A bit sad to see so much hate for The Libs here and only little love. Each to their own when it comes to tastes, but felt like someone needed to list a few great things about them/their impact and why they deserve their spot in the music history.

- The Libertines were one of the few actually intelligent bands of their style. You can slag them off all you want for their drug use and behaviour, but they also had brains and that's what made them so compelling in the first place. Right from the start it was clear they were very literate and not shy about it
- their relationship with their fans. They wanted to keep the barriers between the band and the audience down, there's a very few bands that made it as big as they were and kept those barriers as low they kept them
- they got big just before the internet got huge, and if not exactly pioneered then put its possibilities into great use. Just the amount of guerilla gigs they announced on their forums... All the forum posts and keeping in contact with fans. It's everyday thing now, part of the marketing, but back then it was only taking its baby steps and the Libs were setting the example
- they actually dared to dream and to make their own myths. The whole Albion, Arcadia etc thing... music is often a form of escapism for people but still musicians rarely dare to be openly idealistic and create their own universe. People are so scared of ridicule and public is always so eager to jump at any chance of laughing at someone, but they had the guts and also the energy to make people get involved and interested
- they brought the UK to 2000s, rock music wise. The rest of the world seemed to have moved on and got hang of the new century while the UK was still stuck in the post-britpop mud
- and while yes, they created their own myths and Peter had a bit of a fantasist trait in him, they also truly walked it like they talked it... while that truly wasn't the healthy way to go, all in all, in rock history you rarely get bands who really do that. It's like yes, there was stuff that was just made up stories, and stuff blown out of proportions but basically, you never knew what was true and what was not because what you learned to be true for a fact was pretty unbelieveable as it was

I'd add more but getting so damn sleepy here now!

(I know this is written in past tense even though they are again back together, but it just came out in that way as I was thinking of the past and the era when they first appeared)