The Monkees ? lock

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IanB I
IanB Oct 29, 2010 07:28:31
Replying to zphage

zphage wrote:
IanB wrote:
[quote="dodge one"]Perhaps the most spectacular examples of new light being shed on a band are Led Zep in the late 80s and Queen in the last decade or so. LZ were considered to be representative of the worst excesses of pre-Punk rock n roll and then suddenly they weren't. Queen were largely despsied by hispters from the release of Bohemian Rhapsody onwards (if not before) but they too are now considered perfectly ok. As with Page and Co all it took was a few contemporary artists to start name-checking them and hey presto they're hip again. Even Prog has made a small comeback from the shadows (praise be) off the back of Radiohead, Elbow, Labradford and many others.

As time goes on and mainstream contemporary rock gets shittier and shittier we are all looking in dusty cupboards for things that are not of the avant garde and might still turn us on or have been over-looked in some way. Whether it is the Zombies, Badfinger, Creation or PFM we're all after new sounds that crank old handles and I can see how The Monkees records, whoever made them, could fit into that.

some good points

Zep has always a huge following in the US, they never really fell out of favor, just went from strength to strength currently at 111.5 million in US sales.

Queen, however, experienced the loss of their fanbase in the US:

'80 The Game went platinum, '82 Hot Space and '84 Works each fell to gold,

that's up to 500k unit drop off for each, at that time

'86 Kind of Magic only went gold in 2002, it took 6 years

'89 Miracle has not gone gold

total of 32.5 million units

Many bands have benefitted from reassessment via the GenXers and millenials as Dog's post shows.

The tunage is there and the lines that once divided are lost as the quality of current music drops.

in the US,

Tim Buckley
Gram Parsons
Beach Boys
Scott Walker
Nick Drake
Monkees
Abba
T.Rex
have benefitted from rediscovery/reassessment

there has always been a strong line of division between pop (AM Radio) and rock (FM Radio) in the US, with the demise of AM radio top 40 and FM free form, and the advent of two new generations influenced by '77 punk the lines have dropped away.

Good list and America is definitely another country when it comes to these things, as is Europe where artists often seem to be able to keep their audiences over a much longer haul.

I think there has to be a division between acts that were ignored or were cult level artists in their time (Buckley, Drake and Parsons too to some extent) and bands that were ridiculed by hipsters for some or all of their career partly because of their success and their ubiquity and their lack of edge (Beach Boys, Monkees, Abba)*.

Because of the "churn" in pop and rock that keeps it culturally fresh bands that got lost in the shuffle are exhumed all the time and Nick Drake is a great example considering I think he sold considerably fewer than than 20,000 records in his lifetime.

The interesting ones are where a band is nowhere on the hipness barometer and then get rehabilitated. On a small scale you can see it on HH with the likes of Kiss, Grand Funk, BOC. It takes a maven like Cope to sew the seed of course.

The next big revival from the realm of guilty pleasures? In recessionary times? Please God let it not be Rockabilly or Country.

*Not sure where Scott Walker fits in into that division.