Artists than people THINK rapidly declined after their legendary early work, but really didn't

True dat. Van Morrison?

maybe i haven't heard enough later van.

Jerry Lee Lewis

i'm tempted to put in PIL, but i'm not sure i believe it.

Yeah, Jerry Lee. Have you read the Cash vs. Lewis thread?

PAUL FUCKING MCCARTNEY

I love Lydon and admire the shit out of dude, but I dunno if I can go that far past Flowers of Romance.

Who'd you say, Doctor? Paul Mooney? Yeah, that guy is great.

XTC? Their last 3 albums got about 1 vote between them on the 'Best XTC Album' poll, which was fucking ridiculous.

Wire

Black Flag, depending on how you like the sludge

stereolab

xtc otm, but being winner take all, these polls aren't necessarily good gauges of the consensus.

Tanita Tikaram

Black Flag, depending on how you like the sludge

These guys fell off even if you like My War

Dead Kennedys.

And no, Jello's solo/collab stuff doesn't count as Dead Kennedys, so don't even try to use that against them.

De La Soul

madonna

Cameo

Manic Street Preachers
Pearl Jam
Not sure about legendary early work, but Nada Surf

de la is a good call

The most popular Cameo stuff is, like, ten years into their career, dude. I dunno about De La, most of their stuff after Buhloone Mindstate is kind of dreary, even when it's trying not to be.

Squeeze, Marillion

Prince

Prince declined for a while.

Bowie may have declined, somewhat, in that he hasn't quite managed to keep up with his brilliant 70s work. But other than "Never Let Me Down" and the Tin Machine albums, most of his later work is well worth listening to as well.

Can

OK a bit, but nowhere near as much as you'd think to hear people go on

80s and recent bowie isn't as bad as people say, but it's still a deterioration of sorts.

i wouldn't touch the last three manics records and i've seen the selling for peanuts

i don't think i have an answer to this thread yet

Squeeze is the answer. Only most people haven't even heard their post 1990 material.

Love

The Monkees

XTC OTM.

Clinic

THE RAMONES!

I'm unconvinced by most of this thread

I thought of the Ramones, but I listened to Halfway To Sanity the other day and it was really pretty crap. I'll stick up for most of their post-Rocket To Russia stuff up to that point though. Especially End of the Century.

Ha, but I'm basing it on the "Weird Tales" collection, which picks around 4 or 5 tracks off each album past the first four (the first four get more coverage, naturally), and there are some gems to be had from the latter. No doubt they aren't all 'great/good', but individual bad albums can have the effect of putting off buyers from subsequent ones.

Like PIL, for example. "Happy" was a bunch of murky rub, so I stopped there.

black sabbath ownz this thread

morrissey too excepting Maladjusted

sabbath (counting dio stuff esp.) and de la soul are great ones.

Laura Nyro...(motherhood really became her)...

madness - i thought wonderful was as good as the early albums

Sly Stone... arguably... OK, very arguably

you'd better have a good PowerPoint presentation ready to make your case on that one...

Hey, I often pull out "Heard Ya Missed Me, Well I'm Back" and give it a spin!

Faust?

Hmmmmmmmm, I almost said them earlier... but, not sure really

hmmm opeth anyone?

Sabbath through the Gillan album, after that, the recorded stuff (save for Dehumanizer) is pretty bad

I second Love and Pere Ubu.

Guided By Voices

Don't people think that most artists SLOWLY decline? If you changed "rapidly" to "slowly" in the thread title, most of these artists would easily fit the bill.

Sonic Youth (up until Washing Machine)

slowly, rapidly, i guess it doesn't matter that much....but the idea is the same...

Kevin Ayers? If people think his early work was legendary, that is... or if people think about him at all, perhaps... I do

Nick Cave!!

slowly, rapidly, i guess it doesn't matter that much....but the idea is the same...

I took it as a key point of distinction here, and what makes the thread interesting - the possibility that lurking in the beginning stages of what is unquestionably a decline may be good records, shunned by those who see the decline and assume everything after Album X is wretched.

My vote for McCartney was made with awareness that there is unquestionably a GENERAL decline from his Beatles peak, but I would say this happens verrrrry slowly from around 1966 to 1975, speeds up a bit in the following decade, then bounces back and pretty much plateaus at "surprisingly good!" from 1992 till the present day. Whereas "people THINK" McCartney pretty much stopped being good in any way at all the moment the Beatles broke up (or alternately right after Ram).

moby grape

frank zappa -- at least until the 1980s.

Suicide and/or Alan Vega - there have been lows, but every so often . .

Morrissey OTM

I'm intrigued by Morrissey's solo career. I've got the first album and _Bona Drag_ and a single or two later, which I like fine but hardly pull out (love and still play The Smiths, though). Would you folks defending his not-as-crappiness-as-I-think say he's more of a singles artist or are his later solo albums all worth it?

Chrome.

The post-Creed stuff is AOK.

Some would say Liz Phair, but not me.

nada surf? people forgot about them