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Great bands no-one talks about (Not a List Thread)

Started by gilbertharding, February 20, 2019, 12:02:06 PM

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colinzeal

It's probably inaccurate to say that no-one talks about them, but they are shockingly underrated and deserve way more praise and exposure than they get. I'm talking about Babybird. Perhaps its because they became big during the Britpop era but didnt fit into any of the Britpop or indie boxes, so aren't easily labelled by the media. There's actually a new album out this week that collects together the best Babybird stuff of recent years, and it shows that Stephen Jones is better than ever as a songwriter. Along with 1998's masterpiece Theres Something Going On, it really is an extraordinary record. https://psychomafia.bandcamp.com/album/happy-stupid-nothing-2

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQzo59M-qOTwoukaTXz1wWQ

colinzeal

Quote from: jobotic on February 27, 2019, 12:27:11 PM
Yeah love The Monks.

The Fall covered them donctha know?

Well worth seeing The Transatlantic Feedback film about The Monks. Saw it at an arts centre here followed by a gig from Ye Nuns. Top night.

Only problem was no subtitles so the bits of talking heads chatting away in German were slightly dull.

am i right in thinking there were at least two Fall covers of Monks tracks? i only know of them because of MES, same with The Sonics and bizarrely Wanda Jackson :)

Jockice

Quote from: colinzeal on March 04, 2019, 12:34:21 PM
It's probably inaccurate to say that no-one talks about them, but they are shockingly underrated and deserve way more praise and exposure than they get. I'm talking about Babybird. Perhaps its because they became big during the Britpop era but didnt fit into any of the Britpop or indie boxes, so aren't easily labelled by the media. There's actually a new album out this week that collects together the best Babybird stuff of recent years, and it shows that Stephen Jones is better than ever as a songwriter. Along with 1998's masterpiece Theres Something Going On, it really is an extraordinary record. https://psychomafia.bandcamp.com/album/happy-stupid-nothing-2

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQzo59M-qOTwoukaTXz1wWQ

I'm totally with you about There's Something Going On. One of the great underrated 'flop' albums by fairly well-known chart bands, up there with The Undertones' The Sin Of Pride and OMD's Dazzle Ships.

Lisa Jesusandmarychain

Quote from: colinzeal on March 04, 2019, 12:35:58 PM
am i right in thinking there were at least two Fall covers of Monks tracks? i only know of them because of MES, same with The Sonics and bizarrely Wanda Jackson :)

The Fall actually covered no less than four tunes by yer Monks.

The first was 'Black Monk Theme' (Originally titled "I Hate You"), on their popular 'Extricate" album
The second was ' Black Monk Theme Part 2 ' ( Not sure of the original title, it's the jaunty one where MES sings 'Long, long Time, make you mine todaaaaaaay' , it was originally an extra track on their 'Popcorn Double Feature ' single ).
The third was "Shut Up" on their "Middle Class Revolt" album
The fourth was 'Higgledy Piggledy", covered for an album of Monks cover versions.

Just a shame they never got round to covering "Nice Legs, Shame About The Face", really :(

McChesney Duntz

Quote from: Lisa Jesusandmarychain on March 04, 2019, 02:42:45 PM

The second was ' Black Monk Theme Part 2 ' ( Not sure of the original title, it's the jaunty one where MES sings 'Long, long Time, make you mine todaaaaaaay' , it was originally an extra track on their 'Popcorn Double Feature ' single ).


That'd be "Oh, How to Do Now."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBqXXmPqyoA

Absorb the anus burn

Wall Of Voodoo: A kind of 'Deep South Devo' (jittery rhythms, heavy synths but no boiler suits) fronted by poetry-reciting weirdo, here pictured without his 'camouflage'.... WoV carried on valiantly, but ceased to be vital after Stan departed.



Come On: Talking Heads clone band with a couple of brilliant (funny 'n' creepy) eps, but no full length release except the let's stick everything we can by the band on one CD compilation.



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTvFaNga5w4

McChesney Duntz

Quote from: Absorb the anus burn on March 05, 2019, 10:36:49 PM
Wall Of Voodoo: A kind of 'Deep South Devo' (jittery rhythms, heavy synths but no boiler suits) fronted by poetry-reciting weirdo, here pictured without his 'camouflage'.... WoV carried on valiantly, but ceased to be vital after Stan departed.

WoV was a great band - certainly better than their (admittedly fantastic) one hit implies - but you bring up something that always impressed/baffled me: how in god's green hell did "Camouflage" manage to become such a big Brit hit? (It did less than nothing here in the States, and I'm sure his label would never have hyped that to be the single from that album before, say, "Drive She Said"...)

jamiefairlie

Quote from: McChesney Duntz on March 05, 2019, 11:18:25 PM
WoV was a great band - certainly better than their (admittedly fantastic) one hit implies - but you bring up something that always impressed/baffled me: how in god's green hell did "Camouflage" manage to become such a big Brit hit? (It did less than nothing here in the States, and I'm sure his label would never have hyped that to be the single from that album before, say, "Drive She Said"...)

Mexican Radio is a cracker of a tune.

Camouflage was post-Wall of Voodoo though wasn't it? I suspect it was probably down to Peel championing it then that bleeding into Jensen or Long in the evening slot, it often happened that way.

I think it was latched onto by at least Radio 1 DJ who perceived it as a kind of quirky, novelty song.  In those days, with relatively few radio stations/formats and huge listenership figures for Radio 1, heavy airplay there from even just one DJ getting behind a record could propel it up the charts (see also the Theme from MASH getting to number 1 in 1980, about a decade after it was recorded).  Getting a big hit must have been much more difficult in the US due to its sheer size and multitude of different local radio stations and formats.

Absorb the anus burn

Vietnam War songs were hip in 1985-1986! Paul Hardcastle's N-n-n-n-n-n-n-ineteen started the trend.

Absorb the anus burn

Man: Welsh Rockers! Welsh Rockers!

Complex and difficult to categorise (prog? space rock? jam band? hard boogie?) group with loads of great LPs, including their legendary Roundhouse gig as featured on Back Into The Future.


Absorb the anus burn


a duncandisorderly

#103
Quote from: Jockice on February 24, 2019, 04:40:17 AM
I can't actually remember him being in the Comsats but he probably has worked with them at some point in the past. But it's their keyboardist Andy Peake he's working with at the moment, who incidentally is the only one I've met since exclusively revealing in the paper that they'd split up. So exclusively in fact that three quarters of the band weren't aware of it....

terry todd? yes, he was in that last line-up, in 1995, before SF went off to discover wilco gomez & the rest of them formed 'soup'. mate of mine is on a recent album (on discus records) with terry & (I think) either andy or nick robinson or maybe both of them.
I followed the first two pages of this thread, going 'yes, saw them... saw them.... mate almost joined them.... was in the studio with them with my mellotron in '96....' & so on, but I can't believe we've got this far without anyone mentioning levitation/dark star, tiger or warm jets. slim pickings on yt, but let's see....

tiger: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dq6LJi2KKA  (I modified their moog rogue so it would go an octave lower)

levitation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtE2MYCIzZk (fucking hell!)

dark star: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vCRhcTJGfwA (ditto- I saw that rhythm section dozens of times as part of these two bands, & went home shaking every time)

eat (either incarnation): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHNVoaXMdjI

warm jets: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hCGiExNFQmc  (that's charlotte hatherley's sister, beatrice, back there on the keyboards)

[edit] that eat clip's not the official one... what was I saying about yt? anyway, here they are, mk1, at manchester poly in late 1990, on the brink of breaking up but still a good night out. I stuck his together from a good desk tape & a vhs  https://vimeo.com/234264208

Jockice

#104
Quote from: a duncandisorderly on March 06, 2019, 01:01:52 AM
terry todd? yes, he was in that last line-up, in 1995, before SF went off to discover wilco gomez & the rest of them formed 'soup'. mate of mine is on a recent album (on discus records) with terry & (I think) either andy or nick robinson or maybe both of them.

The very same. I've always thought Terry was a really cool guy, although he certainly works up a sweat in the gym. I can sort of vaguely remember him being in the Comsats now and  also remember Soup. I have very little to do with the local music scene nowadays apart from being Facebook friends with loads of people from the old days and occasionally bumping into them. The last time I saw Andy he was working on reception at the university library about 15 years ago. I know Nick too, although I haven't seen him in person for even longer than that.  Who's your mate? There's a possibility I may know him as well.

And yes, Tiger were ace.


a duncandisorderly

Quote from: Jockice on March 06, 2019, 09:44:05 AM
The very same. I've always thought Terry was a really cool guy, although he certainly works up a sweat in the gym. I can sort of vaguely remember him being in the Comsats now and  also remember Soup. I have very little to do with the local music scene nowadays apart from being Facebook friends with loads of people from the old days and occasionally bumping into them. The last time I saw Andy he was working on reception at the university library about 15 years ago. I know Nick too, although I haven't seen him in person for even longer than that.  Who's your mate? There's a possibility I may know him as well.

And yes, Tiger were ace.

steve, one of my oppos in r.m.i.- both he & gary have done stuff with martin archer for the latter's discus label. nick & terry have both been involved with martin's projects too. we hired martin to play sax & stuff on a couple of our albums. nick & andy have (or had) an occasional electronica project, though I gather mrs p tries to get andy to stay at home these days. nick is a renowned origamist too.

I was the first of r.m.i. out of the traps with a project involving another band, though- I made a couple of singles with tiger & a mate of theirs. then we made an ep with adrenal, whose guitarist is a writer & works with dan mazer on the sacha baron-cohen projects. I dated a warm jet for a while too.... she ran off with eric drew feldman.

the soup album has some nice moments, but the singer.... fans only.   we went to see the comsats, me & steve, at the mean fiddler on my birthday in 1995. I think that was the last tour before the reunion. we managed to get backstage, because steve knew both terry & another guy, simon anderson (now deceased, sadly) from his own time with bands in sheffield.

rasta-spouse

I would mention Polvo, awesome group... but ruddy Stewart Lee namedropped them in the introduction to his last book. Cuh!


Jockice

Quote from: a duncandisorderly on March 07, 2019, 06:37:23 AM
steve, one of my oppos in r.m.i.- both he & gary have done stuff with martin archer for the latter's discus label. nick & terry have both been involved with martin's projects too. we hired martin to play sax & stuff on a couple of our albums. nick & andy have (or had) an occasional electronica project, though I gather mrs p tries to get andy to stay at home these days. nick is a renowned origamist too.

I was the first of r.m.i. out of the traps with a project involving another band, though- I made a couple of singles with tiger & a mate of theirs. then we made an ep with adrenal, whose guitarist is a writer & works with dan mazer on the sacha baron-cohen projects. I dated a warm jet for a while too.... she ran off with eric drew feldman.

the soup album has some nice moments, but the singer.... fans only.   we went to see the comsats, me & steve, at the mean fiddler on my birthday in 1995. I think that was the last tour before the reunion. we managed to get backstage, because steve knew both terry & another guy, simon anderson (now deceased, sadly) from his own time with bands in sheffield.

Right, it's starting to fall into place now. I don't think I know Steve but definitely know his name. And of course Terry and Simon were in the Comsats for their The Glamour album, which I have. Somewhere. They joined after Kevin Bacon left to produce phone adverts or whatever it was.

I haven't heard the Soup album but wasn't the vocalist Pete Hope, formerly of The Box? An acquired taste obviously, but I like it. He now lives in New Zealand according to his Facebook page.

NoSleep


purlieu

Quote from: alan nagsworth on February 22, 2019, 11:02:10 AM
An excellent current band no one talks about: The Cribs
Really? Almost every one of my indie fan friends seems utterly obsessed with them. I always found them to be unlistenable tripe and got sick of people rating them highly years ago.

Quote from: MattD on March 02, 2019, 06:35:11 PM
Idlewild
Depends on what you read / who you know, I suppose. They still appear regularly enough on places like Drowned in Sound and anywhere that has indie fans in their late 30s / early 40s. They're my favourite 'band' (in the conventional sense of the word), and I spot them quite a lot. But yes, it'd be nice if they were more widely discussed, especially as they have a surprisingly varied discography that looks to be getting very much more so if their new single is at all representative of the next album.


My suggestion would be Catchers. I accidentally stumbled across them on YouTube years ago and fell in love with their first album. Male / female fronted Northern Irish indie-pop band from the mid-'90s. Quite jangly, but with plenty of rawer moments that stop it ever getting close to twee, and some frequently dark lyrics. I've never actually spoken to anybody who's even heard of them, let alone is a fan of them.

Also, any ambient / ambient techno artist from the '90s who wasn't in some way connected to Warp, Pete Namlook or a major label.

Lisa Jesusandmarychain

Hey, how's about Messer Chups? Would they qualify for this thread? Twang merchants from St. Petersburg, influenced a lot of the young Russian bands ( I saw a Moscow- based band t 'other week what had determinedly shoved that twangy sound into their otherwise The Housemartins circa 1986 type music ), have a seemingly ageless glamorous lady with Betty Page hairstyle and overbite on bass, and goes through a succession of Drummers on a Spinal Type- like scale. I last saw them incongruously supporting a load of grind core bands. Do they qualify for this ' ere thread then? Asking for a friend.

Absorb the anus burn

Recreation:



Belgian three-piece, active in the early 70s, who put out two lovely albums of playful avant-jazz-prog, in the Samla Mamma Mannas and Moving Gelatine Plates mode.

jamiefairlie

An older one....

Heron: A psych-folk combo from Maidenhead. From 1970, their self-titled debut is a thing of beauty and was recorded in a rigged-up outdoor studio to better capture the ambience. They produced a follow-up the next year before splitting.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6wJ_FXGwgU8


non capisco

Quote from: purlieu on March 07, 2019, 05:31:24 PM
My suggestion would be Catchers. I accidentally stumbled across them on YouTube years ago and fell in love with their first album. Male / female fronted Northern Irish indie-pop band from the mid-'90s. Quite jangly, but with plenty of rawer moments that stop it ever getting close to twee, and some frequently dark lyrics. I've never actually spoken to anybody who's even heard of them, let alone is a fan of them.

'Shifting' is the only song of theirs I know but that one's a banger. Used to be played a lot on Mark Radcliffe's old weeknight Graveyard Shift on Radio 1. Will have to investigate further.

alan nagsworth

Quote from: Lisa Jesusandmarychain on March 07, 2019, 05:55:45 PM
Hey, how's about Messer Chups? Would they qualify for this thread? Twang merchants from St. Petersburg, influenced a lot of the young Russian bands ( I saw a Moscow- based band t 'other week what had determinedly shoved that twangy sound into their otherwise The Housemartins circa 1986 type music ), have a seemingly ageless glamorous lady with Betty Page hairstyle and overbite on bass, and goes through a succession of Drummers on a Spinal Type- like scale. I last saw them incongruously supporting a load of grind core bands. Do they qualify for this ' ere thread then? Asking for a friend.

I find them to be very hit and miss, but when they hit, they're brilliant. A Russian band whose primary influences are surf rock and horror B-movies? I mean, there's pushing my buttons and then there's hammering your fist onto my whole keypad.

My favourite song of theirs is For Everyone Over the 30. It's from an old album of theirs, "Vamp Babes", which has since been "updated" and there's a new revised version of this song which is NOWHERE NEAR AS GOOD as the original, thankfully preserved on YouTube. God. I bloody love this tune. That chorus keyboard bit. Woooof.

Quote from: rasta-spouse on March 07, 2019, 08:06:17 AM
I would mention Polvo, awesome group... but ruddy Stewart Lee namedropped them in the introduction to his last book. Cuh!

Funnily enough I've been going through a load of great indie bands of that ilk lately (Pavement, Shellac, etc) and I'd totally forgot all about Polvo. They're well good ain't they? "Exploded Drawing" and "Today's Active Lifestyles" are cracking albums.

purlieu

Quote from: non capisco on March 08, 2019, 11:09:14 AM
'Shifting' is the only song of theirs I know but that one's a banger. Used to be played a lot on Mark Radcliffe's old weeknight Graveyard Shift on Radio 1. Will have to investigate further.
Mute is definitely worth a check if you like that. It's getting a 25th anniversary reissue later in the year, too.

MiddleRabbit

(Idlewild)
Quote from: purlieu on March 07, 2019, 05:31:24 PM
Really? Almost every one of my indie fan friends seems utterly obsessed with them. I always found them to be unlistenable tripe and got sick of people rating them highly years ago.
Depends on what you read / who you know, I suppose. They still appear regularly enough on places like Drowned in Sound and anywhere that has indie fans in their late 30s / early 40s. They're my favourite 'band' (in the conventional sense of the word), and I spot them quite a lot. But yes, it'd be nice if they were more widely discussed, especially as they have a surprisingly varied discography that looks to be getting very much more so if their new single is at all representative of the next album.

I shared a flat with a lad who had one of their albums seemingly on repeat for months.  I couldn't understand the appeal at all.  Just the nuntiest load of mediocre cobblers possible. Music for people who can't handle silence and simultaneously don't want to hear anything either.

You know songs that aren't memorable as soon as they've ended?  Songs you couldn't hum the tune of once they'd finished?  I couldn't tell you how any of those songs went while they were playing.

The  next record that my flat mate got into after that?  Travis.  Yeah.

Jockice

Quote from: MiddleRabbit on March 08, 2019, 02:33:49 PM
(Idlewild)
I shared a flat with a lad who had one of their albums seemingly on repeat for months.  I couldn't understand the appeal at all.  Just the nuntiest load of mediocre cobblers possible. Music for people who can't handle silence and simultaneously don't want to hear anything either.

You know songs that aren't memorable as soon as they've ended?  Songs you couldn't hum the tune of once they'd finished?  I couldn't tell you how any of those songs went while they were playing.

The  next record that my flat mate got into after that?  Travis.  Yeah.

The only time I saw The Cribs live I had earache. So I blame them for that.

Aw, we're talking about Idlewild here. Sorry. I have a mate who's a big fan but I really can't see the appeal. I call them The Scottish REM to annoy him. I'm like that.