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

for those interested in the resurgence of "Don't Stop Believin'" see:

rolling "why is this old song suddenly on a digital sales chart" thread

songs that weren't a bands biggest hit, but have gone on to be their legacy song and biggest iTunes seller

Tunes that became hits only long after they were first released - and why

^haha, thanks — I read Dan S’s post, and was like, “noooooo... not again”

lol sorry! I didn't realize

I occasionally check out a message board largely populated by millennials, I've given up potsing there because it's far too depressing but the other day there was a thread on favorite horn rock. The first five posts all mentioned Chicago independently. Nobody seemed to have mentioned Blood, Sweat, and Tears.

I saw one very sad mimed tv performance (Solid Gold maybe?) In 86 or 87, in which the horn players were all there on stage but there was no horn part in the song. They were each standing in front of a Yamaha DX7 and pretending to play it.

And it was a ridiculously small circular riser as well, so they were like crowded inside a weird triankle of non-plugged-in keyboards. I was sad for them in that moment.

I was imagining all the horn players huddled around a single DX7 like a trash-barrel fire.

Oops, I should have been clearer. The three of them sharing one DX7 would also have been embarrassing, but in a different way.

"Hey Pankow, stay outta my octave!"

"Fuck you, Walter."

I saw a Chicago/REO Speedwagon double bill with my mother last year. My mother and father attended the Carnegie Hall show that was released as a live album in the 70s. She's a lifer.

Also they were playing the entirety of Chicago II, and half the fans didn't seem to know this as it wasn't heavily publicized. The REO heavy crowd looked confused the whole night as they were expecting the 70s soft rock hits and the 80s power ballads, which came much later in the set.

So it was a steady stream of people headed towards the exits the entire show. My mom got visibly angry and basically kept muttering that they were poser Chicago fans the entire show.

"Question 67 and 68 - You call yourself Chicago fans? Why did you even fuckin show up?"

Wow.

Lol, Tarfumes.

So it was a steady stream of people headed towards the exits the entire show

The band should have admonished them as follows: if you leave us now, you'll take away the biggest part of me. Oooooooh baby please don't go. How can we end it all this way?

Lol otm

Ooh, ooh, I thought of another one. War! The band War. The World is a Ghetto topped the US chart in 1973 and was apparently the best-selling album of the year in that country, and they had a string of gold records. I've always had the impression they were a big thing at the time but in the UK they were a speck, even including the early version with Eric Burdon. The only song I remember hearing in the media was "Low Rider" and probably only in a commercial.

I've always loved the way on the original version of "Spill the Wine" Eric Burdon almost sings the first line, but then immediately gives up and just speaks the rest of the lyrics, as if he decided that he couldn't be bothered:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3i0DMbCKnAg

In the US, I still hear a couple of War songs fairly regularly on oldies stations (mostly "Low Rider," but also "Why Can't We Be Friends," and once "The World Is A Ghetto"). And on two occasions within the last year or so, I've heard "Cisco Kid" in the supermarket.

War is amazing and their songs have been used in TV and movies *a lot*

Looks like some lineup shenanigans happening with War, too: the only original member in the current lineup is keyboardist/vocalist Lonnie Jordan, while four other original members tour under the name The Lowrider Band.

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0911271/#soundtrack

I think any critical discussion of west coast funk would include them

checks out https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0109912/soundtrack

"Slippin' Into Darkness" gets play too. Especially in Vietnam/Watergate docs

Killing Joke...

https://www.you.tube.com/watch?v=HSeXkoakaLI

... were certainly familiar with War...

https://www.you.tube.com/watch?v=Oa-87PfFT4A

'Spill the Wine' memorably used in the pool scene in 'Boogie Nights'.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-vmdBKX40I

"Low Rider" is in Friday and Dazed and Confused ("Why Can't We Be Friends" also in the latter), "Pass That Dutch" is in Mean Girls, "Cisco Kid" and "Me and Baby Brother" in the Wire, etc etc

also really heavily sampled and referenced in rap up to the present

problem with the metric is obv if Ashley doesn’t know War’s music, then even if they watch The Wire and Friday they’re not gonna come away going “heard War in another movie/TV show!”

the point is they are not culturally forgotten, as their music is still in circulation in very popular media. I don't think their critically neglected either but I don't have textbooks handy.

(this is a very hard band to search for info about)

don't think their critically neglected either

yeah the entire thread premise is flawed by the lack of a defined canon really, we should pivot to establishing this first

(salute to sund4r’s valiant efforts in this regard already)

well they've never been reviewed by Pfork lol

Never realised War were such a deal in the States, in the UK they're completely unknown really

Hmmm, three Top 30 singles, "Low Rider" got to #12.

Mostly unknown then (i.e. I don't know them)

Never realised War were such a deal in the States, in the UK they're completely unknown really

― Cornelius Fondue (Matt #2), Monday, November 4, 2019 2:16 PM (one week ago) bookmarkflaglink

I feel like they're mostly a west coast phenomenon? My parents and their friends all (rightfully) LOVE them.

In AZ you could an outdoor party and put on War or Santana and the neighbors wouldn’t call the cops

As far as I can tell this is the only thread with more than just a passing mention of Juice Newton, and even then it's not like it goes deep. But I just heard "Love's Been a Little Bit Hard On Me" for the first time since I was, I dunno, five? And damn it's a fun ditty, like a great lost Nick Lowe/Rockpile song. Maybe because it is totally echoed by Lowe by way of Hiatt's "She Don't Love Nobody:"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cviRnBD8Bmw

Anyway, good for Juice Newton for having all those hits, with some neat connections to hipper folks than Juice. "Queen of Hearts," for example, was written by Hank DeVito, who was in Emmylou's Hot Band. Dave Edmunds recorded it first in 1979 (there's another Nick Lowe connection), Rodney Crowell recorded it again in 1980, and Juice recorded it the next year. "Angel of the Morning" (written of course by Chip Taylor; you could do worse than be the guy that wrote this, "Any Way That You Want Me" and "Wild Thing," which makes up for him being Jon Voight's brother) came out the same year, in 1981; good instincts to whoever suggested it, since it had already been recorded something like 5 times.

"Love's Been a Little Bit Hard On Me," which was from 1982, was the first hit written by some dude named Gary Burr, who has written seemingly dozens of hits I've never heard for pop and country stars. I was curious, and it turns out Burr was the guy that replaced Vince Gill in Pure Prairie League. Gill, of course, had already replaced a couple of others that had been replaced. Gill, incidentally, had left Pure Praise League in 1981 to play with Rodney Crowell.

Anyway. Juice Newton.

Personally, I love the Juice hits. That were my prime radio years and all that stuff will stick with me forever, though it never inspired me to search out rare JN album cuts or whatever. Those songs sounded perfect coming out of the PA speakers at the swimming pool.

A more recent example is Tokio Hotel, who were a worldwide arena-playing band for about a year or three, even managed to land a MTV VMA Award in the US for best new band, sold ten million records, but absolutely nobody seems to acknowledge they ever existed.

so i remember juice from my mom's tape collection in the 80s. just looked her up on discogs, and hey, we we share a birthday.

I don't know if I have even heard of Tokio Hotel before. Apparently, they had a #6 album in Canada, albeit when I was in the US. Did they have a top 40 single in the English-speaking world?

They were pretty much exclusively marketed to the teen/emo crowd.

i bumped some other thread a while ago, maybe last year, to talk about Juice Newton -- I heard a song of hers that I had never heard before, "Heart of the Night" on MeTV radio! I totally wanted to be her when I was a little kid.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1VAMl9dA64

Ive never heard of Tokio Hotel

Ive never heard of Tokio Hotel

Ive never heard of Tokio Hotel

Well now I have

Tokio Hotel were huge with European teenagers at the summer camp I worked at in 2008.

They were a very mainstream screamo / emo rock band and the singer was about twelve.

I remember you well
In the Tokio Hotel

i built a separate thread for this but can't find it
https://pudding.cool/2020/07/song-decay/

“All for Love” by Color Me Badd a lot lower on that list than I expected.