How about Jethro Tull? They started out as a blues band (This Was). By Aqualung and Thick as a Brick, they were pretty progressive. By the late '70’s, they were doing folksy rock on Heavy Horses and Songs from the Wood, though still with a lot of progressive elements. The '80’s saw them experimenting with synths and drum machines and leaving the progressive elements behind. Since then, they’ve mixed it up a lot. Crest of a Knave is unlike anything else while Catfish Rising goes back to the bluesy roots. Their last two albums (Dot-Com and Roots to Branches) show a lot of influence from eastern music.
Poi Dog Pondering gets my vote. Starting from a Hawaiian band playing folky songs with folky instruments to a dance band with techno and house remixes. A very odd evolution.
The Butthole Surfers went from just crazy, noise and feedback to a bad acid trip put onto vinyl, then to not-quite-as-extreme psychedelic post-punk to fairly generic rock and now rest at this techno pop blather (their newest album even has a song co-written by Kid Rock for Christ’s sakes).
'Spose I HAVE to mention Beefheart at this point:-
He became a painter :dubious:
Kid Rock?!?!?! Say it isn’t so!!!
I knew it was all over for the Buttholes when Gibby totally dismissed the Touch and Go albums as unlistenable garbage. Those Touch and Go albums are godlike. They might have been unlistenable at times, but the garbage didn’t start untill they signed with Rough Trade and later, EMI. John Paul Jones producing a punk rock band? Pu-leaze. That wa even worse than having the Floyd guy produce the Damned’s second album. At least Floyd got cool points for Syd.
Speaking of The Damned, They went from being a classier-than-your-avarage punk band, to slick goth/psyche, then, tepid dance pop (although they did do a great cover of Love’s “Alone Again Or” during that period)and finally back to classier-than-average punk again, at least on the last album I have, “I’m Alright Jack and The Beanstalk”
Jon
When I saw the title of the thread, the first band I thought of was Rush. They started out as a pretty straightforward heavy metal band before becoming much more keyboard-dominated and progressive. I haven’t liked any of their stuff after Signals (not making any value judgements, I just don’t care for it).
interface2x, I agree completely about Ministry. I had only heard their really recent stuff so I went back and listened to some samples from the 80’s, and I couldn’t believe it was the same band!
I remember when The Police came out with Synchronicity and some people accused them of selling out because they’d dropped the Raggae influences in their music. The interesting thing about them, though, was that they sold out at the beginning of their careers and when they became the gods of the rock world they decided to do it their way (or at least Sting’s way). They actually started out playing punk because they wanted to jump on the bandwagon.
Aphex Twin (including all the psuedonyms) has evolved from straight-forward 4/4 time beat patterns to more experimental machine-gun patterns of various timing. His music doesn’t seem to be catching on because alot of it lacks the proper “hook” that much of his previous recordings were known for. But I still listen, because it’s different.
Aphex Twin (including all the psuedonyms) has evolved from straight-forward 4/4 time beat patterns to more experimental machine-gun patterns of various timing. His music doesn’t seem to be catching on because alot of it lacks the proper “hook” that much of his previous recordings were known for. But I still listen, because it’s different.
Try the song “Mt. Saint Michel Mix+St. Michaels Mount” from the Drukqs album, and you might agree with me.
Yeah, the guy was prolific. I got turned off on him briefly after the interview where he was slamming all white jazz musicians as being ‘behind the beat’, but he was impossible to ignore for very long.
The Kinks are another group who evolved and grew musically over the last 40 years…quite nicely, actually!
I like Intaglio’s summation of Sting’s evolution. I didn’t like Mercury Falling as much as the other albums, but I could easily substitute it for Ten Summoner’s Tales (which I did like) and it would still be accurate. It’s all good, really.
My pick is Jewel Kilcher. I’ve started at least two threads here, over the past year or so, in which I complained about her evolution (de-evolution, maybe) from a decent folk singer into a pop diva.
Pieces of You - Mostly folk
Spirit - More poppy and bland, but still mostly folk
This Way - Folk rock, mostly the latter.
0304 - Pop, in the vein of Christina Aguilera.
I recently saw the Jack Nicholson movie The Crossing Guard for the first time, and it includes an early Jewel song called “Emily.” I bitterly miss the Jewel of that era, and I loathe what she has become now.
311 “evolves” (positively, or at least laterally, in my opinion) on each and every one of their albums.
In fact, their brand-new album is actually called Evolver for that precise reason.
Carlos Santana. I am not sure I like his current phase, even though he sells a lot of records and there are some good songs on them - he seems to be sort of a sideman on his own albums.
Everyone knows that he did the Afro-Latin Psychedelic Blues Rock thing from 1969 to 1976 or so, but in the late 1970’s and 1980’s he went through everything from jazz, blues, and a lot of straight hard rock - with little success until 1999. But no two albums of his in that long ‘dry spell’ were alike.
The 1992 Wish album was recorded with everyone except Boris on E. (source - interview with Robert Smith in a French music magazine that I read some years ago. If I could remember the name of the mag, I’d share it with you).
re: the OP - “We Built This City” almost makes me weep. The band who did “My Best Friend” and “Someone To Love”, reduced to this. Ugh. It’s tragic.
**Radiohead **are known for their evolution, if nothing else- they’re probably the most notoriously anti-“repeating ourselves” band currently in existence. Every single Radiohead album has been a drastic diversion from its predecessor (with one debatable exception):
Pablo Honey (1993) - Catchy, if rather derivative grunge-rock. Nothing particularly outstanding, though “Creep” did manage to become the angsty-teen anthem of the year.
The Bends (1995) - Powerful all-out rock-n-roll (“Black Star,” “My Iron Lung”) backed by a fractured atmosphere of fragility and pain (“Street Spirit”). Some hints of the electronica to come (“Planet Telex”). Has more of Jonny Greenwood’s trademark guitar histrionics than any other Radiohead album.
OK Computer (1997) - The album that made them famous. A schizophrenic concept album that melded rich soundscapes (“Subterranean Homesick Alien”) with reverberating guitars (“Airbag”) and buzzing electronics (“Climbing Up the Walls”). Hard to believe that only four years previously, they were known only for the musically and lyrically simplistic “Creep.”
Kid A (2000) - Radiohead decided they hated being Radiohead and reinvent themselves. Guitars are virtually nonexistent, with keyboards and samplers taking the forefront instead. Not nearly as “experimental” as the press likes to claim, and definitely still grounded in human emotion, as summed up in the angelic “Motion Picture Soundtrack.”
Amnesiac (2001) - Often dubbed “Kid B,” these songs were all recorded during the Kid A sessions, and this album is thusly often viewed as little more than a b-sides compilation. Not really fair IMO, as it contains some true gems (including “Pyramid Song” and “Life in a Glass House”). It helps if you think of Kid A and Amnesiac as a single double-album.
Hail to the Thief (2003) - Once again a departure from the previous sound. While the other albums were meticulously constructed over long periods, HTTT was an attempt to maintain the energy and bouyancy of Radiohead’s live performances. The guitars are back in force, but the electronics are still there as well, as is a surprising amount of acoustic piano. By far the most stylistically varied of Radiohead’s albums, HTTT veers from the haunting, time-signature twisting ballad “Sail to the Moon,” to the purely electronic “Backdrifts,” and all the way back to unabashed rocking out (“There There”).
R.E.M. It seems like they change stuff around every album or two. I mean, just look at their last few offerings: Out of Time/Automatic for the People vs. Monster/New Adventures in Hi-Fi vs. Up/Reveal. Very different sound.
How about Green Day? 10 years ago they were a 3-chord punk band, and now they are making stringy sentimental songs like “Good Riddance” or doing homages to the Kinks like “Warning”.
For me, it’s gotta be Primal Scream. Every single album of theirs sounds completely different than the previous.
The 60s went by so quickly that it seemed like a whole generation of evolution was packed into five years.
The Beatles led it, changing with almost every album, but really influencing everyone with Sgt. Peppers.
1967 was the psychedelic year so that even the Young Rascals (blue-eyed soul) and Tommy James and the Shondells (bubble gum) suddenly burst out with Summer of Love/Psychedelia that was very good. Even the Jefferson Airplane and other San Francisco groups that had started out more folk-rock turned to acid.
Pink Floyd went the other way, from the Sid Barrett LSD era to Roger Waters stately marching band theatrics.
Of course, almost everyone you ever heard of in British rock in the 1960s put in a stint with John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers before breaking out of the blues: Eric Clapton, Peter Green, Mick Taylor, Jack Bruce, and a million others.
The first singles of the Moody Blues were “Go Now” and “Ride My SeeSaw,” more British Invasion pop than the art rock they later became known for.
Brian Wilson took the Beach Boys on a journey from girls and cars and the surf through the Van Dykes Parks collaborations on “Good Vibrations” and “Heroes and Villains” to the lush sounds on the Holland album and others. Their 1973 tour with their ten-piece band backing Holland was the best they ever sounded.
Even the Motown crowd got into social protest music by around 1970, led by Marvin Gaye with the What’s Going On album.
It’s almost hard to think of a prominent band of that era that didn’t change in major ways.
The worst one that I can think of is the Red Hot Chili Peppers..
The went from being pretty hard rockish in “Bolldsugarsexmagic” to making total crap in the last few CDs.
<shudder>
The worst one that I can think of is the Red Hot Chili Peppers..
The went from being pretty hard rockish in “Bloodsugarsexmagic” to making total crap in the last few CDs.
<shudder>