overlooked 90's groups

I cast my vote for The Ropers. Their first (and only, really) album is a noise-pop classic and probably the best US post-shoegazing LP.

I could go on.

Also: Suddenly, Tammy! They broke up eons ago, but Beth Sorrentino plays solo shows around New York sometimes.

i also second harriet the spy. you'd think with all the fandom of the party of helicopters, more people would remember harriet the spy.

Lifter Puller (getting their due now, like 4 years too late...)

Hickey (San Fran post-hardcore/pop-punk with an ear for manic melodies and rhythms... Released a ridiculously nuts album on Probe in the mid 90s. Their singer just died in October)

Let me second this. Never read one interview/review/story on them EVER -- but they were pretty cool.

The Mysteries of Life's first album was v. nice. Whatever happened to them?

Second that, if its the Hickey I'm thinking of. The singer wore thick frame glasses (before the era of thick frame glasses)? A young man. I'm shocked...what happened?

http://www.mattyluv.com/

Chavez!

and seconded for the Loud Family

Best band ever, and I've only ever met one other fan...

(Sorry, but if ever there was an inexplicably overrated band -- both Electric Company and Amnesia were vast improvements...)

Kudos for the nods re: Silkworm & Chavez & the Loud Family, y'all - like, duh. On my ballot, I'd also like to include Smart Went Crazy, Guv'ner, Small Factory, & the Mommyheads. And Lotion!!! And the Philistines Jr.!!! God forbid I should justify these selections, though - gimme some thinkin' time.

And, hey, how's about some non-indie/guitar choices? (Not that I know of any, but surely there are a few.)

Treason. Return your striped shirts.

And yes indeed, Disco Inferno, the great and utterly wonderful and glorious and grand. I could go on.

overlooked bands (?):

Halo of Flies, maybe?

I dunno, no idea about these things.

(*insert John D's story about seeing them live and having his jaw drop*)

(*insert Ned posting a comment with a crying ASCII frowney expressing jealousy at not being able to see Supercollider live*)

They put out a second CD on Sony and then got dropped in the 90s major label purge. Jake Smith has his own label and put out a CD last year.

a/k/a the band with liner notes by Thomas Pynchon!

Lotion were a bit similar - great early singles, great debut album, pretty much downhill from there.

Six Finger Satillite -- their albums "Severe Exposure" & "Law of Ruins" are the two to check. They had some other cool songs.

Mule -- I saw these guys live a few times and they rose a major amount of dust. Their music gets a bit repetitive, but there are a few good nuggets on both albums.

Tar & Engine Kid were also both bands that were quite good live, but records are kind of spotty.

JF Coleman of Cop Shoot Cop also did a d'n'b/soundtrackish music under the name Phylr that is pretty good. The first album "Contra la Puerta" is quite good, the second one isn't that hot.

Silkworm's first two albums when they were a four piece are excellent, after Joel left their sound just didn't have the same amount of tension and he was the best vocalist of the three. There is a few good songs on "Firewater" but I hated "Developer" and quit following the group.

Red Red Meat's album "Jimmiewine Majestic" is one of my favorites from that time. I never read/hear anyone give them much props, so I will do so.

Finally...The Grifters are somewhat known, but nowhere near as much as they should be. They are one of my alltime favorite bands, period.

"Golden Skin" and "Barney" - both brilliant singles.

If Silkworm was that same band that I saw play with Consonant in NYC this summer, they were horrible. One of the worst shows I've ever seen.

awww, sweet! Don't forget Paul Bardsley's post-MHH incarnation, Wireless. Still got one of their mugs in a cupboard somewhere, along with my My Life Story Golden Mile one.

And while we're with MLS, Jake Shillingford's new web-only project Exileinside is definitely worth a look & a listen. Electropop but nowhere near electroclash...more like ABC with a fat undercarriage.

I nominate: (* denotes still active - not sure about some)
Swell*
Sugar Plant*
Seely
Cotton Mather
Red Sleeping Beauty
Elysian Fields
Scissor Girls
Would-Be-Goods*
Secret Shine
Vulgar Boatmen (late 80s maybe?)
Lida Husik
Chimera (esp. Earth Loop album)
Madder Rose
Long Fin Killie
Sammy
Yatsura
Lionrock (token electronic/dance thing)

Madder Rose's first two albums are worth seeking but after that it's all a bit messy. I'm starting to wonder if Urusei Yatsura really did suck after all.

Wonder no more.

Ditto for the Interpreters.

OT: In my changer now: New EP by Pas/Cal, "The Handbag Memoirs" on Le Grand Magistery....it's terrific! Reminds me a bit of Starlight Mints.

Madder Rose? Lush band. Check out Saint Low, Mary Lorson's soloish outing (with Billy Cote on occasion too). Yeah.

Oh, and in conclusion, The God Machine. And Kingmaker. I'm joking about one of these.

Actually Hurl I blame for their name. That name was crap.

and Indian Summer? jesus christ, did you attend that Unwound/Lync/Indian Summer/Embassy/Second Story Window show out in Pomona or something? they may have been the worst band of the 90s. I had one of their guys provide studio space for North of America when they came down Stateside so Juan Carrera and Bill Skibbe could track their album. Biggest fuckup I ever met. Ever. Homeless people have their shit more together than this jagbag. Guy didn't even have money for masking tape to mark the channels on the board. And he was paranoid about giving out his last name too ... some drug slinging deal gone bad or some shit. What an asshole.

Speaking of more 90s bands that went unappreciated. North of America. God bless em, wherever they are now.

Swirlies, mostly for Blondertongue Audiobaton, but they also did a lot of really crappy, half-assed stuff too.

aMiniature, a post-Pixies-indie-rock band out of San Diego that had some kinship to Drive Like Jehu and No Knife. Released three albums (two on Restless) and then fell off the face of the earth.

Erectus Monotone, some weird screamy no-wavey band that I would never have heard of had they not released a mini-album on Merge.

Pie, my personal obsession. They sounded like Pavement with ten-story-tall amps. They put out an album and an EP on Big Top Records and then I never heard from them again.

never heard pond's last lp, was it as good as 'the practice of joy before death' or whatever it was called?

sxxx

trashmonk - completely and bafflingly overlooked. maybe it was the dream academy connections??

I desperately wanted to like Trashmonk, but I don't. Mind you, this is going by the "Sapphire" 7" only..

"Of all the bands overlooked in the 90s, there's no greater tragedy than the consignment of Zoom, Poole, Nectarine* and Doxie to our great nation's cutout bins."

*Joel Mark of Necatrine? VP of A&R for MCA!

Although, come on - no love for Milf? Where my bitches at.

Velocity Girl weren't overlooked. At one point they were Sub Pop's second biggest selling act.

Ooh. Velocity Girl. I don't know if they were "overlooked" per se, but y'know.....where are they now, eh?

They reunited for a benefit show last year, and I think they may be working on something new.

Clearly they didn't seize the moment.

spot on! well, sort of. HMS Fable is the *only* record of that ilk I've ever really liked apart from (and here's the sort of) Elbow's Asleep In The Back which is just lush.

Please don't anybody lump in Elbow and Shack with the truly terrible, resolutely earthbound Doves, whose appeal I have simply *never* understood. Mmmm, pudgy hod-carriers wailing like sealions? No ta. ditto Puressence.

(except len. and d.i., i guess.)

Also, the Geraldine Fibbers. Were they ever popular anywhere else? And Tiger and the Stiffs and Congo Norvell.

http://www.acousticmusic.com/fame/g00536.jpg

I bought a Celebrity Skin tape for $1 because I read a good review of them somewhere. I should have bought a candy bar instead.

Now would be as good a time as any to say WALT MINK, at least for their first album.

pah - you like the rutles of canadian pop - zumpano - fucking beachcombers stew, more like. let's put a few more ba ba bas. hit! well, a can-con hit, maaaybe.

Just seemed bland, really -- not active hate, more sorta, "Oh, right, whatever."

Celebrity Skin were engagingly ridiculous. One of the odder things Don Bolles has done over the years.

I nominate/second: Shack, Swirlies, Seam, Smaller and lots of other bands beginning with S...

YES to the ropers, fibbers, and medicine. how bout the trash can sinatras? spain?

no, i'm serious! she did a small tour last year.

This should tell you more.

Pretty bleah, them. Saw 'em open for Labradford and Godspeed, and how odd was it (or not) that Labradford blew the others off the stage with the least amount of volume.

disco inferno i keep hearing about but i heard
'the last dance' and i thought it was dead borin'.

knapsack

[listening to a mix cdr from an old friend... wowowowowowowowowowowow]

i'm only telling you this because i love you.

That's what I figured and was kinda trying to say.

oh and say something personally insulting to me about knapsack you coward.

Um...If not for your tiny tiny penis I would have some clue who Knapsack are. [sticks out tongue]

but yeah, you're right, they get lumped in with a lot of shit bands and that dude could really sing

http://image.allmusic.com/00/amg/cov200/dre700/e787/e78749qckxw.jpghttp://image.allmusic.com/00/amg/cov200/dre700/e787/e78754zr6cw.jpg

and

http://image.allmusic.com/00/amg/cov200/drf500/f527/f52742co2nz.jpg

jawbox, jawbox & jawbox

Guided By Voices!

Virgin Whore Complex!
Stay Away from My Mother is smart pop genius

Plumtree, Super Friendz, Thrush Hermit, Jale - the whole post-'92 Halifax scene.

Pearl Jam

jale were really great

This thread makes me happy.

oh man i just remembered the album "succumb" by the virgin-whore complex ... if anyone owns this and wants to up it for me i would die a thousand deaths, it doesn't appear to be online anywhere, no tracks on youtube even

three mile pilot, esp for another desert, another sea (not to slight chief assassin to the sinister)

Thee Speaking Canaries

the big one that comes to mind is Flop!...Whenever You're Ready is a motherfucker of an album...also, as much as I hat to say it, Geir's otm about Jellyfish, they were very great...also, not every song clicks, but New Radiant Storm King's August Revital is quite decent (Check out "Forty-Seven"!)

http://www.banbucket.com/uploads/1235226573.jpg

Yeah, the yummy fucking fur!
Where are THEY now.
― edmund, Saturday, 8 February 2003 22:26 (6 years ago)

^^ Funny in retrospect?

are the 90s hip yet? i got a box of my old baggy jeans waiting here.

yes you need to wear the shit out of that

hell no.

that dog

Pigeonhed

(That Dog were not overlooked. I never disliked them, but they were slightly more overlooked in the 90s than the Beastie Boys)

If you wanna talk about an overlooked L.A. band from the 90s:

Jacknife (best ever Imp/SFTRI three-piece? maybe not, but damn close!)
Straight To Video (which featured ex-Volcano Sun David Kleiler and ex-Sebadohian Bob Fay)

SHOEFACE

Refrigerator (they're still chuggin' out albums)

Seconding Possum Dixon and Vehicle Flips, mentioned early in this long thread.

And: Sone!

Bugskull
Hochenkeit

Supreme Dicks

Follow For Now. The story of that band still makes me very sad.

And was I the only person in the universe who loved Moonshake?

― Trayce (trayce), Saturday, February 8, 2003 6:43 PM (6 years ago) Bookmark

Probably not so unsung around these parts, but overall: yes. Before Fiedler/Fixen left, they were phenomenal. I still play Eva Luna about once a month or so.

also, randomly: 12 Rods, Th' Faith Healers, Jale, Venus Beads, Ganger

and Lanterna

G*Park
18th Dye
Slovenly

Moose. Moooooooooooooose.

Moped. awesome band from Seattle i think, summershine put out their album which was rockin' from start to finish. like a (much) better sleepyhead

Xpost. 18th Dye are also a forgotten 00's group, since nobody seemed to notice their rather good reunion album/tour from last year. Oh well.

He's not a group, but I'm more and more convinced that Colin Lloyd Tucker is one of *the* most overlooked 90's artists on the basis of Remarkable and Songs of Life, Love, and Liquid. Great lost Bowie/Hitchcock/Ayers hybrid.

Barely 90s, but DICKLESS

oh man i just remembered the album "succumb" by the virgin-whore complex ... if anyone owns this and wants to up it for me i would die a thousand deaths, it doesn't appear to be online anywhere, no tracks on youtube even

― congratulations (n/a), Monday, February 16, 2009 4:26 PM (3 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

finally found the video for the song "speakerphone," which is what i used to play on my college radio show - i totally forgot about the creepy zodiac killer parts of the song: http://music.yahoo.com/videos/Virgin-Whore+Complex/Speakerphone--2148785

Superconductor

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bIliXLa_u7A

The Moon Seven Times

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eL8LE0muXzY

King Black Acid

i just jammed some New Radiant Storm King in the car today, so i had to check if they'd been mentioned itt and they have

I have to go back and see if I still think the Small Factory version of "Everyone's Happy for the First Time in Weeks" beats the NRSK original... I wonder if they'll play it at the chickfactor show. Hope so.

Gallon Drunk are playing here soon. Maybe they do this all the time, I don't know, but seeing their name in the listings was a weird flashback. Still like Some Fools Mess.

superconductor

fuck, yes. hit songs for girls is easily one of my favorite albums of the 90s. LOVE this song:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DZxYoO4d1Q

and king black acid! and his womb star orchestra! unspeakably beautiful:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=252WkzeWE_4

this is my asylum records

Tripmaster Monkey. I'm currently under the impression that only myself and the lucky few I've played their fantastic "Goodbye Race" album to know who they are. It's the great lost classic grungepop album, up there with "Frosting on the Beater" and "Bandwagonesque" for great tunes and burnt out guitars. I urge anyone who has a love for that sort of stuff to check it out. Utter classic.
― Lynskey (Lynskey), Monday, January 13, 2003 3:38 PM (9 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

been wondering who they were since going through a copy of melody maker from around the time Kurt Cobain died that sits on a pile on the shelf near my toilet.
thought I recognised the name but maybe its cos they were named after a book I read in the early 90s?

rRope
Jellyfish Kiss
Charlie McAlister
Powerdresser
Diskothi-Q
Lovechild
The Beguiled
Star Pimp
Plainfield
Adickdid
Hammerhead
The Great Unraveling
Phleg Camp
Good Horsey
Pork Queen

everyone on Slabco: Land Of The Loops, Sukpatch, Sientific American, Explosion Robinson, Dynomite D, Buckminster Fuzeboard, Volume All*Star

Overlooked *since* the 90s: Hovercraft
They sound more amazing today,

The Kent 3

Then criminally underappreciated and now all but forgotten Seattle band from the late 90s. They recorded a string of excellent albums and singles for Steve Turner's Super Electro Sound Recordings (among other labels, including a 7" for Sub Pop). After knocking around for a while, they came into their own with their second album, 1997's Stories of the New West, when guitarist Viv Halogen took over the vocal duties. I can honestly say without exaggeration that it's of my all time favorite rock n roll records, flawless from front to back. "Mad About the Boy" is a late-album highlight:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I08j_s2ogq4

god, there's basically nothing about the kent 3 on the internet. frustrating...

You ever hear the Night Kings? They had an album on Super Electro also. That guy was a good songwriter.

Reading this thread last night was fun, remembering so many of the groups mentioned here. I composed a list in my head to add here but I fell asleep. I fell like Barbara Manning is overlooked?

King Black Acid

― John Nestle Harding (loves laboured breathing), Wednesday, March 14, 2012 4:44 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

also pre-KBA group Hitting Birth, 1 great CD and 2 great tapes to their credit.

wow @ mackro's list, I still have time for Pork Queen & Love Child.

Barbara Manning is great but probably higher profile than a lot of this stuff, what with LPs on Matador etc.

ha of course I namechecked Walt Mink but didn't say anything about K's Choice or They Eat Their Own

Didn't Love Child have an album on Matador? Or was it one of the last albums on Homestead?

both LPs were on Homestead, yeah.

I think I still have a Diskothi-Q tape somewhere, lost of great shrimper stuff, Paste, Refrigerator. I also had a record by a group called Plover that I remember liking.

are God Is My Co-Pilot overlooked?

(speaking of Shrimper)

You ever hear the Night Kings? They had an album on Super Electro also. That guy was a good songwriter.

yeah, i dug the night kings and associated bands: kings of rock, fall-outs, nights & days. especially the fallouts, whose "zombie" is a lost 90s nw garage classic. single version, so great:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o5QjBElYyQg

fantastic song, but as a band, they weren't a patch on THE KENT 3, by far the greatest 90s band to have fallen entirely from view. i tell you true.

God Is My Co-Pilot were great! I liked Straight Not on Outpunk, I think?

Houston had a great noise scene that's overlooked, Richard Ramirez/Black Leather Jesus, Pain Teens, and other groups I can't remember.

Culturcide!!!

love the pain teens, though mostly for the born in blood LP. dunno none of the others. associated them with texas psyche more than noise proper, prob due to their being on trance syndicate.

Jesus Penis?

the pain teens' finest hour, imo:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G_F2k7SVR1Y

sadly not with bliss blood, their vocalist/star. here's the album version w bliss:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HzsBSX9lluc

better sound, but damn i do love the sampled preacherman vocals on "it will"

I remember seeing a side project of the pains teens, the girl and guy with other people playing a straight noise set in Houston,TX with Richard R. It was painful but awesome.

whoah yeah Jesus Penis' Stick In The Mud LP? never heard that.

Destroy Me Lover is another good Pain Teens record.

were Kangaroo Kourt from Houston?

Anastasia Screamed

Dead Horse were a fucking awesome live band, the're overlooked?

Cherubs were a cool band

speaking of noisy/heavy texas psyche on trance syndicate, THE CHERUBS. never loved the band, but this song, "CARJACK FAIRY" is another of my alltime 90s favorites. absolutely pulverizing, but in the hypnotic, mush-brained way i love best:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n8TqL1SMPyA

"i can't steal this car alone..."

recently covered by red fang, and so maybe due for a reappraisal?

xp grandavis

Freedom Fighters - My Scientist Friends

super raging but yet poppy at the same time noise punk....they were from Mpls were actually on AmRep right at the time that everyone stopped caring about AmRep, love that band and it's much harder to find/more obscure spinoff Capital! Capital!

both HIGHLY recommended

Just listened to Dead Horse on youtube, maybe they should be forgotten

Yeah, good Cherubs song above. Can't even remember the names of the songs I like, just one of those bands I would play on radio shows in the 90s. That Pain Teens clip above reminded me that they existed!

Speaking of AmRep, here's a track from one-hit-wonder Manchester, UK outfit The Powers That Be, released as a picture-disc single as part of the label's loss-leader "Research and Development Series". Love this song to death, though it's arguably kind of goofy/affected. As far as I know, the band never released anything else, save a compilation track that i've never heard. IT'S A CRUDE SOUND:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3A8G-Z2n9cg

^ remarkably shitty sound. not sure what i did wrong, but i ripped it years ago when i was just beginning to understand life.

I <3 Dead Horse. Horsecore!

Paging through my 90s scrapbook, here's the baby-crushing "Throats to Hit" by Honolulu-via-Ellay grunge-pop act Chokebore. First appeared on one of those "R&D Series" singles, then comped on the tour promo EP from which this tube is apparently sourced. Never heard anything else by the band I particularly cared for, but this, the A side to their debut single, just kills me. Much poppier than almost anything else on AmRep, almost Pixies-like on the incredible chorus. So great:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SQ-DdI3i5k

ha, I just realized I was confusing Dead Horse with Distorted Pony...

Okay, so maybe I'm scraping the bottom of the barrel here, but I was always fascinated by Love 666, another late-to-the-party AmRep band that got overlooked when the Halo of Flies cred was long gone and the hipsters had drifted. Bizzare combination of aggressive ineptitude, raw noise, cute & indie-ish (but junkie blurred) boy-girl vocals, pop hooks, heavy riffs, MBV worship and neil young ache. All recorded like your head was in the kick drum. I don't know that they they ever really got it "right", but no one else sounded anything like them. Heavy Trux. "You Sold Me Out" was their label debut:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G6n-AdRlDB4

Superconductor - "Shaved Temple"
King Black Acid and the Womb Star Orchestra - "Alone On Mars"
The Kent 3 - "Mad About the Boy"
The Fall-Outs - "Zombie"
Pain Teens - "It Will"
Cherubs - "Carjack Fairy"
The Powers That Be - "Crude Sound"
Chokebore - "Throats to Hit"

^ this is actually a fairly accurate "how i spent the 1990s" playlist. fill out with blurry, yearning commercial indie pop like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pB_f0IrNJTs

The Dambuilders - "Slo-Mo Kikaida"

Just looking at the top of the thread - Rollerskate Skinny was the first gig I went to. With the Drop Nineteens. RS were good! Just here to lol at sleeve's DN mainly tho.

I really liked a band called Laguna Meth somewhere around 1996.

http://soundcloud.com/staybeautiful-generation/laguna-meth-nuclear-snowcone

Apparently they released a debut album about eleven years later.

Going over all this stuff, I'm again struck by the massive differences between what I thought of as American "indie rock culture" in the early-mid 90s and what the term "indie" came to mean in the late 90s and new century. That early-to-mid 90s stuff, growing out of the post-hardcore 80s punk underground, seemed defined as much as anything by a will to transgress, a stance of deliberate and sometimes extreme opposition to "mainstream" "normalcy". It was built by evil-minded labels like Amphetamine Reptile, Touch & Go and the early-noisy Sub Pop as by kinder gentler purveyors of guitar pop like Matador, K and Slumberland.

You couldn't clearly separate indie from punk at that point. Bands like the Jesus Lizard, Melvins and Shellac were leading, scene-defining lights, and the legacy of the harsh, experimental noise music once made by the likes of Sonic Youth and the Butthole Surfers remained an important part of the genre's DNA, even when those acts "went commercial". Even pop-oriented and relatively rock-traditional bands like Dinosaur Jr. and the Flaming Lips claimed to be punk. Indie rock took tips from industrial culture and "urban primitivism", from Re-Search publications and Survival Research Laboratories. It decorated itself with scabrous underground comics and embittered ranting (Steven Jesse Bernstein, Answer Me!, Your Flesh).

All that extremity and transgression, the belligerent violence and alienation, the hard fucking rock, seemed to fall away towards the end of the 90s. It didn't disappear, but American indie somehow managed to redefine itself as absent or even as a rejection of those qualities. Whatever Wolf Eyes and Lightning Bolt were, they were suddenly and emphatically not indie. Like how Built to Spill were basically Dinosaur Jr. without the self-loathing and punk outbursts. It's as much a truism that bad times produce angry music as that bad times cause people to crave a pleasant escape. Where American indie is concerned, the latter impulse seems to have won the day. The relatively affluent and optimistic Clinton years bred an indie culture that championed harsh, oppositional, punk-inflected noise music. 9/11 and Bush Jr.'s catastrophically dystopian new century produced an American indie culture in love with Sufjan Stevens and The Shins.

^ the contenderizer news bulletin. issued every 3-6 months. contents juggled, but dependably consistent. count on it.

On the other hand, you had bands like Pavement and Yo La Tengo emerging or gaining popularity in the early 90s and I can see why folks were attracted to such bands amongst all the sub-grunge noise backwash that was what a lot of the scene yr describing turned into.

yeah, i think it's a good point that the successes and sins of "grunge" maybe killed off the transgressive/punk indie i loved so much. at least killed it as indie, as something acceptable within indie culture.

and yeah, the massive wave of second and thirdhand noise-punk cribsheet rockers that got signed to labels like noiseville and amrep towards the end got really, really boring.

When I was listening to this music in the early 90's I thought of it as 'underground'. I didn't hear the term indie until the 2000's and I had fell out of touch with underground rock.

i've heard that several times on ILX. the phrase was familiar to me when sebadoh released the "gimme indie rock!" parody/diss single in '91, but maybe it was more common in some areas/scenes than others?

^ specifically bashing sonic youth, pussy galore and dinosaur jr. as purveyors of played-out, cash-grabbing "indie rock"

Yeah and there was that song She's an indie rocker, but I guess being more into the avant side of the 90's and less the grunge rockin side, I never thought of music as indie.

The 'underground' for me was the whole Siltbreeze axis, the bands that never got any coverage in the UK music weeklies.

I guess it doesn't help that I lived in a small town and didn't know anyone who liked the same music as me, so I got my information from zines or mail order catalogs. I didn't meet other like minded people until I loved to austin in 98 and even then the people who like this music were called 'Mods' not indie rockers.

moved to austin I mean

Ha, Mods is a curious term there, how did that get traction?

I think it was everyone's hair cut

Many it was the people who hung out with The Prima Donnas and a few other bands whose names I forget. Guys who dressed like they were in the Make Up.

The relatively affluent and optimistic Clinton years bred an indie culture that championed harsh, oppositional, punk-inflected noise music. 9/11 and Bush Jr.'s catastrophically dystopian new century produced an American indie culture in love with Sufjan Stevens and The Shins.

I quite like this theory. Does it hold up under further scrutiny? It certainly would explain my experience with indie the past 20 years.

Oh, and The Dambuilders were frickin' AWESOME. I saw them a number of times around Boston and Joan's violin-as-guitar really set them apart. Their last album was a let down but everything up until then is excellent.

For me the end of the Clinton years and what happened to indie, groups like built to spill, emo, and the whole nu twee drove me away from the scene, to look into soul, disco, post punk, and other older musics. I've never really returned to indie.

Dadamah

makes me think about how open to personal or in-group interpretation phrases like "indie", "alternative" and "underground" are. the phrase "indie rock" was attractive to me because it did such a good job of describing my feelings about music and culture. it captured the quasi-political intensity of my devotion to the ideal of "independence". this independence was predicated on punk's rejection of commerce and bourgeois complacency (yeah, i know), but it extended out into a cultural and aesthetic radicalism that rejected traditional punk's genre formalism and demands for ideological purity. as i saw it, indie rock was the punk of impurity, of bastardization, of intermixing and the absurd. relative to american hardcore's extreme orthodoxy, it seemed hugely liberating.

in my personal lexicon, something might just happen to be "underground" by dint of being as-yet undiscovered, and everything was arguably an "alternative" so something else, so those terms were of little use to me. to be independent by choice, as a matter of principle: that was something special. it seldom occurred to me that the gnarly, fucked-up indie rock i so dearly loved was really just another consumer commodity, a niche product aimed predominantly at moderately affluent young people with disposable income to burn, not much different really, than metal or hardcore. i clung to the myth of independence even as the butthole surfers and sonic youth sold piles of records, stickers and t-shirts, got positive reviews in the rolling stone, even showed up on MTV.

then came nirvana, and that was the end of that

really just another consumer commodity, a niche product aimed predominantly at moderately affluent young people with disposable income to burn

That strikes me as a sour spin.

it is, and i regret that to some extent. but it's a realization that struck me deeply and sourly at a certain point in my life, given that i'd invested a lot in the idea of my own "independence" without ever really demanding that i make the appropriate sacrifices on its behalf. that is, relative to the engines of american culture and capital, i wasn't nearly as independent as my record collection had led me to believe. i still see value in the myth of independence (not meaning myth as something false, but rather as something believed in).

i guess i get to be independent in mind, even if i'm still just a wage slave. ask deej and max.

A lof of the 90's underground was very diy, cassettes and cheap cds. What part of it was affluent? matador?

Dadamah, yes Tim, excellent choice, as would be many other little known kiwi bands from the era.

Contenderizer - I was thinking more of the idea that rebelling in the Clinton years when things were comfortable was safe vs. when things felt completely unsafe post-9/11, indie rock became that safe haven. Very broad generalization but it's an interesting idea.

I mean indie rock become safe music.

becAme. Can't get a proper thought typed up tonight.

A lof of the 90's underground was very diy, cassettes and cheap cds. What part of it was affluent? matador?

i meant "affluent" in the "realization that i am an affluent american" sense. like, if you have money to burn on cassette tapes, weed and gg allin shows, you probably aren't all that poor.

Damn. Y'all really suck at this. How about Dream Warriors, Kool Keith a.k.a. Dr Octagon, Atari Teenage Riot, Arto Lindsay, Son of Bazerk and P.M. Dawn?

those are not overlooked

well dr octagon, ATR and PM Dawn are def not overlooked

Smile
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPVmVfoI9hs

The Swirlies?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c1M3DIX9f78

Self? Are they overlooked?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-MqPaxj4Bg

I've heard lots of friends talking about Chavez lately who I never knew until less than a year ago.

I wanted those to be links, not embeds, sorry

I think Self is overlooked! Porno, Mint and Grime is kind of perfect in certain ways.

Also: yes, Diskothi-Q! You can still buy their CDs if you go to a Mountain Goats show where Peter Hughes is playing.

Finally: KLEENEX GIRL WONDER.

many other little known kiwi bands from the era.

The Terminals were a talented band. Cool to see that their '92 album Touch was reissued a few years ago and is on Spotify. Really unique combination of things - super raw, minimal drums, and really developed melodicism. Unique singer.

Brian Ferry-ish, even. Peter Stapleton was the drummer.

Thank you for posting Smile. Crucial band when I was in high school.

man, i fucking loved swirlies for a good couple years but listening to them lately it's just very sloppy and almost kinda involves the same posturing you see in dubstep today in vein that it's just noise for noise sake, like they're trying to impress us. would be fun in a live setting but via record it doesn't allot to a very compelling listening.

that said, tiger trap or rose melberg and all her associated acts. she's a wunderkind in sense that every song she makes is instantly catchy.

I was thinking more of the idea that rebelling in the Clinton years when things were comfortable was safe vs. when things felt completely unsafe post-9/11, indie rock became that safe haven. Very broad generalization but it's an interesting idea.

― Gerald McBoing-Boing, Thursday, March 15, 2012 5:40 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah, that's exactly what i was talking about, and, i think, a good explanation for it. re: your earlier question, i don't think that it does entirely hold up, as there were quite a few softer, more reassuring indie bands in the late 80s/early 90s and at least as many weird and challenging ones in the new century. still, it strikes me as a good large-scale picture of changes in the way indie was defined and defined itself in the two eras.

it's just very sloppy and almost kinda involves the same posturing you see in dubstep today in vein that it's just noise for noise sake, like they're trying to impress us. would be fun in a live setting but via record it doesn't allot to a very compelling listening.

speaks to so so many 90s sub-heroes. caroliner rainbow, truman's water, u.s. maple... [ducks]

blowhole

wait! what about caroliner and u.s. maple?

Caroliner Rainbow were ok though, but I was really into Bananafish and loved their compilations.

Man, I'm listening to Gogogoairheart and that's a good example of the turning point! Really weird vocals but the new revivalism in the music.

"the turning point" - not to say that there was only one turning point, sorry.

wait! what about caroliner and u.s. maple?

lol, sorry, i know that stuff is near and dear to you. i never had the acuity/sac hair/wherewithal required to consistently enjoy their records. a hideous character flaw, i know. heard caroliner were (or could be) amazing live.

was re: kelpo's comment abt uber-noisy music being fun in a live setting, but not too useful for home listening.

Kill Me Tomorrow and Get Hustle strike me as other cusp bands. Part serious old school indie rock weirdness but with elements of the new revivalisms.

i'm not sure i follow, tim. to my mind, bands like gogoairheart and kill me tomorrow have roots in early 90s stuff like brainiac, not so much revivalism but continuation. when you talk about "new revivalism", do you mean a reynolds/retromania kind of thing, or something else?

love kill me tomorrow though. great live band, and some great records for a little while there. so much was lost in the sinking of the good ship GSL. too bad they were new century thing, or i'd post a bunch of videos. hypothetically like this, maybe, one of my all-time favorite music/film combos:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmAjUFSe_Kk

oops

the phrase "all-time favorite" getting a purt good workout in this here thread, courtesy mr. me

Lol I was just listening to Dadamah tonight; I'm planning on giving Dissolve a good listen here pretty soon as well...

Gravitar and ST 37 have turned into two of my favourite bands on the strength of their 90s stuff; Laddio Bolocko is great too, though for some reason I'm not sure if any of these count. Really dig the first Polara album too

I'm totally looking for a way to hear Caroliner's Rise of the Common Woodpile album; also am on the lookout for some US Maple

when you talk about "new revivalism", do you mean a reynolds/retromania kind of thing

Yeah, definitely. I don't know Brainiac - did they have any element of revivalism? Gogogoairheart was really into early Rough Trade and Factory bands.

Oh yeah Space Streakings is rad too, tho completely diff't than anything else I've mentioned in this thread thus far

Brainiac had a significant new-wave revival element in their sound; another band in this vein was Six Finger Satellite. Also: Servotron? (a band jjj played for me in outloud)

(tho brainiac was more new wave and 6fs were more straight up postpunk)

Gogogoairheart was really into early Rough Trade and Factory bands.

gotcha, and i agree, but so were unrest, another band that GGGA seemed to extend. brainiac weren't terribly "retro" to my mind, though they were strongly influenced by new wave, and their sound was very similar to kill me tomorrow's, with a comparably glammy take on dystopian futurism.

we can draw a line between the pasts observed by different eras, but everything responds to a past of some kind, right? the greasy fingerprints of 70s rockers like the stooges, black sabbath and blue cheer were all over the noisy, scuzzy indie punk that grunge rose out of. the velvet underground loomed similarly large over K-recs style lo fi. move ahead a few years, and it's not the 60s/70s but the 70s/80s that are being channeled. just saying that there's a difference between taking a few cues from something and being a "revivalist".

i mean, the flaming lips started out as a 70s classic rock record collection run through a drug-damaged punk filter, much like dinosaur jr. and with a similarly strong debt to neil young (another big grunge-era influence). but in the long run, i wouldn't call them revivalists, though those elements stayed in place.

Yeah, but I think that some of that newer generation of groups really were explicitly revivalist. Did you ever hear Satisfact or Nick Forte's groups Computer Cougar and Beautiful Skin? GGGA were a little looser about it.

Also, the midwest no wave groups that predated that stuff a bit - Couch, Duotron, Scissor Girls, etc.

Gravitar and ST 37 have turned into two of my favourite bands on the strength of their 90s stuff; Laddio Bolocko is great too, though for some reason I'm not sure if any of these count.

...Oh yeah Space Streakings is rad too, tho completely diff't than anything else I've mentioned in this thread thus far

― John Nestle Harding (loves laboured breathing), Thursday, March 15, 2012 9:50 PM (16-20 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah, what counts and what doesn't is a weird question. i don't really think of laddio bollocko as "overlooked" per se. more as a taste acquired by few. they've got a small but very dedicated and vocal following, and are basically still active as the psychic paramount. same might maybe said for gravitar, st 37 and space streakings (???), but even among psyche/drone & skin graft fan circles, they aren't much discussed. still, i don't think that they were ever destined to be loved by more than a handful of folks. unlike SUPERCONDUCTOR and THE KENT 3, bands that deserve to be heard and loved by every man, woman and child on earth.

i will say that this particular song, "stack collison with heap" by st 37, is absolutely fantastic, goofy vocals included, and criminally overlooked:

http://youtu.be/1W3RHgmDcDo

unfortunately, it's from 2002, after their period of designated greatness, so fuggit

Also, the midwest no wave groups that predated that stuff a bit - Couch, Duotron, Scissor Girls, etc.

yeah, exactly! don't know couch, but spent time w both duotron and scissor girls. i think they help build the case that there wasn't any sudden dip towards revivalism in the way strong 80s influences began to show up in 90s indie & punk, but rather a progression of novel-seeming reference points through various bands and scenes. i mean, something had to give after the 70s scuzzrock well ran dry. (dry or not, the scandinavians did pick up that dropped ball and run a few more yards with it in an explicitly revivalist fashion in the late 90s/early 00s: turbonegro, hellacopters, gluecifer, etc.)

leading to more commercial stuff like the darkness and the ark

Space Streakings

mentioned by john nestle harding up there. japanese noise punk hip hop noise noise. an "interesting" band who were probably insane live, but who live or die in my mind by one song: "YOUNGMAN II". might as well be the death set, but way better:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZjagElyU9kk

god, i listened to a LOT of this shit

the case that there wasn't any sudden dip towards revivalism in the way strong 80s influences began to show up in 90s indie & punk, but rather a progression of novel-seeming reference points through various bands and scenes.

That's certainly reasonable. I think I felt the shift acutely because I'm 44 now and all those bands were slightly younger. It was not my generation that was doing that revival!

There's something to be said, also, about revivalist-oriented bands being concerned with explicit stylistic signifiers in a way that, I didn't think, indie rock - no matter how rooted it may have been in older musics - did before. If you look at a record like the Rapture's Mirror, everything about it is a signifier from the Marquee Moon-style cover on.

Now that I think about it, you could say that about the Mummies too, but there seemed to be something central about the new revivalism and I think its lasting presence has borne that out.

hey, i'm 44 too! cheers. anyway, i get what you're saying and don't want to be an argumentative dick, but i got the same feeling from stuff like halo of flies, mudhoney, and green river. like everything was supposed to be a refracted, punk-lensed throwback to heavy 70s guitar god shit. song titles like "biker rock loser", blues & primitive rock structures, funhouse-aping cover on pussy galore's right now. the huge 70s rawk & boogie/blooze stamp on urge overkill. motorbooty magazine's p-funk worship, reflected in their house band, big chief. screaming trees (late 60s/early 70s acid rock), soundgarden & jane's addiction(zep), GBV with their who worship and hippieish lyrical fancies, butthole surfers (entirely their own thing, but came on like freedom rock burnouts, covered "american woman" and "sweat leaf" early on). hell, even pop-tatari boredoms wore a big, hairy 70s influence. plus just the styles. so many bands dressed like they were either in motorhead or refugees from a bad acid version of woodstock. i suspect this was more prominent/apparent in the backwards/woods pacific northwest than elsewhere in the country, where the 70s love was less "ironic", but it was everywhere at the time. or so it seemed to me...

mummies refer to a garage rock tradition that's been active and reverently revivalist at least since the early 80s. ime, it goes back as far as the milkshakes and nomads in 1981, but bands like DMZ were digging more or less the same ditch in the late 70s.

LOL I just realized Dream Warriors are those dudes who sampled that Quincy Jones song that was used in Austin Powers.. I suppose yeah, that was somewhat overlooked...

dream warriors had a huge hit w "my definition". figured that post had to be a joke.

Yeah, I think the fact that it was, as you say, a "refracted, punk-lensed throwback" is what made it seem more like something new than that Rapture record. I'm interested in postmodernism taken to the extreme that everything else gets shut out. The Japanese probably did it to the biggest extreme with heavy '70s guitar rock - High Rise and such.

Ha, I'm looking at the official High Rise web site:

"The concept is composed with heavy, radical sound and rock'n'roll ideological formation."

Mummies!

The Couch you guys are talking about are Midwestern no wave? Bcz I have an album by Couch called Fantasy from 99/2000 (released in the States by Matador!) But they were an instrumental band from Germany...

Also: I'm sure that ST 37 still had great songs well into the 00s. The only one of their albums I gave heavy rotation to was Glare, mostly bcz that one is SO. DAMN. BOSS. Definitely deserved to be heard more people in '95...

o shit I have a split with ST37 and Vocokesh, I should listen to the ST37 side.

"man, i fucking loved swirlies for a good couple years but listening to them lately it's just very sloppy and almost kinda involves the same posturing you see in dubstep today in vein that it's just noise for noise sake, like they're trying to impress us. would be fun in a live setting but via record it doesn't allot to a very compelling listening."

I'm not sure I get this. Would this not be true with any noisy record? It's not like you'd see Swirlies at No Fun fest, they at least have relatively straight forward and very melodic songs, why would they be picked on specifically in the context of the point made here? I can think of plenty of respected bands that devolve into noise or have little tape noise detours peppered throughout an album. In my opinion tricks like that along with songs that vary in tempo, mood, and length give an album glue and better hold interest.

When you pull the focus on melody out of the equation, that's when you put on a noise record and stroke your chin and fabricate quantifiers to how good it is at convincing you that it is cool.

I gravitate to early 90s groups for the punk approach they all seemed to have whether they were being twee, or grungy, or shoegazing. It is so refreshing compared to the magazine ad looking, hi-fi, everything is accessorized, fussed over indie that dominates today.

I'm 44 as well, that definitely has a lot to do with our perspective on rock over the past decades. It'd be interesting if a 20-something chimed in on 90s vs 00s indie.

And in the spirit of this thread, I'll just list my fave neglected 90s bands:
Compulsion
China Drum
Strangelove
Bike (kiwi goodness!)
Tiger
Adorable

I'll be 39 shortly -- I've forgotten about so many of these bands, and so many I still listen to now. One I didn't see mentioned above was The Nightblooms. I don't remember caring much for the second record, but that first one and the singles around and preceding it (ie. "Crystal Eyes") were great. I still play that record, not sure who else listened to them then or now.

Nightblooms, yes!! Debut was psych-shoegaze, totally brilliant. Debut dropped the shoegaze and didn't work for me at all.

Nightblooms trivia: there's a one-sided live vinyl album from their shoegaze period. It's worth hearing. I haven't checked to see if it's available for download anywhere...

Personally, I think that Shatterhand from their 2nd album is the best thing they ever did (it's in the same vein as the epic "1000 Years" from the debut) even if it's not exactly shoegaze. Nightblooms, like a lot of the other shoegazers, had good pop chops at heart. Plus, Shatterhand has, like, a fake beginning, a fake ending, a talkbox-assisted guitar solo that Brian May wishes he had thought of, and about a thousand other cool details.

The post-Nightblooms band, Safe Home, had some good songs but I missed the loudness.

I've looked for a download of that live record every so often and have never found it. It's been for sale on the internet by the same guy in the Netherlands for years (Gemm and now Discogs) but the shipping cost on top of the cost of the record itself is just too much. I definitely want to hear that though.

The Couch you guys are talking about are Midwestern no wave? Bcz I have an album by Couch called Fantasy from 99/2000 (released in the States by Matador!) But they were an instrumental band from Germany...

Right, there was a Couch from Michigan with, I think, the guy who ran Bulb Records and Marlon Magas.

I'm 25

Hmmm, always interesting when threads like this come up and I find out that various bands are still extant. Jennyanykind. Another group that started all indie shoegazey and then went in a totally different direction...like swampy folk blues or something like that. Their major label Revelator was pretty great, and they remained worth hearing to the end. Except apparently they're back together, at least as of last year:

http://www.indyweek.com/indyweek/jennyanykinds-holland-brothers-reunite-after-the-major-label-wringer/Content?oid=2550053

Their best album probably, I Need You, is a very weird mix of like roots folk and dub, or something like that. They're seriously underrated, like many people on this list.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCfFVV7xQeQ

Compulsion
China Drum
Strangelove
Bike (kiwi goodness!)
Tiger
Adorable

as i said earlier in this thread (8 f*cking years ago - damn .. ) i love compulsion.
whether they are loved or not makes no difference given that the bands guitarist had the last laugh by becoming one of the worlds most in demand (and hated on ilm) producers.
as for the others, well, last week i dug out the tiger album and tried it again.
sorry, but i got to the middle of track 2 and hit the eject. not worthy.
still, i reckon its time to have another spin of adorable, as they were indeed ace.

after a night's sleep, i realize that i was being a bit of an argumentative dick re: tim's invocation of the "new revivalism". though influence and reference have long been important part of pop music, i do agree that a backwards-looking, fealty-proclaiming revivalist trend did kick off in the late 90s and has continued into the 00s. signposts: sudden popularity of "real rock" bands like the strokes/stripes/hives etc, emergence of garage rock into the mainstream (same thing), electroclash's 80s fixation and contemporaneous bands like interpol and the rapture (as tim mentioned), new weird america's hippie worship branching out into a soft 70s revival, etc. so yeah, point taken.

i don't, however, see kill me tomorrow and gogogo airheart as revivalists themselves. rather i put them in a lineage of past-influenced but non-revivalist indie rock that was simply making its way through the 80s. hair-thin distinction, i suppose...

i dug out the tiger album and tried it again. sorry, but i got to the middle of track 2 and hit the eject. not worthy.

I don't blame you, they are decidedly an acquired taste. The vocals put most people off straight away but they work for me ('course I love Mark E Smith's voice, too!).

And when we get to reminisce about forgotten 00s bands, Polak, which was the successor to Adorable, will be on my list.

I'd agree about Kill Me Tomorrow, but I think Gogogo Airheart was really geared toward period specificity.

that first post on this thread reminds me of dudes i knew in philly who LOVED rollerskate skinny. they were the only people i knew who loved them. and the dudes i knew in philly were space-pop dudes mostly. one guy was in this band ad astra and some of them ended up playing with the lilies guy. the only other rollerskate fan i knew was my friend jim who played some shows with them and who also ended up playing guitar in st. johnny. so, 90's memories all around!

and now i'm reminded that i have some rollerskate skinny ten inches at the store that nobody will buy and i should play them. maybe i'd like them!

I will buy the 10"s if they aren't super expensive! I need to look into them. I remember seeing them in NYC a few months ago and the price to content was way too disproportionate. Are they just a few tracks each?

I LOVE the Lilys side of that Ad Astra/Lilys split record so much, it is such refreshing beautiful springtime music to me. And I was just listening to the first St. Johnny record this morning, I'm a big fan of theirs as well. Really didn't like their last record because they were shamelessly trying to be Pavement or something.

i've never actually heard a st. johnny record. i remember them being pretty miserable during the whole major label thing. saw them open for elastica at the khyber pass in philly and they were really good though. they brought it. i felt bad for jim. he's such an awesome guitarist.

Yeah the first two albums are very enjoyable to me, would have liked to see them play around that time.

i've never actually heard a st. johnny record. i remember them being pretty miserable during the whole major label thing. saw them open for elastica at the khyber pass in philly and they were really good though. they brought it. i felt bad for jim. he's such an awesome guitarist.

― scott seward, Saturday, March 17, 2012 3:01 AM (12 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah the first two albums are very enjoyable to me, would have liked to see them play around that time.

i love the one st johnny album i have (speed is dreaming), but i much prefer bills follow on stuff under the name of grand mal.

I will second Grifters.

Or is that a first?

Is Catherine Wheel overlooked?

Soul Hat

Hey Scott, speaking of the Khyber, do you know this blog, archiving "local Philly bands and bands playing in Philly", many recorded at the Khyber in the early 90s, like Straitjacket Fits, Mike Rep, Pavement w Gary Young, GBV (Pollard w Cobra Verde, I think), Helios Creed, V3, etc
http://freedomhasnobounds.com/?p=1631

Whatever happened to Babe The Blue Ox? They had the tunes! And the voices, when it was hard to find either in indie rock, much less both in one band

(maybe it wasn't that hard, but I was jaded)

Is Catherine Wheel overlooked?

judging by their presence in used cd bins, i would venture to guess that they have been giving a thorough look-over

been given, rather

what about 90s australian band glide?

Jonathan Fire*Eater.

― Anthony Miccio (Anthony Miccio), Monday, January 13, 2003 3:45 PM (9 years ago)

Jonathan Fire*Eater overlooked? No way.

― hstencil, Monday, January 13, 2003 3:47 PM (9 years ago)

surely if the Grifters and Silkworm get a mention then JF*E should, too. either way, i got much love for all three of these bands.

The Nectarine No. 9 walk this

re: jonathan fire*eater, the walkmen are maybe slightly overlooked as far as 00s bands go

Retsin
Ninetynine
Versus
Citrus
800 Cherries
Baby Fox
Rome
Toenut
Laika
Secret Square
Fablefactory
Skylab
Heavy Vegetable
HiM (not to be confused with HIM)
Juicy
pretty much everything on Skin Graft

Will second/third/fourth all kinds of stuff upthread (Sugar Plant, Moose, Kleenex Girl Wonder, Sammy, Rose Melberg's various concerns). And I know they weren't exactly overlooked, but the Spinanes surely didn't get the attention they deserved.

not enough love on the sugar plant thread i started a zillion years ago:

The Official Sugar Plant Thread

and, don, thanks for the blog tip! awesome stuff on there. an entire void show i'd never seen! and a cool strapping fieldhands set too. all kinds of stuff.

What a fruitful thread. All of those shoegazing groups! Th' Faith Healers, Prolapse and Seefeel.

Blank - great call on Glide, a tremendous band. Great quiet-loud-quiet dynamics, heart-on-sleeve lyrics without being emo or cheesy, and not just overlooked but totally unknown (at least in the US) because their albums just never got released here. And then the lead singer died, damn shame.

This is a really great thread, lots of good suggestions.

Earl Brutus-I Know these guys have a few obsessive fans on here but really one of the most overlooked bands ever.
Ultrasound-The album should have been better but they had some amazing songs spread out on all their singles.
Jack-For fans of Strangelove
Animals That Swim-First album, Workshy is brilliant.
Moose-Those first three ep's are great.
Chisel-Not in the same league as Ted Leo & The Pharmacists but had two really solid albums.

For Squirrels - their album Example was one of my favorites in high school.

Real heavy early R.E.M. vibes on this one:

http://youtu.be/wCme2F4AD04

Land of Talk, even though they are active currently

KP otm as usual - Jack and Animals That Swim are brilliant bands that sadly faded away, though Anthony Reynolds just released a career anthology and Animals That Swim released a digital-only single last year for their first release in a decade.

Earl Brutus-I Know these guys have a few obsessive fans on here but really one of the most overlooked bands ever.

"obsessive"

thats the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me ..

(i am assuming i am included as being part of the gang ! ]

another that occurred to me the other day: TERMINAL CHEESECAKE. dubbed out, grunge-era drone noise of the "we want to be on blast first" sort, well suited to staring at walls, ceilings and/or carpeting. apparently featured russell smith who'd later go on to play in skullflower. never heard their earlier recordings, but i loved angels in pigtails, their sole LP for pathological records. the closing track, "BLOW HOUND", was always my favorite:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hZFjU2e0nfk

lol, edit: "PONY BOY". "blow hound" was my 2nd favorite, but i don't like it anywhere near as much now.

yeh that album is great, some top trolling of Nigel Kennedy too

Track 9: (i) N.F. Kennedy (ii) Kennephant Man (iii) Head Of Nigel

http://www.adamalcock.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/nigel_kennedy_gorzowie_3035396.jpg

as an american, this meant nothing to me at the time

thats the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me ..

(i am assuming i am included as being part of the gang ! ]

― mark e, Sunday, 18 March 2012 19:02 (2 hours ago)

That Mouldy Old Dough thread is one of my favourite threads on ILM. They only did two albums but I'd easily put them in my top ten favourite bands. I love that there's a few people out there that love them too, I just wish there were more of us.

Jack and Animals That Swim are brilliant bands that sadly faded away, though Anthony Reynolds just released a career anthology and Animals That Swim released a digital-only single last year for their first release in a decade.

― Gerald McBoing-Boing

Both bands that peaked with their debut albums but still did some good stuff later on. I remember being pleased and not at all surprised to hear Eddie Argos from Art Brut was a big Animals That Swim fan. Pink Carnations is probably my favourite song of theirs, brilliant lyrics. I didn't really keep up anything Anthony Reynolds did after the Jack albums, anything worth a listen?

Yeah, search Jacques - "To Stars" and Anthony's solo album, "British Ballads". Both equal to the 3 Jack albums.

Will do. Having an album called British Ballads is pretty great.

I wanna go back for a minute and give another shout-out to Kleenex Girl Wonder. I was just listening to Graham Smith Is The Coolest Person Alive for the first time in years and it so holds up. Highly recommended to those who are looking for something with an early-to-mid-'90s GBV flavor.

Holy crap I can't believe I forgot about For Squirrels. I used to have their album in high school too. They def had a heavy REM vibe. Good stuff.

I'm startin to remember more bands, but I will say that I really dug the album by Salt. They were like a Swedish grunge version of Elastica.

Animals That Swim and Earl Brutus without a doubt. I've done plenty of Brutus repping on here before so won't repeat.

New Boots was a great ATS song and believe me , only last week I broke out "I was the King..." . I reckon I am the only person in the world with an obsession for "Near The Moon"

On the Yank front, I'm seconding Versus ( Secret Swingers and The Stars Are Insane superb) And laying Swell (too Many Days Without thinking)

Could continue this all night.

rRope is getting a complete collection release (3LP) possibly by this spring. Via Deathbomb Arc.

Love Swell!!! And Animals That Swim. I listen to both bands almost every day.

I caught this band Nemo from Belgium, very randomly, back in the 90's and bought their first album, which is one of the better Pixies-inspired things out there (though nowhere near Mclusky). Shelled out big $ for the follow-up, which was not in the same league. I'll be plagued until I die by the fact that I don't know what song they finished the live set with, 'cause it totally killed the crowd of like 12 people at Brownies...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AwpZ6_zUdEg

I think about what I was listening to in the 90s and who I'd consider to be "overlooked" and I end up in a totally different mindspace from most of you:

Girl Eats Boy
Fluke
The Hed Boys
Cyberactiv
Psykosonik
London Funk Allstars
Zero Zero
Elevator 101
Burger Industries
Mark Ink
Skin Up
Exposure
80 AUM
Apotheosis

etc etc etc

I know I slept on these bands until the next decade - Acid Bath, Acid King, Acrimony, Colour Haze, Electric Wizard, F/i, Spiritual Beggars, Nightstalker, Terra Firma, Sheavy, Sons Of Otis, Mammoth Volume, Circle, Motorpsycho.

Stuff I did listen to at the time: Dog Faced Hermans, Blacktop, Cosmic Psychos, Crunt, Dwarves, Gaunt, The Gories, Lazy Cowgirls, Pram, Chico Science & Nação Zumbi, The Screws, Souled American, Techno Animal. Natacha Atlas?

Cosmic Psychos.Yes!

Thin White Rope. Possibly a touch more late '80s

yeah, i thought of thin white rope, but in my mind they were a mid-late 80s thing. then again, i'm more about their first three albums than sack full of silver and the ruby sea.

Were Chavez overlooked?

Thin White Rope's version of Some Velvet Morning is.... just hear it

^ yeah, it's great. they do a good "rocket USA", too. both from the late 80s though.

Railroad Jerk

Didjits?

Have I wandered back into the glorious 80s again? their pinnacle "Hey Judester" was possibly 1959

hey judester (yes! their pinnacle!) was nineteen eighty and something.

"ANTS ARE CAVEMENT", my favorite 90's thin white rope track, very much in the spirit of their "some velvet morning" cover:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGA1MthVyHs

lol, "cavement"

Slant 6 - two great albums then split. was lucky enough to see one of their last shows on their only UK tour - Christina Billotte's guitar playing still sounds great!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i-FIZlwQTnI

their only UK tour

^ supporting Fugazi amirite?

My crap 1959 wasn't a typo. It was a reference to that Jerry Lee chances.

I still have my Hey Judester T shirt. Wife and kids get distressed when i wear it occasionally. It's the big ugly face. It matches.

I just know how much it would mean to me if i clocked a daft middle aged idiot wearing the same whilst slobbering around the supermarket or some other void.

Railroad Jerk

was not a big fan of railroad jerk, but i loved the song "message to maisie" off their 02.20.93 EP. unfortunatly, i can't find a tube or even a file to upload atm :/

My crap 1959 wasn't a typo. It was a reference to that Jerry Lee chances.

oh yeah, i geddedit

balls ... FIRE

supporting Fugazi amirite?

yeh i think so, although i saw them w/Eggs on a between-tour-dates show? this is a bit hazy though!

yeah, they were GREAT live. saw em in seattle and promptly bought their inzombia LP which i wound up only half liking. they did a fun version of "rebel rebel" on a split with the make-up. wish i still had that...

god, or maybe it was chapel hill...

Oh I saw Eggs once too, but they were supporting RODAN along with Tsunami.

Would have liked to have seen Rodan live. Were they good?

Rodan were A+++ live, really very good.

I was pretty into June of 44, but I always imagined that I would have loved Rodan live. Was quite on board in time to catch them ...

I did get to see Drive Like Jehu once, so for that I am eternally grateful (DLJ not overlooked of course, at least not any more).

It's weird that I never really got into Rodan, given that I've been a big fan of almost every subsequent project featuring members from that band.

1) My first ilx post (that i remember) was about a slant 6 show! this post references that post and it was almost 6 years ago whoa
Haha -- when I was at a Slant 6 show (which I mentioned the very first time I posted on this thread!) there was a guy wearing an Anal Cunt t-shirt. It was pretty funny.

― The Milkmaid (82375538-A) (The Milkmaid), Friday, April 21, 2006 3:08 PM (5 years ago) Bookmark

2) also i saw rodan open for sebadoh in dayton in...94? and i dragged this guy i didn't know very well (i didn't know him at all) and i guess the long drive there and back was too much because we never spoke again

the end

both shows were great btw

Saw Rodan live once ages ago in the 90s , in Leeds.

It looked like Tara J O Neil was full of cold if memory serves me right.

I have been back to that album fairly recently. "Everyday World of Bodies" is one hell of a song. Yes it's very much in the style of that other Louisville band but heavier

"Everyday World of Bodies" is so mighty, would definitely dig seeing that live. Used to play that song A LOT in college, I imagine that people in my dorm were really displeased (it needed to be loud of course). Wish I had had a friend in college who might have forced me to travel to Boston for shows, missed a lot of bands in the 90s that I really regret not seeing now.

"Everyday World of Bodies" is so mighty, would definitely dig seeing that live.

http://vimeo.com/6438603

Thanks! Was considering going on a youtube binge.

Rachel's

man there is almost no information about the wicked farleys on the internet, except from a shitty old website that is inexplicably still up. such a good band - came from the same boston scene as the swirlies and kind of mining the same american take on shoegaze sound. "make it it" is classic and i wish it was on spotify.

ha on further research, wicked farleys frontman rob laakso is listed as a current member of the swirlies

swirlies kick ass too btw

^^^^^^^ love that first EP, such a classic

Considering who was in it, it's kind of interesting that the band Vodka are like completely completely buried.

Lead singer has one degree of separation or less with Swans, Mommyheads, Guided By Voices, Mofungo, etc.
Drummer was instrumental in the AIDS-denialist movement and has her own Wikipedia page (which doesn't mention the band).
One guitarist was in Cat Power way back when, plus turns up all over the place in experimental circles.
Other guitarist engineered or recorded a large chunk of indie rock as we know it.

They weren't bad either. Not great, but not bad.

And oh neat, I'd never heard the Television cover ("Friction") by this *other* overlooked 90's group that the lead singer was in...

http://www.sensitiveskinmagazine.com/timber-released-unreleased/

I caught this band Nemo from Belgium, very randomly, back in the 90's and bought their first album, which is one of the better Pixies-inspired things out there (though nowhere near Mclusky). Shelled out big $ for the follow-up, which was not in the same league. I'll be plagued until I die by the fact that I don't know what song they finished the live set with, 'cause it totally killed the crowd of like 12 people at Brownies...

OMG. That's one of the dEUS related bands. Well, related to other Belgian bands like Evil Superstars (probably one of my fave live bands ever), Dead Man Ray, Metal Molly,... Shit I feel exceptionally old now. lol

http://youtu.be/RmQBij7ZeWk

"Little clouds of sperms..."

God I loved the Evil Superstars.

rRope is getting a complete collection release (3LP) possibly by this spring. Via Deathbomb Arc.

Which I'm finally getting around to listening to. It's great.

space streakings' 7-toku was good but hatsu-koi is their ne plus ultra. the albini engineering job did not do them justice on the former, and the latter has all the quality riffs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtbF2iTA7go

just noticed that some (all?) of the edsel albums are on spotify. i could have sworn i searched for "techniques of speed hypnosis" in the past year and couldn't find it so maybe recently added.

Any excuse to post some Superconductor

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DZxYoO4d1Q

I love Edsel! Here's the likely reason you recently found it on Spotify?

http://www.comedyminusone.com/023.php

http://www.comedyminusone.com/017.php

xpost

oh cool. i only really know that one album but it's a good one. comedy minus one doing the lord's work these days.

Oh, you have to check out the other one. This track is great:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rXN1OYGpV6I

And yes Comedy Minus One is killing it. Jon, the guy running it, seems very nice given the email conversation I had with him.

I had a sudden need to see whether anyone had ever mentioned Moped on ILM.

Bless electricsound of jim for doing so. In this thread. In two different years.

insides

I was thinking about Tunic today, they did a mediocre cover version of A-ha's Manhatten Skyline on the NME C96 CD, then released two singles I really liked, also apparently two LPs which I haven't heard, however there seems to be nothing about them on the internet aside from discogs and one very old site, and amazingly none of their music on youtube as far as I can tell.

Is it wrong for me to hype my own band on here?

https://open.spotify.com/album/1ttc7KoPS9ittZffhiDSBe?si=qEOyb9J4QcWasha0yQRD9g

i've heard that several times on ILX. the phrase was familiar to me when sebadoh released the "gimme indie rock!" parody/diss single in '91, but maybe it was more common in some areas/scenes than others?

― Fozzy Osbourne (contenderizer), Thursday, March 15, 2012 4:26 PM (six years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^ specifically bashing sonic youth, pussy galore and dinosaur jr. as purveyors of played-out, cash-grabbing "indie rock"

― Fozzy Osbourne (contenderizer), Thursday, March 15, 2012 4:27 PM (six years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

That song was celebrating those bands, dood

Lol there was a 90s band called the 1985?

Anyways the answer is disco motherfucking inferno

Anyways the answer is disco motherfucking inferno

so yesterday I am sorting stuff out in my digital archive and I chance upon a zip file of the 5eps that I got at the time of the reissues that I thought I had lost.
I extract the zip, and then wait for sonos to index overnight.
turns out that I now get the whole ILM vs DI thing.
bottom line : are they still overlooked given the reissue campaign ?

Is it wrong for me to hype my own band on here?

(I like it, btw!)

Cathal Coughlan's Fatima Mansions were fantastic. Brilliant live act, too.

Any love for Small Factory?
https://youtu.be/CoJekie1Br4

I'll cosign kinski's 2003 vote for Marion.

Any love for Small Factory?

Yes! I Do Not Love You was perhaps my first online purchas based entirely on online recommendations, ca.1995, which felt risky at the time. One of the better LPs of its genre, I came to conclude.

Put on Revelater by Jennyanykind as I was moving my CDs last night. Really unique for it’s day and age, though the piano sound would make a Spoon fan intrigued

Surprised I never mentioned the Judybats in this thread, so, the Judybats.

The 360s.

Pale Saints!

I’m certain I’ve said as much in this very thread but my under appreciated 90s are Fuck and Jf*E

Flop are totally overlooked. They released some great powerpop tunes but got lost in the churn of the Pacific Northwest 'grunge' hype.

Someone mentioned 3Ds. They're totally not overlooked here in NZ. They're considered an absolute classic of the '90s Flying Nun roster, which to be fair is somewhat overlooked compared with the label's '80s output.

^^ Also seconding Fuck, who fucked their chances with a stupid name. I guess their lyrics were pretty stupid too though. Some nice songs though.

Long Fin Killie
Bows

Long Fin Killie were great, but I don’t know how much more “looked” they could have been… they were so unique and creative, but definitely not for even mainstream “indie” taste (in the US, anyway)

Jf*E were hot sh1t for a minute, at least in the “scene”… but yeah, they didn’t end up becoming the Strokes or anything

Subskin Cables
Sacred Miracle Cave
Hitting Birth

prob dozens more

Fuck and Flop are some of the more hilarious band names I have seen lately.

Fuck had the funniest busy-cartoon-landscape album cover.

Xpost: yeah I guess you’re right.

The followup project “Bows” didn’t get much attention, probably because it was too late in the game for trip-hop despite them doing a very unique take on it.

I still have my old Virgin Brief History of Ambient CD compilations, and I was surprised to find out that Towering Inferno did so little. One album, Kaddish, a track on Ambient IV, and that was about it. I have the impression that the recording budget was huge and the album lost a tonne of money. One-half of the band died in 2005.

I remember it was a big thing in the early post-rock scene. It's a bit like Scott Walker's later stuff and it's sad they never worked together. I can't think of much to say about them but they existed.

My first thought was The Books, but I'm not sure they qualify either as a 90s band or as overlooked.

well their first record was in 2002 and every album felt like it was discussed endlessly on message boards like this one

but yeah one would think for such an innovative and supposedly influential band there'd be a ton of Books-inspired stuff left in their wake, I think the reality is what they did was so unique and labor-intensive that nobody could really duplicate it

similar story for AnCo's MPP I think

to all the groups I’ve overlooked before

Continuing through the CD pile and going through more Chapel Hill bands, I wouldn't have thought they were forgotten because they were on a premier indie of the time (Bloodshot) and Greil Marcus talked them up, but Trailer Bride only has a few hundred Spotify listeners.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wm1xtbKVO0w

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gibuGcpZF7A

Floraline. Band from Atlanta who put out one album on Minty Fresh in 1999, after which it seems no one in the band ever released anything else, so admittedly they're pretty easy to overlook. That one album is really lovely though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YoUHJV1pF2c

omg Trailer Bride!!! I remember them! Her weird singing was so refreshing to me.

Oh yeah, Trailer Bride! From that era of distinctive female-led Bloodshot bands, though being on Bloodshot then, rock was just part of it, often a sharp part of the attitude/boldness: also Moonshine Willy, The Meat Purveyors, Neko when she was covering Loretta Lynn (7"-only, originally, and non-obvious choices of material), as well as Scott Walker, writing like a combination of those, working w Kelly Hogan and the Mekons and others---but back to Trailer Bride: xgau also endorsed them, and I think that's how I got to them, like with most of the other early 90s acts on here, so, whatever the audience for indie etc. may have been aware of, reviews did count for more back then, as bendy indicates
Thanks to this reminder, I finally thought to check bandcamp, and here's the s/t, pre-Bloodshot, and some reviewers say not as good bandwise, but I haven't yet played it:

https://f4.bcbits.com/img/a3167590376_10.jpg

Trailer Bride’s 1996 self-titled record is a long-lost relic of the blooming Chapel Hill, North Carolina music scene of the ‘90s. Superchunk, Polvo, Archers of Loaf and other indie rock darlings were leading the town’s indie rock movement while Southern Culture on the Skids were pushing the alt-country genre forward. Then comes Trailer Bride who combined both of those worlds with a gothic, lo-fi sound that centers around Melissa Swingle’s atmospheric vocals and cryptic lyrics. Swingle started Trailer Bride following the demise of her band Pussy Teeth and would later go on to form the indie rock duo The Moaners with Laura King (Bat Fangs, Speed Stick), but the dark, southern sound that defines Trailer Bride’s debut record provides a mystifying listening experience a quarter-century later. No Depression said it best in their 1997 review: "They’re impossible to describe, but whatever you wanna call it, they sound really good.”
credits
released November 5, 2021
1996 Melissa Swingle under exclusive license to Yep Roc, LLC.

Swingle’s Moaners are good too, but I don’t know if any other post Trailer Bride projects put out records. These days she’s running the Chapel Hill bar in that video, The Cave.

bendy bringing the NC <3