Waterboys is a good call tbf. There’s a box of the room to roam era coming out and I’m tempted. Beautiful soaring heartbreaking music. Was never happier.
Waking Hours, Change Everything and Twisted are a great trio of albums, great fun live and a front man with a killer sense of humour and an underappreciated skill with lyrics.
Fisherman’s Blues is a great, great album. the title track isnt the best song on the album. ‘When ye go away’ is very fine, perhaps the best. ‘A Bang on the Ear ‘ is an impossible song nowadays but good. The weirdy stolen child is a step too far into fairies and bollox. The album was one where they tipped into highland and island country and Irish ☘️ And sometimes too far. But I listen to it still and will never give it up as it is both beautifully produced and excellently played.
I loved Sleeper. Elastica could have been bigger if they’d bothered to record more than two albums and hadn’t waited five years until Britpop was over before releasing the second.
Having mentioned the Pipettes, I may add the band of their producer Gareth Parton, The Go! Team, who do a sort of mashup of hip hop and Sesame Street music. Vague hints of the Bomb Squad’s backing track filling.
Yeah, I really liked The Go Team’s “Thunder, Lightning, Flash”.
Future Islands should be bigger now - you’ll like them if you’re into electro and synthesizer stuff with strong baselines (a bit like a less bleak New Order).
Watching one of the old Top of the Popses on the iplayer reminded me of a band that always seemed on the verge of making it big but never did - Voice Of The Beehive. Not sure what went wrong, great pop choons, up to 2 members of Madness, cute sisters up front.
Bought a pair of Joy Division oven gloves on Amazon a few years ago. Managed to catch them on the hob and they properly caught 🔥 while I was wearing them.
God, Mansun. I saw them with a set that included Ski Jump Nose and Wide Open Space before their first album came out, supporting (I think) Sleeper at (???) the Civic Hall in Guildford.
You’re right, they were fun.
Blameless (did they do “Breathe A Little Deeper”?) better than Longpigs is a bit of a stretch though…
It was OK, the only reason I know it is because it was on one of those best album in the world ever indie compilations or shine or some other bag o’ tunes
Taking your own appendix out with your anaesthetic is better than Toploader. Look what one of them did to Gail Porter.
Kim Deal started the Amps when the Breeders were paused. I remember one great album from them. Breeders might have broken through had Levis gone with their original idea and used “Cannonball” for the advert that ultimately used Stiltskin.
There is a story that a journalist once played Billy Corgan the Stiltskin song (they only had one, obvs) and pointed out the... shall we say... similarity to "Today" by the Pumpkins.
Shortly thereafter, Smashing Pumpkins went on stage and BIlly's first words were "Hi! We're Stiltskin!"
Crazy Town were “Your Woman”, right? One hit wonders, a good song but …
Papa Roach and Limp Bizkit I struggled to find in my record collection and eventually located them in a box marked “w**k rap rock - never listen to again”.
Kula Shaker had 2 good songs and an awful lot of very silly Sanskrit chants over turgid Dadrock which they mistakenly believed made them “psychedelic”.
Limp Bizkit are the worst thing that has ever happened in the history of humanity. They were also massive so hardly fit in this thread.
Band that would have been way way way more massive but for stage fright: XTC. They'd gone from punk to cult to almost mainstream success, top five album and top ten single, then Andy Partridge more or less had a nervous collapse and all momentum was gone. Despite the love for things like Skylarking and the Dukes of Stratosphear project, they never came close to getting back to where they were.
A long rambling clusterfook of a career that very rarely saw them get it together out of the studio (but The Last Waltz is a truly great live album so go figure). Invented Americana/alt country.
Disagree about them live. Rock of Ages is a great record as is Before the Flood with Dylan, the tour for which 4% of the US population applied for tickets. Trag how they unravelled though. That whole world is now a bygone era, and it makes me sad just to think about it tbh.
Need to dig Rock of Ages out. Not listened to it in ages.
Agree Before the Flood is a good live record and marks the beginning of Dylan’s revival after a (for him) relatively fallow period.
Weird that Dylan ditched them for the Rolling Thunder Revue then (probably because he knew they were rather a mess by that stage with Robertson trying to keep it together (as he tells it) and monomaniacally dictating the approach (as Helm told it) and an increasingly erratic Manuel spending most of his time strung out and crawling inside Grand Marnier bottles).
That tour was a one off I think and obvs Dylan has only ever done what he wanted. Fascinating to think these people were only in their early 30s then. Lucky fvckers.
Scep Tick Limp Bizkit were massive for a relatively short period of time- hence why think they fit here. They merited a longer period in the limelight- so many Durst haters about!
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They were massive by their final record iirc
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he's going to make the point he said more huge...
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Echo and the Bunnymen. In the early days it was between them and U2 for soaring majestic songs.
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Fixed.
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The Bunnymen at their best pissed all over U2.
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Echo were struggling to be good. They didn't make it.
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Gene. Brilliant live, massive tunes, good lyrics.
Suede. If only Bernard hadn’t left.
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Actually both Elastica and probably Sleeper deserved to be bigger.
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As well.
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Elastica were basically a covers band. Sleeper were just shit. Soz.
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Half right there WhatsAppy lad. Your summary of Elastica is correct.
Gene a good call.
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The Pipettes. Their debut album is like a greatest hits compilation. All killer no filler. They should have done Eurovision. Perfect act for it.
Metronomy have been around for ages and have never had a hit. Yet they keep coming up with earworms.
Camera Obscura. Gorgeous melancholic slightly fey folky indiepop with a charismatic singer-songwriter. A run of quality albums.
But all of these acts have coincided with the Fix Factor model of promotion and a lack of any mainstream outlets.
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Waterboys
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Ned’s Atomic Dustbin
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The beta band. In terms of the ratio of success to how good they are (clue: fvcking great) they win this thread hands down.
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Waterboys is a good call tbf. There’s a box of the room to roam era coming out and I’m tempted. Beautiful soaring heartbreaking music. Was never happier.
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Del Amitri
Waking Hours, Change Everything and Twisted are a great trio of albums, great fun live and a front man with a killer sense of humour and an underappreciated skill with lyrics.
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del amitri are sensational live.
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A rare what cookie said for all of this thread - spot on about Echo & the Bunnymen, Elastica and Sleeper.
Definitely not what Mutters said about Neds.
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Mutters was probably joking.
Probably.
If he was being serious he’d have gone for Sultans of Ping.
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The Go-Betweens.
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Yes, Waterboys. Fisherman's Blues is an epic song.
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Some shocking suggestions here. Sleeper and Del Amitri were utter crap. The Waterboys 25% good at best. Posterity has got it right on all of them.
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+1 camera obscura, although hardly mass market
Longpigs
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Always wondered what happened to longpigs
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Your mama’s gastric
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Your mama’s gastric
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they made a poorly received 2nd album and vanished
Crispin hunt is now a director of the PRS
Richard Hawley has done some good stuff
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Fisherman’s Blues is a great, great album. the title track isnt the best song on the album. ‘When ye go away’ is very fine, perhaps the best. ‘A Bang on the Ear ‘ is an impossible song nowadays but good. The weirdy stolen child is a step too far into fairies and bollox. The album was one where they tipped into highland and island country and Irish ☘️ And sometimes too far. But I listen to it still and will never give it up as it is both beautifully produced and excellently played.
Neds - it was a joke
Talk Talk
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"The Killing Moon" and "The whole of the moon" are a couple of my fave songs. Just saying.
Imo Echo are one of the coolest bands to emerge in the 1980s - admittedly not difficult when you consider the competition.
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The Beatles - criminally underrated.
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I loved Sleeper. Elastica could have been bigger if they’d bothered to record more than two albums and hadn’t waited five years until Britpop was over before releasing the second.
Suede definitely should have been bigger.
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Talk Talk is a good shout. And the only one on this thread.
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Divine Comedy? "The Miracle Is Mine" could have become a non-ironic hit.
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I always rated The Alarm, great live band.
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Talk Talk but only their later period (for once). Spirit of Eden is magic.
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Cannibal Corpse
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Having mentioned the Pipettes, I may add the band of their producer Gareth Parton, The Go! Team, who do a sort of mashup of hip hop and Sesame Street music. Vague hints of the Bomb Squad’s backing track filling.
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Yeah, I really liked The Go Team’s “Thunder, Lightning, Flash”.
Future Islands should be bigger now - you’ll like them if you’re into electro and synthesizer stuff with strong baselines (a bit like a less bleak New Order).
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Watching one of the old Top of the Popses on the iplayer reminded me of a band that always seemed on the verge of making it big but never did - Voice Of The Beehive. Not sure what went wrong, great pop choons, up to 2 members of Madness, cute sisters up front.
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Trying to work out which one I am less surprised at not making it huge - Cannibal Corpse or The Go Team!
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VOTB were great.
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Good shout for Gene, above, they were brilliant.
Marion had one absolutely killer album, unfortunately the frontman, Harding, was an absolute wreck of a man.
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Elastica? Posh girls without musical talent playing at pop stars before marrying asset managers and moving to Chipping Norton.
Waterboys? Shite.
Del Amitri is a decent call. Waking Hours was good.
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The Room to Roam box set with the book is quite glorious.
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Japan
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Little Boots. But her music will forever be immortalised on Friday Night Dinner
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XTC
Squeeze
Wilco
I also regularly listen to Fisherman's Blues, Mutters. Love it.
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I bought my house off one of the bassists from Squeeze. Trufax.
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A few more to chuck out randomly:
The Chameleons
Talk Talk
Ocean Colour Scene
The Coral
Not all their songs but maybe one or two in each case
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The House of Love
The butterfly album is a masterpiece. I think Guy Chadwick now fits curtains and blinds.
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Good shout on HMHB.
Bought a pair of Joy Division oven gloves on Amazon a few years ago. Managed to catch them on the hob and they properly caught 🔥 while I was wearing them.
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The Sundays perhaps.
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Let's acknowledge just how good Duran Duran were for the space of their first album.
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The The
insanely good angst ridden lyrics and great tunes
heartbreaking
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yeah, I loved The The.
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Guy Chadwick fits sash windows and does joinery stuff. He’s a really nice bloke.
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Jesus and Mary Chain
The Breeders
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I reckon the doves had a good run and of course we're basically sub sub so probably just got knackered
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When you live in Dubai, you need extra larger cock rings
Genuinely most men gain a few solid inches in length and girth permanently because of the warm weather. It just shrivels up for British men.
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Jesus, I would be tripping over it. Will stay here tbh
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The The are amazing
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This is the day. Great song
https://youtu.be/7ZYgKCbFbWY
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXaEAoRUkfE
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Mansun. Just because Six is SUCH a great record.
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Matt Johnson blew it and I can’t remember why. Could be pretty bleak at times.
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I knew it was something to do with windows.
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The Cult: Fire Woman was amazing. Otherwise pretty meh.
Echo * The Bunnymen: Meh (U2 don’t do “soaring majesty”, by the way. They do soulless, artless mechanistic drivel).
Gene: Seen them live. Meh.
Suede: Has not aged well. Much like Brett.
Elastica: LOLZ. Such hype, much wow.
Sleeper: LOLZ. Fancying Louise Wener does not make them a good band.
Cud: Saw them with Republica and Neds. Had never heard them before. They were amazing. Blew Neds away. Really, REALLY good.
Neds: Meh.
Del Amitri: Like a living C&A catalogue. Middle of the road dullness personified.
Waterboys: No one cares. Except Whole Of The Moon. Otherwise, they are regarded as a second string Dexy’s midnight runners.
Longpigs: Blameless were much, much better.
Ocean Duller Scene: Nuff said. Utter, utter shite.
The Breeders weren’t actually listenable apart from Cannonball. Atonal rubbish.
Mansun were fun.
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People will never agree on music. No point picking apart Shooty's post. Tempting, but its all subjective.
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It’s (nearly)all bollox too
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The Go-Betweens have a bridge named after them Goose. You can't get much bigger than that.
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Chambers
No point picking apart Shooty's post. Tempting, but its all subjective.
=======================
Because you can't.
Because I am right.
I WIN BY DEFAULT!
YEEHAH!
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God, Mansun. I saw them with a set that included Ski Jump Nose and Wide Open Space before their first album came out, supporting (I think) Sleeper at (???) the Civic Hall in Guildford.
You’re right, they were fun.
Blameless (did they do “Breathe A Little Deeper”?) better than Longpigs is a bit of a stretch though…
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The Cud singer, when I saw them, was like a cross between Elvis and Ron Jeremy.
a modern Breeders record, you say? OK, I was basing it off 'Pod', which is very of its time.
"Breathe A Little Deeper" is indeed Blameless, and it was amazing, I hope you agree.
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It was OK, the only reason I know it is because it was on one of those best album in the world ever indie compilations or shine or some other bag o’ tunes
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From wiki:
“The Signs Are All There failed to chart and did not meet sales expectations.”
Looks like you’re on your own with that, sun
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Shine 5, I see.
I remember thinking it was better than Tossloader and “Dancing in the Moonlight”.
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The Breeders were brilliant faod
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Taking your own appendix out with your anaesthetic is better than Toploader. Look what one of them did to Gail Porter.
Kim Deal started the Amps when the Breeders were paused. I remember one great album from them. Breeders might have broken through had Levis gone with their original idea and used “Cannonball” for the advert that ultimately used Stiltskin.
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The thing about Del Amitri, a bit like Crowded House, is they’re well-crafted songs and you know more of them than you think you do.
Yes, middle of the road, maybe, but memorably so, which isn’t an easy trick to pull off.
And they are immense fun, live.
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Everybody in the fun house.
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There is a story that a journalist once played Billy Corgan the Stiltskin song (they only had one, obvs) and pointed out the... shall we say... similarity to "Today" by the Pumpkins.
Shortly thereafter, Smashing Pumpkins went on stage and BIlly's first words were "Hi! We're Stiltskin!"
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Neil Finn pisses all over most other songwriters
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Kula Shaker
Lightning Seeds
Crazy Town
Limp bizkit
Papa Roach
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Lightning Seeds is worthy. Why did David Baddiel leave the band?
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He was never in it- just a one off with skinner for 3 lions. Assuming you were serious!
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The joke was cleverer than that.
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Together Alone is better than any of the solo records. In fact, it’s better than most records ;)
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Together Alone is a truly truly great album. As is Woodface. And Neil Finn is a brilliant songwriter.
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Crazy Town were “Your Woman”, right? One hit wonders, a good song but …
Papa Roach and Limp Bizkit I struggled to find in my record collection and eventually located them in a box marked “w**k rap rock - never listen to again”.
Kula Shaker had 2 good songs and an awful lot of very silly Sanskrit chants over turgid Dadrock which they mistakenly believed made them “psychedelic”.
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That bass line on 'hey dude' though, right? Divine.
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No Jack Crazy Town did Butterfly. White Town did your woman.
Limp Bizkit are awesome.
Papa Roach good as well.
Kula Shaker's first album was great. The second wasn't.
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Indigo Trashcan
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On this topic, “Smile” by the Supernaturals on R2 this morning put a big, er, smile on my face this morning.
Bouncy pop punk a-sides, mournful elegiac b-sides, what’s not to like?
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Limp Bizkit are the worst thing that has ever happened in the history of humanity. They were also massive so hardly fit in this thread.
Band that would have been way way way more massive but for stage fright: XTC. They'd gone from punk to cult to almost mainstream success, top five album and top ten single, then Andy Partridge more or less had a nervous collapse and all momentum was gone. Despite the love for things like Skylarking and the Dukes of Stratosphear project, they never came close to getting back to where they were.
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The Band.
A long rambling clusterfook of a career that very rarely saw them get it together out of the studio (but The Last Waltz is a truly great live album so go figure). Invented Americana/alt country.
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Disagree about them live. Rock of Ages is a great record as is Before the Flood with Dylan, the tour for which 4% of the US population applied for tickets. Trag how they unravelled though. That whole world is now a bygone era, and it makes me sad just to think about it tbh.
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Need to dig Rock of Ages out. Not listened to it in ages.
Agree Before the Flood is a good live record and marks the beginning of Dylan’s revival after a (for him) relatively fallow period.
Weird that Dylan ditched them for the Rolling Thunder Revue then (probably because he knew they were rather a mess by that stage with Robertson trying to keep it together (as he tells it) and monomaniacally dictating the approach (as Helm told it) and an increasingly erratic Manuel spending most of his time strung out and crawling inside Grand Marnier bottles).
A very sad story, really.
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That tour was a one off I think and obvs Dylan has only ever done what he wanted. Fascinating to think these people were only in their early 30s then. Lucky fvckers.
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Scep Tick Limp Bizkit were massive for a relatively short period of time- hence why think they fit here. They merited a longer period in the limelight- so many Durst haters about!
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