King of the Slums: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wqUsyglbDxs The Plastics : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gi5un_z6A9M The Go-Betweens: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkrEiD9s0pU Cocteau Twins: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wgv08gsexfc
British Sea Power should be the biggest alternative band in the UK. They just get better and better. The Go Betweens are in my top 10 bands. Met Grant when I was in oz at a house party smashing bloke. The Rockingbirds and the New Fast Automatic Daffodills were both underrated.
Good call on the Go Betweens. Have got all their albums but their compilation album 1978 to 1990 is still my favourite. New Zealand's The Chills are underrated as well and recently reformed.
Yellowcard, saw them recently in Leeds and they blew all the so called "big" bands i have seen out of the water, and they only played an hour with it being a co headline gig.
It's a difficult one to answer this, because I live in my own little world, where certain artists are so familiar to me that I consider them to be far greater than most people would actually view them. A good indication would be asking my kids. My 9 year old has no doubt that the biggest acts in music are The Beatles, The Stones, Dylan and Elvis, because she hears them often enough and sees the amount of CDs and books on my shelves about those four. She would also, however, presume that Sophie Ellis Bextor is as big as Madonna, that the Proclaimers are the number one soul band in the world, that the giants of 80s pop were Stephen Duffy, Frazier Chorus and Prefab Sprout and that Pet Shop Boys and Kraftwerk have the acclaim that they should rightly deserve. She'd also tell you that Elvis' Guitar Man and Mamas and the Papas' Creeque Alley are two of the three greatest songs ever, because she keeps getting told that. The other is Sophie Ellis-Bextor's version of Yes Sir, I Can Boogie, which is definitely the house anthem and the one that always gets played as me, my daughter and my 5 year old son are dancing round the kitchen, occasionally joined by mummy. She will be shocked when she learns that pretty much nobody else buys Lilac Time CDs and that Ricky Nelson really wasn't the musical giant I make him out to be. This is also a difficult question to answer in so much as I don't always like it when someone I love suddenly develops mass appeal. I was a big fan of Tim Buckley as a teenager, so followed Jeff Buckley from the off, initially due to the connection with his dad. I couldn't understand why everybody else didn't rate Grace like I did. But over time he has become the new Ramones, in that everyone now cites Grace as a favourite album, and I find myself getting a bit sniffy about that! I'm pretty sure that if Stephen Duffy and Lawrence (Felt, Denim, Go Kart Mozart) start developing mass appeal I will resent that too! But underrated? Buddy Holly, definitely. From recording That'll Be the Day to him dying was around 18 months and just think of the amount of great songs in that time. But unlike most other artists of that time he was writing his songs and even getting involved in the production and arranging of them. The songs he had moved on to just before he died, like True Love Ways, were streets ahead of his rivals. Who knows what he would have gone on to achieve. And Kraftwerk. Influential beyond belief, maintaining their integrity throughout (although blocking Sophie Ellis Bextor from releasing the great Romeo because of the sample pi55ed me off a little) and producing great music to boot. Vastly underrated. And Beastie Boys. Still seen by many as comedy brats, but a fantastic catalogue of music. And, controversially probably, but I think Daryl Hall and John Oates got a lot of undue stick for looking so 80's, with their big hair and big moustache, when their music, particularly their 70s stuff, is excellent. Just listen to She's Gone or Sara Smile. I don't expect many agreeing with that one though!
Yep I'd go with the beastie boys, got quite a few of their albums, such diversity, including an entirely instrumental album. People just know them for their very early hits.
They've been popping up on TOTP 1980 recently with My World. On episodes not presented by a kiddy fiddler or sex pest, that is. It's annoying having to miss weeks because they don't want to give Jimmy Savile or Dave Lee Travis airtime. I'm pretty sure they could edit the links out if they tried. They manage it for TOTP2. There must be a few one hit wonders looking forward to seeing their own TOTP appearance repeated, in a sort of Creme Brulee way, only to remember that Savile presented it when BBC4 skips a week!