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Bands that were everywhere and then disappeared


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Since this thread seems to mostly be about certain bands in a certain time which was also my formative musical years, many of you may enjoy this list which appeared on here a few years ago when it was published:

The Top 50 Greatest Landfill Indie Songs of All Time (vice.com)

I was horrified at how familiar so much of this was. And how much of it I'd never heard of that was still familiar anyway.

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2 hours ago, Melanius Mullarkey said:

is it Tich McCooey off Moray Firth Radio 

 

2 hours ago, Mark Connolly said:

Scottie McClue from Scot FM

Now then, now then.... 

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20 minutes ago, Miguel Sanchez said:

The Wombats - go away

Great post but have to admit, I still like some for The Wombats. I will admit there's a lot of shite mixed in there though. I completely missed the nonsense at the beginning of their existence so maybe that helped not cloud my judgement of them as most folk I know who heard about them from the start hated them!

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27 minutes ago, Miguel Sanchez said:

Big amount of corrections coming up

I really liked Hard-Fi's first album, even if some of the finer points of the experiences being sung about weren't exactly relatable to a 15 year old as I was at the time. I remember being quite excited for their second album with it's pretentious non-artwork and then I heard and oh, oh dear. For some reason I still got their third album when it came out and I remember seeing a video of one of the songs live and it just looked depressing. A pub band with a backing singer. Thankfully youtube tells you when you've seen a video, so here it is:

Off the top of my head I think they may have reformed for one of the anniversaries of their first album and attempted a comeback. If Buzzcocks was still on he would have been on the identity parade about ten years ago.

This was largely covered, but since the music industry is in more dire need of a Lamarr/Amstell to puncture the egos of its stars than ever before, let's revisit the full classic:

I refuse to believe this band existed outside of this episode and the clips from their own show you see here. I think the highlight here is "I should explain... Bill is a professional comedian. You won't win."

I've probably spent a good thousand hours or more of my life watching The Inbetweeners, so I can tell you they also had two other songs. One of them was just as annoying as that one, while the other was surprisingly melancholic and charming:

In terms of concentration of hits on a debut album relative to their subsequent output, probably nobody compares to Mika. I think when he hosted Eurovision P&B collectively discovered he was actually still a thing and not just doing pure pop any more. Good for him. 

Scissor Sisters hung about for quite a bit longer than some others here with three albums and a lot of hits, but haven't released anything as a band since their fourth. Jake Shears still does solo stuff.

 

Hard-Fi - covered

The Pigeon Detectives - utterly heinous, their first album has multiple songs on it that are basically identical and their second album was, somehow, exactly the same. I'd almost be interested to see if they carried it on because I remember them releasing new stuff as late as 2016 and just being appalled.

The Wombats - go away

I can't really comment on the Arctic Monkeys because I got bored and stopped listening to them after two albums and an EP, but during their Glastonbury performance in 2023 I posted on here asking if he was supposed to be interesting now because he moved to Los Angeles and grew a quiff and got a greenie from @capt_oats so I'm going to guess I made the right decision.

The Courteeners are a band I don't know anything about but you can pretty confidently tune in to festival coverage on the telly and see a fresh crowd of children belting out Not Nineteen Forever, year after year. As much as music and the audience for it can be a reflective thing mirroring society at the time it's created, some things just hang about and manage to find the exact same people in the exact same place, years and years later.

I don't know that Enter Shikari qualify as "everywhere" but of all the bands of their time in this thread they're probably the least comparable. They've been pretty prolific at releasing music since their debut in 2006. They're constantly adopting new genres and styles and constantly playing live. I didn't listen to anything past their debut album but got back into them during covid and condensed a lot of music into a short space of time and was amazed at how varied it all actually is.

This is actually a good shout who I looked up recently when I saw him on an old episode of Top Gear. He had another album, then became an actor, then put out another album then just... didn't do anything. Weird. 

Some fair points. 

 

Perhaps we're conflating "disappearing" with "bands who released some popular stuff before releasing some much less popular stuff". 

 

Which to be fair, unless you're in Steely Dan is probably every band

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3 minutes ago, Bert Raccoon said:

Mentions of the Scissor Sisters reminded me that I saw them bring Kylie Minogue on for a song at Glastonbury. 

I was like Nelson Muntz watching Andy Williams 

image.jpeg.78deafa57f57a51b0da140d8f7ef3d2c.jpeg

For some reason, your post reminded me of Hurts. They came and went around that time as well and had a song with Kylie

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5 minutes ago, Spyro said:

For some reason, your post reminded me of Hurts. They came and went around that time as well and had a song with Kylie

Hurts became very popular in eastern Europe. Their image changed somewhat. First album:

Happiness

Latest (fifth) album, 2020:

Hurts – Faith (2020, Vinyl) - Discogs

 

 

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On 25/07/2024 at 14:45, Bert Raccoon said:

Most the bands mentioned are either still together or have got back together to cash in on the nostalgia factor.

Take early 00s Nu Metal heroes Limp Bizkit. Few big hits over 20 years ago then relative obscurity. Now the lead singer, Fred Durst looks like yer grandad having some sort of breakdown

image.thumb.png.5326daa13b316dba776670e4aa49e0bb.png

That’s fair enough, as I searched Air Supply and the c**ts are still around.

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21 minutes ago, Miguel Sanchez said:

Hurts became very popular in eastern Europe. Their image changed somewhat. First album:

Happiness

Latest (fifth) album, 2020:

Hurts – Faith (2020, Vinyl) - Discogs

 

 

Have to admit, I quite liked the 1st album. Don't know if I would go as far as listening to any more of them unless it was well recommended by someone

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3 minutes ago, Spyro said:

Have to admit, I quite liked the 1st album. Don't know if I would go as far as listening to any more of them unless it was well recommended by someone

The second one is more of the same but a bit more dramatic. The third is more of the same but a bit like self-parody. One of the songs was used as the background music during the Goal of the Month bits on Match of the Day the year Leicester won the league. Albums four and five... well,  I don't think you'd like them. Good live show though.

Edited by Miguel Sanchez
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21 hours ago, Miguel Sanchez said:

MGMT are still going and are inexplicably popular. Moreso in America, I think. 

MGMT released a new album either this year or last. It was fine. They sort of captured lightning in a bottle with Oracular Spectacular and no follow-up album was ever going to emulate it. Very much a product of its time but it worked.

 

21 hours ago, Bert Raccoon said:

I've went down a bit of a 2000s Indie rabbit hole  remembered  Joe Lean and the Jing Jang Jong, one song of note, loved by NME and most notable for having the actor who played Sophie's brother in Peep Show as the lead singer 

This is a landfill indie deep cut. I'm pretty sure I bought the single for Lonely Buoy on the back of the NME buzz.

 

6 hours ago, Venti said:

Could lump Radiohead in here perhaps.

No you couldn't.

 

------

The Pigeon Detectives first album was disposable indie fun. Every song sounded the same but I was a huge fan of it at the time. One of those bands who just totally failed to kick-on after that. The Enemy are another one: solid debut album by 2000s indie standards, followed by some really poor stuff. The Wombats debut album was mostly rubbish but they had three or four landfill indie classics on it - the majority of bands from that era would kill for that hit ratio.

The Mumfords were absolutely massive for ~5 years (from their debut until they headlined Glastonbury) and then, mercifully, disappeared off everyone's radar. You couldn't go anywhere without hearing them between 2009ish to 2014. 

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6 minutes ago, yoda said:

MGMT released a new album either this year or last. It was fine. They sort of captured lightning in a bottle with Oracular Spectacular and no follow-up album was ever going to emulate it. Very much a product of its time but it worked.

 

This is a landfill indie deep cut. I'm pretty sure I bought the single for Lonely Buoy on the back of the NME buzz.

 

No you couldn't.

 

------

The Pigeon Detectives first album was disposable indie fun. Every song sounded the same but I was a huge fan of it at the time. One of those bands who just totally failed to kick-on after that. The Enemy are another one: solid debut album by 2000s indie standards, followed by some really poor stuff. The Wombats debut album was mostly rubbish but they had three or four landfill indie classics on it - the majority of bands from that era would kill for that hit ratio.

The Mumfords were absolutely massive for ~5 years (from their debut until they headlined Glastonbury) and then, mercifully, disappeared off everyone's radar. You couldn't go anywhere without hearing them between 2009ish to 2014. 

I love Radiohead, but after In Rainbows (2007) their stuff has been poor.

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11 minutes ago, yoda said:

The Pigeon Detectives first album was disposable indie fun. Every song sounded the same but I was a huge fan of it at the time. One of those bands who just totally failed to kick-on after that. The Enemy are another one: solid debut album by 2000s indie standards, followed by some really poor stuff.

I'm Not Sorry was the most played song on my iTunes at one point.

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1 hour ago, Miguel Sanchez said:

 

This was largely covered, but since the music industry is in more dire need of a Lamarr/Amstell to puncture the egos of its stars than ever before, let's revisit the full classic:

I refuse to believe this band existed outside of this episode and the clips from their own show you see here. I think the highlight here is "I should explain... Bill is a professional comedian. You won't win."

 

Not only did they exist outside this episode of BUzzcocks but they had their own TV series (on Bravo but that still kind of counts).

 

There is one episode, it might be this one, where they are wandering about some town centre with a music journalist and end up in a fight with some random person.  Utterly, utterly cringeworthy.  

I think that the singer was a housemate in Big Brother the year that Jade Goody was racist in it but he left before it ended up on the national news.

This sort of thing is kind of the era before reality TV, social media stardom, strange as it may seem these sorts of things were the first flowering of it.

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It's in that episode they fight someone, about 18 minutes in.  Pathetic stuff.

In episode 2 the man-child Donny gets in an argument with his record company boss, it too is extradinarily cringeworthy.

 

The older you get the more you realise that these people are deeply odd people, adults who are trapped in a fundamentally un-adult world.  

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