In one of the Tom Petty threads, I observed that I really liked his 1st 2 albums, but his 3d was the last I bought, and I didn’t care for his later stuff. Thinking about it, I am hard-pressed to think of a performed/band that I stuck with throughout their career.
I can imagine many reasons for this. My music buying time peaked high school/college/grad school. But mI dropped many bands in the midst of my music heavy times.
I welcome others to list performers you loved early, but then dropped - often as they became more widely popular.
Here are some of mine, just off the top of my head.
Springsteen - was a huge fan, buying each of the first few albums soon after release. Bought the River the day it came out, and nothing since.
Queen - I and II are among my favorite albums. Started losing interest after Sheer Heart Attack - regretted the purchase of News of the World.
Elvis Costello - loved his 1st 5 albums. Admit I did not give his subsequent work enough attention.
The Clash - bout London Calling the day it came out - none since.
John Hiatt - bought Slug Line right after its release, and the next 4. Feel same as w/ Elvis - likely owe the rest of his opus a better listen.
Rush - LOVED everything through Farewell to Kings - couldn’t stand anything since.
Cheap Trick - first 3 albums rocked. Live at Budokan and everything after sucked.
Tom Waits - he lost me with Swordfishtrombones. Had every album up to then. My shortcoming more than his.
Now - in my dotage - I’m more into bluegrass/folk. So I’ll listen to anything various artists did at any point in their careers. None of them are anywhere near commercially popular, tho, so that is a sorta different beast. I acknowledge I may not be the most flexible, willing to go along with an artist’s experimentation/growth.
Joni Mitchell - kind of went the distance, in that though I can appreciate her innovative genius in the later jazz stuff, I will admit, if pressed, that what I really love is her first six albums.
For me this is a rather common thang. Simple fact is few artists can even achieve a strong peak, and even fewer can maintain it. I thus typically only listen to some fairly small slices of my fave bands’ discographies…
My fave band for close to 30 years, Australia’s The Church, decided to completely revamp their entire sound in the early 00’s, for whatever reasons. Gone were the glorious chiming guitar interplay, a vibrant rhythm section, dynamics of any sort (IOW) and insightful/evocative lyrics; in their place was sludgly production values burying said guitars deep in the mix, dynamics, interplay, & the power all pretty much gone, and lyrics that were pretty much phoned-in. I found it to be a rather painful ordeal to try to sit and listen to anything in said later timeline (as I could hear the ghost of who they used to be in between the lackluster arrangements). I still adore their 80’s stuff and never get tired of it at all; I never listen to anything post 2000. Pretty much consider them to be two different bands at this point.
Likewise with Echo & The Bunnymen, tho to a slightly lesser extent; the dark edge they had in the early 80’s was pretty much gone by their eponymous album in 1988, but at least they could still pen some hooks and melodies here and there. U2 and REM likewise.
Moody Blues, same thing-have no interest in anything after their first hiatus in the early 70’s, where power & depth got replaced by cheesiness and triteness. [The band] Yes, pretty much ditto. In fact it is pretty hard for me think of any artist where I love everything they’ve done from start to finish. It may often simply be that I liked the qualities that they had, but then they decide to focus on other qualities, at which point they’ve lost me.
The only ones I can think of where they haven’t lost me are often those with huge periods of inactivity, like the Verve, Fields of the Nephilim, or Dead Can Dance (where’s there no real decline phase to start with), but even then they had a few stinkers here and there. I like most of what Nightwish have put out, but in general I don’t love any of it.
I used to be a huge Pearl Jam fan. I joined the fan club in 92. Back in those pre-internet days, you had to hook up with other fans via ads in music magazines. We would trade videos of shows and cassettes of demos and outtakes. Tell stories of our adventures at the shows. I was at the record store at midnight when new albums came out. They came to Memphis in 94 and the day of the show I sneaked into the venue and listened to the sound check. It was thrilling.
I joined the internet world in 98 and one of the first things I did was join the Pearl Jam message board. I made a lot of friends there who I met during the 2000 tour. Due to my seniority in the fan club, I had front row seats for shows. I also created a website for the tour so folks could see who would be at each show, who had tickets or needed them, where they were staying and where to meet up. I was a well-known member of the “jamily”.
You had to buy tickets months in advance, so for the 2003 tour I only got tickets for the Little Rock show (no Memphis show) because I was house hunting. As it happened, I bought a house and was moving in the weekend of the show so I had to sell my tickets. Shortly after this tour, Pearl Jam announced they would not play any more shows in the South.
When the next tour came around in 2005, I was debating which shows I would try to see - east coast or west coast, where I had friends. But then it hit me. If they couldn’t bother to come near me, why should I spend my hard-earned money to go to them? The message board had been through a lot of changes and there were a lot of new fans there and I hadn’t really been participating much and just let it go.
I continued to buy the albums and still loved the music. But finally in 2012 I let my fan club membership expire. Access to front row seats wasn’t doing me any good if they never came to Memphis. Then, of course, they came to Memphis in 2014 but I didn’t go.
I didn’t buy their last record. I have no idea what they are up to these days. I still listen to the old stuff but the spark has died. I have some incredible memories of those years. Maybe that kind of obsession is just for the young.
I started with U2’s Boy and October, and I still find things that like today.
Springsteen - hit and miss for me nowadays I admit.
Rolling Stones - Steel Wheelchairs just was not that good. Sticking to their older stuff.
Green Day - still love them, keep buying their materials.
I went the distance with the Electric Light Orchestra and the Alan Parsons Project. I have, or have listened to (some songs more than others), all their stuff.
I was looking for another artist some years ago in my collection when I realized I had WAY more Miles CDs than any other artist. Didn’t happen consciously, but I got the point.
All remarks, positive and negative, are my opinions, no need to jump on any you disagree with. Okay?
Went The Distance:
Beatles
Simon & Garfunkel
Dan Hicks
Rolling Stones although my coverage has been spotty. I’ve always loved everything up through Let It Bleed; never cared for Sticky Fingers except for the incredible Brown Sugar. Exile, Goat’sHead, Only R&R, Black & Blue are all disposable; Some Girls brought me back on board, and turned out to be their last GREAT album. Everything since then has been a little spotty, but the highs outweigh the lows.
Jumped Ship:
Paul Simon. Stayed with him through Graceland, although I thought it was vastly overrated (still do); nothing he’s done since then has interested me at all.
Frank Zappa. Loved his work from Freak Out through Waka/Jawaka; not quite so rabid about the albums that followed until One Size Fits All which IMO was his last truly great album. I’ve never been able to enjoy anything he did after that, although god knows I tried.
Doors. Technically speaking I stayed with them post-Jim because I really admired Robby and John’s musicianship, but the two final albums were 70% crap.
Emerson, Lake, & Palmer. Albums 1-4 are amazing, and Brain Salad Surgery has been my very favorite album in any genre since 1974; but although Emerson’s piano “Concerto” is stellar, the Works album as a whole jumped the shark. But damn, those first five albums.
I’ve been a Dream Theater fan for 25 years, and they have been my favorite band for a long time. But lately I’m starting to question that.
When Mike Portnoy left the band, I had a feeling that signaled the beginning of the end. It’s looking like I was right. They’ve put out three albums since then. A Dramatic Turn of Events is ok, but nowhere near their previous output. The self-titled album is better, but still in “ok” territory.
When they started talking about The Astonishing, I got really excited over the idea of them doing another concept album. I was hoping it would be a return to form. Then I heard the album… utter dreck. I think I’d made it halfway through my third listen when I decided not to torture myself anymore.
I’m still waiting to see what they offer next before jumping ship, but I’m not optimistic at this point.
As for going the distance, Marillion. I’ve been a fan since Misplaced Childhood was released. 32 years and 14 albums later, they have yet to disappoint.
The Bonzo Dog Band – four brilliant albums before breaking up. Keynsham was a bit disappointing, but still has some excellent songs.
Traffic – Again, When the Eagle Flies is not quite as good as the rest, it’s still a top-notch album.
The Beatles (of course).
Spirit – only four albums. Their first is a little bit weaker, but they went out with one of the best albums in rock history: The Twelve Dreams of Dr. Sardonicus.
In the early 2010s I got into several posthardcore/metalcore bands that, once they had an album or two under their belt started to stop playing their early stuff. Crown the Empire, Famous Last Words, and Pierce the Veil for starters. Set it Off, while slightly influenced by that genre as well, definitely veered into straight up pop territory and I drifted off.
The band that’s had the most albums that I’ve like every one of is My Chemical Romance. Their widely-panned-by-fans last album had several good melodies on it (notably, Kids from Yesterday and S.C.A.R.E.C.R.O.W.) I didn’t like their first, screamo, album, but upon listening to it lately it also had several good tracks (notably, Cubicles and Early Sunsets Over Monroeville.)
Before Pink Floyd’s last album I would have counted them as the band I went the distance with the longest, but I haven’t even listened to the last album because I don’t want to be disappointed because I heard it was mostly musical and I don’t like rock with no lyrics. It has to have at least one verse for me to like it, so I didn’t like Atom Heart Mother Suite (although I did like the other side of the album) but I do like The Narrow Way, Echoes, and Shine On although they don’t have very many lyrics. I don’t mind Interstellar Overdrive but it would have been better with some lyrics
I discovered R.E.M. with their first EP, “Chronic Town”, and went the distance until they broke up in 2011, even though their output after Bill Berry left was erratic.
In the late 80s and early 90s, I was a big fan of a hard rock band called King’s X that achieved middling success, and after some changes in their personal and spiritual lives a few years later, their music declined precipitously in quality and they slipped off my musical radar. I didn’t even know their lead singer came out until a decade after it happened.
Oooh - just thought of one - Southern Culture on the Skids! I’ll buy anything those guys release (and see them anytime I can)! Of course, they’ve never been exactly commercially successful…
- I’m more into bluegrass/folk. So I’ll listen to anything various artists did at any point in their careers. None of them are anywhere near commercially popular, tho, so that is a sorta different beast. I acknowledge I may not be the most flexible, willing to go along with an artist’s experimentation/growth.
