Artists You Used To Laugh/Scoff At That You Came To Love

[JKL2000]

The Grateful Dead

[Progbear]

Popol Vuh. I bought the Celestial Harmonies reissue of Hosianna Mantra and, based on one play, dismissed it as crystal-gazing, hippie-dippy new-age shit and took it back to the store the next day. Now I love them, including this album.

Also, Lucifer’s Friend. I was already hearing alarm bells going off learning their singer was in Uriah Heep, but I had heard them described as “prog.” And I found a copy of I’m Just a Rock & Roll Singer for a dollar. And...it turned out to be mostly a Grand Funk wannabee album. With female backing vocals and horns. Yuck! Except for the last track, which threw every prog keyboard cliché into the mix. And it turns out...this was arguably the band’s worst album. I was surprised how sophisticated and proggy Where Groupies Killed the Blues in particular was, especially given the horrible and completely unassuming title, when I finally heard it. The UH comparisons are way off base, the Heep never did anything that even came close to this level of musical refinement. Banquet and Mind Exploding turned out to be worth listening to as well, and I even grew to like the LZ/DP wannabee stuff off the first album and “Warriors” from Good Time Warrior (the rest of that album, save for “My Love,” is pretty horrid, apart from maybe the bits that make me laugh from how cheesy they are).

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MIKE (a.k.a. "Progbear")

"You can take the war out of the soldier, but you can't raise that soldier from the dead."
--Shona Laing

N.P.:nothing

[Sturgeon's Lawyer]

Oh, and: ABBA.

[progeezer]

I always liked ABBA.

[Oreb]

Abba-related, I like Chess and love, love Kristina fran Duvemala, the musicals Benny and Bjorn wrote.

And I've always liked Agnetha and Frida.

[Progbear]

I always liked ABBA.

Me too. After swearing off a lot of the vapid 70s pop I loved as a youngster, ABBA stuck with me as something of a guilty pleasure. My sister bought the K-Tel Magic of ABBA cassette off of TV when “The Winner Takes It All” was a big hit. We passed that tape back and forth for years, neither of us had the heart to give/throw it away.

↑Chess had its moments. “I Know Him So Well” is basically an ABBA song with Elaine Page and Barbara Dickson in the Agnetha and Frida parts. Also, not Chess, but there is this:



...which actually was an ABBA song (a completely different, more upbeat arrangement by ABBA exists as a frequently-bootlegged demo).

Kristina från Duvemala, on the other hand, did nothing for me.

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MIKE (a.k.a. "Progbear")

"You can take the war out of the soldier, but you can't raise that soldier from the dead."
--Shona Laing

N.P.:nothing

[Vic2012]

I didn't wanna like these bands but it usually started with liking 2-3 songs then just taking a chance on 'em. It's only been within the last 10-12 (well into my 40s at the time) years that I've become fanatical about them.

AC/DC: I always liked a couple songs (Back In Black, For Those About To Rock). Then on a whim I bought one album. Then 2,3,4, and on and on. I still prefer the Brian Johnson era (sue me, fuck if I care ) but I eventually warmed up to Bon Scott. I get the love now.

Metallica: See AC/DC. It started with taking a chance on one album because of a song or two I liked, then I end up buying just about the entire discography.

Van Halen (DLR era): Same as above. Like a song, take a chance on an album. Off we go .

I'm sure there's more that I'm forgetting.

[Vic2012]

Jimi: I wouldn't say I scoffed at him, but for years I always thought of him as some whacked out guy who lit guitars on fire. About ten years ago I just took a chance on Electric Ladyland. Where'd I been my whole life? Jesus, I finally got it. I got it, I got it. Better late than never.

[nosebone]

The Carpenters
The Fifth Dimension
Burt Bacharach
The Free Design

[Wounded Land]

Louis Armstrong (and early jazz in general) - took me many years to hear through the sound to catch up with the music;


Mozart - dismissed by yours truly as bland ("I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now", as someone I've always had the good taste to revere once wrote

Good call on these two.

[Trane]

That would be me also. I loved early 70s soul and funk, but once disco became big I hated what I considered the "whitening" of some of these great bands. With the reflection of time, I realize that the funk may have been softened, but much of it was still funk and not disco.

Great thread.

Actually,we aren't alike in this case... I really didn't know all of those 70's funk bands before they got encompassed in the disco era whirlwind/tornado... I'd never heard of them before.... Which is why I pigeonholed them (wrongly) as disco


I had to wait until the late 90's to discover that EW&F and K&tG had released albums before 1977...

[Rael]

I always liked ABBA.

I don't think ABBA can even be considered a guilty pleasure anymore. It seems like they are bigger now than any time since they broke up 30 years ago. And they made some damn fine music too.

[Sturgeon's Lawyer]

The thing about ABBA: it may be questioned whether what they did was worth doing, but they did it so damn well....

[SteveSly]

[QUOTE=Oreb;31467]

Buckingham-era Fleetwood Mac - these days I think s/t and Rumours are genuinely wonderful and Tusk is a masterpiece;

Billy Joel - most proggers can only dream of being as fine a craftsman;

Both of these for me too. I never gave FM the time of day back when they were huge. Now I am a huge Lindsey Buckingham fan and a fan of the band in general. Hearing some of Lindsey's solo stuff eventually brought me around with The Mac.

Billy Joel too, I always wrote him off as pop fluff, but a buddy of mine urged me to listen to deeper to some of his albums and he clicked with me.

Steve Sly

[SteveSly]

[QUOTE=Cuz;31759]Grateful Dead and Jimmy Bufett - two artists who used to make me cringe all through my teens and 20s (I'm 46 now). Started to get into the Grateful Dead around age 30 or so. Jimmy Bufett is relatively recent, maybe in the last two years or so.

Jimmy Buffett for me too. I had heard his hits and thought some of them were ok, but never got into him much. Then one time I was sitting in an outdoor bar (located on a riverboat) in South Haven Michigan and they were playing some of Buffett's albums over the sound system (not just the hits). It clicked with me and I started exploring his stuff deeper. Now I own all of his studio albums and have seen him live many times.

Steve Sly

[Progbear]

Billy Joel too, I always wrote him off as pop fluff, but a buddy of mine urged me to listen to deeper to some of his albums and he clicked with me.

Billy Joel does write pop fluff, but it’s brilliant pop fluff. Turnstiles and especially The Stranger are stuffed with great radio-friendly tunes that most songwriters would die for. Like Todd Rundgren, Neil Diamond and Carole King, he has a sort of magic touch when it comes to writing the perfect pop tune. Joel’s problem is that he wants more than that, and his attempts to be taken “seriously” as an “artist” are completely insufferable. It’s in those moments that we get crap like “We Didn’t Start the Fire.”

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MIKE (a.k.a. "Progbear")

"Siento que debemos saber para el sueño de quién brillará esta luz
o consagrar una propia estrella" --Alberto Felici

N.P.:“The Poison Woman”-The Dear Hunter/Act III: Life and Death

[trurl]

Joel’s problem is that he wants more than that, and his attempts to be taken “seriously” as an “artist” are completely insufferable. It’s in those moments that we get crap like “We Didn’t Start the Fire.”

I hope you're not including The Nylon Curtain in that group because I f*ing love that album. Ii never considered We Can't Start The Fire as anything BJ would offer as some kind of serious art, but maybe he feels differently.

[Yodelgoat]

The first Rush album gave me fits. I made incessant fun of it - and of Rush listeners who I put in the Idiot Butt Rocker category - People who went to Ted Nugent concerts and sniffed their own poop and ate their own mucus. Then in 1978 I accidentally heard A Farewell to Kings and man at a college dorm party, it hurt so bad to be so wrong about a band. I picked up Farewell and then retroactively Caress and Fly By Night and loved them both. I still deeply despise their first album and will never own it. I went on to love Rush through Roll the Bones, but for two decades its been hit and miss.

[progeezer]

I thought of another one. The first time I heard "Someday, Someway" by Marshall Crenshaw and saw what he looked like my first thought was "one Buddy from Lubbock", as great as he was, was enough.

Then a friend played me some tapes he had "obtained" from the original B'way production of "Beatlemania" w/ MC as John Lennon. I was amazed and then heard his s/t debut album in its entirety, and for years now I've felt he was/is a very under-appreciated talent (particularly his writing).

[jowallan lid]

The Carpenters.

[SteveSly]

I hope you're not including The Nylon Curtain in that group because I f*ing love that album. Ii never considered We Can't Start The Fire as anything BJ would offer as some kind of serious art, but maybe he feels differently.

I would agree, I think "Nylon Curtain" is his best overall album.

Steve Sly

[R. Totale III]

Joan Baez. I lumped her in with all the other good looking, rich, guitar strummin' barefoot babes of the time, but she really does have some integrity, a great voice, and a few great songs.

[Bake 1]

-First time I heard the Ramones it seemed like really dumb, vacuous and weak derivative B.S... I don't now love everything they've recorded, but do like a lot of their stuff.
-Thinking what the hell kind of stupid name is Elvis Costello? kept me fom checking out the 1st three records for a couple of years.
-Thought James Brown was pretty lame compared to Mahavishnu Orchestra and King Crimson and was surprised to see the G.F.O.S. getting praised in the liner notes of Can's Soon Over Babaluma record. This led to getting the J.Bs Doin' It To Death record for 25 cents and eventually figuring out something that should have been pretty obvious all along.

[progeezer]

-Thought James Brown was pretty lame compared to Mahavishnu Orchestra and King Crimson and was surprised to see the G.F.O.S. getting praised in the liner notes of Can's Soon Over Babaluma record. This led to getting the J.Bs Doin' It To Death record for 25 cents and eventually figuring out something that should have been pretty obvious all along.

In the small world department, JB's original "Funky Drummer" (who the song was written about), Clyde Stubblefield (his sticks are in the dubious RRHOF) has lived in Madison for 35 years, and is still playing locally a lot w/his funk band after dealing (successfully) with stomach cancer in 2010. His wife Jody is someone I dated a couple of times in a galaxy far, far away! (And yes!)

[notallwhowander]

Hawkwind.