Bands you've never heard

For some reason I often find myself listening to artist solo careers before hearing the band that made them famous. For example Gene Clarke before The Byrds, Donald Fagen before Steely Dan, Destroyer before The New Pornographers, Mount Eerie before Microphones.

This phenomenon aside, artists I don't remember if I ever listened to but that are still on my radar include Cabaret Voltaire and Scott Walker. Famous ones that I'm not interested in giving a proper album listen include the Stooges / Iggy, R.E.M, Yo la Tengo, Nico, the Kinks, CCR...

xpost
Yeah there were couple friends that told us our covers sucked and which Zappa albums were essential listening, haha.

Just realized some of the connections in xpost Indexed's never-heard toppermost:
Howlin' Wolf is one of the best mostly electric blues artists.
Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band were often tagged as Howlin' Wolf meets Ornette Coleman, way before Ornette plugged in.
Janis Joplin, especially with Big Brother, was what was much later tagged as mutant blues (as was CB), with a yowling vibrato that could shiver the timbers of any melody line without breaking it, like Ornette.
She and he both came from Texas, like
The 13th Floor Elevators, who, legend has it, once asked her to sing for them, when Roky was in Rusk, I think. What might have been!

basically the only Bill Callahan I know is Smog's _Julius Caesar_, which I had on a tape copied from a friend back in the mid-late 90s

i gather his style has changed slightly since then

Never heard a note of anything he's been involved in.

If you've never heard Pavement, I'm not surprised you haven't heard Smog!

The combination of ILM and Spotify means when a thread or comment catches my attention, I go right to Spotify to sample the artists top tracks, then over to Rateyourmusic and/or Allmusic for an album or comp recommendation. I've discovered so many great artists that way!

Famous ones that I'm not interested in giving a proper album listen include the Stooges / Iggy, R.E.M, Yo la Tengo, Nico, the Kinks, CCR...

I'm not fanatic about any of these but they each made a pretty great album or two.

yeah big oof re:the kinks + ccr i'm all for smashing the canon, but jeez not like that!

They all deserve a listen; even saying you're interested in Scott Walker but turning your nose up at Nico seems odd.

Mount Eerie before Microphones

Huh... I don't know anything about this guy

Under both The Microphones and Mount Eerie, "Elverum has been instrumental in shaping the landscape of current indie rock."(54) Isabel Zacharias claimed that Elverum, "to a pocket of Pacific Northwesterners, is more folkloric deity than musician" with his releases under The Microphones propelling him to "indie-god status".(55)

!! Is there a particular one of the "40-plus albums" I should check out by this indie-god?

it's the cliche go-to, but i like the glow pt 2. i found the album mount eerie pretty fun too. haven't listened to that stuff in ages, but i remember it very hit and miss, with the 'hits' making everything worth your time.

They all deserve a listen; even saying you're interested in Scott Walker but turning your nose up at Nico seems odd.

Was Scott Walker an unrepentant loudmouth racist too?

xp Thanks, checking out The Glow Pt. 2 (I see it's one of those good ol' "released on Sept. 11, 2001" albums)

xp granted; I have no idea if that was the reason.

Smog here as well

there are a bunch already mentioned on this thread in the category of “never heard; never want to”. Or maybe for some: “I’ll get around to it”.

One thing a lot seem to have in common is feeling certain they wouldn’t resonate without cultural context and/or after hearing decades of bands influenced by their music.

!! Is there a particular one of the "40-plus albums" I should check out by this indie-god?

― Obviously Five Beliebers (morrisp)

My entry point was "The Microphones in 2020", with the accompanying video.