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

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.

"canon" possibly the wrong word? "collective memory," used further down the page, seems maybe closer.

but super interesting and way up my alley! especially the big giant line-graph at the bottom with all of the top-5 songs. could spend hours discussing surprise at things not-so-remembered (by either group) and unsurprised nodding, "of course that makes sense."

bob larson exorcised a demon from one of the color me badd guys, a recording exists

I had no idea that Bad Company was the first band on Zeppelin's vanity Swan Song imprint. They toured together and BC was at one point groomed as a successor to LZ. BC had at least 5 songs I still hear all the time on classic rock radio, and sold something like 20 million albums in the US. And yet, does anyone care about Bad Company?

^Bob Dylan said a man can’t give his address out to them, so no one joined their fan club.

I think the reason nobody cares about Bad Company is that their sound is really...an amalgam of a number of other sounds? Which maybe explains why they sold so many records at the time, but damn if I didn't remember that they did "Feel Like Makin' Love" until a few minutes ago. It's a great song, and one that I will now do at karaoke because it's so campy, but nothing too original or groundbreaking—

Neighborhood barbecue a few years back included a 14 year old with a Strat and battery power amp serenading us with "Feel Like Makin' Love". After a few classic rock numbers, he switched to sitar.

I hope someone tells him that playing that track will not get him laid in this day and age.

classic rock radio programmers still care about bad company

I had no idea that Bad Company was the first band on Zeppelin's vanity Swan Song imprint. They toured together and BC was at one point groomed as a successor to LZ.

Not to mention that Jimmy Page formed a band with their singer

Have we collectively forgotten that Paul Rodgers toured with Queen?

Bad Company were a supergroup just like Zep were so that makes sense

There should be a 'Forgotten Paul Rodgers Projects' button poll, with Willy & The Poor Boys (Bill Wyman's, uh, poor man's Honey Drippers) and The Law (w/Kenney Jones) competing with the aforementioned projects.

Re: forks' link, I refuse to believe that 70% of people my age know the song "To Be With You" by Mr. Big.

apparently tori Amos covered “bad company” live a few times in the early 90s

I love stuff like that forks link, but even with the extreme imprecision of asking people “hey do you remember this song?”, I have some questions about the demographic breakdown of a poll that says only 52% of millennials recognize California Love, while 43% recognize Adia

Though I guess they used the album version, which maybe partially explains it

What do those numbers suggest to you?

it's a shame mick ralphs didn't just go solo and do a lo-fi power pop project

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zto_iABiJD0

Lobby Loyde /?
(after listening to G.O.D. my perception may be distorted)

Oh my I like that demo so much more than the hit. It's got that Mott sneery good nature that I never get from Bad Company.

Does anyone rate Country Joe and the Fish anymore? Every hippie I knew had their records, fish cheer was one of the classic moments of the Woodstock film, but I feel like the Dead, Airplane, Doors, even Quicksilver tower over them in the memory banks. I just listened to their debut for the first time ever, way more psych organ jams than I was expecting.

I remember John Peel being very fond of them, particularly the guitar playing of Barry "The Fish" Melton. Seemed very anachronistic even then.

Byron Coley always repped for them too iirc

The Fish often appeared in docs about the 60s but I rarely hear them on the radio

And i think most people would guess they were sort of a novelty act

[first name] and the [plural noun] band names have taken on a jokey feel, but CJ&TF must have been one of the first satirical uses of the formula.

Not sure this is exactly on topic, but I've been thinking about The Who lately with regards to their legacy. They aren't that far down the list quite yet, but I feel like in another 15-20 years, should things stay the course, they are going to be relegated to minor supporting players when compared against their popular peak. It just seems like that's a band that fades away a little more with each passing year.

I'm not sure if it's because they haven't been as aggressive with reissue campaigns as, say, Zeppelin and Pink Floyd, or because they still trickle out new material infrequently enough to not have that "career overview" angle, but it seems like they don't get written or talked about nearly as much as most of their contemporaries. I mean, they had a brand new album last year that seemed to get a tiny fraction of the digital ink that yet another Stones reissue is getting.

The member everybody liked (or liked to write about) has been dead for over 40 years. Daltrey isn't a very interesting interview subject, and Townsend is a fucking creep.

Fair point, but I feel like that statement could almost be literally mapped on to, say, members of Zeppelin and it still wouldn't explain the difference in cultural cachet between the two bands.

I’ve come around to appreciating most of the iconic 60s bands I was too cool to like in my 20s, but I’ve hated The Who relentlessly. My guess is it’s because they suck.

Fair point, but I feel like that statement could almost be literally mapped on to, say, members of Zeppelin and it still wouldn't explain the difference in cultural cachet between the two bands.

It's absolutely a valid point; Plant is all "let's talk about my new album instead" and Page won't talk to anyone about anything, so it's weird that LZ have retained their status. I think it's because the Who were ultimately seen by the public/history as a singles band, not an album act, despite putting out Tommy and Quadrophenia. So when their singles don't get airplay anymore, they fade away. (Plus, as MatthewK points out, they kinda sucked. Not as much as the Kinks, but pretty bad.)