Bands that people would view differently were it not for one release.

at times, i almost wish they hadn't released ned knows what.

Unwound minus Leaves Turn Inside You

The VSS minus Nervous Circuits

..Run DMC? Raising Hell?

*wonders if one should dare to post/pose this question, and logs off for safety.

Consequently, both not-very-indicative-of-their sound AND my least favorite of their songs.

Well, I know no other Starship songs than that one, "Sara" and "We Built This City", and I see no reason for ranking those.

Jefferson Airplane, on the other hand.. Now that was a great band...

For a start, Blur did not "jump on the bandwaggon of Britpop" - if anything, they INVENTED IT. Give credit where credit is due. Modern Life Is Rubbish really is the first Britpop album, recorded when Suede were still wearing tracksuits and Oasis were but a twinkle in Alan McGee's eye.

The Great Escape was really Blur popping the blister of the horrid nasty thing that Britpop had become, it was a horrible album in a lot of ways, but I think it was necessary for them to make it.

I wish Blur hadn't released Song 2. The rest of _Blur_ is a fine album, except for that song.

100% true. Album's like a car wreck, disgusting and compelling. Hate + negativity oozed out of it and killed the god-awful Cool Britannia aspect of Britpop stone dead. I like the record more and more, actually, as my distance from its context increases.

sorry for off-topic rambling. Back to the Beta Band!

You just mean the title, I trust. ;-)

The title is indeed horrid. And the double disc thing was a mistake -- never make a double album unless you just have too many great songs to fit onto one disc. They didn't.

But more than all of that, it was the behaviour of Corgan that brought the band's image down. So it's not really the album. Naming something "Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness" is a bad misstep, but having a lead singer who goes around behaving like he really, really means to be Mellon Collie all the time is a far worse one.

I don't think they would seem different at all. They released plenty of other horrid little piles of runny poo besides that one.

OK, what about the Beach Boys without Pet Sounds? Bingo!

A double album rarely works out in the CD age anyway. I mean, there are 80 minutes available on a single CD, which is usually too much to fill even just one CD with good material.

Er, hyperbole, surely. ;-)

having a lead singer who goes around behaving like he really, really means to be Mellon Collie all the time is a far worse one

If we're to kill off bands due to the emotional attitudes of their members, 95% of them would be slaughtered in a cull.

http://www.annafriel.net/pix/Dexys_Eileen.jpg

In America, Dexy's are a one-hit wonder.

Uhhh...wrong.

Devo is a one hit wonder too, and that makes me cry.

Only if you put any stock whatsoever in "hits." If anything, Devo's solitary hit ("Whipit," duh!) served only as a albatross `round their collective neck....damning them to 'novelty band' status. Had they only not "scored" a hit, their creative trajectory may not have plummeted the way it did.