Countdown 100: Bands that got megahyped that failed spectacularly...

From Fluffy's Wikipedia page: "The band was regularly featured in several magazines; Kerrang, Q, Select, Melody Maker[1] and NME. They also appeared on several UK television shows, including Top of the Pops, The Big Breakfast and Hotel Babylon."

Chart positions:

"Husband" (1996) Parkway - UK #58
"Nothing" (1996) The Enclave - UK #52

Ouch.

I don't recall Fluffy's hype being particularly memorable or mega, they just seemed like another London scenester band who got coverage because they socialised w/ppl from MM and NME, I dunno.

I have "Husband" and another one of their singles (checks that shitipedia page) "Hypersonic", I think they were 50p each. Classics, both of them, "Husband" is fierce!

Spacehog? A no.1 out of the gates, of course, but I think they must have got turned into glue shortly afterwards.

And that mid-90s band with the astronauts on the cover!
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/8/8d/Smartsleeper.jpg
Sleeper

Or perhaps http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/e/e6/Failurefantasticplanet.jpg

Sleeper? Failed?

Hmpf.

16 Sleeper Inbetweener Single Jan 1995
5 Sleeper Smart Album Feb 1995
33 Sleeper Vegas Single Apr 1995
14 Sleeper What Do I Do Now Single Oct 1995
10 Sleeper Sale Of The Century Single May 1996
5 Sleeper The It Girl Album May 1996
10 Sleeper Nice Guy Eddie Single Jul 1996
17 Sleeper Statuesque Single Oct 1996
28 Sleeper She's A Good Girl Single Oct 1997
7 Sleeper Pleased To Meet You Album Oct 1997
39 Sleeper Romeo Me Single Dec 1997

They didn't fail and they weren't hyped much either, other bands at the time were far more hyped

Right, the final place should go to a band/artist that's being megahyped RIGHT NOW that are doomed to fail.

Drumroll keith!

(that's not the name of a band/artist btw)

2. The Parkinsons (jesus fucking christ)

Totally forgot all about them - saw them supporting someone (Freeheat maybe) at King Tut's and they were fucking appalling. Dude tried to climb up on the speaker stack with his guitar but the ceiling was so low he couldn't really fit so he had to leave his guitar then squeeze into the wee gap then get someone to pass it up to him - kinda lost the moment you know? First and only time I ever saw a literal embarrassing climbdown.

Symposium probably fit in here too.

the silence is deafening (i struggled to think of any current it name hype games .. )

which i guess leads to the question - are labels bank rolling full scale hype programs these days ?

Or possibly hype works better than it used to

Thesedays, it seems the hype machine spends money on what's already got some sort of posfeedback.

OK, I got one good enough for the current situ:

1. Sandi Thom.

She was born too late to a world that doesn't care

oh hang on .. who is that person who did all those viral videos that people believed were X-tina ?

as from the evidence so far, the whole thing seems to have totally failed.

There was an act around 1990 who got hyped to the extreme by his own label. Sony Music had seemingly decided they wanted to turn Halo James into a megastar. It ended up in one minor-to-medium-sized hit in "Could Have Told You So" and then nothing else ever.

As for bands that got mega-hyped by critics but never had any commercial success to speak of, I guess you could namecheck almost the entire Paisley Underground scene of the mid-to-late 80s.

Well, it's like any "scene", the bands that emerged and succeeded tend to be forgotten as "that's where they came from"...

I remember a fair amount of 'the next Smiths??' style hyping going on in the NME, some bands I recall being on the receiving end were people like Easterhouse, Gene, The Railway Children & James.

Oh and The Primitives, The Motorcycle Boy. All it took was for Moz to wear one of your t-shirts or praise you in an interview.

97. Freur AKA "Elephant with a stick of rhubarb" AKA "that dumb squiggle logo band"

I had a couple of this lot's singles as well, "Doot-doot" (which was pretty bad, but was a nice picture disc) and "Matters of the Heart", which was a great 12" single, the b-side was this weird techno-metal thing that ~I liked a lot, and there were a couple of weird little instrumentals as well, one of them being a brief blast of bleak, hawkwindish noise. I wish I still had it. In the long-term, maybe it worked for them, Underworld did pretty well I think?

Swansway and Hayzee Fantayzee come to mind - they were both unbiquitous in the music press for a while, HF had I think one minor hit, Swansway not even that that I remember.

xp bourgie bourgie I remember getting abit on next-smiths hype in MM, but not megahype really.

Thought of Swansway, and also of Scarlet Fantastic, who they became

Cranes got a fair amount of hype in MM I recall, 'this summer's coolest band' along with odd insinuations of child-abuse and Alison & Jim's odd-childhood (forget details)

I remember a fair amount of 'the next Smiths??' style hyping going on in the NME, some bands I recall being on the receiving end were people like Easterhouse, Gene, The Railway Children & James.

Also there was Bradford and Raymonde

Were Love & Money successful?

aw man don't lump the poor Primitives in with this lot :(

I liked the Motorcycle Boy too but they're the perfect fit for this thread.

Oh shit Raymonde! Ha

Swansway had "Soul Train", which was pretty good.

Hipsway certainly belong on this.

Love + Money had a hit or two. As did Hipsway. That was the period when bands in Glasgow were only allowed to write songs with Sugar, Candy or Honey in the title (see JaMC).

What was the name of the band with Thom Yorke's brother in, named after a film I think.

The Unbelieveable Truth

Love and Money were successful enough to hang around for years making records for the same audience. Maybe I thought they were more successful than they actually were because of their prominence in and around Glasgow.

Texas came along and made all those bands redundant (not to mention embittered + resentful)

Getting unpleasant flashbacks of people like The Big Dish and The Silencers here.

In terms of post-Nirvana major label cash hemmorhaging, Jonathan Fire*Eater probably had the most high-profile trajectory of "a MILLION dollar contract --> total flop album --> drugs --> cautionary tale --> obscure footnote." It's a really great album, though.

Even at the time, it almost seemed like the majors already knew not to bother spending the marketing cash on the many other big WTF post-grungexsplosion signings (Drive Like Jehu, Helmet, Jawbox, Shudder to Think, etc. etc.)

Everyhit brings nothing for Love and Money.

Hipsway:

17 Hipsway The Honeythief Feb 1986

"Candybar Express" not a hit?

(see what I mean about Candy/Honey/Sugar?)

http://www.btinternet.com/~birdpoo/images/pupplp01.jpg

I've got that album somewhere!

from Love and Money's wikipedia page - "hits" in this case meaning between #50 and #75

In their nine years together they recorded four moderately successful albums, three of which were released in the United States, and had six chart hits in the United Kingdom.[2]

Singles

"Candybar Express" (1986) UK #56
"Dear John" (1986)
"River of People" (1987)
*Love & Money" (1987) UK #68
"Halleluiah Man" (1988) UK #63
"Strange Kind of Love" (1989) UK #45
"Jocelyn Square" (1989) UK #51
"Up Escalator (1989)"
"Winter" (1991) UK #52
"My Love Lives in a Dead House" (1991)
"Wishing Waters EP" (1991)
"Last Ship on the River" (1994)

"Strange kind of love" the only one I could hum you.

So, what positions did those moderately successful albums get to?

Not exactly setting the heather on fire there

Looking at the wikipedia page, it looks like the record company tried everything they could launch them, but not one top 40 hit. Support slots for U2, Simply Red & Tina Turner, appearances on the Wogan TV show etc...

iirc 'Candybar Express' mentions both sugar and candy in the chorus.

James Grant couldn't sing and wasn't very good looking - no competition for Sharleen Spiteri basically

So, what positions did those moderately successful albums get to?

Their first album didn't chart. I'd be surprised if any of the others reached higher than the arse end of the top 40. 'Dogs in the Traffic' was 30th in the Scotsman's top 100 Scottish albums thing that I think we discussed on ILM at one point.

Did Jonathan Fire*Eater srsly have seven figures chucked at them?? That seems like next level madness if that's true. In the UK they were exactly as big as you'd expect ie a cult band who had a good rep among indie kids and got played on the Evening Session (think Lamacq released their records in fact?)

Did Jonathan Fire*Eater srsly have seven figures chucked at them??

That was the story:

In early 1997, Jonathan Fire*Eater signed with David Geffens nascent Dreamworks music label. It was a million dollar contract with unusual clauses including full creative control for the band and a generous dental plan for their nearly toothless manager Walter Durkacz.

The front man had a big drug habit and the band collapsed, but (most of) the rest of the band put the money into their own studio (and re-formed as The Walkmen).