Tip jar

If you like CaB and wish to support it, you can use PayPal or KoFi. Thank you, and I hope you continue to enjoy the site - Neil.

Buy Me a Coffee at ko-fi.com

Support CaB

Recent

Members
Stats
  • Total Posts: 5,559,185
  • Total Topics: 106,348
  • Online Today: 767
  • Online Ever: 3,311
  • (July 08, 2021, 03:14:41 AM)
Users Online
Welcome to Cook'd and Bomb'd. Please login or sign up.

March 29, 2024, 06:00:47 AM

Login with username, password and session length

Underrated or forgotten indie bands let's go

Started by alan nagsworth, August 20, 2014, 02:35:30 PM

Previous topic - Next topic

Ray Travez

#60
I've always retained a fondness for The Man From Del Monte... I think they still sound fresh
Water in my Eyes

Obligatory Tiger track-
Shining in the Wood


Dusty Gozongas


Nobody Soup

why weren't The Go! Team really popular? back in 2000 surely that shit sounded out of this world and everyone loved the avalanches and stuff like that.  for a band that have a name that could be in the 'smug band names' thread and have kinda elements of cheesey hip hop and stuff like that I should hate them, but that first album is really good.

Mark Steels Stockbroker

Man From Del Monte were indeed magnificent, and render the entire output of The Divine Comedy irrelevant.


chand

Saw this NME tweet last night:

QuoteShed Seven, Idlewild, Skunk Anansie and more: 50 forgotten '90s indie bands http://www.nme.com/photos/50-forgotten-90s-bands-who-prove-90s-indie-wasn-t-just-about-oasis-and-blur/348677/1/1?recache=36&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=90sgallery

Amazing terrible picture article spread over fifty pages. Shit like this:

Quote50 Forgotten '90s Bands Who Prove '90s Indie Wasn't Just About Oasis And Blur

Babybird: Everyone remembers 'You're Gorgeous', a sarcastic ode to the objectification of woman by sleazy photographers that would become the albatross around mainman Stephen Jones' neck. Jones had wildly prolific periods right up to 2012 when Babybird quit, but nothing ever came close to that success. Top tip to wedding DJs: 'You're Gorgeous' still fills a floor with dancing uncles.

Now, like, I know people who are obsessed with Babybird and will wax lyrical for ages about all the stuff he did that wasn't 'You're Gorgeous'. One would think that an article revisiting forgotten indie acts of the 90s would delve a little deeper than the one song literally everybody who was alive at the time remembers. They just kind of run out of indie bands partway through and settle for stuff like Ugly Kid Joe and Porno For Pyros.

Amazingly, despite the brief of being able to cite any of the fucking millions of indie bands that existed in the 90s, one of their examples is Wheatus, an American pop rock band who as far as anyone here is concerned existed for two singles released summer 2000 to summer 2001. They also mention Amen, who NME literally only started to talk about in 2000 when 'We Have Come For Your Parents' came out and they started covering harder-edged rock bands because nu-metal was a thing and Kerrang! were troubling them.

I feel like including Idlewild in the tweet was a cynical ploy to get me to read it while frothing with anger, given that Idlewild's biggest singles and shows all happened post-2000. "Hey, remember Idlewild, that band who did Queen Of The Troubled Teens and then totally disappeared by the end of the 90s, by no means going on to have like 10 top 40 singles in the following decade?" And it worked I guess, so fair play.

23 Daves

Quote from: Ray Travez on August 22, 2014, 01:33:37 AM
I've always retained a fondness for The Man From Del Monte... I think they still sound fresh
Water in my Eyes


Now, I might have got my facts wrong, but didn't Jon Ronson manage them? Or wasn't he involved in their career in some way? That at least partly explains why they failed to break through in any convincing way, as for all his strengths I can't imagine Ronson hustling and wheeling and dealing in the music world.

Quote from: Nobody Soup on August 22, 2014, 04:25:02 AM
why weren't The Go! Team really popular? back in 2000 surely that shit sounded out of this world and everyone loved the avalanches and stuff like that.  for a band that have a name that could be in the 'smug band names' thread and have kinda elements of cheesey hip hop and stuff like that I should hate them, but that first album is really good.

Yeah, I agree. Although I'm such an old fart now that I regard The Go! Team as being relatively current. They are actually still going, aren't they? I have to admit I steadily lost interest in them across the diminishing returns of their albums.

Tiny Poster

I thought The Go! Team had about a year of success? They were the cool name to check out on the festival circuit, being pushed by 6 Music and 4 Later etc.


How about Tim Ten Yen? So indie only I appear to have heard of him and his great debut album: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1b_tcXwrlRI

Brundle-Fly

Quote from: chand on August 22, 2014, 08:30:36 AM
Saw this NME tweet last night:

Amazing terrible picture article spread over fifty pages. Shit like this:

Now, like, I know people who are obsessed with Babybird and will wax lyrical for ages about all the stuff he did that wasn't 'You're Gorgeous'. One would think that an article revisiting forgotten indie acts of the 90s would delve a little deeper than the one song literally everybody who was alive at the time remembers. They just kind of run out of indie bands partway through and settle for stuff like Ugly Kid Joe and Porno For Pyros.


and Electronic!?! Who had their biggest success in 1989.

Ray Travez

Quote from: 23 Daves on August 22, 2014, 08:43:20 AM
Now, I might have got my facts wrong, but didn't Jon Ronson manage them? Or wasn't he involved in their career in some way? That at least partly explains why they failed to break through in any convincing way, as for all his strengths I can't imagine Ronson hustling and wheeling and dealing in the music world.

You're right, he did manage them (a fact I still find incredibly weird), and according to his recent interview with Richard Herring, lost that job when he slept with the lead singer's girlfriend.

doppelkorn

Quote from: Tiny Poster on August 22, 2014, 08:50:58 AM
I thought The Go! Team had about a year of success? They were the cool name to check out on the festival circuit, being pushed by 6 Music and 4 Later etc.

That's how I remember it. Even my girlfriend, who only likes about 20 songs in the history of popular music has The Go Team's album.[nb]I don't know which one...the main one everybody had...[/nb]


phantom_power

Quote from: chand on August 22, 2014, 08:30:36 AM
Saw this NME tweet last night:
Shed Seven, Idlewild, Skunk Anansie and more: 50 forgotten '90s indie bands http://www.nme.com/photos/50-forgotten-90s-bands-who-prove-90s-indie-wasn-t-just-about-oasis-and-blur/348677/1/1?recache=36&utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=90sgallery
Amazing terrible picture article spread over fifty pages. Shit like this:

Now, like, I know people who are obsessed with Babybird and will wax lyrical for ages about all the stuff he did that wasn't 'You're Gorgeous'. One would think that an article revisiting forgotten indie acts of the 90s would delve a little deeper than the one song literally everybody who was alive at the time remembers. They just kind of run out of indie bands partway through and settle for stuff like Ugly Kid Joe and Porno For Pyros.

Amazingly, despite the brief of being able to cite any of the fucking millions of indie bands that existed in the 90s, one of their examples is Wheatus, an American pop rock band who as far as anyone here is concerned existed for two singles released summer 2000 to summer 2001. They also mention Amen, who NME literally only started to talk about in 2000 when 'We Have Come For Your Parents' came out and they started covering harder-edged rock bands because nu-metal was a thing and Kerrang! were troubling them.


Shed 7 a forgotten band? Is that the sort of people the NME are pitched towards now, "music" fans who don't know shed seven? Surely they are Jack FM/Virgin Radio/Absolute Radio mainstays?

Back on topic, The Rock by Delakota is one of the lost singles of the 90s.

Stretching "indie" a bit but Renegade Soundwave never get the props they deserve for their English take on hip hop when that sort of thing was looked down on as a joke

23 Daves

Quote from: doppelkorn on August 22, 2014, 09:14:05 AM
That's how I remember it. Even my girlfriend, who only likes about 20 songs in the history of popular music has The Go Team's album.[nb]I don't know which one...the main one everybody had...[/nb]

"Thunder Lightning Strike", I expect.

My wife loves The Go! Team as well, and she's notoriously picky about music (not as bad as your girlfriend, but not far off it) - they were a band she used to nag me to go and see live rather than vice versa. I've also known their music to be appreciated by a lot of unlikely people, so it's surprising they didn't have seriously high-selling albums rather than cultishly successful ones. One of those bands with "something for everyone" without being bland in the process.

Tim Ten Yen is another marvellous (though peculiar) live act. I think I'm still having nightmares about his robot cat. Still going, though, he actually did a gig at a friend of mine's 30th birthday.

I'm surprised nobody's mentioned Tom "Star of 2004!" Vek yet, though maybe I shouldn't be because for all the hype, he wasn't really that interesting. He only just released his follow-up album, I believe.

phantom_power

He had one in between as well. I really like his first album but haven't really been bothered with the other two

Tiny Poster

I've always wanted to hire TTY for a birthday party too - he's a lovely bloke and wins over misreable people with his act. Left it too late though, I'm not gonna be in London for much longer.

23 Daves

Quote from: phantom_power on August 22, 2014, 10:35:03 AM
He had one in between as well. I really like his first album but haven't really been bothered with the other two

Yes, I just wiki'ed him and noticed that. Amazing what you can miss when you're not really interested in the first place.

I've also just remembered that my observation about The Go! Team isn't 100% true. The wife and I went to see them live at some kind of NME/ XFM sponsored live event (the last one of those I ever attended) in 2005. It was a bill half-filled with total rubbish and half-filled with brilliance, and the three whiffiest contenders were Kubb (like some bland major label hype act of 1986 who got lost while time travelling - they even had a single called "Wicked Soul", for fuck's sake) Morning Runner (like Coldplay only worse, if I remember) and Athlete. For whatever reason, a segment of the Athlete fans kept booing every time The Go! Team were mentioned, to the extent that Shaun Keaveny who was MC'ing actually had to tell the audience off. In the end the wife and I decided to boo and yell "But they're fucking shit!" every time Athlete's name cropped up. It could have ended in a big mods and rockers styled fight, but fortunately Athlete's fans seemed to have an average age of 14, so they just looked disconcerted.

Anyway, Athlete - what were all that about, eh?! Like a really bland Britpop band who wouldn't have sold records in the nineties selling them in 2005! Do you remember that, do you?! I once made the mistake of slagging off Athlete at a party to two of their road crew. I wasn't aware of the connection. They shouted at me and told me to go away and listen to them again. I seem to have spent a lot of my life investing more emotion into Athlete than they ever deserved.

Shoulders?-Stomach!

Fuck. You'd have to be some soulfucked scene-droid to boo The Go! Team. It's the fucking Go! Team. Die in a fire.

Someone mentioned HAL as being a mid 2000s band but I have this EP from the mid 90s-
http://www.discogs.com/Hal-Election-Day/release/1720279

Same name, different band?

23 Daves

Quote from: Shoulders?-Stomach! on August 22, 2014, 11:12:20 AM
Fuck. You'd have to be some soulfucked scene-droid to boo The Go! Team. It's the fucking Go! Team. Die in a fire.

Some of them did seem to enjoy their set in the end (there was a posse of booing Athlete fans in the seats directly in front of us, in case you were wondering how I know). But I think it was originally just ignorant indie-kid behaviour, probably because they all mistakenly thought they were some kind of "urban act" or something.

God, young scenesters got on my tits in the mid-noughties. I still find them irritating now, but at least gigs aren't as awash with disinterested Top Shoppers as they used to be.

CaledonianGonzo

Quote from: Shoulders?-Stomach! on August 22, 2014, 11:12:20 AM
Same name, different band?

Yup.  The other Hal are actually styled HAL:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hal_(band)

Their debut album is a decent west coast-y country rock listen.  I don't revisit it often, but tracks like Don't Come Running and Worry About The Wind are keepers.

doppelkorn

You know Feeder? They had that hit didn't they?

CD PLAYERPLAYERPLAYERPLAYERPLAYERPLAYERPLAYERPLAYERPLAYERPLAYERPLAYERPLAYERPLAYERPLAYERPLAYERPLAYER

But you'll never meet anyone who claims to have been a fan. Despite all those people in that video of theirs who sent in camcorder footage.

Brundle-Fly

Quote from: phantom_power on August 22, 2014, 10:27:57 AM


Stretching "indie" a bit but Renegade Soundwave never get the props they deserve for their English take on hip hop when that sort of thing was looked down on as a joke

Renegade Soundwave were great. Probably A Robbery was a little ahead of the game in 1989  with the cocky London,  swagger. Pre-Prodigy, Parklife, Lock, Stock, AudioBullys Etc

Neville Chamberlain


Don_Preston

Quote from: Dirty Boy on August 22, 2014, 10:11:38 AM
Brainiac

Another singer who died :-(

He's not dead, he's just making some home improvements.

EEEEEEEEERRRRR-EEEEEEEEHHH!!

holyzombiejesus

The Kingsbury Manx were a band a few years ahead of their time. They'd have fitted in with that Espers/ Vetiver psych folk scene that came along a few years later. I've just been listening to their debut and it's such a good record.

chand

Quote from: phantom_power on August 22, 2014, 10:27:57 AM
Shed 7 a forgotten band? Is that the sort of people the NME are pitched towards now, "music" fans who don't know shed seven? Surely they are Jack FM/Virgin Radio/Absolute Radio mainstays?

Indeed. Shed Seven were massively famous for a while, they had decently-charting singles off all their albums. Indeed according to Wiki they had more chart singles in 1996 than any other act. After the NME decided they were naff, they became a long-running joke, for years people citing them as an example of a shit boring band, but nevertheless people didn't forget them, and you can still hear their songs all over the radio. They were one of the archetypal examples of a band who released a best of and had loads of people going "Huh, I know all these songs".

Skunk Anansie too, hugely popular in the 90s with three successful albums. They got less popular and broke up and reformed as most bands do but it's hardly as if they were 'forgotten'. It's like having a reminisce about forgotten 90s footballers and talking about Andy Cole.

doppelkorn

Andy Cole was alright but he should never have married that gobby geordie scallie off the TV.

23 Daves

Quote from: doppelkorn on August 22, 2014, 12:07:08 PM
You know Feeder? They had that hit didn't they?

CD PLAYERPLAYERPLAYERPLAYERPLAYERPLAYERPLAYERPLAYERPLAYERPLAYERPLAYERPLAYERPLAYERPLAYERPLAYERPLAYER

But you'll never meet anyone who claims to have been a fan. Despite all those people in that video of theirs who sent in camcorder footage.

How could I forget that song? For some reason, it always feels as if I last heard that fucking song an hour ago. It feels as if it got playlisted on release then it just somehow remained locked there for eternity.

Don_Preston