Brag About Some Band You Cared About Way Before Everyone Else

Also, back in '94 I was VERY into this amazing band called Laito Lychee that only ever played in public like six times (and only ever recorded about 48 seconds' worth of their repertoire)--"they're going to go places," I thought. Then they broke up, and the guitarist and one of the singers became Cibo Matto.

Elliott Smith played a show with The Softies at Rice U. in Houston back in ... 1995? Anyway, the show was in a room next to a room where a kicker dance was going on, so Elliott moved to an outside patio and 40 or so of us sat around and listened to him give an unamplified performance. Astoundingly intimate.

I remember getting the Superchunk/Tsunami/Unrest/Rodan 7" on Simple Machines, and being "eh" about the first three bands, then saying "Holy shit!" when Rodan came on. I told everyone I knew how good they were, looked for their 7"s, and so on.

And I don't know if this quite qualifies, but I got a demo tape of Edith Frost's stuff long before she was signed to Drag City. It's pretty great to hear those songs without the heavy-handed DC production techniques, and in fact it may be my favorite Edith Frost record.

And I've been a huge Dismemberment Plan booster since the "...Is Terrified" days, when I saw them open for Burning Airlines.

That's about it

also saw some band called oasis back in about 91. i thought they had the potential to release one great album and then just regurgitate the same sounds every album after that...

I saw the Contortions first show at Max's as a teenage runaway in late '77. Adele Bertei and James Chance were so nice, Pat Place was really stand-offish. I thought they were really going places--like over to CBGB or to a loft party downtown. Where else were they gonna go? Trude Heller's?

Actually, Jess, I was thinking this question would be a good way to figure out who people really liked -- i.e., liked so much that they'd be willing to brag not just about liking them, but about liking them first.

But people keep answering with bands they don't really like but are happy to have known about before they rose to prominence. Whereas I want to know who they were kicking and screaming and telling strangers about only to later watch the band live up to everything they thought the band could (whether the band gets popular or not), thus completely vindicating those earlier suspicions.

1) I got Galaxie 500's On Fire pretty close to the time it came out, and it was one of my favorite albums ever almost immediately. Lots of people were probably into them at that point, but I had no exposure to the world of indie rock, so they seemed very underground and unheard to me.

2) A friend of mine from Toronto went to high school with this guy named Efrim who had a band that she thought I might like. His band had just finished recording an album and pressed about 500 vinyl copies, complete with crushed pennies and all this junk inside. She played me a tape of it and it sounded interesting. Kranky reissued the first Godspeed album about a year and a half later.

The most famous-now person I saw 'back in the day' was David Gray! He supported the Auteurs on an Oxford date back in 1992 and I thought he was boring.

Hopefully this next para isn't as tangential as it seems: there's kind of an innate live-performance spin to this question, in that this seems to be the best way to 'catch' bands early. But all the live performances I've really really enjoyed in the last couple of years, except the Clientele, I've enjoyed because of the tension and fuck-ups and triumphs of the moment, not because I saw amazing potential which might be fulfilled but because of the potential being fulfilled right then and there. Which then in turn leads me to forget the band afterwards - I never want, for instance, to see the Gossip again though I hope they do very well.

I found said record misfiled under a couch in the green room to my campus radio station about 3.5 years ago.
I have probably the distinction of being at their smallest show. In 98 they played in Sackville, NB as they left Halifax's Pop Explosion festival. GYBE+Do Make Say Think+Mean Red Spiders+ The Peter Parkers means over 20 musicians/band members in the bar. It was awhile ago but I think the people playing in a band that night out numbered the paying customers. So while I may not get good bragging rights its still amusing.

I'm Shane's brother and I can assure you that he has been thoroughly beaten for ever suggesting that the St***es were in any way good. Congrats on discovering Low, Ive only discovered them of late, and Secret Name is never off my cd player. Better late than never.

* 1996: On my first trip to London, a mailing list friend told me I *had* to see a band called Belle & Sebastian at the Borderline. I'd never heard of them, but I figured what the heck - I wasn't doing anything that night, I'd go check them out. Literally a few weeks later, the buzz began...but even that night, I knew I'd never see them in a place that small ever again.

* 1988: saw the Blake Babies (pre-Earwig, with Evan Dando in the band) play my college student center in front of about 15 people.

* 1990: saw Pavement's first-ever show at the Court Tavern in New Brunswick, NJ, mostly on the strength of hearing "Box Elder" on the radio. Bought _Slay Tracks_ and _Demolition Plot_ for $2.00 apiece. (Why didn't I buy a dozen of each? If only I'd known.)

So began the ranting to our friends. I haven't seen GBV in probably 6 or 7 years, but I was a HUGE fan for awhile, and the older records are still some of my favorites ever, by anyone.

Jeff Buckley played in my local pub in Stevenage Old Town one Sunday lunchtime in early 1994, then played another gig a few hours later at the local youth club, 3rd on the bill to some dismal punka acts.

I guess?

Old ones:
Sneaker Pimps
Groove Armada
Rae & Christian

...almost the same thing had happened years earlier for the band Big Hat, who were wonderful, but never went anywhere.

I waited weeks and weeks for Jeff Buckley's Grace to be released after hearing its first singles.

I had all the pre-Gish singles for the Pumpkins -- but i'm not as proud of that now as i used to be.

I saw, then unknown, Pearl Jam open for the Pumpkins (who opened for the RH Chili Peppers)... didn't much care for them.

Saw him do an in-store at the East Village Tower in '94, bought the album a few months before that. I never got to see him at Sin-e when he was a regular performer there, but I know people who did, who bought the '93 live EP because of that.

Just trying to imagine them playing the same venue on the same night makes my brain hurt in the most amazing wonderful way.

Dude, I totally arranged the meeting between Robert Johnson and the devil. I have some bootlegs of the gigs before they met and boy did they stink

I liked him back when we was N. Ab3b3, pre-Pitch days.

Darni3ll3 was the first dude into the M0untain Go4ts too.

:(

(And it was aimed at stence, anyway.)

80's Matchbox B-Line Disaster as the support to Ikara Colt and The Parkinsons (though again, they already had buzz). Knew they'd be amazing in later times, but I never thought they'd ever hit the top 40 like how they ended up doing.

Anyway, the guy who cleaned out my cage is now the drummer for the
Ninjas Of The Obvious. I always knew that his band were going places--sure, there's nothing new about three albino crossdressers playing saxiphones while a nine-year-old skinhead recites William Gibson stories retold from the perspective of a turnip, but they do it just a little bit better than anyone else. My keepers let his band mo1est me every once in a while as part of his benefits package, and we have a cozy little gangb&ng every so often for old time's sake. (They ain't huge yet, but they're definitely a fair bit bigger than they used to be.)

*If you have to ask why I Googleproofed this story....

2 years later they kicked out the singer and changed their sound completely and, in my opinion, began sucking.

And if Good Charlotte go Led Zep instead of Grand Funk, I'll crow about that one for sure.

Some of us knew about Rodan long before that 7" came out. ; )

I used to love Hootie & the Blowfish, before they became this overplayed frat rock anthem band. It was even before their video would only air on late night MTV. I still think that if they wouldn't have been as overexposed, they would've resonated with more people. Still, however, it was when they were starting to get a little bit of national radio airplay, so I'm sure it's another one of those "back of the line" deals here as well.

OH! WAIT!

Someone in another thread mentioned Velocity Girl -- well, I remember that they were mentioned in some really crazy but cool music rag about five months after I'd started listening to them via our local college radio station. I think maybe 200 people outside of the state of Maryland had heard of them before I heard of them and all 200 probably worked in college radio or were college radio devotees. I remember feeling insanely happy when I listened to their music for the first time and thinking to myself that maybe I should ask for this for Christmas. In fact, what's been driving me up the wall ever since I got online was "What in the world was the name of that band that did those awesome, quick rock songs that were totally infectious that I got to hear on college radio?" So to whomever mentioned them before -- THANK YOU. Now that I can afford to buy my own music, maybe I'll buy some of their material.

Heh. So there.

People who think this thread is stupid are silly.

huh?

Hell, I saw Drew Daniels from Matmos's high-school punk band Cerebellum in 1988. They played with another band, Destry, that did a cover of "Jordan, Minnesota" with a 17 year-old Jeff Mueller (who went on to be in Rodan and June of 44) singing.

Yo Michaelangelo!

i'm sorry.

Remove the respectively and you have what will eventually happen to the Rolling Stones.

Bragging Time, both The Lollies and The New Pornographers on the same chart. Muhahaha, I R So Indie. Sadly I can't find the charts with Vancouver Special but here is the national results of the first comp to have New Pornographers.

I don' know if cared is the right word but I saw SUM 41 try to play and bounce on a trampoline in an instore at Sam The Record Man in Halifaxxx in 98. Thought they sucked then, still think they do.
Now I just sit here and listen to New Wave comps.

Back in 1994 I thought Mouse on Mars was a pretty cool trance/techno act. I didn't really think they'd become big though, nor could I have known how much they're style would change from their early stuff.

Also, around the same time I thought Mike Ink's (aka Wolfgang Voigt) house tunes were the shit! Again, though, I had no way of knowing he would become an icon of minimal electronic music 5 years later.

I saw the White Stripes open for Sleater-Kinney in 1999(?) and bought their debut from Jack White at the merch table.

i saw Battles in 2005, people didn't really start caring about them until after the album came out.

typing that sentence has made me feel old. Was that really 4 years ago?

In the early 80s I was once peeing into a urinal in the gents toilet at a gig for 4AD band 'Modern English' who were OK and there wasn't much else on in Dunfermline.

The bloke peeing next to me asked if I was going to check out the support band who were about to come on. I said I would and he said he was the guitarist and they'd just had their first EP and had a couple of copies in the dressing room, if we liked the band to come back and he'd give me a copy.

I was pretty non committal, mainly due to me not being all that chatty as I wee.

Anyway they were great, the guitarist was doing awsome swirly sonic cathedrals, and the singer seemed to be an pixie with glossolalia.

I went backstage (it was a tiny venue. actually backstage is a bit of an overstatement, it was a wee room at the side), anyway the guitarist was as amiable and chatty as before, smashing bloke, and he give me a copy of a record that is still, 25 plus years later, one of my favourites.

The wee pixie / angelic singer was in a bad mood, something to do with the venue and was cursing and swearing in a broad Scottish accent. She did show me her Sid Vicious tattoo though.

I saw the Cocteau Twins many more times, but that was the awesome one.

I want a thread for "bands that annoyed you way before everyone fell in love with them" because I'd have more answers.

I can claim to have disliked Soul Coughing, Nirvana, and Fountains of Wayne before anyone got excited about any of them.

i saw Battles in 2005, people didn't really start caring about them until after the album came out.

― languid samuel l. jackson (jim), Sunday, 17 May 2009 21:30 (1 hour ago) Permalink
typing that sentence has made me feel old. Was that really 4 years ago?

― languid samuel l. jackson (jim), Sunday, 17 May 2009 21:32 (1 hour ago) Permalink

To be fair, the EPs came out in 2004 and were on the radar, not to mention that you're talking about a band featuring the guitarist from Don Cab, the drummer from Helmet and Anthony Braxton's son.

yeah, they were on the radar, but i saw them play to 50 people in a pub, in 2007 I saw them play to something like 800 people in the same town.

Yeah, I remember seeing them play a pretty small crowd in maybe '05 or '06 at Maxwell's -- although that's the only kind of crowd there is at Maxwell's. I suppose without the benefit of hindsight it wasn't at all clear that anyone beyond mathrock fanboys still cared about John Stainer or Ian Williams at that point and maybe it wasn't entirely predictable that their album would blow up.

Has Maxwells had anybody good besides Yo La Tengo play there in the last five years? Seems like they've fallen on hard times. Either that or I've gotten too old.

Well, Battles.

I saw Decembrists there maybe 3-4 years ago -- don't particularly like them but they were fairly big by that time.

Some fairly big names in the upcoming shows too (Ted Leo, Old 97s, Feelies, Paper Chase, etc.)

pick any slightly indieish british combo from '98 to '06 and i probably own their first few singles

i missed out on the last copy rough trade had in stock of coldplay's 'safety' ep.. curse the lucky bastard that got it just before i did..

I had MBV's early jangle singles like "Sunny Sundae Smile" when they came out. But I'd assumed a lot of people were into them even back then?

Oh also, I was into Doug Anthony Allstars when they were just buskers in Canberra. But that will mean something to about 2 people.

Loved Tiesto when trance was still deeply underground & bought his first compilation. Also went a lot to local student club In Casa where Armin was resident.

the bad plus. i saw happy apple like eight years ago and was blown away, and when i was talking to the drummer he told me about this other trio he's in. then when i was in new york i found a copy of their fresh sound/new talent debut at a used cd place, then i was pretty happy about my new discovery. then they got signed to columbia and blew up.

I bought Coldplay's debut single and saw them live on a double-header tour thing at Northampton Roadmender when they were on BEFORE Terris.

i think i saw one of the Decemberist's first non-Portland shows (Spaceland in LA), maybe around '03? i didn' t make it to the end. so i guess that isn't really for this thread/

saw the shins play to like 12 people right around when OIW came out, but i'm pretty sure they were pulling bigger crowds elsewhere. Modest Mouse was playing an hour away, which was probably the indie-kid magnet that night

I was there in 1974 at the first Suicide practices in a loft in New York City.
I was working on the organ sounds with much patience.
I was there when Captain Beefheart started up his first band.
I told him, "Don't do it that way. You'll never make a dime."
I was there.
I was the first guy playing Daft Punk to the rock kids.
I played it at CBGB's.
Everybody thought I was crazy.

...and so on

No don't stop, those sound pretty interesting

i saw the shins on that same tour, or maybe it was the one before that. anyway, several months before OIW came out. they opened for modest mouse. nice set, outdoors, gorgeous autumn day. when i finally heard the record i wondered if it was the same band, sounded nothing like the show.

This would be a long list, but I guess a few that come instantly to mind:

Saw Nirvana with Dale Crover on drums in 1990. I'd listened to Bleach 100 times by that point.

Had Babes in Toyland's demo tape with Lori's phone # hand-written inside.

Saw Unwound play a basement party before they had a record (and when Brandt was still the drummer).

I saw Neurosis on the Pain of Mind and Word as Law tours (their first 2 albums).

Where do I stop?

lol @ "fairly big in hip-hop circles." no Nostradamus am I.

o yeah saw the black lips at a warehouse party a couple of years before let it bloom (i think the guy with the grill lived here for a hot minute). i don't remember being terribly bowled over, even tho i love those dudes now.

so umm once again, maybe not for this thread.

I 'knew' STS9 back when they had just put out their first album. Now I don't really listen to them at all. I played hackey sack with one of the dudes in the band when they did a gig in the corner of an outlet mall.

I used to go see Andrew WK back when he was playing at shitty coffeehouses in Ypsi, though I'm not sure that's a real claim to fame.

I'd talk about Nomo to anyone who would listen. I'm not sure if everyone (anyone) else cares about Tyvek, but I saw their first couple gigs and they were a lot of fun.

I've been into Spoon since the Soft Effects EP in 1997.

I saw Antony and the Johnsons supporting Current 93 in London in like 2000 and wrote the first review of their first album to be published in the UK.

cheap trick (1977) and sonik-youth (1981) - a case of bein' in the the right place just before the right time, pure happenstance or good luck or whatever you want to call it.

I'm not sure when Jay Reatard "blew up" exactly, but I've been a fan since the Lost Sounds days.

I saw the Arcade Fire open for the Unicorns in 2002 or so. Not many people were there...

Oh man. In high school I went with a then-girlfriend to see My Chemical Romance play to about 30 people in San Antonio. This was pre-first album and I wasn't and still am not a fan, but hey... immature guys in high school and their need to impress girls, right?

"I was into Jeff Buckley before he was dead" would suffice here.

― Amateurist (amateurist)

The implicit necrophiliac associations of that phrase disturb me but also seem perfectly appropriate.

― Ned Raggett (Ned)

The volume at which I just lol'ed cannot be overstated.

i was the first to post about studio and MGMT on ILX

Props for Studio but can't say the same for MGMT, who are better left unloved...

no one cares what u think. i dont like them either but who gives a shit
also my friend went to college w the mgmt bros