Rock bands that stayed around too much or not enough

[NDP]

@Gray_Ghost

U2 was the band I was thinking of. No Line on The Horizon was OK, though if they’d stopped after All That You Can’t Leave Behind, that’d have been fine. EDIT: Finish with their Super Bowl halftime show and go out on top.

They sound like both elevator music and a U2 cover band at this point.

I have to agree. When people would rather have a virus downloaded into their iPhones than your latest album, you’ve hung around too long.

[Horatio_Hellpop]

@StusBlues

All this kvetching about the Stones and not one mention of Blue and Lonesome, good or bad? It was a fine album and a rare pleasure by any standard. Yes, it is 100% covers, but that is the nature of the genre. I’m glad they did such good work, though I am a little disheartened by folks who would rather scoff at how the group hasn’t produced any good material in decades than listen to their fresh takes on the standards.

It’s a perfectly fine album of blues covers. But it’s not a great Stones album. It has a kind of phoned-in quality.

[Treppenwitz]

Nobody has said Genesis? Surely the poster boy for bands that hung around too long.

j

[TreacherousCretin]

@Horatio_Hellpop

It’s a perfectly fine album of blues covers. But it’s not a great Stones album. It has a kind of phoned-in quality.

Exactly. Could and should have been better.

[D_Odds]

@Treppenwitz

Nobody has said Genesis? Surely the poster boy for bands that hung around too long.

j

Really? While their last 2 (maybe 3) studio albums were not great (especially the last), they haven’t been put out a studio album since 1997. They toured in 2000 and again in 2007. I think fan desire for another Genesis tour outweighs their desire to tour. Perhaps you are a fan who didn’t like their reinvention as they grew smaller, but their success also grew as they grew smaller. Hard to hang around too long when you are not hanging around.

[JKellyMap]

I won’t speak for Trepoenwitz, but perhaps he/she was referring to Genesis’ transition from arty prog rock to commercially appealing pop rock. This happened around 1980, Duke being a little of both.

[D_Odds]

@JKellyMap

I won’t speak for Trepoenwitz, but perhaps he/she was referring to Genesis’ transition from arty prog rock to commercially appealing pop rock. This happened around 1980, Duke being a little of both.

I would argue it began around And Then There Were Three, but I did note that he may not have liked the reinvention, but that was also when Genesis’ popularity soared and peaked.

[Snooooopy]

@JKellyMap

Has anyone discussed R.E.M. yet? Back around 1990, one of them (Peter Buck?) said in an interview that they were considering retiring on New Year’s Eve '99-'00. Instead, they soldiered on for another eleven years.

In fact, I thought their last good album was 1996’s New Adventures in Hi-Fi. They should have retired after touring for that album – indeed, drummer Bill Berry did just that, though mainly for personal reasons (mostly, health related). It’s hard to say what’s cause and effect, but I think the band was running out of musical ideas and cultural relevance already, and Berry’s departure was simply well timed.

I really would hate to have missed out on Accelerate. After the depressing trio of Up, Reveal and Around the Sun – three albums that barely have one album’s worth of songs between them that I have any attachment to – I thought it was an outstanding return to form. I will always associate that album with the overwhelming sense of relief I felt that the first band I ever really worshipped managed, after all those years together, to pull one more rabbit out of the hat. Collapse Into Now didn’t impress me quite as much, although I would also give it relatively high marks. I feel like they called it a day at the right time.

[Thudlow_Boink]

@Snooooopy

I thought it was an outstanding return to form. I will always associate that album with the overwhelming sense of relief I felt that the first band I ever really worshipped managed, after all those years together, to pull one more rabbit out of the hat.

That would make a good thread, if there are enough examples: Bands that returned to form after a significant amount of time when it looked like they had lost their mojo or jumped the shark.

[Treppenwitz]

@JKellyMap

I won’t speak for Trepoenwitz, but perhaps he/she was referring to Genesis’ transition from arty prog rock to commercially appealing pop rock. This happened around 1980, Duke being a little of both.

I haven’t figured out this multiquote thing yet, but yes. And to D_Odds point (I would argue it began around And Then There Were Three, but I did note that he may not have liked the reinvention, but that was also when Genesis’ popularity soared and peaked.) Yes also.

Genesis (it always seemed to me) had a mission, but everything fell apart - and they just carried on. And on. And (I would argue) the idea of sticking around too long is an artistic, rather than a commercial call.

j

[Reindeer_Flotilla]

@JKellyMap

I won’t speak for Trepoenwitz, but perhaps he/she was referring to Genesis’ transition from arty prog rock to commercially appealing pop rock. This happened around 1980, Duke being a little of both.

I agree, but IMHO that’s what made Duke an incredible album. I also love its concept structure, and its transitional nature combined their prog sound with more marketable songs. Later albums (again IMHO) would lose most of that Genesis prog sound and their appeal to me. (Though I love the song Land of Confusion)

The biggest hit on that album was Misunderstanding, my least favorite and I’ve heard (no cite) they hated performing it. It does however show up on 3 Sides Live in a reinterpretation that I think is even worse than the original, which makes me wonder if that was intentional.

Zenyatta Mondatta by The Police comes to mind as another transitional album of this kind, and I also think it’s brilliant.

[nearwildheaven]

Recently, I had a local classical station on, and they were playing some pleasant orchestral music, and at the end, the announcer said, “That was (name of piece), performed by the London Symphony Orchestra, composed and conducted by Tony Banks.”

Yup. THAT Tony Banks, the keyboardist for Genesis. The fortune he made with them enabled him to do things like this.

[Sigmagirl]

The Box Tops just got fed up. I could have used more of them.

[digs]

One of my favorite things to do is to think of a band I liked “back in the day”, and see if they’re touring again. And I get a lot of chances to see artists who I never got to see, or who I couldn’t afford back then.

I mean, a couple of years ago Poco rocked a hot air balloon festival in the middle of Illinois… for five bucks.

And I’ve gotten to see some of those old 60s bands that broke up too soon because they weren’t the Beatles (ok, weren’t up to their standards, and able to adapt to the 70s like the Liverpudlians did).

But I checked off a bucket list item by seeing The Buckinghams. Great show, but they had to pad their setlist with other oldies – they called it a tribute to the rest of the Happy Together tour that they were on with the Turtles (well, Flo & Eddie) and other 60s bands.

And I got to see them again at Summerfest with the Ides Of March, the Shadows of Knight, The Cryan’ Shames, and The New Colony Six (basically, Chicago’s Answer to the British Invasion: Bands You First Heard on WCFL).

All sounded great, but damn, they are old.