Bless you ** Tanaqui **. Op Ivy are the best. To your list I would add:
Sleep Long
Healthy Body
Officer
Junkie’s Running Dry
My Life
Steppin’ Out
Since you already hit Operation Ivy, I’ll do Rancid
Dope Sick Girl
Junkie Man
Daly City Train
Black Derby Jacket
Leicester Square
Lady Liberty
Bloodclot
7 Years Down
Time Bomb
Roots Radicals
Maxwell Murder
Hoover Street
Radio
It’s Quite Alright
Take warning, this shit rocks!
The Smiths–legendary British 80s band; often paired with The Cure (of whom I am equally fond) as purveyors of mopey, depressings songs, but actually quite different in sound and style. The combination of Morrissey’s lyrics (quasi-autobiographical narratives) and Johnny Marr’s music (wonderful guitars) was simply magical.
Reel around the Fountain
How Soon is Now
Shakespeare’s Sister
The Boy with the Thorn in his Side
Panic
There is a Light that Never Goes Out
Cemetry Gates
Bigmouth Strikes Again
I Know it’s Over
Suffer Little Children
Still Ill
Nowhere Fast
That Joke isn’t Funny Anymore
Back to the Old House
Sweet and Tender Hooligan
London
Girl Afraid
Half a Person
Girlfriend In A Coma
Stop Me If You Think You’ve Heard This One Before
Bright Eyes…
Don’t know when but a day is gonna come
A perfect sonnet
A new arrangement
Messenger’s birdsong
A spindle, a darkness, a fever and a necklace
The center of the world
The calendar hung itself…
Sunrise, Sunset
A song to pass the time
Lover I don’t have to love
Pulykamell’s Pixies list is all right, but the crucial lack of Velouria and few others forces me to make my own Pixies playlist.
Velouria
Debaser
Caribou
Gigantic
U-Mass
River Euphrates
Wave of Mutilation
Monkey Gone To Heaven
Where Is My Mind?
Here Comes Your Man
Letter to Memphis
Is She Weird?
Tame
Trompe Le Monde
Sublime:
40 oz. to Freedom
Smoke 2 Joints
KRS-1
Badfish
Pool Shark (Acoustic)
Wrong Way
Same in the End
Santeria
Seed
Jailhouse
What I Got
XTC:
My Bird Performs
Then She Appeared
The Disappointed
The Mayor of Simpleton
King for a Day
Dear God
Earn Enough For Us
Senses Working Overtime
Chalkhills and Children
No Thugs in Our House
Funk Pop A Roll
This World Over
The Loving
Dear Madam Barnum
Humble Daisy
The Ballad of Peter Pumpkinhead
Books are Burning
Scarecrow People
One of the Millions
Rook
(They also did “Making Plans for Nigel”–one of their most recognizable songs, but not one of my favorites. I always felt sorry for Nigel. Get Upsy Daisy Assortment and Nonsuch for starters, and then you’ll probably want to try Oranges and Lemons, Skylarking, and English Settlement.)
Peter Gabriel
Former front-man of Genesis. In his solo career, he has explored the boundaries between pop, rock, art-rock, and “world music”.
Big Star
Feel
Ballad of El Goodo
Mod Lang
What’s Going Ahn
Thirteen
O My Soul
Life is White
Give Me Another Chance
Back of a Car
Daisy Glaze
September Gurls
I am the Cosmos
Blue Moon
Kizza Me
Big Black Car
Holocaust
You and Your Sister
Nightime
Kangaroo
Oingo Boingo: Long-lived band that began in the mid-Seventies as an experimental theater troupe called The Mystic Knights of Oingo Boingo. Disbanded amicably in 1995. They drew from a wide range of musical sources (Cab Calloway, ska, new wave, punk, country, Southeast Asian, African, Latin, etc.) and their sound was in constant evolution, which makes them hard to describe. Except for their hit single “Weird Science,” they were never really in the mainstream despite having a devoted fan base. Lead singer Danny Elfman is the same man as the prolific film composer; you can hear Boingoesqe touches in his scores for Pee Wee’s Big Adventure, Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands, and Nightmare Before Christmas, in which he also provides the singing voice for Jack Skellington. They can be seen in the films Back to School and Forbidden Zone, a cult musical directed by Danny’s brother Richard Elfman. Many of their songs deal with alienation, resistance to conformity, gleeful fascination with death, perversion, and social/personal breakdown. Writeups about them on the Internet inevitably use the word “quirky.”
Little Girls
On the Outside
Only a Lad
Controller
Nasty Habits
Grey Matter
Private Life
Nothing to Fear (But Fear Itself)
Why’d We Come
Who Do You Want to Be
No Spill Blood
Nothing Bad Ever Happens
Dead Man’s Party
No One Lives Forever
Stay
Same Man I Was Before
Home Again
Where Do All My Friends Go
Elevator Man
Out of Control
Gratitude (Live)
Only Makes Me Laugh (Live)
Goodbye Goodbye (Live)
Witch’s Egg (lead vocals on this one are by actress Susan Tyrell)
Genesis
Here’s a reasonable overview of the band Genesis in 20 songs.
The progressive era
At this point the band was producing albums whose songs were more or less parts of a whole. You could very easily be mistaken for thinking that this was a totally different band to the one that released “Invisible Touch” in the mid-80’s. The keyword here is “whimsy.”
Lineup: Peter Gabriel, Tony Banks, Steve Hackett, Mike Rutherford, Phil Collins
In 1975, Peter Gabriel left and Phil Collins took on lead vocals.
Lineup: Phil Collins, Tony Banks, Steve Hackett, Mike Rutherford
The pop era
To be honest, they never fully transformed into a simple pop/rock group. Banks, the heart of the band, still dominated and still kept the band’s music interesting (though to a lesser degree). Everyone thought that Gabriel’s departure would kill the band, but in retrospect, Hackett leaving probably impacted upon it the most.
I’ve avoided most of the obvious hits here, since most people know them anyway.
Lineup: Phil Collins, Tony Banks, Mike Rutherford
Eventually Collins left, allowing the band (well, the two guys left, anyway) to breathe a bit more. Needless to say, the album flopped and the band called it a day.
Line-up: Ray Wilson, Tony Banks, Mike Rutherford
You can also catch a pretty good live performance by Oingo Boingo in the movie Urgh! A Music War… along with The Dead Kennedys, The Police (early), Echo and the Bunnymen, The Cramps, Devo, Gang of Four, The Fleshtones and a whole bunch of others.
Wilco - alt-country band formed from the ashes of Uncle Tupelo, they have since become one of the most innovative rock bands in existence today. (IMHO.)
Box Full of Letters
Casino Queen
Pick Up The Change
Passenger Side
Far Far Away
Outta Mind Outta Site (both versions)
Someday Soon
Somebody Else’s Song
(Was I) In Your Dreams
Dreamer In My Dreams
She’s A Jar
Always In Love
Via Chicago
Candyfloss (bonus track on “Summerteeth”)
War on War
Ashes of American Flags
Heavy Metal Drummer
From the Mermaid Avenue sessions (where Wilco and Billy Bragg put to music a number of previously unknown lyrics from the Woody Guthrie archives):
California Stars
Hesitating Beauty
Airline to Heaven
Remember the Mountain Bed
Blood of the Lamb
Jimmy Buffett (and the Coral Reefer Band), in no particular order:
Led Zeppelin - Here’s a good overview
Stairway to Heaven
Rock and Roll
Babe I’m Gonna Leave You
Over the Hills and Far Away
Wanton Song
Since I’ve Been Loving You
Misty Mountain Hop
Bron Yr Aur
Black Dog
Heartbreaker
Livin Lovin Maid
All My Love
Jimi Hendrix
Purple Haze
Red House
Cross-town Traffic
Wait Until Tomorrow
Spanish Castle Magic
Castles Made of Sand
The Wind Cries Mary
Voodoo Chile (either version)
Third Stone from the Sun
Gypsy Eyes
Hey Joe
Ezy Rider
Machine Gun
The Police
Arty New Wave trio and one of the biggest bands of the late '70s/early '80s. Most well known for the massive hit “Every Breath You Take”.
Portishead - 2 albums (Dummy, Portishead) and every song is amazing.
Siouxsie & The Banshees - 11 albums. Hmmm… this was VERY tough but here is a broad sampling of their lengthy career.
Overground
Switch
Happy House
Arabian Knights
Spellbound
Cascade
Melt!
Slowdive
Israel
Pulled to Bits
Dazzle
Swimming Horses
Cities in Dust
Trust in Me
Strange Fruit
The Killing Jar
Rhapsody
Kiss Them for Me
Got to Get Up
O Baby
VNV Nation, abridged
A warning - these guys are Euro-techno/industrial. Definitely not for everyone, but honestly its the only band I have ever listened to nearly daily for more than 6 months without any significant decrease in my appreciation of their work. They really are that good.
Kingdom
Solitary
Legion
Honor
Standing (Rubicon II)
Dark Angel
Beloved
Airships
Dead Kennedys
Kill the Poor
Let’s Lynch the Landlord
Your Emotions
Chemical Warfare
Religious Vomit
Nazi Punks Fuck Off
California Uber Alles
Holiday In Cambodia
Moon Over Marin
Viva Las Vegas
Winnebego Warrior
Halloween
Well Paid Scientist
This Could Be Anywhere
Stars and Stripes of Corruption
Triumph of the Swill
Chickenshit Conformist
Too Drunk to Fuck
I Fought the Law
Pull My Strings
Night of the Living Rednecks
Some great suggestions here – The Cure, The Smiths etc.
Here is my contribution
The Chameleons (UK)
These four lads from Middleton, Manchester, England, forged between them some of the most awesome, and in its turn- influential, yet (apart from a loyal fan base) criminally ignored music ever. I urge everyone on this board who has not heard the music of this group to give their ears a treat.
Their music spans all human emotion; anger (In Shreds), joy (In Answer), sadness (Tears), despair (Caution), and those emotionally indefinable moments (Miracles and Wonders). You name it, it is in there. As far as I am concerned they made some of the best music ever.
They split in 87, reformed in 2000 and made three new studio records (two were acoustic renditions of previous work, and one was of brand new material). They have unfortunately split again.
Put a gun to my head and tell me to pick ONE track from the list below – it would be Second Skin – a stunning beauty of a song that never ever fails to get the hairs on the back of my neck standing to attention. The awesome Tears comes a very close second.
They could easily have become as big as any other stadium striding band had they held it together and got the right promotion behind them. Listen… and you will hear why.
Shimmering iridescent chimerical incandescent music…
Nostalgia
In Shreds
Second Skin
Paper Tigers
A Person Isn’t Safe Anywhere These Days
Perfume Garden
On The Beach
Singing Rule Britannia While The Walls Close In
One Flesh
Home is Where The Heart Is
P.S Goodbye
Tears (“full arrangement - single version”)
Swamp Thing
Paradiso
In Answer
I’ll Remember
Caution
Tomorrow Never Knows
Anyone Alive?
Miracles and Wonders