shifts in popular opinion you have noticed

Probably due to his twitter account and ability to self-deprecate, Richard Marx's credibility seems to have had an upward swing in recent years.

Michael Bolton too.

Lionel Richie went away, Rod Stewart didn't. Elvis Costello soldiers on with a new batch of songs every few years, unlike Patti Smith. Bowie's rep definitely benefited by taking a decade off.

I think these are all different cases. The recent Lionel Richie rehabilitation is a complete fucking mystery to me, I confess: The guy was garbage in the '80s, why is that garbage suddenly popular again now? Who will children discover next, Kenny Rogers? Rod Stewart never went away, except he kinda did - all those "American Songbook" albums effectively removed him from pop cultural discussion. He was suddenly making music for grandparents. Elvis Costello, I agree, labors in relative obscurity, making albums for his natural constituency of NPR critics. Van Morrison is the real "how can we miss you if you won't fuck off?" guy IMO; he put out a record basically every year or two in the '80s, '90s and '00s, and nobody gave a fuck. His longest break was four years between '08 and '12. Bowie's rep improved because it took about a decade for the stink of his last three or four albums pre-The Next Day to waft away. Those records sucked, I don't care what anybody says now.

Can were definitely more obscure in the U.S. than VdGG or Gong or Gentle Giant in the 70's. though Gong were pretty underground here even by underground prog standards. solo Hillage records had more of a presence. Most Can was not released here at the time. That's the main thing. Lots of Hawkwind records in the U.S. and not so much Can. United Artists almost singlehandedly responsible for what did get over here. they put out Soon Over Babaluma in the U.S. and Ege Bamyasi. but finding a U.S. copy of Ege Bamyasi is REALLY hard.

Thought it was different in US.

Cluster's a good one, I don't think I heard them till the 90s. I borrowed a lot of albums from the sister's ex-husband's sister's boyfriend (phew) and it had some Cluster ... and Harmonia.

Hawkwind is a band I had heard of, but never heard, until the 2000s when Sanctuary/Castle remastered their UA albums.

it took about a decade for the stink of his last three or four albums pre-The Next Day to waft away. Those records sucked, I don't care what anybody says now.

Hush yr mouf. Heathen is badass.

I started writing a bit of music yesterday which unwittingly ended up sounding a bit like an electroclash track from the early-2000s. It made me think about how, growing up in the 90s, I didn't even know what electro was - it was a touchstone that had been left behind in the 80s. When electro came back into style, and then stuck around for well over a decade, it felt like it would never go away. But I haven't heard an electro rhythms in quite some time now.

U.S. copies of the first Neu! album probably easier to find than an american Ege Bamyasi. my U.S. copy of Hijack by Amon Duul II is on Atco! so cool to look at that label. there were some weird distro deals at the time. but all that stuff barely existed.

... and Kraan. Yes, seems like a lot of German bands had trouble even getting released in the US.

Pretty sure I first read about at least Can in the Spin Alternative Record Guide? There were probably also mentions of the Krauts in the '90s Trouser Press guide.

I just got a cheapish walter wegmuller double cd in the mail the now (not the box set with the tarot cards).

xxxp Late 90s/early 2000s electro, I remember that being a thing... went from that to electroclash. ADULT. as like the transition point. Afrika Baambaata, track suits, breakdancing, graffiti culture. That stuff seemed so fresh to me back then, for being retro at least. Weird how I've almost totally forgotten about it.

Hawkwind is a band I had heard of, but never heard, until the 2000s when Sanctuary/Castle remastered their UA albums.

― the top man in the language department (誤訳侮辱), Wednesday, April 6, 2016 10:06 AM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

A friend of mine in high school was way into Hawkwind -- this was 1989-90, and it's safe to say no one else at our (3000+ students) school knew who Hawkwind was. But you could easily find their albums used and (sometimes) cheap.

(Said friend is now a professional bassist who owns/plays the bass Richard Davis used on Out To Lunch and everything else from that era.)

Can (and John Fahey) get a mildly dismissive mention from Christgau in the back of his Rock Albums of the 70s

Fahey, btw, def a beneficiary of hipster adulation from the early 90s onwards

i'm guessing i first read about Can in Spin mag. Byron probably raved about them. or i read an interview with Thurston or something. in order for me to go buy their albums back then in the 80's.

Probably due to his twitter account and ability to self-deprecate, Richard Marx's credibility seems to have had an upward swing in recent years.

― Ⓓⓡ. (Johnny Fever), Wednesday, April 6, 2016 10:04 AM (11 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Diane Warren too.

forgotten super vibey tech-house records that nobody cared about and were £1 before are disappearing from view on discogs like Sunderland fans in the 80th minute

Jim O'Rourke did a lot to bring Fahey to hipster attention, or so it seemed at the time.

Mute reissued all the Can albums in CD in 1990/91 and had a major label distro deal with Warners(?) so you could suddenly find them at most record stores. I bought Tago Mago at the mall iirc.

On cassette too. Was it all of the albums? I don't remember seeing the later ones.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nx5Eotio26U

I'm pretty sure the dinky little independent music store in my hometown had all of the '70s Can albums in stock in the '90s, so I have to believe they were pretty widely available.

I bought Future Days at a Best Buy (along with Sun Ra's Other Planes of There) in 1995, so yeah, they were everywhere.

When music is knitted into the fabric of your consumption habits – food, cars, sex, whatever – its creators are irrelevant.

― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn)

feel like this is a key point here

^^have observed this in my son too

I never heard Can until the mid 90s reissues. Cluster I discovered via a 1985 vinyl reissue. The tiny import section at my record store job in the late 70s had a few Can albums alongside Nectar, Gong and Hawkwind. For some reason the debut album from Lucifer's Friend was lurking around in a few friends' record piles when I was in high school.

Nana Mouskouri, speaking of 70s import bins, is overdue for re-evaluation

I actually fell in love with the album she made with Quincy Jones just last year. Fucking sweeeeet.

I bought Future Days at a Best Buy (along with Sun Ra's Other Planes of There) in 1995, so yeah, they were everywhere.

― Montgomery Burns' Jazz (Tarfumes The Escape Goat), Wednesday, April 6, 2016 9:43 AM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Best Buy in the mid 90s, in step with the "alternative" revolution actually stocked quite a bit of what had been obscure stuff to the point where in Minnesota at least they were even stocking local alt/indie band CDs, which I think it turned out to be a bit of a disaster for some bands that were used to consigning at the local indies (i.e. they'd stock the CDs, and later give the bands the money for any they sold minus a consignment fee), Best Buy I believe in some cases treated the bands as they did the distros and labels - buying the CDs upfront wholesale and then expecting refunds for unsold returns -- money that had by that time long been spent on practice space rent, ailing Econoline vans and weed/beer, so the bands ended up in debt.

I only first heard of Nektar a couple of years ago when Sherman Hemsley showed up on an ancient SNL episode wearing one of their shirts, and I figured they were worth checking out on that basis alone.

My local thrift stores are just getting filled with Bill Cosby records now, and I don't really see him having a career resurgence any time soon.

forms of metal feels like they takes up some of the space that used to be taken by noisier 80s/90s indie… like younger people with taste patterns that I generally recognise (contrary, 'alternative', maybe cerebral) seem more likely to be pro-metal and dig backwards into a metal canon that's alien to me (rather a Nuggetsy, garage one). but idk this is some colleagues in their 20s, my sample size isn't huge.

i mean i guess this is a version of hipster metal talk, but it feels like a shift to me

in Minnesota at least they were even stocking local alt/indie band CDs

Weird, didn't see any local stuff in Chicagoland Best Buys at the time.

Yes, you're right, i think. (xp)

forms of metal feels like they takes up some of the space that used to be taken by noisier 80s/90s indie… like younger people with taste patterns that I generally recognise (contrary, 'alternative', maybe cerebral) seem more likely to be pro-metal and dig backwards into a metal canon that's alien to me (rather a Nuggetsy, garage one). but idk this is some colleagues in their 20s, my sample size isn't huge.

― woof, Wednesday, 6 April 2016 15:58 (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

YEs - black metal etc has taken the noise-rock mantle that was popular about 10 years ago.

I think these are all different cases. The recent Lionel Richie rehabilitation is a complete fucking mystery to me, I confess: The guy was garbage in the '80s, why is that garbage suddenly popular again now? Who will children discover next, Kenny Rogers?
― the top man in the language department (誤訳侮辱), Wednesday, April 6, 2016 9:05 AM (13 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

http://www.theonion.com/article/new-roommate-has-elaborate-theory-about-how-kenny--1411

What's wrong with Kenny Rogers?

Lionel Richie - popular because All Night Long has been a mainstay of populist dancefloors for quite a few years now

i remember when the beach boys were a joke to a lot of people around the time "kokomo" came out -- seems like mass (not just aficionado) worship of pet sounds became a thing some time after that?

i wrote about Kenny and the First Edition in the Pitchfork Review and i'm more than happy to get the ball rolling.

and early commodores were a magnificent funk band

i remember when the beach boys were a joke to a lot of people around the time "kokomo" came out -- seems like mass (not just aficionado) worship of pet sounds became a thing some time after that?

― reggie (qualmsley), Wednesday, April 6, 2016 11:17 AM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yea when i was a kid the beach boys were often guest stars on full house

yeah, Kokomo was pre-pet sounds/brian worship. it came out when i was listening to all those Can records i bought.

During the 20th anniversary celebrations for Sgt. Pepper (and there were many...it got annoying) in 1987, Pet Sounds was frequently mentioned as "the album that inspired Sgt. Pepper!" It placed high in RS' best-records-of-whenever issue that year, and in this book:

http://www.timepieces.nl/chart/10489/1987-critics-choice-top-100-rock-n-roll-albums-all-time

pre-INDIE rock pet sounds/brian worship.

plenty of parents still loved them.

That's why I said most students can identify "Every Breath You Take" but not that The Police performed it. When music is knitted into the fabric of your consumption habits – food, cars, sex, whatever – its creators are irrelevant.

I mean, I still have plenty of moments where I learn the name of a song/performer that I've heard a million times. Also (from what I can tell) radio stations don't really announce the names of artists & songs as often as they once did though.

i went on a really heavy beach boys bender around 1994 or 1995? when i had a basement shop in philly. listened to them all day. that's when i was selling lots of exotica records. can't give away martin denny records now.

the Lionel Richie revival begins and ends with Can't Slow Down, his only good solo album, and critics were praising it in 1983 too.

i had a boss at the restaurant i worked at in philly who LOVED "Kokomo" and that album. she always put it on during the day. drove us all nuts. before she got to work and before we were open we would play straight outta compton and the land of rape and honey a lot.