The Dream Warriors
I still pop in that tape when I’m feeling down.
My Definition of a Boombastic Jazz Style was their minor hit.
Don’t know about hits, but it always baffled me Screaming Trees were never at least as big as Pearl Jam back in the early 90s. Far better band than them too, although Lanegan’s getting more success with QOTSA nowadays.
Most people would probably recognize it as the intro to the first Austin Powers movie.
Guided by Voices are one of the fathers of indie rock, but their last few albums (especially the transcendant Earthquake Glue) is not only better than anything you’ve heard on the radio in the last decade, but also very solid, straight-down-the-middle rock and roll. In retrospect, Pollard was always like that, it’s just a matter of production and the fact that if he had two minutes worth of ideas for a song, the song would only last two minutes.
My vote?
A Vancouver Canada band that should have been credited with creating the “grunge” sound. A rocking, hard, and absolutely amazing band - with a song the combined punk, rock, and pure energy.
The band is Slow - and they only released an EP called Against the Glass.
I can sit & listen to the song “Have not been the same” over & over & over again.
Better musicians & and they were slightly less messed up than Nirvana, although you wouldn’t have known that if you saw them in 1986.
These guys were before their time.
Wolf Meister… I saw Spirit & LOVE in 1995 just before Randy’s tragic drowning. It was a remarkable concert! Randy circled the room playing Slide-Guitar with a Coors bottle, hugh smile on his face, complete with bandana. Between shows, Randy & Ed were in the lobby selling T-shirts, CD’s and signing autographs. LOVE, being the headliner,were outclassed that evening. I saw Arthur Lee in the hall watching Spirit when everyone could sense the magic in the air. Not long after this concert, Arthur went back to Prison and Randy went to Hawaii.
Hey, great story Mr. Roboto! Randy was one hell of a good guitar player.
Quick, how did he get the name “Randy California”? That’s right, Jimi Hendrix. A 15 year old Randy Wolfe played with Jimi James & The Blue Flames for three months. :eek: To distinguish Randy from the other Randy in the band, Jimi started calling him Randy California and the name stuck.
Jimi asked him to come to England to put together another band (The Experience), but his mom wouldn’t let him. He was only 16!
Amazing!
RIP Randy California
I can’t speak to her musical virtuosity, and once I let myself think about it, she was kinda limited, but I still want to throw out my personal favorite: Pearl Harbour, of Pearl Harbour & The Explosions.
Okay, I’ll be over there sitting down now. 
Tom Cochrane is not dead; there’s nothing on his site that would suggest it.
Red Rider also had a hit with Life Is A Highway.
To answer the question of the OP…there a far, far more great bands than you or I have ever even heard of…it’s a lottery win if a band gets famous, odds-wise, regardless of talent.
Having said that, I would have to say that The Jam, while well-respected and successful in most of the world, didn’t do squat here in the US while they were together. Their albums probably sell more now than they did when they came out, 20/20 hindsight and all.
The Little River Band was the first Australian group to have a platinum album in the U.S. They were a big success.
Tom Cochrane is definately alive, a little older & worse for wear after partying too hard (almost to the point of death mind you) for a few years then cleaning up.
I notice quite a few Canadian bands in lists like these, it seems occasionally one of our canuck bands will get a limitted following in the States and then return home and be playing the same stuff for the next 20 years or so.
You could almost take any list of the best of CanRock, and post them up here - so many good bands have existed in Canada but never made it outside of our borders.
Instead of the Slow, Nils, Demics, Viletones, Personality Crisis, DOA, Deja Voodoo, or Young Canadians (or closer to mainstream Sloan, The Pursuit of Happiness , Rheostatics, Rush, or the Tragically Hip) - we send you mediocore cheeze bands like Bare Naked Ladies or pop-craptistic stuff like Celine Dion, Bryan Adams, or Alanis Morrisette.
I believe that was Cochrane not Red Rider.
Not a band, per se, but is there really a better answer than Nick Drake?
Pylon (the other, other Athens, GA band of 25 years ago), The dB’s (they suffered from crappy U.S. distribution early on), The Golden Palominos, The Mekons, Jellyfish, Madder Rose, Poi Dog Pondering, and – even though they did enjoy a considerable measure of popular success – XTC, because they still never got their fair due from the public.
I’m afraid that The Negro Problem and its frontman solo artist Stew will also be on future editions of this kind of list…
I’ve always been a bit surprised and disappointed that the Muffs never got bigger than they were. Not that I thought they’d be huge or anything, but they had such a hooky, punky sound. I mean, Kim Shattuck guesting on a NOFX album? If anything, it should have been the other way around. Of course, they were much better as a four-piece than as a trio. IMHO.
And I’ve got to second Screaming Trees. What a fantastic band. Mark Lanegan’s solo work is pretty good, too (if a little dark and broody).
Oh, and Agent Orange. I know they’re widely viewed as influential, but they should have been bigger.
Colin James - There was a time when he was touring with Stevie Ray Vaughan, and everyone thought he was going to be a mega star. And he was pretty big in Canada. But he never could crack the big time in the U.S. He’s a great guitar player and a great songwriter who wrote a lot of songs perfect for the radio - “I Just Came Back”, “Why’d You Lie”, “Five Long Years”, “Voodoo Thing” - these were all huge hits in Canada.
The Tragically Hip - Best Canadian band ever. And hardly known in the U.S. For about a decade, they sold out every venue they went into. I can remember when they’d do two shows a night at the Northlands in Edmonton, and sell both of them out (17,000 people each). What’s wrong with you Americans? Pick up Up to Here, Fully Completely, Day For Night, and Road Apples. Fantastic albums, all.
Fountains of Wayne - I see they were already mentioned, but they deserve repeating. If you don’t have Welcome Interstate Managers, go buy it. Almost every song on it will get you singing along and tapping your toes. Incredible pop music. This album should have sold 5 million copies.
The Jayhawks - While Classic Rock stations are playing the Eagles to death, these guys can’t get airtime. Fantastic music. Hollywood Town Hall and Tomorrow the Green Grass are both 5-star albums.
and last but not least…
WARREN ZEVON. The best songwriter of the past 30 years. Better than Dylan, better than John Prine, better than anyone. A musical genius. People in the industry know this, which is why all the best musicians did flips and twists to get on a Zevon album. His following may be small, but it’s fanatic. I first listened to Warren Zevon in about 1977, and hardly a day goes by that I don’t play at least one track on it. I have played that CD literally thousands of times, and it never gets old. Excitable Boy, Bad Luck Streak in Dancing School, Sentimental Hygiene and The Wind are all must-have CDs.
Warren Zevon should be a household name and have sold 20 million albums.
Another vote for Fountains of Wayne - really glad they got a hit out of Stacy’s Mom, simply to get a little money in their pockets.
My two votes:
Big Star - if you don’t own #1 Record/Radio City (two albums on one CD) buy it now. Search this message board for threads - amazing power pop from the early 70’s that influenced everyone from Cheap Trick to the Replacements (who wrote a song called “Alex Chilton” after Big Star’s front man) to R.E.M. Tragic story - Chilton was in the Box Tops (“my baby, she wrote me a letter”) then joined Big Star with his friend Chris Bell and two other guys. They were distributed by Stax right when that label was going bankrupt and the albums got no play. Bell left the band and died in a car accident. Chilton has stumbled around in an alcoholic stupor for decades, but just reformed Big Star to play at the SXSW festival this year…
Badfinger - they had some hits in the UK and at least one in the US (“sitting here in my lonely room, Day After Day…”) but not the breakthrough crossover success they could have had given the quality of their songs and the fact that they were the first band signed to the Beatles’ Apple label. They got dicked around in the studio and couldn’t get it together, and two of the members ended up committing suicide…
Yeah, but then POOF they were gone. I would have liked to have seen them become big-time big, with a lot of staying power, you know? Listening to their albums, they were really wonderful songsmiths, very tuneful, easy-on-the-ear without being saccharine. I just think they had the potential to become so much more than they were, at least here in the States. Hence my question about whether they were bigger in Australia - are they of “legendary” status there, the way, say, Crosby, Stills & Nash are here?
Guys, The Little River Band has sold over 20 million records. They’ve had 13 Top 40 singles (9 Top 10). Reminiscing - 4 million. Lady - 3 million. Lonesome Loser - 2 million. Night Owls - 1 million. Cool Change - 1 million. The Other Guy - 1 million.
They are one of the most successful groups ever to come out of Austrailia.
They definitely “made it big”! To say they should have been “bigger” is a bit unrealistic, I think.
Since my favorite band was, is, and always will be Fairport Convention (in its 1960s incarnations), I wish they’d become huge. I’m still waiting for Richard Thompson to hit it big, as well.