Hipster bands that didn't live up to their promise or something like that...

There was a thread some time back about all the Pitchfork/NME blessed and can do no wrong types of bands of the early 2000s that have seemingly evaporated into a cultural mist. I've been searching all over for it and am coming up blank, or distracted, or blankly distracted each time. There was even a Spotify playlist, but it seems to have been greyed out.

Any clue as to what I mean by this thread?

this'n? the landfill that time forgot: crap uk bands of 00s/10s

Or this?

The Top 50 Greatest Landfill Indie Songs of All Time (2020)

those are for nme hype bands I'm less familiar with p4k at that time but they mostly went for different stuff didn't they? (not just in a US/UK way though that was part of it)

Pitchfork liked Radiohead far more than NME did for some reason.

Because the NME was all Britpop at the time?

And getting Radiohead to pose in front of a Union Jack was too difficult?

OK Computer got 10/10 in the NME at the time and was #2 in their year end poll, so idea that they were cool on them doesn’t hold up.

They weren't one of those bands that got feted from their debut single like hundreds of other bands did in the 90s. They never got anywhere near the amount of coverage that Suede or the Manics got, nevermind the britpop acts as Tom mentioned.

I recall a moment of p4k/NME convergence circa 07-08 around those indie dance bands with the absurdly long and/or annoyingly punctuated names and hopefully everybody now agrees that was a mistake (unlike the earlier NME landfill and later P4K GAPDY stuff both of which still have plenty of defenders)

Did they offend you, yeah?

Hopefully allowing Late Of The Pier as the glorious exception, the shining jewel of nu-rave gone right

Blue Rondo A La Turk?
Joboxers?

who both featured palyers whmay have been better known elsewhere.

But I would think bands launched with massive hype as being the next big thing who just didn't happen or catch on.

Big Country?

Big Country were a hipster band? y'sure?

In 1983 they were

I was only 10, so cant judge on who or what was hip?. but I'd be amazed if Big Country were hip (and I like Big Country)

the p4k/nme convergence was franz ferdinand, bloc party, etc. not nu-rave

Like, they were popular at my high school I started in 1984, and my school (In Ayr) was full of the least hip schoolkids imaginable!

ok but now compare them to geir

Big Country were a hipster band? y'sure?

Maybe in Norway but nowhere else on planet Earth.

UNKLE

I think the Skids split into different factions and the hipster element may have been more Richard Jobson who went onto various arty pursuits.
I also think Big Country got a lot of hype when they were launched from what I remember. But I thought they went onto create a steady solid body of work that might seem a bit pedestrian or eanest from elsewhere. I thought they remained a pretty popular band throughout their existence and Stuart Adamson was respected until he died. Could be wrong about the popularity but I did think they did at least semi live up to any initial hype. I enjoyed the bagpipe guitars when I was first hearing them but never got really into them or anything. But would think them creating a solid body of work went against the OP's initial point wouldn't it. Thought this was about massive hype then nothing after the bubble burst.

I recall a moment of p4k/NME convergence circa 07-08 around those indie dance bands with the absurdly long and/or annoyingly punctuated names and hopefully everybody now agrees that was a mistake (unlike the earlier NME landfill and later P4K GAPDY stuff both of which still have plenty of defenders)

I tried to find the list you're talking about...I saw it (might not have been on Pitchfork, maybe Buzzfeed or something else?), it was within the last month or so, and I def remember people talking about it on twitter. But now I can't find any evidence of it and it's making me feel insane.

my older sister's then boyfriend was quite the hipster and was all over big country, but only fairly briefly. as soon as the crossing blew up he was well out of there.

that first album was pushed pretty hard here in the u.s. - i went and bought it after reading about it in hipster newspaper The Village Voice - by critics and magazines but then MTV did the rest and nobody needed reviews anymore. it was just a big debut album AS SEEN ON MTV after that.

maybe hipsters were listening to Big Country ironically in the early 00s.

getting big country haircuts. wearing scottish clothes...

Getting their eyebrows done like Stuart Adamson.

Big Country were the first band I ever saw live, supporting The Jam on their farewell tour. The audience was full of modsters not hipsters.

after big country, the fastest i ever ended a love affair with a hip new artist was probably howard jones. "new song" hooked me in 1983 and i got unhooked after trying really hard to love human's lib in 1984. and then he put out 5 million more singles and albums and i have never heard a note of them. other than those later hits on the radio.

Howard Jones was hip? The US is weird.

I haven't seen any discussion of Clinic in quite some time.

is it too hard to think of howard jones being in any way "hip" even in 1983? he felt new. his pants looked fresh. you could do this look in 2023. totally.

https://i.discogs.com/lkuf5xZtRYHbfUja0FgoYtDFpxsGLUpZeZk7v4xO0t0/rs:fit/g:sm/q:90/h:600/w:600/czM6Ly9kaXNjb2dz/LWRhdGFiYXNlLWlt/YWdlcy9SLTk3MTQy/LTEyMjUyOTU1MDgu/anBlZw.jpeg

i always think of hip bands/artists as kinda coming out of nowhere. all of a sudden they are just out there blowing minds with their 1983 sweaters.

He had an onstage mime artist, this has never been and will never be "hip" however you choose to define the term

I suppose he might have seemed hip compared to Jimmy Buffet (RIP).

He was always obviously a progger who'd had a rapid 80s makeover

I did have a friend get mad at me in junior high for saying Howard Jones was lame.

i forgot about his pet mime! that mime was better than the happy mondays drug monkey.

Style Council tried really, really hard to be hip.

were they hip in england? or did people laugh at their suits?

i would probably listen to My Ever Changing Moods if it wasn't for that rap song. the rest is decent. tracey thorn and all that. tracey thorn track probably the best thing on it!

They were pretty hip.

Genuinely laughed out loud at the idea of Big Country being hip.

i bailed with the shout to the top single. that was enough for me. i had been a child jam fan but i knew my limits.

half of british men over 50 think weller is the hippest man who ever lived xps

xxxp The concept to me always seemed to be Weller just trying on new clothes.

tracey thorn track probably the best thing on it!

OTM

I have no recollection of Nasty Rox Inc.

TS: synth-pop diddlers vs fake-funk frauds

Sugar Bullet were the next Massive Attack, per the British weeklies of the time. The first record bombed, and they tried to regroup as the even-hipper Suga Bullit.

I don't believe I'd ever heard of Nasty Rox Inc before, I don't think I missed much.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDI0wxl6DSQ

NRI : zep guitar samples + go-go beats vs dj cuts by cj mckintosh.

so, no, not in the same ball park as SSS

loved their CA$H album at the time.
if only i had bought the cd edition when i saw it in Our Price/Leeds.
didn't bother as i already had the cassette version, and i was a broke student.
whereas now the cd edition is stuff of ZTT collectors legend.

I’d never seen the video before. It’s a bonfire of every UK style mag hipster signifier from 1986-87, but released in 1988 just before the tide turned.

Sugar Bullet are a good example. Virgin Records back then seemed to love nothing more than throwing big sums of money at Edinburgh bands they thought had massive potential. See also Win and Hey! Elastica.

Some of Win were in Fire Engines IIRC? I liked “You Got The Power”.

Never heard of Sugar Bullet but Win were fine and I think Hey! Elastica had at least one good track?

Virgin Records back then seemed to love nothing more than throwing big sums of money at Edinburgh bands they thought had massive potential.

not just Edinburgh bands.
see GBOA, TPE, Win, and of course Age of Chance.

There was a time when Virgin were throwing money all over the place at stuff that was never going to sell.

The Sugar Bullet album is really nice

even the one-off album by Dr Calculus was a Virgin funded release (via their 10 imprint i seem to remember).
and no-one but me bought that.

Ahhh the good old Virgin of Age of Chance, Gaye Bykers and Calculus. A decade later it would be R.O.C. wouldn't it

Also, Paris Angels in the early 90s, who were kicked out when EMI bought Virgin.

On a similar note to Paris Angels are, I suppose, The Hollow Men. They got a 5 from Select although they regularly gave out full marks in those days.

Critic Kurt Loder of Rolling Stone gave the album a glowing review, writing:

Here's a big-noise guitar band from Britain that blows the knobs off all the synth-pop diddlers and fake-funk frauds who are cluttering up the charts these days. Big Country mops up the fops with an air-raid guitar sound that's unlike anything else around, anywhere ... Like the Irish band U2 (with whom they share young, guitar-wise producer Steve Lillywhite), Big Country has no use for synthesizers, and their extraordinary twin-guitar sound should make The Crossing a must-own item for rock die-hards

― Beyond Goo and Evol (President Keyes),

This Loder review is ground zero for the U.S. backlash against New Pop and an embrace of the Reaganism they'd abhor politically but embrace musically.

Also when I think of big forgotten NME names from the early 90s my mind comes to Apache Indian pretty quickly. There's a disconnect there as he was seen as (indie) cool then - and, quite apart from that, his work is the subject of quite a lot of academia - but to anyone else in Britain (at least outside Asian communities) he is now known only for Boom-Shak-a-Lak which might as well have been Shaggy.

the main man from The Hollow Men used to work in the Crash Records in Leeds and sold me the first AOC 12" i ever bought (DJ Chakk remix of KISS).
He then went on and formed Black Star Liner, a band i think i would probably enjoy a LOT more than the Hollow Men now.
i once saw the Hollow Men support Jesus Jones, and they were very much part of the baggy thing ..

Absolutely zero memory of Sugar Bullet; meanwhile, I see that the second Win album was called Freaky Trigger, well well well.

(cont from Apache Indian) I guess in my mind it ties to how Arrested Development and the Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy - both explicitly 'progressive' in different ways - were two of the most major hip hop draws for rock critics at the time and are now treated as somewhat naff aberrations.

xp Yes that's how I got into Win originally. OOH another 'failed' act signed to Virgin or rather their subsidiary Siren - It's Immaterial. They had the one hit but the label kept them on for the hugely unsuccessful (but very very good) second album Song. Probably not very hip though, at the time.

I had a former member of Age Of Chance on my dance floor a couple of weeks ago; he runs a retro vintage store near here, and runs it very well.

Never heard of Sugar Bullet

it felt like quite a shock at the time when their single world peace bombed. i still quite like it even if it is just about as 1990 as it is possible to be.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljffYD0VOMo

i had a huge crush on the singer.

Big Country were the first band I ever saw live, supporting The Jam on their farewell tour. The audience was full of modsters not hipsters.

― Ward Fowler, Wednesday, September 6, 2023 3:06 PM (seven hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Ah, I was at (one of) that gig. Big Country were getting hyped up as a new band, but not in a "hip" way

that tough guy thing goes way back to old hard rock records with the NO SYNTHS proclamation on the back cover.

― scott seward

weren't iron maiden _still doing that_ when the first big country record came out?

the only time i've ever heard of win is when a friend of mine linked me to their version of "the slider".

kurt loder, in 1983, was also the only person to review _the final cut_ positively. he gave it five stars! said it was their best since _some girls_.

There was a time when Virgin were throwing money all over the place at stuff that was never going to sell.

― mark e

are you saying "the henry cow legend" was _never going to sell_?

kurt loder, in 1983, was also the only person to review _the final cut_ positively. he gave it five stars!

He gets it

I had a former member of Age Of Chance on my dance floor a couple of weeks ago; he runs a retro vintage store near here, and runs it very well.

― mike t-diva,

ah ha.
i know whereabouts you live now.
i used to do my laundry in the leeds university laundry and steve often used to be there at the same time.
he was great company.

This thread reminds me of how Stump signed to Ensign/Chrysalis for A Fierce Pancake, who had no real idea what to do with them. A similar story to One Thousand Years of Trouble.

I see what you mean about the absolute 1990-ness of that Sugar Bullet video! The singer has a very early Madonna look to her.

kurt loder, in 1983, was also the only person to review _the final cut_ positively. he gave it five stars! said it was their best since _some girls_

Wait, huh?

I've heard Hackney Diamonds. It's the best Rolling Stones ...
The Times
https://www.thetimes.co.uk › article › rolling-stones-hack...
5 hours ago — Sweet Sounds is a highlight of an album that is unquestionably the Stones' best since 1978's Some Girls.

unquestionably

I tried to find the list you're talking about...I saw it (might not have been on Pitchfork, maybe Buzzfeed or something else?), it was within the last month or so, and I def remember people talking about it on twitter. But now I can't find any evidence of it and it's making me feel insane.

the noisey indie landfill list?

https://www.vice.com/en/article/bv8a8w/the-top-50-greatest-landfill-indie-songs-of-all-time

the thread was already linked by dog latin, though it doesn't quite fit with what geir was describing idk what else he'd be talking about

I remember a write up of an early Win gig where they did a freeform set that I think was largely improvised. Turned up in the front of an NMe or Sounds or something. I think it was a direction they didn't follow any further but sounded like something I wanted to hear at the time.
Think I'm thinking them but Brilliant a band Youth put together after leaving Killing Joke are also running through my head. Think both wound up far more pop/soul/dance oriented though.

I had never heard of Sugar Bullet until this thread. Listening to the single, I am not at all surprised it bombed. It's completely unremarkable, competent but utterly generic.

The singer's looks were clearly the best thing going for them, and they were clearly not enough.

Das Psych-oh Rangers

they pushed that stump album pretty hard in the u.s. almost as hard as microdisney and the screaming blue messiahs.

i only heard Win for the first time in this century! never heard of them before that.

The Davey Henderson trajectory is pretty impeccable:

Fire Engines > Win > The Nectarine #9

Screaming Blue Messiahs flamed out FAST. I saw them at a sold-out show at the Ritz in NYC in '88, and you would have sworn they were the next huge thing. Even Bowie was on board, but he's kind of the kiss of death for a lot of new artists (see also: Charles Douglas.)

Cody Chesnutt

The Davey Henderson trajectory is pretty impeccable:

Fire Engines > Win > The Nectarine #9

I love the Fire Engines, but the only Win I've heard I didn't like at all, and the few Nectarine #9 songs I've got (on compilations) are just OK

kurt loder, in 1983, was also the only person to review _the final cut_ positively. he gave it five stars! said it was their best since _some girls_

Wait, huh?

― Beyond Goo and Evol (President Keyes)

the bit about _some girls_ was a joke

Nerd alert re Sugar Bullet. i just remembered that the guy in the video with the hat and glasses who does a rap is Rab King from Edinburgh Post Punk legends The Scars.

Loved the Nectarine No. 9 stuff on the revived Postcard. Would like to hear the Holes of Corpus Christi right now, but my CD is far away and it's not streaming, sadly.

even the one-off album by Dr Calculus was a Virgin funded release (via their 10 imprint i seem to remember).
and no-one but me bought that.

Dr Calculus was Stehen Duffy, no? I bought it but never really took to it.

*Stephen Duffy*

Dr Calculus was Stephen Duffy, no? I bought it but never really took to it.

yup with bloke from pigbag.
it's of of its time with an excess of fairlight fun and samples.

Not a hipster band but definitely related to the chat here re:late 80s bands signed up to majors who did nothing:

Crazy House. Who I only know about because they're one of the only bands to ever hail from my hometown. They did two indie apparently minimal-wave type albums I've never been able to find to listen to and then signed to Chrysalis for a slick synth/sohpisti-pop type record with a lot of session help (Bill Nelson and Peter Hammill are among its number) and then they just disappeared. I know barely anything about them even now.

there are tracks on Youtube from their 1st 2 albums.

you could also find both of them if you seek deep in your soul

I downloaded They Dance Like This From As Far Off As The Crazy House by Crazy House thanks to this post and listening to it now, quite like it so far.