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

"Wildest Dreams" was a big boomer hit, Steve Winwood-big.

Are The Moody Blues any good?

Oh, I remember hearing that on the radio a lot, even seeing the deeply lame video a few times (“Did I ever tell you kids about the ‘60s?”). But I didn’t realize it was a huge enough to push the album into the top 10.

xp

*a huge enough hit

What's really nuts is that Long Distance Voyager was a #1...in 1981.

That actually made sense to me. I dunno, I guess in 1981, boomer bands having hits (as the Stones and Who did that year) didn’t seem as weird as it would a couple years later.

Moodys still seemed pretty big in the mid-00's...I saw them at a fairly large venue in Green Bay and they nearly sold out the place. later that year I was a meter reader and I went inside a guy's house who had like, entire rooms full of Moody Blues memorabilia (you can pretty much guess exactly what this dude looked like). but since then I've heard them mentioned virtually never. one co-worker who mentioned he liked 'em because of his dad but was way more into that War of the Worlds album that Heyward was on. I don't think I've heard any of their songs on the radio except for the occasional "Nights in White Satin". even in prog/psych discussion groups on Facebook or whatever they're practically nonexistent.

xpost to Tarfumes --- it's funny how big the gulf of the Long 1970s seems --- like in contrast it wouldn't be at all noteworthy for the Foo Fighters or RHCP to have a song chart in 2021, a full *thirty* years after the protagonists made it big. i guess it'd be pretty weird if, say, Filter or Silkk the Shocker suddenly made a big splash with a contemporary-style radio-ready comeback. tho i wish more 90s acts would try that tbh - we as a generation basically missed out on our version of "Touch of Grey," "Wasted on the Way," "Higher Love," "Got My Mind Set On You," um... "Every Step of the Way"...

re: moody blues, i think "tuesday afternoon" is still a huge AOR / classic rock radio tune and karaoke favorite.

i actually think "in search of the lost chord" is an okay record, maybe reminiscent of early gong and the more lighthearted / throwaway pre-DOTM floyd, sort of whimsical and wispy with occasional excursions into sitar drone territory, kind of a fun, stoney, low key (and lo stakes) psych journey.

Thanks, I think I'd enjoy that. Added it to my list.

i do like that record.. "ride my see saw" is sick.

there's literally a song where the chorus is just them singing "timothy leary" over and over again lol, but it's fun if you don't take them as seriously as they seem to take themselves

re:Long Distance Voyager i think "the voice" got a lot of airplay?

"The Voice" and the other single both went Top 20; just didn't think that could push the LP (their second reunion effort) to #1.

moodys had one of the best cameos in simpsons history.

CAN THE POETRY IT'S ASS WHOOPING TIME

yeah In Search of the Lost Chord is a pretty good one, loads of mellotron if you're into that sort of thing. also has "Voices in the Sky" which is just unbearably pretty. and yeah "Ride Me See Saw" is really great, idk what exactly sounds like that. I love the Moodys in fast rockin' mode..."Peak Hour", "To Share Our Love", some others I'm forgetting...

on the flip side there's "So Deep Within You" which I'd swear was one of those gross hard rock parodies that Zappa used to love filling his mid 70s albums with

i like the moodys early stuff. . . even the super schmaltzy pompousness of 'knights in white satin' and similar material. those first three or four albums are solid. seems like they're a band that isn't as played as they were in the past, but they still retain some notoriety somehow.

Yeah, Moody Blues always overlooked as one of the prog bands that got huge in the '80s.

Queen, Journey, Kansas ... is it a coincidence that the first was often mocked (for some reason) for "fascist" tendencies and the latter two have right wing leanings? I don't think Dennis DeYoung is a Trump guy, but if you told me Styx were Trump supporters I wouldn't be shocked. Then again, Tom Scholz from Boston has dissed Trump, so maybe he's losing aging AOR America.

Queen had right wing leanings until Brian May discovered badgers.

xp doesn't seem to have hurt springsteen or mellencamp

“The Voice” was all over the radio in 1981. I didn’t hate the song at first, but got real sick of it. Weirdly, I have no memory whatsoever of “Gemini Dream.”

Watching the Moody Blues on the Isle Of Wight documentary, I thought, ok, they’re out of the studio, they’ll probably rock out a bit, right? Nope. Justin Hayward was always too much of an earnest folkie troubadour to let that happen, though I do dig some of their more aggressive moments like “See-Saw” and “Question.”

And I always thought “(Listen To The) Flower People” was specifically parodying the Moody Blues.

It's fun reading this thread because I love all of these bands and all of these songs.

I spent a summer as a youth working in the basement of a law office shredding papers. We weren't allowed to wear headphones but we were allowed to listen to classic rock radio. This was in the early 2000s when I was around 16/17.

My only contribution re: popularity is that along with the movie and numerous appearances in media, it's also worth noting that Mercury and Queen's stature has been raised as queerness has become a more legible and mainstream identity.

maybe the Strawbs fit here, nobody really seems interested in them nowadays (despite remaining semi-active) but I'm fairly sure they were a big deal in the 70s

table otm

I remember having weird feelings of non-comprehension at age 11 when reading through the CD booklet of Queen's greatest hits, unable to really parse why this heavy-metal-hair lead singer suddenly went Mario Bros. Now I'm like "that could not have been more amazing"

(xp) Lindisfarne were bigger.

The Strawbs were sort of a cult band at birth, weren't they? I saw some interview with Mikael Åkerfeldt‎ from Opeth once, and upon learning that the Strawbs were playing the same night he joked that they should cancel the Opeth show so that he could go.

J. Geils Band haven't been mentioned yet, have they? They were sort of a huge cult band for much of the '70s, and of course huge in the early '80s - and then Rolling Stone kept giving Peter Wolf albums 5 stars or whatever - but no one really talks about J. Geils Band.

Peter Wolf almost seems more known now for hanging w/David Lynch and Van Morrison in the '60s than for his own music.

"the other side of life," the followup to "your wildest dreams," is one of the unintentionally funniest records that it could be possible for old super rich prog-orch rockers to have made… that record was what Justin Hayward, John Lodge et al thought was a really daring foray into the hard edged 80s…

In 1981-82, "Another one Bites the Dust" coded as a disco sellout as far as self-identified rock fans/AOR listeners were concerned… we're talking the kind of people who thought Prince, who was "faggy," opening for the Stones was a hideous occurrence, and who did not like any advancement past the corp-rock status quo: no new wave, no hip hop, no punk rock. And Freddie's carrying on in the manner that he wanted to was no doubt discomfiting to rock fans who believed "rock" to be hetero-normative. And rock was something that white people made… I knew many people in those days that only knew rock music as a white music, and considered black music to be sellout, show -biz pandering crap.

Additionally, I suspect that Queen belongs in a discussion with Kansas/Journey/Styx/Foreigner/Loverboy/Asia because the latter grouping bespeaks 80s corporate rock cheese that is huge in america and nowhere else. Whereas my understanding is that Queen fulfills that function in the UK all by itself… there is no showy, corny, completely-oblivious-to-notions-of-cred-corp-rock culture that the acts in the above grouping represent, except for Queen…

there is no showy, corny, completely-oblivious-to-notions-of-cred-corp-rock culture that the acts in the above grouping represent IN THE UK.

I think Styx and maybe Kansas are more comparable to Queen did than Foreigner, REO Speedwagon, Loverboy, or Journey are fwiw.

- "did"

The latter four bands are pretty straightforward pop/rock bands. Styx had similarly progressive/theatrical aspirations.

there is no showy, corny, completely-oblivious-to-notions-of-cred-corp-rock culture that the acts in the above grouping represent IN THE UK.

Do Status Quo count? Icons in England for decades, could walk unbothered down the street pretty much anywhere else in the world.

Nothing like it, Status Quo's thing is all blue collar/ working class boogie - though they lost their way a bit in the 80s and 90s.

Foreigner and REO Speedwagon had big hit singles in the UK but something like Loverboy (LOL), I literally have no clue what Loverboy is/are.

They're only known for ballads in the UK, though, right?

Yes, think so.

Maybe the UK analog to Styx or whoever is Marillion?

I saw a clip of the Loverboy singer saying something like, “Kurt Cobain killed my career” and thought, um, Loverboy hasn’t had a US hit since 1986.

That was their last Canadian hit too.

(xxp) Magnum!

i know absolutely zilch about magnum, couldn't name a single song. didn't even know they were british tbh!

I don't know much about them either except a guy I know did a tour with them as their singer.

I was going to say I think they're closer to Styx than Marillion but I don't actually know what Styx sound like.

I worked with a rather cheeky New Zealander living stateside as a lark many years back. He loved Loverboy, but ironically so. He referred them as "gettin` laid music" which I found spot-on and right hilarious.

Also, LOL Marillion. Talk about a band that could only have existed in the 80s. Power balladeers with prog aspirations. What a cacophony.

They’re still making albums today

I really loved the Moodies’ “I'm Just a Singer (In a Rock and Roll Band)" (a big hit in ‘73 in the Netherlands, also in the US, not in the UK) as a kid, and it still sounds great to me.

And then I went “Waterloo” > “See My Baby Jive” (boy, does that song outstay its welcome!) > “Beach Baby”. This thread does strange things to me.

ILM is giving me two very different strands of My Own Private 70s today, after I dug into War (“Cisco Kid” > “Low Rider” > fucking “Galaxy”) earlier - now there’s a band that fits here too!

(...and I see War were discussed here back in November, the jury was out on them apparently)