Artists/bands that were once quite popular, yet nowadays are mostly ignored in canonical history books

UK radio was a very different beast to US radio back then, it was basically Radio 1 for pop plus the odd local station. So rock music was seen as this niche aberration, Led Zep and Pink Floyd et al were huge but their big songs weren't really known outside the fan bases.

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Yes, we didn't have this classic rock music rubbish clogging up the airwaves.

Never heard of George Strait either. Or Alabama or Alan Jackson, for that matter.

No we had the Wurzels and Brotherhood of Man iirc

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Tbh, based on anything I've seen/heard of commercial radio from the UK, I'd happily stick with classic rock.

Strait, Alabama, and Alan Jackson all got cursory mentions in Ken Burns' recent country music series, so they're canonical to that extent

There's very little country I can stomach, so my ignorance is partly willed.

peel used to mention, but not play, george strait from time to time so i know a few song titles but not songs. All My Ex's Live In Texas being the one i particularly remember.

Who needs classic rock when you've got this?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_0fC_HL2NL8

(This is the closest thing I can think of to a guilty pleasure, in that I quite enjoy it while simultaneously feeling mortified that it even existed)

Oh, so they were basically ABBA with native English speakers?

And without a modicum of talent? Yes.

Basically this, yes.

But with somehow genuinely classic tunes occasionally poking their noses out and being buried beneath shitheaps of end-of-the-pier tastelessness.

Most of the unfamiliar ones seem to be country of one sort or another, but wtf are these guys at #65?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mannheim_Steamroller

― mfktz (Camaraderie at Arms Length)

lol, those guys are HUGE here every december, it's chip davis (who did "convoy") doing these kind of gaudy new-age christmas songs, do you know trans-siberian orchestra? kind of like them but mannheim steamroller were around first. my mom had all the mannheim steamroller tapes when i was a kid

it's not any worse than any other christmas music to be honest

I had a high school friend whose praise for Mannheim Steamroller somehow always worked in the descriptor "classically trained." Like, did you know all the guys in Mannheim Steamroller were classically trained?

Yawn, so's everybody in the New York Philharmonic. Ditto the local community orchestra; doesn't mean they don't suck.

Mannheim Steamroller sales are 98.5% people who donated to NPR fundraisers in the 80 and 90s. Post-Reagan equivalent of exotica records, Music to Stir Risotto to

do you know trans-siberian orchestra?

No.

George Strait has like 800 #1 Country songs, but he never tried for any pop crossover, so he's largely by non-Country fans for "Exes Live In Texas"

Yeah Mannheim Steamroller and Trans-Siberian Orchestra reliably sold hundreds of CDs every Christmas when I worked at a chain bookstore, no doubt they continue to do so. They're radically different in sound but equally unlistenable trash. Mannheim are saccharine while TSO are bombastic. When we got the in-store promo copies the music staff had an informal agreement to scratch the shit out of them on day one so they could never be played. It didn't always work - the store manager would just buy copies and make us play those.

TSO are basically a power metal band (formed by ex-members of Savatage; Alex Skolnick from Testament toured with them for years) playing Christmas music.

Trans-Mannheimian Steamrollerstra reliably sell out the US circuit of medium-to-smallish-city theaters (mostly season-subscription places that have whatever the town's local orchestra is, Livingston Taylor, and An Evening With Terry Gross).

Never heard of either of those bands, such parallel worlds we live in!

I've been checking out the trans-siberian orcestra.

1. fucking hell they are awful

2. but also why are they so cheap-looking? for example surely they can afford to pay a designer something to make a more acceptable cover for this platinum-selling LP?

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/d/dd/Night_castle.jpg

Wet Wet Wet
The Beautiful South

My brother in law asked me to get tickets for Paul Heaton when they went on sale last week and were sold out in 3 minutes.

Eat your heart out, Necrolord.

xp

wet wet wet are due a re-appraisal.

if poptimism had anything about it marti would be a legend

(a marti-less "wet wet wet" are still touring, which is a travesty)

Beautiful South hardly forgotten either.

This is where I get to play an American “I’ve never heard those artists” card

Ah, ok. Since the main guy seems to be an icon in Ireland I assumed the whole band was from there.

Lynott wrote 80% of the material, did all the lyrical and Celtic sleeve art conceptualising, and was the face and heart and soul of the band. Not that the other members weren't important but he was more important to the band than the rest of them put together.

Also, as well as Lynott, the drummer was Irish and so was Eric Bell, the original guitarist before Robertson and Gorham came along. So they totally qualify as an Irish band.

2. but also why are they so cheap-looking? for example surely they can afford to pay a designer something to make a more acceptable cover for this platinum-selling LP?

i have this same question about several hundred thousand different book covers from the previous 10 years

there is no excuse, in this day and age, to design a cover that is so catastrophically bad

book/album cover designers, and the people that are paying them to make covers (or the people who are making it themselves the night before it is due) should ask themselves before pressing "submit":

is this better than a blank white background with only the title in a small, boring font

i say this as someone whose career output is 99.9% unmitigated garbage, career earnings: several thousand negative dollars

This is where I get to play an American “I’ve never heard those artists” card

I think the only reason I know The Beautiful South was from reading I think it was a Youngblood comic in the '90s, and it had one of the characters going on a fake-Letterman late night show where the mentioned but never seen musical guest was...The Beautiful South. I guess Liefeld was a fan?

Huh I always assumed Mannheim Steamroller was a reference to Mannheim Road in Chicago. Has nothing to do with roads!

TSO version of "Carol of the Bells" is all-time.

I actually know Beautiful South - MuchMusic played "Song for Whoever", which is hilarious, sort of like a cynical Chicago.

Engelbert Humperdinck, James Last, Barbra Streisand, Nana Mouskouri, Demis Roussos...who will pick them up from the scrapheap of history, now that their original fanbase have lost most of their hearing?

didn't know engelbert humperdink was a real name for a real person until i ended up with a bunch of my deceased aunt's LPs

Wasn't his real name iirc, but he did name himself after an old composer.

(He was #1 the day I was born, biggest selling artist that year)

(oh, your aunt could've had LP's by the composer...)

I always thoughtit was a weird coincidence that the easy listening singer had the same name as the composer.

The 1950s-70s easy listening audience is dying out now, even charity shops seem to be running dry of Andy Williams and Perry Como LPs. Not to mention the Black & White Minstrel Show. Can't see it being rehabilitated a la Martin Denny either, although you never know whether James Last might become collectable in future decades.

there's a non-ILXor in my Spotify feed listening to Wet Wet Wet right now!

Demis Roussos and Nana Mouskouri are both worth investigating imo.

there are good nana records? tell me more!

I don't know, I just like when she sings in Greek!

The Beautiful South. I guess Liefeld was a fan?

this is incomprehensible

ah ok! she's the one person you can still rely on finding in the charity shops, maybe one day i'll take the plunge. got some good demis over the years though! xp

She has thousands of albums and sings in about 50 different languages and also has an ILM thread

... with some awesome images in it.