Your Favorite Underrated Artists

I didn't what to say about Luther Vandross, that one I don't get. But when do you ever hear anybody say anything favorable about the Libertines? They're famous, but everybody always says how bad they suck. Talk Talk, on the other hand: anybody who ever has anything to say about them says how godlike they are, how the two albums you cite are masterpieces, etc. If you look up "critics' favorite" in the dictionary, there's a picture of Talk Talk there. So underappreciated/not known at a level commensurate with their aesthetic accomplishment, maybe - underrated? Everyone who rates them does so highly!

McFly

underrated but not obscure

my pick is probably just obscure, but does anyone remember the band duster? late 90s lo-fi space rock band? they put out 3 albums, but the only one i've heard is "stratosphere." but "stratosphere" seriously one of my favorite albums ever. i guess they were just forgotten, or else brushed off as just another drone/post-rock band. but anytime i want to hear something like this i always reach for "stratosphere".

Grateful Dead, underrated-even hated-around here.

Bill that's like not even true, there are a bunch of Dead fans around here

Re: Big Country, More4 showed a 24-year-old episode of The Tube recently with Big Country playing, and they were pretty awesome. Far better than what I remembered from absorbing Top of the Pops at al as a toddler.

"...there are a bunch of Dead fans around here"

Probably true, but outweighed by all the tiresome "dirty hippie" bullshit.

yeah all those dirty hippie threads. . . .HUH???

c'mon, everyone loves nickalicious

I wasn't kidding about Ray Parker Jr.

And even though there's a sizable Wichita Lineman fanbase around here, the great Glen Campbell is utterly underrated.

Not individual threads, but that seems to be the response whenever the Dead are mentioned. I don't really give enough of a shit to go back and find the old Dead threads.

Happy & Artie Traum
The Shadow Ring

I LOVE THE GRATEFUL DEAD.

^^^ happy now Bill?

oh, and also M Coleman on the mark re Ian Matthew. his fan club is, what, you and me and scott s? a couple of the guys i work with love him too though, so maybe that's why he didn't register in my mind as underrated.

i love the dead too. at least a decent chunk of it.

i think i've mentioned my love for Epic Soundtracks on this board before -- he might have a tiny tiny tiny following, but I never hear him mentioned very much. All of his albums (even the outtakes collections) are fab.
also, the Moore Brothers. Though Joanna Newsom has been talking them up, so maybe they're not underrated anymore.

The Lovin' Spoonful
The Rascals
The Turtles

sure they get their play on oldies stations, but like with Eddy Grant (the best example so far) you don't run into a lot of folks who are like "man I'm a big Rascals fan"...but these bands are fabulous

I stand corrected! And the multi-millionaire surviving members of the Dead surely don't need me to carry their water for them.

For a few seconds, I read this thread title as "Your Favorite Underrate Racists."

underrated

based on a search I have realized my real answer to this is ALEC EMPIRE
seriously there's like one thread about ATR and I don't think that's even actually about ATR

Also:

Young Fresh Fellows
The Handsome Family
Andre Ethier / Deadly Snakes
Freakwater

Blake Babies

sloan

here in the U.S., anyway

i remember duster, very cool

the cannanes are totally underrated

also outrageous cherry should be huge but aren't. i'd love to see them do a gbv but i can't see it happening

J0hn completely and totally OTM about the Libertines. I don't think I've ever read (on nerdy msg boards, that is) or heard a single positive thing about them and they've got 4 or 5 really great tunes that I've been able to download illegally.

The Equals have at least 4 or 5 really great tunes that I ripped from my lady friend's greatest hits CD. The rest is a bit lackluster...

Deadly Snakes = a good one, too.

or three, at least (re Libs)

i just bought a catherine wheel cd at goodwill for 99 cents because i nver heard it,its from th yr 2000

^ well that's Wishville, and it's the worst Catherine Wheel album. Adam and Eve is fantastic though, and the Ferment-Chrome 1-2 albums punch is also worth checking out. Great band overall, and yes, underrated - a nice counterpart to Ride, and other '90s British stuff with massive, gorgeous guitar noise and melody.

as for my pick for underrated artist(s): Bedhead/The New Year.

okay i take that back. Wishville is at least as good as, if not better than, Happy Days, which aside from "Heal" and maybe one other song is fucking awful, especially compared to the genius of the first two records.

i loved that chrome album,,and some mid 90s stuff so bug guitar cords big ghutar coirhds

Efterklang is in my opinion is sorely underrated - not just on ILM, but everywhere (Mirador=greatest track of 2007)

others include

Joe henry
Tahiti 80
Pinetop Seven
Tronzo
Nujabes
Archer Prewitt

King Crimson's modern improvs - The ProjeKCts (1 - 4 + X). I am possibly the biggest crimhead this side of Alpha Centuri an believe this is the pinacle of their existence.

How about totally overrated artists, especially the critically adored overrated artists like:

Tom Waits: Cooky-monster-voiced parody of folksy americana for the coffee shop set. I'm embarrassed for him just listening to it alone. Come on: http://www.seeqpod.com/music/?plid=89932ffdbb

Suede: flaccid glam rock

A Certain Ratio: Half as good as ESG (who only had a few cool songs to begin with).

The Fall: Nobody cared about this band until sometime in mid-2001, when the critics had run out of classic overlooked 80's English bands to tout Midlands spastics for people merely looking to expand their record collections.

Fela Kuti: It's basically the same song with slight variations throughout the entire catalog. Interesting life, but musically unadventurous. I can take about 1 or 2 songs a month.

nah

wrong

http://eatourbrains.com/EoB/wp-content/uploads/2007/05/troll.jpg

does kenickie qualify? they're highly rated among their fans, but everyone else is pretty "wtbd, another dollar bin britpop waste"

sure

It's just how I feel about those bands. I never liked the Pixies either. I'm not trying to upset folks..

http://www.trollforest.com/story/small5.jpg

i'm outraged

Adam and Eve is fantastic though

Happy Days, which aside from "Heal" and maybe one other song is fucking awful

OTM!! I've said this before: Happy Days -> Adam & Eve is the most stunning upturn in quality I've EVER heard in ANY musical career arc. Happy Days is absolutely bereft of anything (even Heal gets dull eventually), but then Dickinson and the gang get their Talk Talk on in earnest, this time also remembering to write some (brilliant) songs. It's a phenomenal record, full of texture, depth, emotion, surprise, space and flow. Buy!

Bill Macgill was off with his Grateful Dead suggestion, but would it be off to suggest Brent Mydland?

1980s Dead is roundly disliked by ~75 percent of their fanbase. Many of those people blame the band's decline on the addition of keyboard player Brent: he was kinda yacht-rock; he introduced synths to the band; he brought some dark tunes to the table; he had a distinctive voice that tended to rise above the other guys; and there are those who say he played a big part in enabling Jerry's addiction.

I can really get behind the first 4 of those, ya know?

I take "underrated" as meaning "people know of the band (or at least one of their songs) but don't properly appreciate them" and using that, I tend to go with Men Without Hats and The Vapors.

The Fall were well known (relatively speaking) well before 2001. xpost. I'd say that by Nation's Saving Grace they were hardly obscure. I got Bend Sinister at a non-hipster store in NJ off of Route 22 when it came out.

con-funk-shun
red sovine
carolyn mark
freakwater/catherine irwin/janet bean
american death ray

dlp2001, you may be right re: The Fall. All I remember is that in 2001 or so, all of a sudden a bunch of people were playing their records, there were interviews with Mark E Smith everywhere, and hipster records shops were stocked with a bunch of Fall Cds and records seemingly overnight. It was as if all Hipsterdom decided en masse that they were the latest hip-find-that-we've-been-into-for-years,-duh, (maybe because 2001 was another shitty year for music in the US), but in the 90s I never saw their name anywhere.

As far as bands that are well-known, i still say (I've already ranted on other threads) that the Buzzcocks and The Stranglers don't get enough worship. They are both big names, but I never hear them get the kind of star treatment that a band like The Clash gets. Buzzcocks are sorta remembered by a lot of people as cutesy pop punkers or something and Stranglers are remembered for being old and bearded and sexist or something. If Stranglers were from Germany they would get Can/Neu levels of praise. And Buzzcocks are simply one of the greatest rock bands of the 70's. I mean, how many years do I have to read about the genius of Television. Fuck Television! Buzzcocks were all kinds of genius.

Plus, just in case anyone forgot how great The Cramps were, don't forget how great The Cramps were. Okay? I spent a night watching Cramps on youtube and even I almost forgot how godly they could be. They deserve a medal at the very least. (not that i've heard much Cramps music since, like, a date with elvis, but still...)

good point - fuck Television.

Oh yeah, and Wall of Voodoo