Bands that served as their style's only representative on the charts

[Various Artist]

How do you have singalongs with instrumentals, though? Did all their hits actually have words, but the listeners were expected just to know them and fill them in for themselves?

[Sits]

For a long time, Kraftwerk ploughed a lonely furrow.

And Hawkwind sort of created their own genre in "Space Rock", albeit with limited chart success beyond Silver Machine.

[evilC]

Falco was first

I'm assuming, then, that Boney M - who were German - would be further sub-categorised within Disco and that you're treating Falco's more straight-up Pop stylings as separate. Maybe ditto with Space? Would that apply to acts like Telex, or Trio though, who were overtly Pop / New Wave?

(edit: Yellow Magic Orchestra always stood out, for me, as the sole purveyors of Japanese Pop - Electro- or otherwise - when they first charted, over here.)

[ursus arctos]

Sorry, I was answering Reed's question of whether Falco or After the Fire recorded Der Kommisar first.

Boney M barely made a dent in the US market, the other bands you mention even less so.

I'm a bit confused by Reed's nomination of the Georgia Satellites, as I always considered them an offshoot of the "Southern Rock"/Muscle Shoals genre best exemplified by the Allman Brothers and Lynyrd Skynyrd

[Various Artist]

I looked it up. Dave Matthews band had multiple #1 albums in the US, but no albums in the UK did better than #59, according to officialcharts.com.

Insofar as they had any profile here at all, it was that they were basically regarded as the apotheosis (or, perhaps, nadir) of a type of "meat and potatoes" US rock that tended to shift 10m per album Stateside and made little or no dent here at all. See also Matchbox Twenty, Hootie and the Blowfish, etc.

No, I know that they were fairly popular in the UK. Though I always get The Specials mixed up with The Selector..

Here in Britain they're regarded as two of the key handful of bands of the late '70s/early '80s 2 Tone ska explosion, but The Selecter had just four chart singles and their only enduring radio classic is their 1979 no.8 debut hit On My Radio (as I believe someone observed on these boards recently, naming a song something like that is always a great bet to keep getting airplay for, well, ever) – though singer Pauline Black remains a visible and articulate presence on various cultural issues and TV retrospectives of their era. The Specials were a much bigger band commercially – eight or nine top 10 hits and two number ones with The Special AKA Live! EP (lead track Too Much Too Young) from 1980 and Ghost Town from 1981, the latter of which remains a cultural touchstone for the era of the Brixton riots.

The Mighty Mighty Bosstones' sole UK hit was The Impression That I Get, which reached no.12 in 1998. The album Let's Face It dipped in and out at no.40. I could swear the song appeared on a FIFA game soundtrack at some point, but the below reminds me that I may be conflating it with something else:

Any minor popularity or even just name recognition Reel Big Fish had in the UK most likely came off the back of the appearance of Sell Out on the soundtrack of FIFA 2000

Thanks 3CR, as soon as I saw the name it rang an annoyingly faint bell, but you've mercifully pinpointed where I know it from.

The Flying Pickets must be another for this.

Though they didn't have the only a cappella Number One hit of their era, the Housemartins hitting the top with Caravan of Love in 1986 – albeit it wasn't representative of their usual style.

[Hot Pepsi]

I'm a bit confused by Reed's nomination of the Georgia Satellites, as I always considered them an offshoot of the "Southern Rock"/Muscle Shoals genre best exemplified by the Allman Brothers and Lynyrd Skynyrd

Yes, but the Georgia Sattelites charted in 1986. The Allman Brothers and Lynyrd Skynyrd were nowhere in sight then, were they?

[ursus arctos]

They were still in heavy rotation on Southern radio.

[Incandenza]

Early No Doubt were much more ska punk than their later stuff. They were part of the Orange County ska punk scene, like the aforementioned Reel Big Fish, Save Ferris, and the Aquabats.

[elguapo4]

St winifreds school choir and the brighouse and rastrick brass band

[caja-dglh]

I looked it up. Dave Matthews band had multiple #1 albums in the US, but no albums in the UK did better than #59, according to officialcharts.com.

I am storing this fact for future use in any UK vs US debate.

[3 Colours Red]

White Town for "bashed-out-on-an-Atari-ST-electropop-1920s-trumpet-fusion".

[Satchmo Distel]

The Tornadoes - simply because no other producer could reproduce that Joe Meek recorded in the bog resonance.

Dick Dale - although I think he only charted in the US originally

Hugo Montenegro - poundshop versions of Ennio Morricone's spaghetti western themes

Cocteau Twins - guitar ambient wash with indecipherable vocal

[Hot Pepsi]

They were still in heavy rotation on Southern radio.

Oh sure. That stuff is always popular somewhere. But GS hit #2 on the main US chart and were on MTV a lot. That's an outlier.

And I'm not sure they're really the same kind of music. GS sound more like Meat Puppets or Mike Ness than the Allman Brothers or Skynard. It's a heavier, more straightforward sound with less guitar noodling (sorry, i"m not a music writer). Spotify says their closest analogs are Molly Hatchet, George Thorogood, Foghat, John Fogerty, Blackfoot, and the Outlaws. Foghat had some hits, but that was - in pop music terms - a long time before 1987. (I'm also surprised to learn that Foghat are English. Then again, they're one of those bands that sounds so American that they must be British).


Another outlier from around that time was Los Lobos' cover of "La Bama" for the film about Richie Valens, but that was from a film. It got to #1, which is better than Richie Valens' version did. It was not part of a wave of Spanish-language covers of 50s songs based on folk songs.

And John Mellencamp is a bit of a one-off. I can't think of anyone else that sounds so rootsy and even country that had so much commercial success in the 80s or 90s. It was very much against the grain.
Maybe Neil Young, but he had built his fanbase in an earlier time.

And Bruce Hornsby stands out as the only hit-maker of that era to heavily feature the piano, IIRC.

[Hot Pepsi]

Early No Doubt were much more ska punk than their later stuff. They were part of the Orange County ska punk scene, like the aforementioned Reel Big Fish, Save Ferris, and the Aquabats.

Yes. If there was ever a band to "sell out" - which isn't really a thing, I believe - it was them. IIRC from their behind the music. Gwen Stefani's brother quit the band to become an animator and that changed their sound.

For some reason, I thought Save Ferris were from New Jersey, but that makes sense that there was a whole scene. Rancid weren't part of that. They're from the east bay and half of them were in Operation Ivy, which sounded a bit more ska. But neither were never really a ska band. They never had brass or anything like that. Like the Clash, they just borrowed the rhythms. Indeed, Rancid has been accused of just reenacting the Clash the way those guys reenact civil war battles.

Save Ferris' lead singer has formed a new band calling itself Save Ferris. They'd probably be good to see live.

[Hot Pepsi]

White Town for "bashed-out-on-an-Atari-ST-electropop-1920s-trumpet-fusion".

Good example.

[Hot Pepsi]

The Tornadoes - simply because no other producer could reproduce that Joe Meek recorded in the bog resonance.

Dick Dale - although I think he only charted in the US originally

Hugo Montenegro - poundshop versions of Ennio Morricone's spaghetti western themes

Cocteau Twins - guitar ambient wash with indecipherable vocal

Indeed, Dick Dale, king of the surf guitar, stood out when his version of Miserlou was used in Pulp Fiction. It got on the radio then, but I don't know if it charted. It's not in the top 100 from that year. I was going to mention that but figured since it was in a movie, it didn't entirely count.
And he's not the only surf guitar act to ever have success. The Ventures, the Chantays etc hit the charts in the early 60s.

As I've mentioned before, if I were very rich, I'd start a bar restaurant that only played surf guitar, rockabilly, and psychobilly and sometimes space-age bachelor pad music. We'd showed old cheesy sci-fi movies and the staff uniforms would be Aloha shirts and bowling shirts or those "camp shirts" that dads in old movies wear camping.

[Hot Pepsi]

Would also suggest Nine Inch Nails - plenty of industrial electro/metal out there but no-one comes close to them in terms of sales.

NIN are an example of an outfit that brought with them a lot of imitators to the radio, if not the charts - I recall that in the mid to late 90s, there was a lot of stuff like Powerman 5000, Stabbing Westward, Gravity Kills, Orgy, Marilyn Manson (though he's a little different). Some of it is ok, but NIN is still better. Trent Reznor is just more of a real musician, for lack of a better term.

[MrLeam]

I looked it up. Dave Matthews band had multiple #1 albums in the US, but no albums in the UK did better than #59, according to officialcharts.com

Dave Matthews band certainly had one big hit...

[Hot Pepsi]

Dave Matthews band certainly had one big hit...

Wow!!! Ugh. Imagine the horror

And this.

http://www.theonion.com/article/dave...f-anymore-1779

[evilC]

NIN are an example of an outfit that brought with them a lot of imitators to the radio, if not the charts - I recall that in the mid to late 90s, there was a lot of stuff like Powerman 5000, Stabbing Westward, Gravity Kills, Orgy, Marilyn Manson (though he's a little different). Some of it is ok, but NIN is still better. Trent Reznor is just more of a real musician, for lack of a better term.

Wow! How things have changed! (Or maybe that 'lack of a better term' looms large, here?)

Let me give this some historical context. Over here (Europe) we were spoilt for 'Cyberpunk' and (third wave of) Industrial bands in the late 80s. Throbbing Gristle and Cabaret Voltaire had been the old guard, originating in the early 70s. Then you had people like Test Dept., Nocturnal Emissions, Portion Control, (Australia's) SPK, Psychic TV, D.A.F. and many others. Where it started to 'cross over' and get more commercial - over here, in Europe, at least - was with bands such as Nitzer Ebb (who popularised the 'Bodybeat' - nowadays called EBM - of D.A.F.), Front 242, Cassandra Complex, Chris & Cosey, Trisomie 21, Signal Aout 42, Esplendor Geometrico and countless others, who started incorporating elements of Electropop into their songs (possibly inspired by the crossover appeal of Depeche Mode). This isn't meant to be an exhaustive or temporally accurate list, though.

Similarly, on the other side of the Atlantic there had been a parallel development which was by no means inferior. Suicide, Chrome and Z'ev represent the Stateside 'old guard' and Devo weren't far behind, though were very different in approach. But then 'New Wave' seemed to dominate the North American scene for a while, presumably inspired by the success of bands like Talking Heads and the maturation (and chart success) of Devo. Thus, more Electropop-tinged bands, such as Snakefinger, Our Daughter's Wedding, Units and others got into the charts, while the more industrial-influenced bands seemed to stay underground. That is, until the rise of the seminal labels Wax Trax! in Chicago and (slightly later) Nettwerk in Halifax & Vancouver. Wax Trax! had been founded in 1980, officially-speaking, but really hit its stride in 86-87, when it started to not only release U.S. and Canadian bands such as Ministry and My Life With The Thrill Kill Kult, but also to licence European bands such as Front 242, Laibach, The Young Gods, KMFDM et al. There's actually an excellent documentary about Wax Trax! that you can view the trailer for, here.

It was largely because of Wax Trax!, Mute Records and, to a lesser extent, Nettwerk (who were the home to Skinny Puppy, Moev and later Front Line Assembly and all the myriad bands that spun off from those three) that 'Industrial' really reached the charts and the masses. While I would never in a million years class Depeche Mode as Cyberpunk or Industrial, I think that there's little doubt that being on the Mute label had brought them into touch with artists such as Fad Gadget and Nitzer Ebb, who had managed to blend those styles with pop, and I think this influenced them (DM) to lean in that direction, stylistically. This meant that their adoring fans (and popsters in general) were slowly having their minds opened to Industrial's influence.

However - and this is the point I'm getting to... when Nine Inch Nails appeared on the scene, on TVT Records, in 1989 (complete - it should be noted - with a fictional backstory about Reznor having been declared missing and dead between recording the abum and its release) they were considered to be operating thoroughly in the wake of many of the bands I've mentioned above - particularly Ministry (who had transformed themselves from a chart Synthpop band into quite an edgy, if rock-oriented, unit) and Front Line Assembly. I remember buying 'Pretty Hate Machine' and gradually getting into it, despite some misgivings. Some of it seemed great, but other tracks felt weak and just too much like Depeche Mode, who were getting left behind by their peers and label-mates by that time. In particular, Reznor's vocals simply made me feel that it often sounded a bit like a teenager having a hissy fit ...and I stand by that. Though 'Broken'/'Fixed', 'The Downward Spiral' and 'Further Down The Spiral' were more edgy, sonically-speaking, the subject matter still felt immature a lot of the time. Swearing for the sake of it; token outrage. Nice cover art, though. And this was at a time when dance musics and mutant forms of Hip hop were taking over. It just felt out of time and out of place. Basically, I and most people I knew considered them bandwagon jumpers and not particularly talented ones, at that.

So in one sense, Nine Inch Nails were *influenced* more than they were *an influence on others*, and yet it cant be denied that a whole load more bands did indeed start up or adopted a similar style due to their success. People like Chemlab, Apoptygma Berzerk, Combichrist and countless others ...including, of course, Marilyn Manson, who is pretty much the apogee of that teen-angst industrial-metal style. The conveyor belt of NIN imitators continues to this day and - like Rockabilly - it is a genre that will never die ...not so long as there are alienated middle-class kids who think that black hair dye, eyeliner and slashed forearms are the ultimate expressions of artistic endeavour and integrity. And, yes - I was nearly one of them! (See below.) Fortunately, Thrill Kill Kult, Sheep On Drugs and House music saved me from an eternity of taking myself seriously. :-)

Trent Reznor has, to his credit, continued to evolve, though. His collaborations with Atticus Ross have been fruitful, resulting in - IMHO - his most mature music yet. Nine Inch Nails are still a going concern too, of course, and his most recent material under that moniker seems to be something of a throwback to the early 90s stuff, but noticeably more mature in terms of content.

The eternal criticisms I have seen of Reznor, though, are often along the lines of him having little real talent of his own and riding on the backs of his other, more talented collaborators. While I wouldn't like to say that kind of thing, myself (having never witnessed him in the studio or behind the scenes) I think that it is noticeable that his music seems better when he is collaborating with other 'equal' partners, rather than running the show himself. I have to say that I do respect him more now - partly due to his collaborative efforts and partly due to the fact that, when artists such as Marilyn Manson, Combichrist, et al. came along and seemed to be involved in a perpetual game of outrage one-upmanship, he seemed to prefer to take a back seat until that theatricality had blown over, before reappearing with a more stripped-down approach and image than some of his peers.

So... in summation, an influence, yes - but not a definitive one.

-

[Various Artist]

Great history lesson Clive. Your last point about Reznor having largely taken the more dignified 'high road' during the outrage wars of Manson and his ilk's most visible period is also very valid.

And this quote is just outstanding:

... when Nine Inch Nails appeared on the scene, on TVT Records, in 1989 (complete - it should be noted - with a fictional backstory about Reznor having been declared missing and dead between recording the abum and its release)

I never knew that!

[evilC]

Great history lesson Clive. Your last point about Reznor having largely taken the more dignified 'high road' during the outrage wars of Manson and his ilk's most visible period is also very valid.

And this quote is just outstanding:I never knew that!

Actually, I'm mis-remembering it slightly, but it's even more weird than just that. Of course, the music press over here just lapped it up and this was the story they all led with when interviewing them around the time of 'Pretty Hate Machine'. :-)

[Various Artist]

Heheh, that is fantastic. I love that it all arose accidentally and serendipitously, seemingly.

[Hot Pepsi]

Thanks for that. I didn't mean to suggest he invented industrial. Just that he seemed to be the first of that ilk I recall ever seeing on MTV or getting play on college radio and it was only "Head Like a Hole," that anything that sounded like that became ubiquitous on WFNX, on movie soundtracks, etc.

I recall that NIN were on the original Lalapalooza bill and that gave them a lot of exposure to people who wouldn't have otherwise sought out something like that.

I always thought Trent Reznor *was* Nine Inch Nails, at least in the same way Mike Ness is Social Distortion.

I'm not fond of the wallowing-in-angst either, but a lot of that stuff sounds like the future, which is kind of exciting.

[evilC]

Thanks for that. I didn't mean to suggest he invented industrial.

Oh no, I didn't mean to infer that you did. It's just that a lot of younger people see Reznor as a more significant figure than he really is, in the evolution of Industrial-tinged music. I'm guessing that they tend to 'weight' things according to their visibility on popular media, so I think that's where their impressions of him come from.

I expect there's people who think that Metallica invented Heavy Metal, for similar reasons.