Smashing pumpkins
I liked Gish and Siamese dream but tuned out after .
Now I regularly listen to their whole catalog
I liked Gish and Siamese dream but tuned out after .
Now I regularly listen to their whole catalog
Name a band..
- Thread starter steelcurtain55.
- Start date
yeah I lumped turn in with lots of other pseudo alternative bands of the 90s. Now I really appreciate power/jangle pop and like them.
Fountains of Wayne fit the same bill for me.
Gotta throw Luther Vandross into that mix. The man could flat out croon.
Yes! Great call. Train in Vain was one of my favorite songs growing up and loved going through the rest of London Calling years later.
U2 is one for me. In the 80s they were not my thing, seemed melodramatic and annoying. My tastes matured over the next couple decades and I came to appreciate their work, including and especially the 80s work I disdained earlier in life.
1991 U2 was my favorite. Anything before 1991 was good. Anything after 1991 was decent. But 1991 was great.
I saw Gin Blossoms for free outside a coffee shop at San Jose St in the middle of the afternoon around 1991-1992. There were maybe 20 people in the crowd. At the time they hadn’t released their first album yet and no one had heard of them. They were pretty good.
I liked them in the late 90's. I saw them a dozen times. But, none of their music interests me anymore.
agree, although I would push forward one year to 1992 to include the ZooTV tour. Probably at their peak on that tour, especially during the stadium broadcast. The things Bono did vocally live were unbelievable, he was in prime voice then.
KISS, when I was a teenager I hated them, I thought they were just a gimmick, well they were, their lyrics are 8th grade, their instrumentals are mediocre, but they perfectly fit that old saying "They're so bad, they're good", I got their Greatest Hits CD in the 2010s, at Walmart, $5. And just realize it's FUN, Nostalgic, even though they kind of suck
I went to the reunion show in the 90's with all the original members and the first time they put the makeup on in over 15 years. Great show, one of the best times I had at a concert.
See U2 is the reverse for me. I loved them in the 80s and into the 90s, and now I am "meh" on. It is not their fault as much as I think any group once they are together for 20-25+ years, they have run their course. Most people now when they go see these bands, they don't want to hear new stuff, they want to hear the songs that they grew up listening to, or what attracted them to the group in the first place. They become a defacto cover band of themselves.
Not disputing. Just my tastes/“needs” were different in the early/mid 80s, I wanted uptempo dance/party music, would could fall into multiple genres, but with the common thread that they had to be fast(er), and absent that, should at least be romantic gushy stuff to put the ladies in the mood. U2 songs tended to be buzzkill, ponderous, dramatic, introspective, blah blah and above all, poisonous to attracting women.
Yeah, No Line on the Horizon was kind of it to me. Usually with a U2 tour I looked forward to hearing the new material that they were currently promoting. With that show (2011 maybe?), I was hoping for just the classics. I lost interest and don't think I've even listened to the Songs of albums. The last tour, the 30th anniversary of the Joshua tree, was all nostalgia.
As you said that's a long time to stay relevant, especially when the band is probably richer than the GDP of Ireland.
So now most of these older acts are all doing nostalgia. Bill Joel proudly admits it. Says song writing was difficult and now that he built up his song book he can live with just playing the hits. I just heard Madonna's new tour will be a hits tour as well. Springsteen did a River tour several years ago. And of course the Rolling Stones. It happens to the best of them.
It is. Like I said, they become their own defacto cover band. I have no idea what the last 3-4-5-8? Rolling Stones albums produced song wise. But almost everyone attending is going to hear them play Satisfaction, or Sympathy or Brown Sugar....
Pearl Jam and the Foo Fighters have crossed into this category.
It sucks as an artist because you are conditioned to "create". But you are also conditioned to be an entertainer. So it is a conundrum I would imagine.
I agree with all the comments about U2. I didn't like them, liked them, grew bored of them.
I didn't like them in the beginning because they seemed angry and political. Southerners with mullets made me laugh, foreigners with mullets seemed like anarchists.
I love the Stones, but I wish they would have quit after their last album, Blue and Lonesome. They were just trying to get accustomed to Mark Knopfler's new recording studio I think, and just played some old blues songs to warm up. They liked it so much they made an album out of it. Would have been cool if they quit after they finally had went full circle, with an album of the kind of songs that inspired them to form a band originally.
I guess the thing that stings is 60/70's bands like the Rolling Stones, Aerosmith, Kiss you pretty much go into it knowing the show is a juke box, and they really aren't doing anything new or interesting. But now bands that were always out there innovating like U2, Pearl Jam, etc, have crossed the line too as you said and are now becoming cover bands/juke boxes that play the hits.
I have an album of the Duke Ellington and Count Basie bands combined recorded live in a studio. Supposedly the decibel level was higher than The Who in concert.
Except I also wouldn’t want to hear any old foo fighter stuff , either
They are the vanilla yogurt of bands
Same with weezer
They weren’t always totally political, often more spiritual than anything (but they themselves didn’t even seem to know for sure). Political could still be kind of entertaining, as many songs by the Clash, Police, the Beat, the Jam and others of the period demonstrated … but then a U2 song would launch, and it would be like, urrrrgghh, it would be like fingernails on the chalkboard for me (at that time). Maybe they just didn’t fit easily in anything, not in punk, not in new wave, not in mainstream AOR rock, certainly not ska or pop. That might actually be what made them great, but as I said, I didn’t (or didn’t want to) appreciate it then.
Rattle And Hum turned it around for me (though I think it turned off many of their original fans). I loved and still love “Desire”, “Angel Of Harlem,” “When Love Comes To Town,” etc.
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I rarely turned on the radio after 1978, preferred to listen to music from 1965 to 1975 on my albums and cassettes. I did see Sunday Bloody Sunday on MTV though, and thought it was okay but kind of heavy and depressing. But later I heard When Love Comes To Town and started to pay attention to them.
Let's be honest here. Think about where U2 grew up and during those times with "The Troubles". I would think it would be possible to not be darker and political.
Absolutely, it took the evolution of my own tastes to appreciate them…
When I think about it, why buy that album?? They can't be the greatest ROCK band ++++. Nothing to prove, plenty of $$$$, just a bit bored???
They should just have dinner with a starlet and call it a day!!
They jumped the shark with the Dirty Work lp. Just the cover alone with the guys in their Miami Vice suits and headscarves. Should have stopped with new releases there.
That might make for an interesting follow up thread… successful bands/acts that were obliterated by a sole dreadful album, maybe even a single song (Mr. Roboto) or even a tragic video (Billy Squier!).
EDIT… the Stones didn’t actually wear headscarves on the cover…but it surprising they didn’t…
I've never been more than a very casual Pearl Jam fan, but I thought they were known for completely revamping the setlist every night and playing a bunch of deeper cuts. I know that has been what has kept me coming back for Bruce so many times: You're never getting a greatest hits show or the same show twice. I'd actually probably be pissed about that if I was a casual fan... like, I would want the hits if I was seeing Pearl Jam. But I totally respect not doing it that way.
The Jaggerz. They had that one hit...The Rapper, then not much else. Donny Iris started it, then went to Wild Cherry. I never really appreciated them back in the late 60's and early 70's. Then I heard them live in Sewickley a few years ago and again this past Fall, and they are fantastic on stage. I think only 2 of the original Jaggerz are still with the band because guys either went elsewhere, retired or died. My wife got me their original album, a real vintage LP on heavy vinyl that was made in 1969. They're very versatile, playing R&B, blues, jazz, country, pop, rock.
not true so much anymore. The River tour in 2016 I'd consider a nostalgia tour, and as early as 2000, the reunited E-street band did a greatest hits tour, although Bruce followed that up with probably his best work in "The Rising"
I wouldn't say that Reunion Tour was a greatest hits tour. I was actually only a casual Bruce fan at the time, and I barely knew anything they played. Heck, they were playing outtakes that didn't even make albums. And they switched the setlists up a ton every night, too.
The 2016 River Tour was a bit of a head scratcher - yeah. It wasn't greatest hits or anything, but playing a double album every night made the setlist about as static as I can remember it being for a Bruce show. It was cool to see the first time, because there are some River tracks I know I'd have never seen live otherwise. But I probably didn't need to go to a second show during that first leg. They abandoned that format by the time they got to Europe, though. And then when they came back to the US, the setlist was wide open again. Definitely played a lot of stuff from Greetings and the Wild and the Innocent (i.e. nostalgiac), but I was cool with it because I wasn't alive when they were predominantly playing that stuff live.
Albeit a little less so now, he's generally avoided the path most of his peers have ventured down. Western Stars (2019) was an A+ album that I would put in his top five. Not many people at his age are releasing an album like that. Now, the few albums before that (Working on a Dream, Wrecking Ball, and High Hopes) sucked, in my opinion. Wrecking Ball is actually pretty polarizing among Bruce fans. A lot of people love it; I happen to despise it. But even Letter to You (2020) was a solid B- album.
A kid in high school (1988) tried to convince me to listen to REM...I was a total rock guy so I though to alternative for me...few years later Out of Time came out and I bought the CD. I was so wrong about them. Great band.
