I Have Never Heard These Bands That Start With The Letter B

Black Randy & The Metrosquad
Black Randy was in DOA, no?

Broken Bones!
Punks. Mohicans

I think are Black Metal, but might be completely wrong.

They released an excellent overlooked EP called Music For Listening To... where the first half are pretty much demos for Penthouse And Pavement and Side 2 is like early Cabaret Voltaire, but more stark, and more awesome. "A Boy Named Billy" or the similarly named track is amazing!

Heaven 17 would soon after called the BEF their record label and start releasing records on it.

(Xpost)

Black Randy & The Metrosquad were amazing, really. Great, sort of Ubu-ish artcore.

Aha! That's right. I've always wanted to hear that stuff. I love Heaven 17. They were great on Solid Gold.

http://www.citypages.com/databank/21/998/article8380.asp

Bethnal were some cash-in type punkers from the late 70s, not black metal of any sort, but I know fuck all else abt them

Wait, that's right!!!! They had a violin player!!!!

Basement 5 do have a certain resemblance to first-album PiL.

"Basement 5 were I believe five black guys..."

The drummer, Richard Dudanski, definitely was not black.

http://www.starfarer.net/galleryt/bethnal.jpg

http://www.innercitysound.com.au/BoxOfFish.html

The Barracudas were a pretty crappy garage revival band on a really nerdy Swingin' Sixties A Go Go tip.

Boys did pop punk with emphasis on rock and roll. When they got tired of pop punk they became the Crybabies, who did Euros trying to imitate Johnny Thunders and the Georgia Satellites.

Black Randy founded Dangerhouse Records. Did the album "Pass the Dust, I Think I'm Bowie," which doesn't sound LA punk at all. It's rock, it's art, it's theatre, it's someone with good bizarre ideas and character hobbled by stumblebum recording. Can't believe you didn't see it in your vinyl collection somewhere.

they did, however, feature original bangles bassist annette zilinskas. can tex and the horseheads claim that?

Bone Orchard

jersey shore/new brunswick area garage-y alt rockers, late '80s or early '90s. they were ok, never really went anywhere. but drummer joe vincent went on to the devil dogs and then the prissteens (and then to arlene grocery, where i used to see him all the time, not sure if he's still working there).

I always thought these goobers were German! Anyhow, their album has versions of 'White Light, White Heat' and 'Search And Destroy' on it. Plus a charming ditty called 'I’m Singing To You With My Finger In Your Ass'.

http://www.pogopunx.de/lp/big_balls-v.gif

(that'll be an x-post then)

Barracudas - mildly silly / irritating US surf-inspired pop-punk. Their drummer was later in Lords Of The New Church

Basement 5 - a couple of great singles on Island the titles of which elude me right now, and a slighly disappointing album called In Dub

Bethnal - slightly off-the wall pre-punk / proto-punk / punk bandwagon jumpers (depending on your pov) band from (duh!) Bethnal in East London. Very Who influenced but also had distinctive electic violin.

Bijou - early French punk band

Blue Rondo (A La Turk) - absolutely fantastic large-ish (8 or 9 members?) manic jazz-influenced band (from High Wycombe IIRC) released 2 (?) albums and had a hit with the brilliant "Klactoveesedstein". A couple of them went on to form Matt Bianco.

Bone Orchard - definitely rings a bell but can't quite place it.

Boys - forgotten early British punk band, links to London SS, released 2 great albums and several great singles ("Sick On You", "First Time", "Brickfield Nights"), split up, reformed now based in Norway(?) (because one of them had visa problems???), released a further 2 meh albums. Had a humorous alter ego existence as The Yobs who released a number of irreverent Christmas records.

Bette Bright & The Illuminations - all I can remember is one single (o Stiff?) which was a cover of "My Boyfriend's Back"

British Electric Foundation - Marsh & Ware from Human League / Heaven 17. Released 1 instrumental album then 2 with guest vocalists.

Broken Bones - horrible metal side-project of Discharge (Drummer? bassist?) Bones.

Buzzards - there must be (or have been) two bands called The Buzzards: the ones I'm familiar with started off as The Leyton Buzzards, had a minor punk indie hit called "19 and Mad"; signed to a larger label (Chtysalis), got a bit poppier and a had a minor hit with the fantastic "Saturday Night Beneath The Plastic Palm Trees" (b/w the equally great "Through With You") blew it a bit with one called "No Dry Ice & Flying Pigs", dropped the "Leyton" when they they rush-released an album that basically consisted the Chrysalis singles, 1 or 2 John Peel sessions and a surprisingly faithful cover of "Can't Get Used To Losing You". Singer Geoffrey Deanne and bass player David Jaymes subsequently resurfaced in Modern Romance and had hits with "Everybody Salsa", "Ay Ay Ay Ay Moosey" and "Best Years Of Our Lives".

Will that do for now?

I believe the comp. Too Soon To Come was very briefly available on CD - but you're absolutely right, this is great music and really should be available.

here i was hoping this was a bijou philips tribute band. ah well..

Bob Azzam
Lisa B
Sandy B
Tairrie B
B-Movie
B-Tribe
Baby June
Baby O
Baby Roots
Babys
Back To The Planet
Backbeat Band
Badman
Bam Bam
Band Of Gold
Honey Bane
Bang
Bar Codes
Barnbrack
Barracudas
Bas Noir
Bass Boyz
Bass Bumpers
Bates

(And that's just Ba)

Black Randy's already been talked about, the Boys first couple of albums are great power pop-ish punk (don't know anything after the 2nd album) assuming you mean the UK punk band, that is. There was also a power pop Boys from the US who had a song on one of the Teenline comps that's really good.

And Broken Bones were indeed the side-project of someone out of Discharge, but they were a lot better than Discharge's metal stuff. Metallic hardcore, I suppose they were one of the "crossover" pioneers.

Don't know any of the other bands!

anywho: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Balls_and_the_Great_White_Idiot

I have never heard these "B" bands from Joel Whitburn's Top Pop Albums 1955-1996 book:

(At least I don't think I have. At least not much):

Babylon A.D.
The Bachelors
Back Street Crawler
Badger
Balaam & The Angel
Ballin' Jack
Bangor Flying Circus
Basic Black
Bass Boy
Bass Outlaws
Batdorf & Rodney
Baton Rouge
Beast
Beat Farmers
Bell & James
Marc Benno
Biddu Orchestra
Billy Satellite
Jussi Bjoerling
Stanley Black & His Orchestra
Blackhawk
Black Ivory
Black N Blue
Blodwyn Pig
Bloods & Crips
Blue Mercedes
Rudi Bohn & His Band
Born Jamericans
Bourgeois Tagg
Boy Howdy
Boy Meets Girl
Boys Club
The Brandos
The Brass Ring
The Braxtons
Breakwater
Breathe
British Lions
Brooklyn Bronx & Queens Band (B.B.&Q. Band)
Brotha Lynch Hung
Brother Cane
The Brothers Four
Odell Brown & The Organ-izers
Buckwheat
Bulldog
Burning Sensations
By All Means
D.L. Byron

Daft Punks "Robot Rock" was the start of Breakwaters "Release The Beast" looped over & over. Balaam & The Angel were subgoth bollocks, avoid at all costs!

Battered Wives were useless Toronto punks. I think they did a cover of "Great Balls of Fire" with lotsa gratuitous cusswords thrown in.

Rob Sheffield's RS review of Joe Perry's sons' band starts like this:

Aerosmith guitar god Joe Perry once told Rolling Stone he enjoyed turning his kids on to classic Sixties stoner rock like Moby Grape, Fleetwood Mac and Blodwyn Pig. "I don't know if we would be the same band without Blodwyn Pig," he said in 2001. "And nobody's fucking heard of Blodwyn Pig!"

D. L. Byron - that'd be David Byron from Uriah Heep, right?

(ummm, nope. sorry, forget I said that.)

Black 'n' Blue was mid-80s LA Hair metal. Couple of tracks hit MTV - "Hold on to 18," "School of Hard Knocks," "Nasty, Nasty," and "I'll Be There For You." The singer, Jamie St. James, is currently singing in Warrant.

I had a friend who was seriously obsessed with these guys. I'm glad we were too young for tattoos in 1985. I think I still have their second album on cassette.

Brooklyn Bronx & Queens Band (B.B.&Q. Band) - Their "On The Street" is on the same comp as that Arpeggio song, Volume 2 of Rhino's The Disco Years. It's saved from sub-Chic ultra-competence by a great hook and a Chic-worthy mournful quality to the synths.

Black Ivory - Leroy Burgess/Patrick Adams project. "Mainline" appeared on one of the Super Rare Disco comps.

"And nobody's fucking heard of Blodwyn Pig!"

I recall listening to them after reading Carducci. Didn't they sound like Jethro Tull?

Marc Benno - slick, tight-bottomed studio pop-rock. Great review in the Meltzer anthology (he never heard it).

This is a different Black Ivory, I think. Two albums which charted at #158 and 188 in 1972 and 1973; NYC vocal trio on Today Records, whatever that is.

And yeah, I vaguely remember reading that Blodwyn Pig sounded like Tull, too. But I don't think I ever actually heard them do so.

Biddu Orchestra - Cheesy disco producer. Scored The Stud starring Joan Collins. There's a thread on him here I think.

Beat Farmers = boring roots rock

I actually think I might like Beat Farmers if I heard them! Weren't they suppposed to me more cowpunk, or Blasters-like, or something? I would totally buy an album by them if I saw it for $2.00.

Biddu was apparently born in India, though he worked as a baker in England. I never heard of him before.

Batdorf & Rodney

never heard them, never even heard of 'em, until this week. you are the third person i know to invoke their name in the past seven days. i still don't know who/what/when they are. though i think it has something to do with early '70s country rock.

Beat Farmers = boring roots rock

they were totally fun when drummer country dick montana (RIP) came out front to sing songs like "happy boy" and "big rock candy mountain," sometimes WHILE lying on his back onstage and chugging a beer held between his feet.

D. L. Byron - that'd be David Byron from Uriah Heep, right?
(ummm, nope. sorry, forget I said that.)

but i thought that WAS the same guy. my entire knowledge of him musically was, in my billy joel collecting days (yes, fact checking cuz had billy joel collecting days), i found a 12-inch of d.l. byron singing "down in the boondocks" backed by billy joel's band. that was a fine moment in billy joel collecting, let me tell you. it was very phil spector/bruce springsteen lite as i recall.

Bourgeois Tagg

power pop a la todd rundgren jellyfish etc

<i>Didn't (Blodwyn Pig) sound like Jethro Tull?</i>

Sort of, because they had a reed player and their chief songwriter and guitarist was Mick Abrahams, Tull's guitarist on their first album.

Had two good songs. A decent cover of "Cat Squirrel" and "See My Way" which was a hit.

Back Street Crawler -- Paul Kossoff's band after he was banished from Free and well into drug addiction. Mediocre and tuneless hard rock. When Kossoff died, they changed their name to just Crawler.

British Lions -- when Ian Hunter left Mott the Hoople, Overend Watts, Buffin and the piano player kept on, hiring a new singer and guitarist. They became Mott and released two records which were sneered at. Then they changed their name to British Lions and released one record that was shelled. It contained an awful version of "Wild In the Streets" and a very good version of Kim Fowley's "International Heroes" which sounded a bit similar to "All The Young Dudes."

Badger was a progressive jam band whose first album was a concert recording produced by Jon Anderson of Yes. They had a Christian theme and their album cover became a famous Roger Dean example. Their second album was radically different, awful British take on blue-eyed soul.

I've never heard BMX Bandits. Thanks to their name I wouldn't give them a chance when I was 14, and I'm not about to do it now.

I see Batdorf & Rodney albums in the thrift stores all the time. Like, every single time.

and a very good version of Kim Fowley's "International Heroes" which sounded a bit similar to "All The Young Dudes."

I need to hear this!

also, The Box are a totally worthy post-Clock DVA band consisting of at least three of the actual musicians. They had an excellent EP with a song called "No Time For Talk". Don't know about any other records.

uh, I mean post-original-lineup Clock DVA. They were never the same after Thirst.

oh and somebody already said that, I got the lists mixed up.

I've never heard BMX Bandits

recommended ridiculously highly if you can triangulate your musical tastes using the pooh sticks, teenage fanclub and nrbq. "kylie's got a crush on us" is deliciously loopy in a twee way.

re British Lions' album, Fowley tune --

Check it out only if you see it used and cheap. The rest of the album is a big "eh," much like the Hunter-less Mott albums, "Drive On" and "Shouting & Pointing." The major label jig was well and truly up for Overend and Buffin after these things. They just couldn't live without the good material Ian Hunter consistently gave 'em.

It was just like the case of Luther "Ariel Bender" Grosvenor. After he left Mott the Hoople a big star, it was into a band billed as a "supergroup," Widowmaker. They were a supergroup only until their first album came out and while it was a bit better than fair, it was nothing compared to the bands he'd been in -- Mott & Spooky Tooth.

i LOVE that live badger album. batdorf and rodney do nothing for me. same with buckwheat. i love black ivory too. all their albums are great. both beast albums are worth a couple of listens. the second one is more hard rock. the first more experimental/psych/flute action. i still ove burning sensations for their belly of the whale song. i played that video on youtube and it was like i ate one of proust's fucking cookies. took me right back to teendom. i have a sealed babylon a.d. album. maybe i'll listen to it someday! bangor flying circus kinda blew. i have one really good bell & james album. can't think of the title. blodwyn pig i can live without. i liked the one blue mercedes hit. um, you know the one. and, chuck, i mentioned on that 90's hard rock thread that you would like the first brother cane album. hard rocking southern action.

Bourgeois Tagg
Boy Meets Girl

a couple of one hit wonders right there, for the quite pleasant "I don't mind at all" and "waiting for a star to fall" respectively

Buckwheat - I've never knowingly heard them, but I do know that during 1974 they were being managed by one Andy DiMartino; who at the time was also attempting to co-manage Captain Beefheart; and that he arranged for a couple of them (keyboard player / vocalist Michael Smotherman & guitarist Dean Smith) to back Don as part of what was to become known as "The Tragic Band" (after the Magic Band all deserted Don to go off and form Mallard) both on tour and for the recording of the subsequent Bluejeans and Moonbeams album. Michael Smotherman also had a solo career as well as working at various times with Glen Campbell and Steve Earle.

Bourgeois Tagg ... for the quite pleasant "I don't mind at all"

Quite pleasant, yeah, but at the same time incredibly wimpy and defeatist.

Brooklyn Bronx & Queens Band (B.B.&Q. Band) = Chic soundalikes, scored R&B hit w/"On The Beat" 1981.

BB&Q Band is actually italo-disco, fwiw.

Definitely not that song, Dan. Also, my post on them above.

I bought the Batdorf & Rodney album 'Life is You' (yuk yuk) for 50p. They're a couple of pussies, but I like the feel of their apartment. And they're called Batdorf & Rodney.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61M-foUNsWL._AA240_.jpg

Can't bring myself to get rid of it.

I have a Badger album, only played it once about 20 years ago BUT there's a pop-up Roger Dean badger on the inside of the gatefold so I kept it.

Balaam & The Angel, oh fucking dear. File alongside Flesh For Lulu and Gene Loves Jezebel in the 80's goth hall of shame.

Didn't Country Dick from the Beat Farmers actually keel over dead onstage?

oh, man, the EP by Band Apart on Crammed Discs was KILLING me last night. it's brilliant. now i really want to find their album. anyone heard it? dan selzer? dan, reissue their stuff! looks like their was an 80's japanese cd reissue, but that's it.

oh and i do have a copy of the basement 5 album around here somewhere, but i haven't listened to it yet.

I have never heard Bad Company or Blind Faith.

I think Crammed has/had a reissue series of all/much of their releases. I'd think they'd be the best people to do it. Crammed is associated with SSR which is better known in techno type circles. There's a track on the second Aksaq Maboul record, the one credited just to Mark Hollander, that sounds like Detroit Techno 5 years before.

Is the track called "Saure Gurke"? Because that piece always left me speechless.

I don't remember, it's the first or second song on the one with the green cover. I've always been confused as there's one album by a band called Aksaq Maboul (sp) feat. Hollander, Chris Cutler, Fred Frith, Catherin Janioux etc etc, which is amazing and then another with a green cover that is credited to Hollander and maybe called Aksaq Maboul? I'm too busy now to look it up.

I once owned an EP by the Bonemen of Barumba. I snagged it in some used record store back in the misty mists of the 1980s, and it was . . . okay. Overdriven garage rock, as I recall, with nothing overtly "tribal" other than maybe some dubious cover art/design. They were from Chicago, I think, though I could be mistaken about that at this point. I was not moved to keep it as part of the permanent collection.

as confirmed on their myspace page, yes it's "Saure Gurke"

http://www.myspace.com/aksakmaboul

A Modern Lesson, also there, is the killer track from the other album that I always play.

Batdorf & Rodney

Ha! Funny this thread was bumped today; I tweeted this just two days ago.

I have to organize some CDs that came off the shelves when my wife and son were doing some painting.

Good news: Only the B's.

Bad news: This is how many B's I have. pic.twitter.com/teapY3zG4J

— Brian O'Neill (@NYC__Native) May 6, 2023

Bet you can't name a band that starts with the letter B!

Bison

Rob Sheffield's RS review of Joe Perry's sons' band starts like this:

Aerosmith guitar god Joe Perry once told Rolling Stone he enjoyed turning his kids on to classic Sixties stoner rock like Moby Grape, Fleetwood Mac and Blodwyn Pig. "I don't know if we would be the same band without Blodwyn Pig," he said in 2001. "And nobody's fucking heard of Blodwyn Pig!"

― Thus Sang Freud, Wednesday, 5 March 2008 01:28 (seventeen years ago) bookmarkflaglink

They were on Top of the Pops once! (Caution: contains Jimmy Savile)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxDyI0lWors

(seventeen years ago)

!!!

Blodwyn Pig were a spin off of Jethro Tull when the guitarist left after 1st l.p.. put out 2 good lps in the early 70s.

Bone Orchard were a psychobilly/goth band from Brighton with a major Birthday Party influence. I didn't know there was a U.S. band by the name too. But definitely a UK one existed. I stayed at the singer's place one night after a gig.

The Box need reissuing as well as their tenure in Clock DVA. I thought it was all of that band but Adi Newton. Then he continued with the name and a new more electronic line up.

Interesting to see Barracudas compared to Flamin Groovies without mention of Chris Wilson being in both bands.