The genres I like don’t tend to produce many famous bands, and indeed a quick perusal of my music folder and I’d guess 1 in every 20 bands I have a full album by has a Wikipedia page, but one band that fits this thread perfectly is The White Stripes. I bought their self-titled CD that came out in 1999 a year after it did. I was 9 years old in 2000, trying to find something I liked in HMV to make use of a $20 gift card and, as you can imagine, having no idea about music at all. But I knew my favorite colors were red and white, so I grabbed their CD, and loved it to death. I went back and bought their second album De Stijl a week later.
In 2001, White Blood Cells was released, with the singles Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground, Hotel Yorba, Fell in Love With a Girl, and We’re Going to Be Friends. The rest is history.
I think I’ve found one that barely qualifies. Fountains of Wayne had a few semi-hits from their eponymous debut album, but by the time Welcome Interstate Managers came out, they were back in relative obscurity, having only had one studio album since and it didn’t spawn any hits. Plus if you said “Fountains of Wayne” to nearly anyone they’d be all “Fountains of Who?”. Then, of course, Stacy’s Mom.
So they had been at their nadir right before that album, then rose to their peak. While if you look at their popularity when I first liked them versus today, you wouldn’t think they’d risen all that far.
Saw Frankie goes to Hollywood in 1982? Right before the broke big. It was at the old Bismarck theatre in Chicago… and the fucking floor collapsed… Leadin to the headline FRankie sank the Bismarck…
Caught Husker Du at University of Chicago right around Zen Arcade… I swear Soul Aslyum was with them… and I also was into Ten thousand Maniacs… they played Caberet Metro… and I remember Natalie Merchant… was 1) hot to me. i was 14… 2) demanded that we not smoke… which… was … odd lol.
I didn’t discover Barenaked Ladies until just before Rock Spectacle came out and I happened to catch “Jane” on the radio. They were getting big by then, but I was into them before they were Maroon big.
I got really in to ska just before it became a household word. Before Reel Big Fish and No Doubt. I had the real thing going on, with my paper ska zines from New York and hunting all over town to find affordable braces and boots. Now it’s just annoying to mention anything about ska because people assume I was merely swept up in the wave. I wasn’t.
Not musical, but a friend from California sent me the first “Life in Hell” book (Love is Hell) way back in 1986 and I found it weasel-rippingly hilarious. No one else I knew had ever heard of this simplistic cartoonist named Matt Groening.
Clearly enough people knew about him that he had a book published, but I daresay the number of people in Wisconsin that knew the name at that time was under a dozen.
When I was in college, early 80’s, there was an oversized gym behind our house. Me and a friend used to kick around a soccer ball in there, it was just about the right size. In fact the men’s basketball team had abandonned it years earlier because it was too small.
They used to hold concerts in there, it wasn’t much bigger than a club. Standing room only, they didn’t use the bleacher seats. One of our brothers got a job working security, and he would let us in for free when he could.
An Irish band was playing there. They had released 2 previous albums that didn’t do too well in the states, but I had heard 2-3 singles on the college radio station and really liked them. They were promoting their 3rd album, which absolutely blew up and put them on the map. The next year they were playing large arenas and later stadium concerts.
That band, of course, is U2.
Not sure how many levels that is, but I’m sure it’s more than 1 or 2.
When I was growing up, a punk/metal band called The Weasels was renting the house on the corner. All us youngsters would hang out in their driveway while they practiced and jammed. Eventually their biggest song “Beat Her With A Rake” got airplay on KROQ (when it was still an indie punk station). The biggest they got was opening for Van Halen when Van Halen was still playing clubs. I guess that counts as one or more levels above a driveway, even though they never got “big”.
During the 80s, UCLA had lots of free concerts from rising bands. I recall seeing Red Hot Chili Peppers, Social Distortion, Guns n’ Roses, Jane’s Addiction, Dramarama, Mr. Mister, all of whom made it big for various levels of “big”. Plus a lot more from bands that never got bigger than “college rock” hero status - Del Fuegos, Rank and File, Beat Farmers, The Dickies, Burning Sensations.
In 1986 or so, I saw Suzanne Vega in a small (~400 person capacity) college auditorium and loved her. She played mostly songs from “Tom’s Diner” but also sang a song that hadn’t been released yet - “Luka” Luka (song) - Wikipedia which became a huge hit the next year. I owe my college roommate a debt for dragging me to that one.
Doesn’t totally fit the OP because I am not a big fan but I listen to their music on the radio. Just like everyone else in the world.
When I was I believe a freshman in high school I would listen to a rock station called WAPP. It started off with a commercial free summer so I got hooked. They had a contest for unsigned bands and put out an album of the contestants. There was one song that they played over and over on that station. The song was Runaway and the group was Bon Jovi. They got pretty big right after that.
Later found out that Jon Bongiovi went to high school with my brother. Jon went to the same Catholic high school his first two years. My brother was a senior when he was a freshman and didn’t know him. He is in his yearbook.
A friend of mine played Cold Spring Harbor for me in early '71; I introduced it to the college radio station. I also found Bruce Springsteen’s first album and put it on the playlist; it was sitting in the “to be reviewed” box and I decided to give it a spin.