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Criminally commercially unsuccessful bands

#282
- Quite a bit of Factory records bands were overshadowed unfairly by Joy Division/New Order and Happy Mondays :
Section 25
The Durrutti Column
The Wake
A Certain Ratio
Stockholm Monsters

- Quite a bit of what i used to mailorder in the 90's/early 00's was full of discovering bands i hadn't heard that i thought should've made it a lot bigger :
The Republic Of Freedom Fighters
Do Make Say Think
Godspeed You! Black Emperor
Fly Pam Am
Avec Le Soleil Sortant De Sa Bouche
Ire
Bloodlet
(Saw they finally last year and it was great & the bassist plays metal with a fretless!)
Kittens
Shallow North Dakota
(These two were pretty heavy and weren't really touring a lot. They were on a indie rock record from Hamilton called Sonic Unyon...so perhaps being on a heavy label would have helped?)
Beyond Possession
(old and great trash metal from mid 80's Calgary band that played w/ Metallica, Melvins and tons of others. CD discography is out of print, sadly...)
Melvins
(Should have gotten so much bigger!)
yup, pretty much everything on Constellation Records & Alien8 Recordings
Menace Ruine
Ornette Coleman
Akron Family
Earth
Sunn O)))
Wolfmangler
Dead Raven Choir
 
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#284
MVE said:
13 pages....
2 bandmember suicides and no one mentioned Badfinger.:eyebrow:
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Love Bad finger but don't really think this applies to them. C'mon, they were quite successful!
Come and Get It
Day After Day
No Matter What
Baby Blue
..and tho it wasnt a hit for them, 'I Can't Live' or whatever it's called was huge as well.
Sad story for sure though...
 
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#285
The Mogpipe said:
Love Bad finger but don't really thing this applies to them. C'mon, they were quite successful!
Come and Get It
Day After Day
No Matter What
Baby Blue
..and tho it wasnt a hit for them, 'I Can't Live' or whatever it's called was huge as well.
Sad story for sure though...
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And I'm aware the guys never got the financial rewards due them. But that was thier horrible manager Stan Polley ripping them off.
 
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#289
wraub said:
Gentle Giant
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First band that came to mind.

Also, Sunny Day Real Estate. Robyn Hitchcock & The Egyptians, too.

And, why isn't instrumental rock music a bigger thing? I'm specifically talking about what is generally (though ineffectively) categorized as Post Rock. In an alternate universe, Trans Am, Tortoise, Godspeed You Black Emperor and especially Do Make Say Think, would have been selling millions of albums.

In that same alternate universe, Selling England By The Pound and The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway were incredibly successful albums and everyone in the globe cried when Peter Gabriel left. The next 4 Genesis albums were still well received but nowhere as successful as those two albums and interest in the band waned after their last good album, 1980's Duke. Phil Collins and Gabriel both still go on to have successful careers but decide to get the band back together in 1987 (after Gabriel's brilliant "So", and yes, with Steve Hacket) and release prog-rock back-to-back masterpieces that are nearly as good as their 70's classics.
 
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#290
Didn't read the whole thread (it's already gotten too long), but after seeing Steven Wilson mentioned more than once on a quick skim, I don't think he's done too badly for himself, even if he's not a household name. A couple of his solo albums have gone gold (a sales level even Rush were having some difficulty reaching towards the end), a #3 album debut on the UK chart for his last release, and he's become a multi-millionaire from selling records in an era where almost all record sales are in decline, let alone prog/conceptual rock albums. I daresay a lot of people would love to have that kind of "unsuccessful" career, eh?
 
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#292
burgerdj said:
Pinback and Hum immediately come to mind. Another great UK band that was passed over by the grunge wave was Bivouac. Minibar...the list goes on, but I’m glad I found ‘em.
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To me Hum was just another U of I college band that played "Chambana Grunge".

They were powerful at times but just as far as "star factor" is concerned...they really didn't have any.

Anyways they sold 250,000 copies of their album which is better than most could do circa 1995.
 
#295
Gyver said:
Cracker.
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Kevin Wolfe said:
Love me some Cracker.
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mexicanyella said:
I liked "Kerosene Hat" more than the later Cracker albums, but some of that might have been due to the fact that I really liked the mix, which they somehow did in some soundstage live recording situation if I'm not mistaken. I thought that album was a lot of fun all the way through. And I really like the drums and bassline on the hidden track, "Eurotrash Girl." It's an interesting addition to a sort of piezo-acoustic bonehead three-chord strummed rhythm part. David Lowery comes up with some pretty out-there lyrical images too. "Here come ol'...Kerosene Haaaaat...with his earflaps waxed...a'courtin' his girrrrl..." What?
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Yogi Bear said:
Ditto... Cracker are a great band.
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And before that, Camper Van Beethoven! They had some catchy ditties and a few beautiful ballads amid the wackiness. David Lowery is a tremendous songwriter who gets very little attention.
 
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