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

thirded on Bee Gees thread

The best-selling artist for singles in the UK for the 80s was Shakin' Stevens. My 30-year-old colleague has not even heard of him (though he must have heard Merry Xmas Everyone which will be on rotation in shops as soon as we get past bonfire night)

Bee Gees & Joel are both RRHOF inductees; don't think it gets much more "canonical" than that...

As is Chicago.

(Induction speech by I think Rob Thomas, who said something like "If Chicago is your mom's band, then I want to party with your mom." Make of that what you will.)

https://youtu.be/baewtwI9A64

Gah, I was right, alas

xp Yeah — I also hear about Chicago all the time (a podcast guy I’m a fan of is a huge fan of theirs)

For the record, Rob Thomas is NOT invited to party with my mom.

the bee gees are more respected by critics than say billy joel

I would think the opposite, but dunno how to gauge this really

― Οὖτις

i mean just you could just ask anthony fantano

Herb Alpert and Johnny Rivers both had a few hits and made bucket loads of money but whose deeper catalog of music is probably at best mostly Goldmine readers material outside a few tracks. Of course, their hey day is like 40-50+ years gone at this point too.

Johnny Rivers was one of the first rock and rollers to go to Vegas if I remember right at one point might have been one of the highest paid musicians or at least his publicist like to say so.

Herb was like some other jazzers that played in the pop field not really unlike Quincy Jones, although Jones would by many be much, much more heavyweight as a musician and arranger. Alpert was pretty indie though starting his own studio and then label which got huge, so that would be an angle where he would be still quite significant.

"Big A&M Herb was there** His offices had fresh air. But his rota was mediocre. US purge, rock 'n' pop filth. Their material's filched." Kinda true of Johnny Rivers too as he was not really a writer, although he had the dough to buy whatever tunes he needed. Which was also from what I understood was true of a certain Matchbox Twenty (allegedly).

idk the theme for the american broadcasts of "danger man" is still pretty iconic i think? have no idea of anything else rivers did though

wasn't there an era of german popular music before krautrock that is roundly disparaged or ignored by english music critics? schlager i believe.

Looking at a couple of popular pop history textbooks, Joel is discussed in reasonable depth in Covach, even with a picture of him. The Bee Gees are mentioned in that and in Starr/Waterman, in the context of the popularity and impact of Saturday Night Fever, but not beyond that. In Starr/Waterman/Hodgson (the Canadian edition), the disco chapter is actually called "Night Fever". Neither American book includes the Guess Who in their index and Triumph and Midnight Oil don't appear in any of them (even the Canadian rock history book doesn't mention Triumph!).

Sweet - solid data! Thanks.

I missed the question upthread about whether Midnight Oil were ever a stadium band over here - they played the Pacific Coliseum, Maple Leaf Gardens, and Montreal Forum in 1988, so, yes, at least in Canada, they were that big.

wasn't there an era of german popular music before krautrock that is roundly disparaged or ignored by english music critics? schlager i believe.

Oh yeah, and both schlager and iskelmä are almost always sung in the local language, not English, which would partially explain its obscurity among Anglo listeners.

(resisting the urge to post some awesome Jürgen Marcus songs)

(for now)

My main experience of schlager is members of Can and Neu moaning about it in krautrock documentaries

"Big A&M Herb was there** His offices had fresh air. But his rota was mediocre. US purge, rock 'n' pop filth. Their material's filched." Kinda true of Johnny Rivers too as he was not really a writer, although he had the dough to buy whatever tunes he needed. Which was also from what I understood was true of a certain Matchbox Twenty (allegedly).

― earlnash, Thursday, October 31, 2019 8:44 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

I never realized "big A&M Herb" was Herb Albert. Learning a lot itt!

Side note: Why isn't there a huge annotated book of Fall lyrics by now? Way overdue.

There is an insanely detailed and obsessive website of annotated Fall lyrics. Now MES is gone I suspect something like a book is possible.

There was one:

https://images.app.goo.gl/WKFztQECJNYRucpS9

https://dqzrr9k4bjpzk.cloudfront.net/images/7909113/937613239.jpg

It was quite big..

The only mention of Bryan Adams in the Covach is in a list of artists Max Martin has worked with. No mention in Starr/Waterman. (Obv, he is discussed in the Canadian edition.)

There are Bryan Adams tribute bands--a kind of canonization anyway

It was quite big..

Annotated?

My main experience of schlager is members of Can and Neu moaning about it in krautrock documentaries

― mfktz (Camaraderie at Arms Length), Friday, November 1, 2019 4:27 AM (five hours ago)

this is how i know it exists!

Schlager is just corny pop/light entertainment music, isn't it? And it's popular all over Europe.

It's primarily a central European thing.

And I'm using 'thing' in the monstrous, John Carpenter sense.

Popular in Scandinavia too though? Certainly (early) ABBA had schlager elements.

Fair. It seems to work best in Germanic and Germanic-adjacent cultures, which I suppose does encompass most of Europe. (What about the Angles and the Saxons, though?)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jWuyGc9jEXM

Re tribute bands, I worked with a teenager whose school choir was doing an arrangement of "Summer of 69". Adams is 'canonized' in the sense of being a radio fixture and concert draw worldwide, despite being a crap guitarist imo. (Seems to be weirdly huge in India.) I'm not sure he gets much ink in non-Canadian history books, though.

(What about the Angles and the Saxons, though?)

It wouldn't be called schlager but it's the same thing really - it certainly existed in the 60s/70s and probably the 80s. The Celts have their own variations.

(xp) There's an advert on UK TV at the moment built around DHL(?) delivering a guitar from a factory to... Bryan Adams standing on a stage singing "Summer of 69".

nice

A couple of pages are devoted to Chicago in Starr/Waterman, with a fairly in-depth look at their career arc; no mention of Neil Diamond at all. Covach discusses Chicago's jazz-rock period along with BST - some discussion of individual singles. They also come up later just as an example of 70s bands (along with Styx and Foreigner etc) who continued touring decades later with diminished but continued popularity. Diamond is mentioned in a couple of places but only for his Brill Building songwriting.

i'm pretty open when it comes to music but even "peak" early Chicago and Blood Sweat and Tears is like nails on a chalkboard. i can somewhat stomach a couple of the smooth yacht rock type Cetera-led hits but the rest is just anathema for me.

and i think that specific sound they both kinda share has aged horribly

Four Words: David Clayton-Thomas Syndrome

The first BS&T album (w/Al Kooper) is tight tho.

That horn rock thing of BST and Chicago seems like the first of a periodic fad where everyone gets excited about combining rock and soul/jazz/funk and it just sounds embarrassing a few years later.

I'm sure BST sounded like a great *idea* in the moment: "wow man, imagine if Dylan had Memphis horn charts". But it's awful. And not inherently awful! In theory, it's not far off from MC5's "Skunk" from the same era.

Subsequent iterations: funk punk/ska punk, rap metal/nu metal, Dirty Projectors, etc. There's always exceptions that prove the rule, but they tend not to be hyped (Minutemen come to mind). It's like people *want* these fusions to exist 'cause they like the component genres, and they can overlook the results for a while.

MC5's horn arrangements on "Skunk" are more from Motown/Sun Ra end of things than Memphis horn charts

funk punk

this may not be the appropriate place to ask this question, but can anyone give me a real example of this?

you mean like the clash? or gang of four? or esg?

because all those bands kicked fucking ass at that stuff.

the LA axis: Fishbone, Red Hot Chili Peppers, etc.

^ yes that

Pop Will Eat Itself

I made a thread once
The thread for late 80s/early 90s black funk-rock (Living Color, 24-7 Spyz, Urban Dance Squad, etc.)

ahh, gotcha. yeah i don't like any of those folks. but there was some people doing it decently.