I Guess You Had To Be There: Bands You Love that Will Be Lost Beneath The Waves

[RoyBiggins]

Prosaic thread title, eh?  What I'm wondering is: are there bands that you love that have broken up or become totally shitty, but they had this ONE great record that sticks for you?  I am especially interested if this is a band that people usually respond to by saying "Oh yeah, they made that one record in 2002, right? Huh."

Examples for me include The Long Winters, who played one of the top-five best shows I've ever seen, and put out one really great record, IMO (When I Pretend to Fall).

Clem Snide and Eef Barzelay are another example: he put out like 6 records in a row that I love to DEATH, but I feel like in 10 years, he'll be such an afterthought (due in part to the fact that his last 3 have been lame as hell, but more to the point: people will be like "Oh yeah, wasn't he that alt-country guy?)

[davy]

I like all those Long Winters albums! But that one is the best, yeah.

I'd mention The Good, The Bad, & The Queen, who everybody sort of got excited about while simultaneously writing them off for being a "supergroup." But that self-titled album (from what, 2006?) is one of my favorites in recent years, and I go back to it often.

Also, The Scud Mountain Boys, who had a couple of nice, quiet records before releasing one of my favorite records of all-time, Massachussetts. Then they promptly became The Pernice Brothers and began sucking a little bit more every year.

There are tons of second-tier Matador bands from the 90s that would fit this category for me.

[RoyBiggins]

Yeah, the LWs records are all good--it's just, that fucking middle one, and that show where they destroyed a pizzeria in Iowa while me and Stephanie (who didn't know each other yet, but we forensically reconstructed this event) did shots of vodka with Chris Walla, that was inexplicably great. 

I love Massachusetts, too.  Don't know any other Scud Mountain Boys records.

[davy]

"Cinnamon" continues to devastate me each and every time I hear it.

[nonotyet]

Clem Snide, definitely, although they will be remembered by posterity as Those Guys Who Did The Theme Song To That Show About The Bowling Alley With That One Guy.

Also for me, The Futureheads fit this category. I think they are still together? But I was SO IN LOVE with their self-titled album and wrote about it for a website  and played it incessantly and yelled at everyone I knew about them. Then they put out another album and I was completely underwhelmed. It was okay, it wasn't bad, it just didn't grab me and strangle me the way the first one did. Same thing with The Gaslight Anthem.

[auto-da-fey]

oh man, I have been looking for a venue to air my gripes about their second, crappy-to-mediocre, album, which followed one of my favorite records of the 90s, and here, I have found that venue:


TEAM DRESCH


seriously, what happened on that second record?

[Antero]

I kind of just miss the period in time where every indie band wanted to sound like Gang of Four.

[Antero]

Also: Blood Brothers Burn Piano Island Burn

[nonotyet]

yes yes yes yes yes

[Chet]

BLACK EYES

[Chet]

srsly

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2c4X_570Hoo

[Antero]

Hey, how'd indie rock get so bitchass in the last decade?  Is it because indie rockers started getting invited to nicer parties with better drugs?

[RoyBiggins]

"We all got bitched out on that Death Cab Money."

[fishjim]

The Dutchess and the Duke

She's The Dutchess, He's The Duke (2008) - FABULOUS
Sunset/Sunrise (2009) - SUCKED

Then they broke up. The end.

[reebty]

I don't even know if Supergrass ever broke up, but I've always loved their second album In it for the Money and never been interested in anything else they've ever recorded. I became familiar with them when my sister played their first album day in and day out, and she'd probably say the same thing about them except with that album in place of my pick.

[Maaik]

There was an instrumental mathy type band here in Atlanta that I absolutely loved called Ocelot who put out two records that were both great and then petered out. Those guys could shake the paint off of the walls when they played.  They were among a slew of other instrumental music that came out of Atlanta in the late '90s--I think the best-known of them is probably The Purkinje Shift (who are also crazy awesome, and playing shows again!). But yeah, Ocelot had this wild dreadlocked dude on bass who just killed it and brought this great fluidity while the guitarists were making protractor riffs. I totally stole that trick where you turn your guitar's volume knob all the way down, strum a chord, and ease the volume up so it sounds like you're bowing the strings--totally stole that after I saw them do it in the basement of an art gallery back in maybe 2000.

Between them and C'est Mortel out of Athens (had two guys from Jet By Day), who put on some of the greatest shows I've ever seen (and this is all around that same time, late '90s, early oughts), I feel like I'm the only person who ever talks about them, so I have to tell absolutely everybody.

Because like, that slew of crazy intense music coming out of the scene is what really made me want to move to Atlanta and start a band. By the time I finally got around to doing that, effing garage rock had taken over (thanks Rock A Teens) and it's taken a while for a scene to start building up around music that one doesn't have to be blasted on coke to think is the shit.

Christ, what was I talking about?

[Johnp]

I listen to the Patch tape "nudeamerica" (Shrimper) at least monthly. Never sure if they were related to Sukpatch but I never found anything else by Patch, or even knew who was in the... band(?).

[Ignatius]

Sheryl's Magnetic Aura. Big catchy and jittery pop songs. One and done, before kinda re-forming as Meneguar.

[narlus]

The Dutchess and the Duke

She's The Dutchess, He's The Duke (2008) - FABULOUS
Sunset/Sunrise (2009) - SUCKED

Then they broke up. The end.

i saw them open for New Pornographers and they were awful.


how about 18th Dye? any fans here?

[Black Amnesia of Heaven]

soul coughing/mike doughty

boy that guy sucks now

[alistarr*]

The Bronx successfully buried one of the best punk albums ever beneath two followups with the same title. That first album slays, though.

[Antero]

The Bronx successfully buried one of the best punk albums ever beneath two followups with the same title. That first album slays, though.

Second one's pretty good too.

First one is amazing, though.

[davy]

Between them and C'est Mortel out of Athens (had two guys from Jet By Day), who put on some of the greatest shows I've ever seen (and this is all around that same time, late '90s, early oughts), I feel like I'm the only person who ever talks about them, so I have to tell absolutely everybody.

C'est Mortel fucking dominated.

[Johnp]

how about 18th Dye? any fans here?

Fan would be stretching it but I have a couple of records - Tribute To A Bus & the Ché 10" - I'm going to dust off thanks to your post.

[tort]

Funny, I was just talking to my friend about the Long Winters the other day..."are they ever going to make another record?" I really enjoyed Putting the Days to Bed. I might throw out Eleventh Dream Day. I've always loved Prairie School Freakout..to me it possessed something like a ragged majesty...I have most of their other albums and sadly, my opinion is that none of them are even in the same ballpark.
Silver Scooter?