"They had great potential!"

alternate answer: i don't kno, killian, the one 'l' in yr name is an ultimate problem dat i can't face up 2, 2 da point wher yr threads r unanswerable. maybe i shd put a winkin smiley face after daT SENTENCE BUT fuck it. how r things anyway, in yr life, kil(l)ian, feel free to b inpersonal. (inpersonal?)

hm

hmm

This is a toughie, cuz bands that have already broken up I usually tend to see them as "great" or "not great". It's hard to hear the potential in something that I already am aware of how far it would go.

BANDS THAT COULD UP THEIR POTENTIAL:

I think Bright Eyes has a great album in them yet (Desparecidos already has theirs), once he learns how to trim the indulgence from the insight. Unless Conor Oberst starts having too many years that are all the same and runs out of new things to say.

I still say that the Red Hot Chili Peppers are an editor away from a great album. Ten tracks that are rarely allowed to break 3 and a half minutes.

If Justin Timberlake didn't try so hard to be Usher and hooked back up with BT I think he might have something all-the-way-fun. Neptunes can play as long as someone else is there to inspire JT to say something more than "may I put my dick in that?"

Audioslave needs to replace Chris Cornell with Rod Stewart and then play a couple Faces/Rod Stewart-Mercury albums for inspiration. I cannot stress that enough. If I had three wishes this would come right after world peace and financial security for me and mine.

REM and Radiohead need to be denied access to Michael Stipe.

Sonic Youth needs to let Lee sing everything, and nobody is allowed to "talk" in that band again.

Mark Robinson needs to take his gifts and just SELL OUT.

Rob Zombie needs to listen to some old Alice Cooper and think about how he can work some social politics into that disco-metal shit. Imagine if he sang about A Clockwork Orange in a way that couldn't be mistaking for a car song.

so, were was me... a-ha, instead of SFA's i was converted into a Gorky's Zygotic Mynci's far-away fan for a while - by a '97 chance encounter with their 'Barafundle'; that little shiny thingy pumped several zeppelin-fuls of elation, mirth and hot hope into me; making me muse, gleefully, "many a 'renowned' and 'classical' songwriter should turn pinkblueblack&yellow with envy hearing this"
(after which i went back and checked out 'Bwyd Time' - listened, shrugged, thought "okeh, they've grown in two years a lot")

and then - wot? the sad 'Gorky 5' - workmanlike & mediocre.
after which lots of my enthusi''' evaporated. perhaps too soon, dunno... yeh, they might still "have it", i s'pose
(('Rings Around' has reached track 6 ...and i've already heard quite a bit of Beach Boys and Beatles ...but where're SFA ...hm, '(A) Touch Sensitive' may be the best track so far...))

But surely that's the point. ;-)

Sonic Youth needs to let Lee sing everything, and nobody is allowed to "talk" in that band again.

haha you didn't have to amend that, anthony, i wish they wouldn't talk, EVER! (NB i like ye olde sonic youth)

And RATW deserves a better reception: yes, it evokes Beach Boys here, Beatles there, but it's full of well-crafted, well-performed songs. Best track is Run Christian Run, which suffers from a title that screams "throwaway novelty track" when in fact it's beautiful and substantial.

"Hey Joni", "Skip Tracer"= ehhh....ugghhh...gee....ok, maybe they should only let JIM sing.

Eric Dolphy (Coltrane learned more from him than anyone...Dolphy might have been able to push free jazz beyond mere 'energy music,' and thereby prevented the fusion disaster in the 70s)
Jimi Hendrix (I don't think he would have pulled a Santana and stagnated, and who knows what kind of crazy pedals would have been invented with his input)
The Screamers (Wrong place at the wrong time?)
Nick Drake (What would he have produced if he were able to musically exorcise his demons instead of be consumed by them?)
John Lennon (Another great song-writer who would have potentially evolved with the times instead of being stuck rehashing his past)

I'm sure there are more that none of us ever got a chance to hear about.

http://www.clashmagazine.com/flowered-up-return/

Levitation.

The first 2 eps and "squirrel" single showed a band that could really have gone in any number of fascinating directions, and Dave Francolini was an incredible drummer.

But they'd lost it by the first album, which was as vapid as the vapour in a vapour chamber.

Television

One immortal debut, an "eh" follow-up, then a dull comeback record 14 years later. They should have had a much better career.

i'm generally not a pink floyd fan, with the exception of "piper at the gates of dawn", so i'll go with syd barrett-era pink floyd. imagine if he hadn't gone nuts?

BADLY DRAWN BOY

Campag Velocet.

I mean nobody sayd of LBGP, "Imagine how great they would have become if they hadn't broken up!"

I do. I LOVED those three EPs. Perhaps the 3Ds (with Denise Roughan) provide us with a clue.

Bis. Social Dancing suggested a viable route beyond the youth-oriented sloganeering, but the next couple of CDs were all too dull - or perhaps outstripped their abilities at the time, who knows.

I agree with Nick Drake, although I wonder if we'd have actually heard much from him afterwards. Perhaps he would have made a Roky-style comeback after antidepressants became more effective and less narcotic. I don't know. It's hard to imagine a 60-year-old Nick Drake.

Bishop Allen.

House of Love should have been U2 big (and the world would have been a better place for it).

Super Furry Animals have fulfilled all of their artistic potential, only people haven't noticed.