Your favourite band's favourite band

What are some examples of this over the years? The Band? Little Feat? NRBQ? Some non-rootsy possible examples too please.

And what is a true 'your favourite's band favourite band'? Possible criteria (or not): low sales, music is hard to find, they get on especially well with musicians/jam with them, they get recommended to the 'favourite band' by other famous people, regularly brought up interviews but it isn't enough to inspire you to search them out, the singer/guitarist (if either exists) at some point makes a guest appearance on favourite band's album/live show.

I feel like the Beta Band might have counted for a few years, but maybe there were too many points against being a YFBFB (if we could establish those too), like big widespread concurrent critical acclaim, which may have been the source for idk Oasis or Radiohead being nudged their way to begin with for all I know.

Bowie's Screaming Blue Messiahs circlejerk in the mid-late 80s comes to mind actually.

Feel like Sensational Alex Harvey Band are a band I know exclusively from The Cure (and maybe occasionally other artists) namechecking them

There was a period when Peter Buck constantly raved about That Petrol Emotion, and I dutifully bought their records, and although they’re fun, they’re kind of nothing special, so I’ve always wondered if it was just Peter taking the piss.

at the time didn't REM and TPE share the same producer ?
hence the connection/love.

Pulp got me in to Scott Walker and Barry White of course, but the more obscure one is Artery, a Sheffield post-punk band who are much more obscure than they should be, 'Into The Garden' should be on all those compilations.

Bowie's Screaming Blue Messiahs circlejerk in the mid-late 80s comes to mind actually.

Andy Partridge did one of those one-page interview pieces in Mojo about the first Judee Sill record in maybe the very late 90s, which was the first time I'd ever heard of her.

Back then I could only find an expensive import copy of Heart Food in Tower, which I dutifully bought and loved.

Speaking of R.E.M., they and the B-52s are I think the main reasons anyone outside of Athens ever heard Pylon.

not sure if The Band would really apply here. afaik first two records were huge right away, widely loved by critics and audiences alike?

Scott Walker is an interesting one actually as the Julian Cope curated comp around 1980 did seem to have a decent impact - at that point it was basically a decade since he'd released anything people gave a shit about, and then Climate of Hunter comes a few years after

Julian Cope definitely kick-started renewed interest in Scott Walker. Also got to give him credit for getting a lot of people into various Krautrock acts.

Before that, Bowie got people into the Velvet Underground, the Stooges, Krautrock (again) and probably lots of other stuff I can't remember right now.

Yeah I feel like the Velvets kept getting "rediscovered" until the reissues (and VU) really solidified their place in the pantheon.

I first heard of Big Star in the late '80s when they were being namechecked by practically every jangle-pop act that was interviewed by NME, e.g. Teenage Fanclub. While I never much cared for TF or their C86 peers, I am grateful to them for alerting me to Chilton & co.

I bought Young Marble Giants' Colossal Youth only because Laetitia Sadier listed it as her favorite album in the Spin Alternative Record Guide.

Kurt Cobain's promotion of the Raincoats comes to mind

REM is the first band to come to mind since I learned about a lot of bands (and vacabulary!) from them. Also I became interested in Flying Nun/The Clean bc Pavement were into them. Different times!

If we're applying the criterion in the opening post of "regularly brought up interviews, but it isn't enough to inspire you to search them out", then I'd suggest Van der Graaf Generator and Peter Hammill's solo work.

I remember John Lydon, Mark E. Smith, Phil Oakey and Julian Cope all raving about them back in the day, but the few tracks that I'd ever heard by VdGG & Hammill never inspired me to listen to a full album. Still haven't, I ashamed to say.

kurt also is the only reason anyone’s ever heard of scratch acid, and basically gave the vaselines a financial lifeline with two covers before bringing them onstage at reading (and then did yet another cover for unplugged)

Josh Homme and at least Raw Power by Iggy and the Stooges. I thought I was hearing some of the earlier band in Kyuss. I finally looked up what influences he personally admitted to and found out that was about the 4th lp he ever bought and still a fav at whatever time he was being interviewed. So finding it odd that a stoner orthodoxy have tried to disown the band.
He also cited My War era Black Flag. & Off The Bone by The Cramps was also an early purchase. Apparently the band bonded over The Misfits and also cited UK punk like GBH and The Subhumans too.

I'd like a full breakdown of The Gun Club. JLP was covering Reggae before he got into the Blues. Was introduced to jazz by Phast Phreddie. Had picked up ion garage in the mid 70s and ran The Blondie Fan Club while Brian Tristan ran The Ramones one.

I got turned onto delta blues by interest in the genre from various bands in the mid 80s. & various other roots musics from some of the same bands and reading about Bob Dylan's influences. Turned onto earlier Post-punk type sounds from comparisons in the music press to bands I was getting into mid 80s

& loads of turn of the 70s hard stoner rock from interest from bands over the next couple of decades.Still picking up on that.

Definitely John Lydon for Can. And reggae/dub.

Julian Cope for that hard stoner rock stuff too. & various writers contributing to his website.

Non-rootsy example meeting a lot of the given criteria: Suicide

Madoona had a thing for pleasant but rarely remarked upon London trip hop band Mandalay, such that the lead of their Wikipedia article says they were known as "Madonna's favourite band" (and she had one of their songs put in The Next Big Thing soundtrack).

You probably didn’t mean it that way but your sentence implies that Bowie benefited from the Screaming Blue Messiahs’ endorsement.

Yeah should have said, well, endorsement.

not sure if The Band would really apply here. afaik first two records were huge right away, widely loved by critics and audiences alike?

This could be exactly why they don't count, if so, though in my head the chronology is slightly more 1. other musicians love them/talk them up 2. wider acclaim follows. Could be wrong ofc.

Another potential way the Band and several others in this thread might not count is if we discount artists who have never been revived per se. Ones that stand on their own enough without the nice words about them from such and such artist entering the picture fairly quickly, when perhaps that was not so true at another point in time (like Nick Drake maybe).

Kurt's taste and the effect it had - that he made it have, sometimes (Unplugged's the obvious example) - became a cottage industry in itself. I wonder how many indie/punk records were reissued off the back of it. UK equivalent if any.. maybe the Manics? Not sure really. But if the by-then-defunct Big Flame were ever mentioned in print in the early 90s I'm guessing there's a high chance it'd be because of them.

McCarthy too re Manics

Madonna* (Pls forgive typos my keyb is being slow)

Madoona-Scottish Madonna

The Band were hugely successful upon release of their debut album and "The Weight".

it is possible to trace things back to the Band at a later point. Fairport Convention basing the idea of Liege & Lief on trying to do a British version of what the Band were doing. Probably a few 80s bands thinking similarly. I think Los Lobos tried to apply what Liege & Lief did for England to their own culture.

Not sure the Band retained hip status permanently. Though they retained an audience who were familiar with them. They also picked up new listeners along the way.

gram parsons is maybe a better example than the band? burrito brothers were a cult concern, his byrds album relatively unhip, but he gained notoriety because keith and the stones loved him so much (also loved doing drugs with him)

(i know that’s another roots example. townes van zandt is yet another roots example)

Can are obviously pretty well known now, but I feel like they might've been one of these things in the 90s and 00s. I got into them because musicians I liked kept bringing them up, luckily for me it was right as their albums were starting to get reissued. idk if this is true or not but they seem like a bigger deal now than they might've been during their heyday. Neu! I think had a similar thing going on before their albums got reissued in 2001.

Roots examples abound! That mix of essential mateyness and itsaboutthemusicman insider knowledge that similar musicians have and others maybe not.

Also: Billy Preston and Roy Harper (latter possibly or not cancelled out today by Stormcock now being in that upper echelon of cult).

Los Lobos to me feel like a classic 'critic's favourite band' i.e. all those Pazz & Jop high charters, but obviously that's a different matter altogether (though I'm sure there's a good few overlapping examples)

Nick Drake was mostly someone who got namechecked before his stuff was re-issued (in the US at least)

regularly brought up interviews but it isn't enough to inspire you to search them out

feel like this is a key criteria here.

I feel like the early beginnings of box-set/reissue culture dovetailing with the likes of Q magazine helped, even with very well-known acts. The apparent success of the Biograph box, for instance, put Dylan back into people's minds in the UK at least.

Suicide is a really great one, always wonder how that landed with Bruce's fans when he'd be name checking them in his imperial phase. I seem to recall the CD showing up in used bins pretty regularly.

Of Cobain's least likely to succeed, I think Flipper was the longest shot.

Metallica pushed Glen Danzig's various projects hard for years, wearing Misfits and Samhain shirts onstage, and James Hetfield did uncredited background vocals on the first Danzig album.

Misfits may be the most successful recipients of this phenomenon. Budgie looks on longingly from afar.

Another Kurt Cobain favorite: Shonen Knife.

Get To Know Sparks, Your Favorite Band's Favorite Band
August 6, 20215:11 AM ET
Heard on Morning Edition

re: Nirvana:

I remember the exact moment Meat Puppets II went from a dollar bin regular to getting a proper price hike.

The Melvins benefited from more popular grunge bands name checking them.

With both the Melvins and Pylon you had the "scene" effect, where a few local bands blow up and then try to bring attention to the bands they came up behind.

there's very little documentation of it outside of anecdotal reminiscing ―and that from folks who are no longer around to validate it anymore― but john gilmore could have counted coltrane among his most astute listeners.

i saw The Feelies open up for R.E.M. and later also Lou Reed and you know it was because of the love that band and that sourpuss had for them. since at the time they could have had anyone open for them. and i'm sure their labels would have preferred some same-label action.

this is true of Looby and Sebadoh as well. being a PEACH of a guy for having a band like Dog Faced Hermans open for them at the height of their indie fame. you know no Sebadoh fan knew about DFH. and okay they would have Bunnybrains open at the same height of fame. i love when bands do that. and in the case of DFH having a WAY more amazing live band open for you? that is gutsy. and cool.
look for those kind of openers. on tiny labels. opening for way bigger bands. its the band's doing unless its just some local act that the venue/booker got so that there was an opening act.

I think a lot of the names being mentioned don’t quite fit the criteria of often mentioned but seldom actually heard, so I’ll offer one up - Biff Rose. A name familiar to anyone who knows a bit about David Bowie’s Hunky Dory but hardly anyone listens to him. I’ve only heard his first record but it’s great quirky stuff.

Thanks HS, yeah I guess the main thing in my mind that makes a YFBFB is them being so and so's pet fav band or, perhaps more importantly, a fav band of many big name musicians, but they've never really been canonised otherwise. NRBQ really feel like the model for what I'm after.

Hanoi Rocks, for glam metal bands

Manuel Gottsching, Can, Brian Eno, Kraftwerk, for all my favorite techno artists I discovered in the early nineties

"so I’ll offer one up - Biff Rose"

probably better known now for going cuckoo on facebook with all the racism and homophobia. but definitely not someone that people listen to now. i never cared for his records. they are way corny. they were forgotten pretty much as soon as they went out of print. but then i never really listened to Fanny or Anthony Newley either and Bowie loved them too. and i'm guessing 93.99% of all bowie fans have never listened to them either. (though i do love archival live Fanny stuff...)

Hearing Anthony Newley for the first time (not counting Wonka when I didn't know about him) was a total shocker. Like "ohhhh, that's where he got it from".

However intentional or not, the Newley gene had a bit of life in the punk/post-punk eras, through Vivien Goldman (Laundrette), Madness (Suggs in general, but also Driving in My Car sounds like That Noise), new wave ZZ Top (Manic Mechanic sounds a bit less like That Noise, which generally evokes what is known as 'zolo') and Ian Dury passim (seek Newley's Delia Derbyshire collab Moogie Bloogies, basically arch ambient pop in 1966, and especially his pronunciations on the chorus).

regularly brought up interviews but it isn't enough to inspire you to search them out

This part brings to mind Brian Wilson and his multiple-decades-long repping for The Four Freshmen. I don't know if this ever made any difference to the Four Freshmen's career. It would seem there's a cultural gap between them and the Beach Boys/BB fans even though the chronological gap is relatively small and the Four Freshman continued to perform into the 2000s.

John Lennon famously declared Harry Nilsson as his favorite "band" in the late-60's, which probably supercharged an already-ascending career. Lennon also talked up Dr. John in the early 70's quite a bit.

There’s also the whole thing with Rock bands name checking Blues artists.

Daniel Johnston was someone I knew about because other artists covered him and talked about him in interviews

I think a lot of the names being mentioned don’t quite fit the criteria of often mentioned but seldom actually heard

this kinda thing, like all efforts to track down obscure art, is pretty different nowadays in the internet era. it's pretty hard to compare artists promoting cool under the radar music before and after fans got the ability to access that music easily and instantaneously. the sad irony of course is that it doesn't do much to benefit the obscure artists

Yeah, like the Nurse With Wound list was an entirely different thing before file sharing and streaming.

Feel like every other alt rock/grunge band from the 90s talked up The Frogs a bunch.

Didn’t Nirvana (not sure if it was Kurt) rate the Boredoms?

I know Robert Smith has often said he would like to do music like Mogwai. And if I can extend the chain, I met Barry Burns one time years ago and he complimented my CAN t-shirt, saying "y'know, I think CAN might be ma favourite band of all time" which was off-the-scale for me, who chooses gig shirts based on what I think the band would appreciate.

can’t believe Silver Apples hasn’t been brought up yet

Eminem has mentioned Lakim Shabazz and Pharoah Monche is some songs

Didn’t Nirvana (not sure if it was Kurt) rate the Boredoms?

Yep and took them on the road. They opened on the In Utero tour stop I saw, along with Meat Puppets. Pretty good bill!

pere ubu
os mutantes
honor role

Boredoms came to me through Bob Mould, iirc they toured with him.

Aimee Mann led me to Scott Miller (Game Theory, Loud Family). Anyone who recognizes my username knows that is a good thing.

Scott Miller has major 'your favourite songwriter's favourite songwriter' energy yeah

I think bonus points are required if the band is a contemporary rather than some act locked in the past, i.e. the groups know each other or have at least met. The Frogs are a real great shout.

Aimee brought Scott on her '96 tour as an opener, and the two performed his song "Inverness" together during the encore.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ff9TALU9jcw

aww lovely <3

Rush really made a big push for Max Webster back in the day, and frequently used them as an opening act (which was my introduction to them.) Never could quite get them over the hump, in the US at least.

Toronto Tontos best song ever

"Battle Scar" was my jam, the heavier-than-heavy one with Geddy guesting on vocals.

Other bands Cobain repped for: Wipers, Marine Girls, Half Japanese, Kleenex, Fang

Kurt's favourite bands >> Nirvana >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> other contemporary grunge bands >>>> 21st century bands influenced by Nirvana

This Heat
Pere Ubu
Outsiders
Nation of Ulysses
Mars
The Trojans
The Black Dice
Todd Terry
the Germs
Section 25
Althea and Donna
Sexual Harrassment
a-ha
Pere Ubu
Dorothy Ashby
PIL
the Fania All-Stars
the Bar-Kays
the Human League
the Normal
Lou Reed
Scott Walker
Monks
Niagara
Joy Division
Lower 48
the Association
Sun Ra
Scientists
Royal Trux
10cc
Eric B. and Rakim
Index
Basic Channel
Soulsonic Force ("just hit me"!)
Juan Atkins
David Axelrod
Electric Prunes
Gil! Scott! Heron!
the Slits
Faust
Mantronix
Pharaoh Sanders
the Fire Engines
the Swans
the Soft Cell
the Sonics
the Sonics
the Sonics
the Sonics

Kim Gordon rocked some fantastic t-shirts in her time.
Mudhoney rocked Scientists ones.
J Mascis wore Cactus ones during reunion

Kim Gordon rocked some fantastic t-shirts in her time

EAT ME

(later: "EAT M")

Cluster is a band that seems far more popular and beloved among my musician friends/acquaintances than the general listening public. I think there is something very quotidian about their music, the production is so lovely.

the REM vs TPE connection mentioned earlier reminded of TPEs entry into this chaos.
Steve Mack was very vocal re his love for FOETUS/Wiseblood etc.
so much so that on the cover of Chemicrazy he can be seen wearing a FOETUS/Nail t-shirt.
of course the connection = Roli Mosimann (R.I.P) who produced their Babble album.
but still it was quite a relatively high level promo push for a major label band at the time i.e. before FOETUS himself decamped to Sony Records.

Roy Harper

John Prince was a bit of singer-writer's singer-writer. He said when he had a release party for his debut album Dylan was there and when Prine played his songs on acoustic guitar Dylan sang along and knew all the words, even though the album hadn't come out yet. Turns out someone sent Dylan an advance copy.

Judee Sill first came to my attention through mentions by Sonic Youth. I think Thurston Moore. Then the 2CD compilation Abracadabra came out not that long afterward. At least that's how I'm remembering it.

Sonics also good for covers of Bubblegum by Kim Cowley, some early Alice Cooper, Stooges, The Fall and a lot of avant stuff.
Also breaking bands to a wider public by tour support choice. Or did I say that earlier.

Kim wearing Die Kreuzen t-shirts from th4ir hard-core days among others.

Rowland S Howard & Lydia Lunch and then Eimsturzende Neubauten covering Lee Hazlewood. Blixa Bargeld telling me about Lee & Nancy as a great romance. Which is misinformation but I think what the publicity was depicting.

Neubauten do a version of Serge Gainsbourg's Je T'aime on their first l.p..
Mick Harvey went on to cover a lot of his songs.

Gun Club talking about a love for Dr John.
Though may have just been hearing Walk on Guilded Splinters turned me onto him.
The David Toop book Two Headed Doctor is really interesting.

Minutemen love for Blue Oyster Cult, CCR,Pop Group, Wire, The Urinals etc etc

I saw The Replacements early on when I read Peter Buck's essay in Musician Magazine when he said they were the best band in America.

speaking of NRBQ: The Shaggs. since they were instrumental in getting The Shaggs heard by people. that's like your favorite band's favorite band's favorite band.