water: The songs "Broken Bride" and "Tonight's the Night" have a modern-day man trapped in the Cretaceous era.
• Genre Blind: Many of the narrators of the songs, though the lyricists obviously aren't.
• Gratuitous German: "Girls On Trampolines" starts with a count of Eins, zwei, drei, vier!
• Heartbroken Badass: The traveler in Broken Bride.
• Hopeless Suitor: "Roxy".
• Large Ham: Definitely Andrew, most likely the other three as well. Not that this is a bad thing, as "Love Me Dead's" video proves...
• Last-Note Nightmare: "Air Conditioned Love" is pretty dark all over, but the last forty seconds or so are very much that.
• Long-Haired Pretty Boy: Tim Ferrell (far left in the page image), who evolves into Badass Long Hair when he proves via thumb wrestle that he is the better Tim.
• Love Before First Sight: "Hum Along"
• Love Nostalgia Song: "I'll Never Be Lonely Again"
  • "Good Will Hunting By Myself" is set up to be this, but near the end turns into an Anti-Love Song with an epic Take That speech.
• Love Hurts: all over the place.
• Mad Scientist: The travler in Broken Bride. Mad is debatable... unstable, not debatable at all.
• Male Gaze: Quite likely the entire point of "Girls on Trampolines."
• Man Scorned: "Good Will Hunting By Myself"
• The Masochism Tango: "Love Me Dead."
• Mood Whiplash: The Broken Bride Album, period. Mainly "The Lamb and the Dragon". Its starts in a hard-rock metal-like solo, then turns western-ish. With whistling. And then the western tune gets hard-rock-ified. Then a depressing solo by the Traveler. It's awesome.
  • To a small degree, Skeletons on Parade. It initially sounds like a group of undead laughing at Halloween and planning a nice parade, but later the shift from jazzlike to metal makes it darker as they talk about overwhelming the living in a small town. It finally reaches creepy with the line NO ONE GETS AWAY. Then in comes the last chorus which is nice and serene.
• The Mourning After: the traveler in Broken Bride has a bit of a problem letting go of his late wife.
• Nameless Narrative: Girls on Trampolines
• Nerds Are Sexy
• One-Hit Wonder: "Love Me Dead" was their only top 40 alternative hit.
• Our Time Travel Is Different: Broken Bride
• Outlaw Couple: "All the Stars in Texas."
• Pie in the Face: The Whipped Cream video - the band's teaser vid (linked) AND the official clip.
• Playing with a Trope: A lot of their songs are hard to classify due to their penchant for untwisting, zig-zagging between, subverting, playing for laughs and drama, often in the same song, and exaggerating tropes. For example, is "Love Me Dead" an Anti-Love Song, a Silly Love Song, a Break Up Song, an Obsession Song, or an Obligatory Bondage Song? Is "Battle Cry" a parody, a reconstruction, or a played straight?
• Rock Opera: Broken Bride. It has pterodactyls.
• Rousing Speech: From "Save Our City":

"There's a time to pray and there's a time to fight
Anything can be a weapon if you're holding it right
Defend what is yours
They will not take our souls
It's time now to rise and fight!"

• • Another great is example is "Battle Cry." And, boy is it awesome.
• Rule of Cool: A lot of their songs run on this, especially those from Prepare the Preparations and their Rock Opera Broken Bride.
• Set Right What Once Went Wrong: the basis of the Broken Bride rock opera is the story of an unstable but brilliant man building a time machine to go back and stop his wife from dying.
• Shout-Out: In "The Horror of Our Love"- "I'm your servant, My Immortal.."
  • "Good Will Hunting By Myself"
  • "Ode to Kevin Arnold"
• Silly Love Songs: Even the played straight love songs are quite silly, and maybe all the sweeter for it. Straight examples (i.e. not Stalker with a Crush songs, for example) include "Anything for You", "Manta Rays"
• Stalker with a Crush: Go-Getter Greg. "Haven't seen you at the pool since the barbeque! Not that I've been checking..."
  • Arguably, the narrator in "Hum Along", and for a much much darker example, "The Horror of Our Love"

Silent sleeper, I've been inside your bedroom/I've murdered half the town/left you love notes on their headstones...

• Take That : The speech in "Good Will Hunting By Myself"

But I realized you were right, we were never meant to be
And you know what? Thank God
'Cause you're the most vapid, whiny blah I've ever met
Always making fun of my clothes, telling me how hot other guys are, asking me to pay you gas money?!
Buy your own gas you bug-eyed mooch - it's your car and it costs more than my house
Oh and now you're going around trying to sleep with my friends
Hey good, that really makes you an empowered individual - no wait, did I say empowered individual? I meant two-cent gutter slut
Listen you tanning-bed-baked, broke-ass, goat-faced, oompa-loompa monkey problem
I am proud to shop at Target, I'll wear warm-up pants any day of the week
Yes, your ass did look fat in those jeans, your mom's a M.I.L.F.
And I plan to get on your little sister just as soon as I give her a call back

• Together in Death: Morning in May

Baby, I thought I'd come along for the ride...

• Troperiffic: One review of You're Awful, I Love You pointed out that Andrew (who writes most of the lyrics) seems to write from the point of view of someone who learned everything they know about relationships from watching TV (if anyone recognizes this and knows a link to the review, please provide)
• Tsundere: "Love Me Dead." Best summed in five words:

You're awful! I love you~

• • Which was the name of the album, so they probably knew how iconic that phrase would be.
• Unusual Euphemism: "I want it with Whipped Cream on it..."
  • "Mutiny Below" is about a man who's ex reappears and asks for one more night together, but his conscious says no. Considering that he allows her in, no points for guessing what exactly said mutiny is.
• Urban Legend: Lake Pontchartrain, a 'first-hand telling' of a supernatural experience at the eponymous lake.
• Villain Song : "Skeletons on Parade" plays like this.
• Yandere: The Horror of Our Love.
  • Also, Stalker with a Crush.
• Zombie Apocalypse: "Save Our City" is an epic metal ballad about a zombie invasion.