So far I have had some good bands and artists to talk about over the past two dozen months. They have all been bands that I love, first of all; and they have had a fair amount of recorded material to their credit. There are any number of unknown garage rock bands that I could talk about who have only recorded one or two 45’s (and it might come to that in a few years). In fact, one of my favorite power pop songs, “She’s Not Mine” – with enough musical ideas to fill an entire side of an album – is the sole recording by a band called the Mystery Machine; it was included on a compilation album in the mid-1970’s as the power pop movement was just starting to take hold. For now though, I am trying to find artists with at least a full album of work to talk about.
This past year, I have been able to show a lot of variety, from power pop to surf rock to rockabilly to singer-songwriter to my usual punk rock, psychedelic rock and garage rock. One of the bands, the Rip Chords even had a hit song, “Hey Little Cobra” (#4 on the charts toward the end of the surf/hot rod era). The first band for the new year was a new band, and I plan to keep that up in the years to come. I have three new bands/artists to talk about already, so I will probably have more than one new band in the coming year.
Also, I am going to try to add a bonus to the articles: A “Flashback” to the band from two years earlier if I can find a YouTube video to post. I am a little leery of this kind of link myself since I evidently picked up a couple of nasty viruses that way early this year. What I have heard you can do to keep it safe is to copy the link rather than click on it directly, and then paste the copy into the Internet box. Anyway, wish me luck; supposedly there are millions of YouTube videos on any band imaginable – and I have come across several as I have been writing these posts. But I don’t expect to find one on all of the Under-Appreciated Rock Bands and Artists, that’s for sure.
Here is a rundown of the 2010-2011 Under-Appreciated Rock Bands/Artists of the Month for the past year:
December 2010 – THE POPPEES, 1970’s Beatlesque power pop band (compilation album)
January 2011 – HACIENDA, active 2010’s Chicano rock band (two albums)
February 2011 – THE WANDERERS, 1980’s apocalyptic punk rock band (one album)
March 2011 – INDEX, legendary 1960’s psychedelic rock band (two albums)
April 2011 – BOHEMIAN VENDETTA, 1960’s garage rock band (one album plus compilation album)
May 2011 – THE LONESOME DRIFTER, 1960’s rockabilly singer (compilation album)
June 2011 – THE UNKNOWNS, 1970’s first-wave punk rock band (two albums plus compilation album)
July 2011 – THE RIP CHORDS, 1960’s surf rock band (two albums)
August 2011 – ANDY COLQUHOUN, active 1980’s-2010’s psychedelic rock guitarist (two albums)
September 2011 – ULTRA, 1970’s old-fashioned hard rock band (compilation albums)
October 2011 – JIM SULLIVAN, 1960’s country-rock singer-songwriter (two albums)
November 2011 – THE UGLY, 1970’s first-wave Canadian punk rock band (compilation album)