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

Gizmos - 77 punk with sleazy lyrics, pretty average

Gravedigger V were 80s garage revival but I've never heard them.

Don't know any of the rest!

I'll let Osbourne do the excellent Glaxo Babies.

Girls at Our Best - from Leeds. Lead singer Judy Evans. Great album, the title of which escapes me. Good singles 'Go For Gold' and 'Fast Boyfriends'. Pashmina wrote some good words about them a while back. I'll search.

People have been fawning over Girls at Our Best lately, how did you miss it? I think they are more overrated post-punk crap (though I have to admit it's been a while since I've heard anything and I did like "Politics" when I was around 13).

Was Gorillas the same as The Hammersmith Gorillas? Jesse Hector and crew?
The Michael Guthrie band was this guy, Michael Guthrie, and some other people. They chose the name the Michael Guthrie band for their musical project to let people know that it wasn't just Michael Guthrie, but in fact Michael Guthrie and some other people, namely his band. Then they made a record. Oh alright I've never heard of them...

Girls At Our Best! - loved them then, not so sure now. (I burned my four 7" singles to MP3 expecting a treat, but it all just sounded a bit thin and twee and lame, and the out-of-tune-choirgirl vocals irritated me.) My favourite at the time was "Politics", which I played obsessively four or five times a day for about a month.

Gist - promised much, being a Young Marble Giants spin-off and all - and the track on C81 sounded OK - but I thought their first (only?) album was way too doodly and aimless and under-powered, and failed to conjure up much of a mood (suffered badly in comparison to the Durutti Column).

Gorillas - formerly Hammersmith Gorillas - two ace singles on Chiswick records: "She's My Gal" and "Gatecrasher". Good-time pub rock with a Slade-ish pop sensibility, amiably bonkers, catchy as hell.

Glaxo Babies - Peel favourites who never registered much with me; a bit too dour. Used to get them confused with the Comsat Angels.

Huw Gower was the main man in the Records. Nice guy, but I have absolutely no recollection of his solo stuff.

Get Smart! - from Kansas. Like the Embarrassment except not as good.

Gina X Peformance -- I don't know about the "performance" part, though I think the Gina X 12-inch I used to own did suggest a sort of pretentious performance art type attempting disco. Given that, it wasn't awful, as I recall; sort of a Lovich/Hagen type goth goofoff.

Gizmos - Great, Angry Samoans-like Bloomington, Indiana garage punks, sorta the missing link between Johnny Cougar and, um, the Panics or Jetsons or Zero Boys. They did cool sarcastic songs about the midwest, and about why the hell would anybody wanna move to New York.

Gorillas -- Had a forgettable song or two on one of those 1979/80 A&M new wave compilations, *No Wave* or *Propaganada.*...oh wait, maybe I'm thinking of "You Drive Me Ape You Big Gorilla" by the Dickies, which was also forgettable..Or wait, weren't they sort of a pre-punk pub band in England, like Eddie and the Hot Rods. I'm probably wrong.

Great Buildings - Vaguely Talking Heads-ish geek-wavers? Not sure

"Groceries" and "Gyros" are both excellent names for bands

I was also thinking of the Granati Brothers (who were on *Propaganda*), apparently, who I remember nothing at all about.

sammy - tales of great neck glory
hounds - unleashed (i think i already owned this; but what the heck)
starcastle - starcastle
anthony braxton - five pieces 1975
kate bush - kate bush (best of EP from '83; just seemed kinda weird --the whole concept of best-of EPs I mean. Echo & the Bunnymen had one.)
double u - "somebody" 12-inch
randy jones - randy jones (isn't this guy the cowboy from the village people? 4 extended version songs; 1982 county-disco maybe? i dunno)
steve nardella - it's all rock & roll
the vels - velocity (i used to have a copy of this one)
arrogance - suddenly
joey dee & the starliters - hey let's twist (a soundtrack i guess)
michael urbaniak - fusion III (not sure if i ever heard him before)

COUNTRY-disco, I meant. He is wearing a cowboy hat. And he covers a Roy Orbison song. He sure *looks* like the cowboy from Village People.

http://www.randyjonesworld.com/

I wonder what he thinks of Big & Rich.

Sammy, Tales of Great Neck Glory [Geffen, 1996]
Rather than hiding their privilege behind obscure witticisms, these alt-rock everyboys tell it like it is for their cultural class--bright, affluent kids who still have more options than they know what to do with. "History hounds" and "encyclopedi-ites," they write mash notes to their own characters and detail manageable traumas like bankruptcy and agoraphobia over hooky post-Pavement dissonances. They're about hedonism not idealism, choice not necessity. Puritans will ostracize them unless and until they succeed. Then they'll try and burn them at the stake. A-

Yes, you'll probably like it. XGau hated it, along with Christ Child which came out at the same time. Legitimately semi-tuneless and collision hard rock band.

starcastle - starcastle

If you really like Yes. "Lady of the Lake" was passed off as American Yes on FM. Features first REO Speedwagon singer, Terry Luttrell. Champagne band, I think, like REO.

arrogance - suddenly

Hard rock band with Rod Dixon, who went on to be a big producer for a short while. Kind of mediocre.

All these bands are in Jasper & Oliver's International Encyclopedia of Hard Rock and Heavy Metal, which -- mebbe -- I should cycle through.

Ganafoul
Gaskin
Geddes Axe
Geeza
George Hatcher Band
Graf Spee
Grand Prix
Jack Green
Gus "Convicted"

Two other 50 cent vinyl selections I found at Kim's today: a Westworld 12-inch (3 or 4 bubblegum songs from their turn of the '90s debut album, which I reviewed favorably at the time in LA Weekly but no longer own; did these twerps have actual hits in England?); a bootleg/semi-legal/slapdash-looking unlabeled blue-label thing called "Bits N Pieces 1989" (was this some DJ collage series that existed throughout the '80s? I've got a Bits N Pieces collage-mix version of Yarborough and Peoples' "Don't Stop the Music" from '81 or so, but I'd always assumed before that that just was a one-time thing.)

Grand Prix may have something to do with modern Uriah Heep. Or maybe it was LeMans, I dunno.

This better stop or we'll soon be talking about Trevor Rabin solo well prior to Yes.

Quite naturally, it became valuable, anyway, by application of the
180 degree rule developed by the "red book" Rolling Stone guide and Xgau's takes on hard rock. Others may differ in opinion but hardly any have ever seen any of the Trouser Press white paper editions, nothing of which, to my knowledge, has gone into the subsequent book bindings over the last two or three decades.

By way of illustrative example, the artists extacted for this series of threads show no inclusion of the clssic FM rock acts that the magazine started out profiling.

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

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

Gallery
Danny Gatton
Gaylord & Holiday
Giant
Giant Steps
Giuffria
Glass Moon
Goanna
Goose Creek Symphony
Gorky Park
The Graces
Grease Band
Boris Grebenshikov
Jack Green
Ricky Lynn Gregg
Grey & Hanks
Grim Reaper
Grinder Switch
Groove Theory
GTR
Guadalcanal Diary
Dave Guard & The Whiskeyhill Singers
Gucci Crew II
Gun
Gypsy

(I'm lying about a couple of those, I think. In fact, there are a couple that I think I briefly even owned actual albums by for a week or two. But damned if I have any idea what they sounded like, and I want to see what people will say about them, so....)

Grinder Switch = provided theme tune to John Peel Show

Gun - fairly shit Scottish indie-rock band whose biggest hit was a cover of Cameo's "Word Up!"

Or else the Gun who had a hit with "Race With the Devil" in 1968

The Graces - Charlotte Caffey from the Go-Go's, Meredith Brooks, a couple of others I don't remember, playing neo-"alternative" arena rock, late 80s.

Guadalcanal Diary - twangy mid-80s indie-garage band, "hit" was "Watusi Rodeo," had a near-hit on MTV in 1988-89 with some other song whose title I forget.

GTR - Steve Hackett and Steve Howe, together at last! Hit in 1986 was "When the Heart Rules the Mind." Review in Musician magazine: "SHT"

Giuffria - this is Greg Giuffria (ex Angel keyboard player), kinda 80's soft rock as I recall it. Very very gay image. Stick with the first couple of Angel albums is my advice.

Boris Grebenshikov - Soviet-era Russian rock star, state sanctioned BUT he also played with a lot of underground free-jazz types - a weird double career for the time I guess.

Grim Reaper - Brit powere metal, did OK in the US for a while I think. Turned up on Beavis & Butthead occasionally.

Gun - fairly shit Scottish indie-rock band

^^This one, not the other, older, harder rocking one (which I've actually heard, though only briefly; apparently they never put an album in the Top 200.)

I'd never noticed it before, but between Grebenshikov and Gorky Park, was there some weird little attempt at a Russian Invasion of the U.S. rock charts after the wall came down?? Their albums both charted in 1989! And who knows what other Russkie acts, beginning with other letters of the alphabet, might have done so as well.

Grey & Hanks - "Dancin'" (1978) was a biggie at the tail end of the London rare groove/boogie scene, circa 1989.

surely you know Gallery, who hit it big in the early 70's with "It's So Nice (To Be With You)"...

Boris Grebenshikov had a medium-sized U.S. hit with "Radio Silence," which is actually kind of a sterling example of strummy, slightly alternative pop. I have the cassette somewhere; my memory is that the rest of it doesn't live up to the single. There should be more Russian-accented vocals in English-language rock.

Also, I think BG was a member of Aquarium, the biggest band in Leningrad in late Soviet times.

Yeah, that's what Whitburn says too (re: Aquarium).

i remembering hearing that boris grebenshikov album and thinking it sounded like third- or fourth-rate vaguely alt/modern rock.

but my best russian friend tells me he was long over the hill by that point and that he was a worthy rocker in his day, long before the wall came down.

Danny Gatton -- guitar ace often featured in guitar mags. Committed suicide.

Giant -- poppy hair metal band who's leader now produces that Aussie guy who sells millions of country records.

Gorky Park -- genuinely dreadful Russian pop metal band who were given a bit of a push in the US after the wall came down during the administration of the elder Bush. Saw 'em, a totally ludicrous act with a guitarist who played a Kramer, custom-made for him by the American company, shaped like a balalaika. Kramer has risen to fame on the rage for Eddie van Halen-style fad guitars. Shortly after issuing the balalaika-shaped guitar, the company went bankrupt.

Grease Band -- backed Joe Cocker.

Jack Green -- guitarist for late-period Pretty Things. Made one power pop album.

Grim Reaper -- awful heavy metal band who's debut album was issued at cost. Guitarist Nick Bowcott became a guitar mag columnist.

Grinder Switch -- third tier southern rock band. First album featured Dicky Betts doing them some favors.

Gatton used to play with Robert Gordon too.

Gorillas -- BTW, from above a bit. They WERE Crushed Butler, a very heavy and raunchy band driven by guitarist Jesse Hector. "My Son's Alive" has to be heard once in your lifetime if you like hard rock. Crushed Butler couldn't get a deal, morphed into The Gorillas, also known as the Hammersmith Gorillas. Message to the World is the LP I have and it spans a lot of glammy style, from a good cover of "Foxy Lady" to hard rock takes on Fifties-style hiccuping rockabilly. Fair to good record.

Guadalcanal Diary also had that song "Litany (Life Goes On)." IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII, IIIII seeee liiife, like a miiirror," or something like that. Very earnest.

Hammersmith Gorillas and Crushed Butler are two of the best band names ever!