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Eighth Year Review

Year 8? Check.
 
Under Appreciated Rock Bands (UARB’s) and Under Appreciated Rock Artists (UARA’s) are hard to come by, but I came up with a fine batch this past year.  The least likely UARB of them all, to my way of thinking, came along in March:  Iggy Pop got his name from his first band called the Iguanas; and somehow, some way, no punk rock fan had yet prepared a Wikipedia article on this band.  Also in the mix this past year were two bands featuring Mike Stax, founder and editor of one of the premier music magazines Ugly Things and one of greatest experts on 1960’s music on Earth:  his current band the Loons and another from the 1980’s, the Tell-Tale Hearts.  Rounding out the quartet this year are the Lazy Cowgirls, a long-time favorite punk rock band whose music is often called “outlaw rock” that put out 11 albums – not counting the 4 albums put out by frontman Pat Todd’s new band the Rankoutsiders.
 
Even with having only a quarterly rather than a monthly schedule, I almost blew off my last post for September 2017 (which didn’t actually come out until mid-November).  I was starting to run out of stuff to talk about, or so it seemed to me; and even though I really loved the Tell-Tale Hearts (not to mention the Edgar Allan Poe story “The Tell-Tale Heart” that the band was named after), coming up with yet a third post about Iggy and the Stooges was just not frying my bacon.  Once I decided to talk about my early bootleg record acquisitions, however, the words flowed forth like old times.  But I am dragging my feet again since I still have not discussed The Iguana Chronicles that I had intended to get into last time. 
 
Also on tap this coming year is an overview of New Wave Theatre, a fascinating public-access show that presented LA-area punk rock bands amongst other assorted weirdness that would air at the end of the popular late-night program Night Flight on USA Network.  I have poked around on the Internet, and even though all of the episodes are now available on YouTube, not much has been written about the show – the Wikipedia article on New Wave Theatre has basically two or three paragraphs.  Thus, I am going to have to do some primary research before I can get this post put together.  I do plenty of that with the UARB’s and UARA’s, but for the remainder of the posts, I typically lean on Wikipedia and Allmusic.  In other words, that is something else that I have been putting off.  I had always hoped to at least keep this up for at least 10 years, but I am not there yet.
 
I also have a CD or two of potential UARB’s in the religious category, but I have already written extensively about “rock and religion” in five earlier posts, so coming up with something new to say is also going to take some time.  As it turned out, I had more to say about rock and religion than I had UARB’s to talk about:  One of the UARB’s had “Christ” in the name but that’s it, Mötochrist; and another was a gospel group called Wendy Bagwell and the Sunliters that was not in the least a rock band.  Same thing about “women and rock” – I have five posts on that also, but that will be an easier topic to expand on.  Anyway, we’ll see how the year goes.  It is going to be hard for me to top the list of UARB’s for this past year, that’s for sure.  I have even considered changing the definition of UARB to include those that do have a Wikipedia article but nothing in Allmusic, but I haven’t gone that far yet.
 
There are plenty of rock bands out there that do not have a Wikipedia article yet, and I already have the LP or CD in hand.  I alphabetized my CD’s a year or so back, and picking a row almost at random, here are some potential future UARB’s and UARA’s:  King Richard and the Knights (a wonderful 1960’s garage rock band from Albuquerque that actually I was pretty sure had a Wikipedia article, though I can’t seem to find it now), Level with the Ground (a local band that came along about the same time as 3 Doors Down – as with Schattenfreiheit though, a German duo who put out a self-published album that is among my all-time favorites, they are too obscure to make the UARB list), Looters (I have written about them before but had not realized they were a potential UARB – an inventive world-music band that, unaccountably, was a favorite of many Bay Area punk rock bands, including Dead Kennedys), the Love Drunks (an Alive Records punk rock band, with quite affected vocal stylings), and Martin (how could I resist that one?  His full name is Martin Kember).  That is actually a pretty good list of potential UARB’s and UARA’s; I will have to do this more often! 
 
I am now loading up the last of my monthly posts into the Google Sites website – https://sites.google.com/site/underappreciatedrockbands/ – including Martin Winfree’s Record Cleaning Guide that came out on the 10th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina (August 2015).  I always seem to be running 2½ years or so behind the posts that I am writing, but now that there are only quarterly articles after this one, I might actually get caught up this year.  
 
Anyway, here is what and who I talked about last year:
December 2016 – 1960’s garage rock band THE IGUANAS; Story of the Month on the Muddy Waters song “Rollin’ Stone”; also, 1970’s music and proto-punk music, Ramones, Nuggets, Pebbles Series, the Sonics, New York Dolls, the Modern Lovers, MC5, the Stooges, Iggy Pop.
 
March 2017 – 1980’s/1990’s punk rock band THE LAZY COWGIRLS; Story of the Month on Ringo Starr’s pre-Beatles career; also, first-wave punk rock, Iggy Pop, the Stooges, the Avengers, Penelope Houston, the Weirdos, the Dickies, Pat Todd and the Rankoutsiders. 
 
June 2017 – 1990’s-2010’s Sixties revival band THE LOONS; Story of the Month on “They’re Coming to Take Me Away, Ha-Haaa!”; also, Green Day, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Karen O, Bomp! Records, the Black Keys, the Sloths.