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

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.)

Plant is much more interesting than Daltrey, while Page is a bigger creep than Townshend, swings and roundabouts.

In the early 80s, The Who were talked about as precursors to punk (the early singles) and new wave (the synths, the power pop) and even U2s anthem rock. They felt very much in the contemporary mix. To some extent that history has been rewritten, with the Velvets and Kraftwerk and the Stooges. But the stodgy reunion tours and Tommy on broadway and all that did as much self-inflicted damage.

Are used to truly love that band, but yeah, a notch down every year is accurate.

John Paul Jones vs John Entwistle though, hmmm

albums vs singles is a fair point too - when i was checking out these bands for the first time in high school, it was clear and widely broadcast that Zeppelin IV is a Great Album, that coincidentally enough had like 4-5 huge and very accessible CR radio staples. perfect gateway especially if you're new to appreciating guitar solos or whatever. Who's Next is the closest The Who had, and I found it a lot harder to get into at 17! and then Tommy, which I knew was "important," is a *double* album with one song you might already know. i ended up with a garage sale copy of Who's Better, Who's Best and was content with that for a lonnng time.

IOW, maybe they sort of awkwardly straddle the era of "LPs with songs on them" and capital-A "Albums," y'know? i don't care about that, but it might slow down uptake for kids in dorm rooms or w/e. though, you'd think the albums/singles thing might be slightly less important in the streaming age (has there been a thread about, like, spotify's impact on ways rockism is passed on to the next generation?).

in terms of radio play, imho The Who's biggest disadvantage is that their first few singles, which are fucking incredible and mind-blowing as performances, were at best middlingly-well-recorded at the time, and only sound thinner and tinnier as years go by and they're competing with these booming, FM-ready 70s tracks. so it would be easy to just not realize how dynamic and insane Keith Moon was - you can barely hear him! (might be recapitulating the TS: Moon vs Bonham thread here...). meanwhile, mid-60s rock singles have been really wiped out as CR has advanced forward in time, so that's a big part of their narrative washed away, in a way Zep hasn't had to contend with. or take the Stones - they still "work" as a titanic rock act if you only know them from Beggars Banquet forward and have never heard "Satisfaction" (bizarre though that might seem) --- not sure the equivalent holds true if you start The Who at Tommy and don't have "I Can't Explain" etc.....

my dad’s friend told me that my high school band sounded like Country Joe and The Fish, I was honored

you should be, they kicked ass

Pretty sure The Who would still be able to sell out stadiums and headline festivals pretty much anywhere. They may not be the most fashionable act to cite but they remain a gigantic draw.

(and obviously this is different from being ignored in the canon! i feel like there's another thread i can't think of for artists who are / recently have undergone major declines in their canonicity...)

I don't know about stadiums, The Who's 2019 fall tour was booked at the same type of summer sheds that the reunited Black Crowes were also playing.

Although I see they did play Fenway Park, so I guess it varied.

Black Crowes were probably over-estimating their draw.

I'm most certainly sure they were. It was just the first comparison for last summer that came to mind. I'm sure the UK draw would be different for The Who, but in Chicago they played the same shitty shed an hour south of the city that everyone plays. The Stones played Soldier Field twice and Dead & Company played Wrigley Field twice, I don't think The Who would have been able to play either of those.