Hi falck,
should also those be mentioned which “deserved” to vanish into obscurity without leaving fans behind or only those we would have wished more/any success from our personal view?
I was thinking in the lines of wavey pop music that could be played alongside “Shout”, “Relax”, “Blue Monday” at 80s parties and people would think hey, did I miss out on that hit for some strange reason?
So this should be a “tell us your hidden pop pearls” thread, of course feel free to open a “tell us your worst nightmare” thread as a warning to all us fleamarket hunters :wink:
It’s interesting, in these times where “obscure” is the new “credible” and people call me a Mickey if I don’t know every french cold wave group that ever made one cassette and two warm-up gigs… After all, a lot of what now passes for “obscure” was not intended as music for the Chosen Few at all! Sometimes you can hear that what they were trying to do, was make a hit record, and only the total commercial failure is left to tell the tale of underground street cred…
I’m thinking Ice The Falling Rain “Lifes Illution” - surely they thought they had it made when that track was sent to press? P.S. Personal also made a single which would have been a high-energy club classic if it had shifted any units… Alex Fergusson’s “Stay With Me Tonight”, issued when he was 13 or something? The producers behind that must have thought teen girls would buy that en masse... Not so.
i have to think of scarlet architect as the perfect synthpop band! Or what to think of deux? Camera obscura were on the brink of commerical succes, which would be well deserved.
Totally agree on Ice the Falling Rain!
Solid space also had the potential for late depeche mode style darkpop succes if you ask me.
And why did front 242 succeed (so horribly at that) where absolute body control failed?
Finally, Fall of Saigon to me deserve the title GODS OF SYNTHPOP, even if it were to be too minimal for the hitparades.
ps oy nightmoves remix was an underground clubhit, but the original wasnt danceable enough to set the dancefloors ablaze. Fair enough.
How about Jon St James or SSQ? Sure, Stacey Q had success, but SSQ was a cult hit at best, and Jon St James’s song “Translatlatic” is one of my all-time favorite synthpop songs.
There are many earlier synthpop bands that came out in the early 80s but were eclipsed by groups like Depeche Mode. Rational Youth was a perfect example, and one of my favorites. The Twins are another good example - their first few albums are classics, and songs like The Desert Place, Runaway, and X Ray Eyes should have been big hits.
Also, the Belgian band Kuruki could have been big with their song “Crocodile Tears”. Such a wonderful song!
[quote author=“goutroy”]The Twins are another good example - their first few albums are classics, and songs like The Desert Place, Runaway, and X Ray Eyes should have been big hits.
Now The Twins weren’t altogether too unsuccesful on a commercial level (not with those early pearls you mention though), they got a lot of airplay in Germany and also got popular with the European italo community.
I bought their LPs “Passion Factory” and “Until the End of Time” in 1985 and I wasn’t exactly hunting for underground artists at that moment in time. IOW if they managed to reach me, they must have been famous. :D
What happenend though is that they did a Houdini act and more or less disappeared completely from the collective memory.
Great band! “Love System” and “The Game of Chance” for instance are also nice tracks.
Are you serious? Ricky Gervais maybe very succesfull in comedy, but Seona Dancing was an mediocre affair. There were much better bands around at that time that should have had mass succes like indeed Rational Youth, although I believe they were reasonably succesfull in Canada. Not as succesfull as Men Without Hats though.
Uhm.. The Actor
Could have been a big succes had they been on a major label and gotten more exposure. Catchy poptunes, reasonably good looking and well dressed blokes. It never happened and now they are our little secret.
There are so many reasonsd why a band fails or succeeds.
Yazoo were very succesfull, but had already disbanded even before the second album got to the pressing plant as Vince and Allison by that stage hated eachothers guts.
Front was so succesfull because Front had a very strong image and very well defined plan of how they wanted to achieve succes. Absolute Body Control didn’t have that I think, even if ABC succeeded to create great tunes until the end where Front seemed to make more and more compromisses and lesser tunes after 1989 . Front became poppier and poppier where ABC got darker and experimental and then changed into The Klinik.
Are you serious? Ricky Gervais maybe very succesfull in comedy, but Seona Dancing was an mediocre affair. There were much better bands around at that time that should have had mass succes like indeed Rational Youth, although I believe they were reasonably succesfull in Canada. Not as succesfull as Men Without Hats though.
Are you trying to accuse me of being serious? That’s outrageous! :wink:
Well, I didn’t nominate them for GODS status IIRC, but yes I think Bitter Heart is a great pop song and the “More to lose” b-side “You’re on my side” e.g. is the perfect soundtrack for a rainy day.
I just thought it would be interesting to have a list with some nice pop suggestions. BTW, wouldn’t it be cool if somebody threw an enitre 80s party just with hits that never were? And people would think “did I really live in the 80s after all”? :D
Back to Seona: well, at least they were “Big in the Philippines”....
[quote author=“Spartak”]i have to think of scarlet architect as the perfect synthpop band! Or what to think of deux? Camera obscura were on the brink of commerical succes, which would be well deserved.
Totally agree on Ice the Falling Rain!
Solid space also had the potential for late depeche mode style darkpop succes if you ask me.
And why did front 242 succeed (so horribly at that) where absolute body control failed?
Finally, Fall of Saigon to me deserve the title GODS OF SYNTHPOP, even if it were to be too minimal for the hitparades.
ps oy nightmoves remix was an underground clubhit, but the original wasnt danceable enough to set the dancefloors ablaze. Fair enough.
