Crummiest Bands of the 90's (1 Viewer)

[MikeAW]

Everything in this catagory begins with Hootie & The Blowfish...what irony in a name, only equaled by The Strokes...croaking ..."Hold My Hand...croak croak croak"

....his/their way into our hearts, onto our Cd players, and right back into obscurity and into bargain bins EVERYWHERE. They/he can't get arrested in Branson MO today. What a career, but he and we didn't see the sucker punch coming, and we would be using them for beer coasters.

The secret reason his his CD album made it, was that the music company lowered the list price of his debut CD to a ridiculous 9.99 retail price, literally dumping them into marketplace and into the Top Ten...amazing...and this same music company is doing the same thing with this "Pete Yorn" character....8.99 for a full length CD of music and with Tower Records and Rolling Stone magazine co-conspirators with SONY, how can the biggest dud miss ? Even a blind man can see the price rigging going on here. So where is John Ashcroft now that we need him...well, he's dodging subpeonas for his role in Enron!

Counting Crows croaked too, but at least they had...have?

...some good hooks and Pretentious Style. Besides the lead singer was a major Star Screwer, so he had something going for him...so maybe it wasn't the music, right ? He had...Personality. But it wasn't enough to last, as they didn't have Talent.

I love Evan Dando & The Lemonheads...since he's making a comeback now, the jury is still out. Talk about diehards !

Who are the rest of them on Your List ?

 

[joe logston]

im sorry but the most of them are not that good im 57 yrs old and love rock&roll but i been listing to trance and jazz and abeiance more and more its better

 

[MikeAW]

Who specifically Joe...and why.

 

[MikeH1]

The Spin Docters. A horrible little band.

 

[MikeAW]

Michael, I remember how popular that band was in NYC at the time..."Little Miss, Little Miss, Little Miss...Can't be wrong..." and that scraggly beard...what a Rock Heeeero !

God, how embarassing to have made that band popular! Those losers even had a bunch of bootleg CDs! Kind of like listening to Rusted Root...remember them ? I believe they toured with Plant/Page and were really hot! The crap people make popular at the time.

It must have been that thin ozone layer, letting in all the Xrays !

 

[MikeAlletto]

There are lots of good songs, but good bands as a whole? Not many. Unfortunately there were (and still are) a ton of one hit wonders.

 

[MikeH1]

ha ha ha Mike you just made me remember something about that horrible little band. I believe it was the spring of 1993 when the Spin Docters were doing their top 40 march up the charts. Molson's, the largest brewery here in Canada, had a contest and the winners got to see the Spin Docters perform on a cruise ship in the Carribean. LOL! Imagine! Winning a free trip to drink free beer to party with scantily clad women on a free cruise... with a cheesy 90s band....... in the dead of the Canadian winter.

*stops laughing*

 

[John Geelan]

Candlebox

 

[Graeme Clark]

I think you're being a little hard on poor Hootie.

 

[Jeff Kleist]

I enjoy Counting Crows, they're still around. Hootie went back to college, and I doubt they'll ever show up again. Their AWFUL second album crashed and burned

 

[Peter Loan]

I'd have to say BUSH. Really stupid lyrics...just plain boring and uninspired shit. To add insult to injury, they seem to take themselves somewhat seriously.

 

[Brian O]

Counting Crows are great. Their first two releases were excellent as is their live stuff, showing alot of talent and diversity.

However, their last release was a mistake. Didnt do anything for me. It appears they tried a new path and it just didnt work. I really cant believe they released it.

 

[Kirk Gunn]

Didn't Hootie & Co. start a record company ? Long term career outlook is probably better behind the soundboard than as "15 Minute Wonders"... (or was that 15 million wonders ?) The american public, buying 15 million copies one year, then you're "Hootie and the what ?" the next year....

Michael - I believe that Molson trip has now been downgraded to a van ride in a '68 Ford Econoline to the Quickie Mart with the lead singer's mother for all the YooHoo you can guzzle and still walk home... I thought the band had it's moments, but was never crazy about the front man.

 

[Craig_T]

In the decades to come, just think of how many people will no longer understand the scene in Jerry Maguire where the kid asks Cuba Gooding's character "Are you Hootie?" I'm surprised that Cameron Crowe put that line in there. Even when I saw it in theaters, I remember thinking that Hootie would be a distant memory within in a few years.

 

[Philip Hamm]

What kind of morbid enjoyment do you get from talking shit about musicians you don't like? Isn't there anything more constructive you could be doing?

 

[TheoGB]

Well I'm actually impressed this hasn't yet been a list of every band/artist who was successful last decade.
Frankly I can't even make any sense of the first few paragraphs of the original post.
For what it's worth, Hootie have never really been heard of over here...

 

[Mike Broadman]

Nirvana

***runs away***

 

[Sean Cauley]

For the record, Hootie and the Blowfish haven't left the music business. They've released three studio albums (Cracked Rear View, Fairweather Johnson and Musical Chairs) and a b-sides/covers collection called Scattered, Smothered & Covered. They've toured fairly extensively (at least in the U.S.), and have plans to tour again next spring and summer, I think. Guitarist Mark Bryan released a solo album in 2000 to small sales, and singer Darius Rucker (who is not, for the record, named "Hootie," as he explained many times over when the band was at the height of its popularity) has a solo record due out this year.
On their Boom Boom Lounge tour to support Scattered, Smothered & Covered in 2000, Hootie (see, it's a "they") played an outdoor show in Louisville during the first week of November that drew a huge crowd (I never heard numbers, and it's a venue--outdoors at Jillian's nightclub--that doesn't really have a capacity quote to work from, but it seemed like it could have been eight or ten thousand, maybe more). That's a big draw for an outdoor show, in November, for about $20-$25 a ticket. They played for two-and-a-half hours, doing covers, medleys, and songs from their own repertoire. In an interview with local news that week, the band members said that all the money they made early on gives them the freedom to do what they want now, and they don't mind having less of a spotlight than they did in 1995.
I'll always jump in to defend Hootie and the Blowfish, because I grew to be a fan over the years largely because of the energy they put into their live shows. I didn't care for their first album on its release, when everybody and their brother (including my two best friends) kept playing it nonstop for almost two years. About a year into their popular run, I went to a concert in Nashville (it was a sort of road-trip for all of my buddies the first week of our junior year in college, so I jumped in regardless of my not being a big fan), and by the end of the night, I was converted. I still didn't buy the albums for quite some time, but I've gone to see their live show whenever it's come to town, and it's always fun. You can tell they're just four guys who have a blast doing what they're doing, and amazed that they ever got as popular as they did. I can't fault them for that, and if they can still make a crowd of 10,000 feel like they're watching a band in a beer-soaked college bar, then I'll keep going to see them.
As for Counting Crows, I'm a huge fan of them and have been since I saw them on Saturday Night Live in January '94. Their first two albums are among my favorites, and the third has become one I really enjoy. I was initially disappointed in it (not least because it was only ten--well, ten plus an unmarked eleventh--songs long, and one of those ten had already been released on a movie soundtrack), but it kept finding its way into my CD player until I couldn't bring myself to stop listening to it. I've seen them live, too, as opening act for the Stones in '94, and on their co-headlining tour with Live in 2000, and they've really improved as a live band.
I liked the first Bush album and saw them three times on the tours to support it (first at a free show when they were just starting to get airplay, then at an arena show in Nashville, then on the triple bill with Goo Goo Dolls and No Doubt). Everything since then hasn't really been to my taste.
And while we're lobbing grenades at sacred cows, as Mike Broadman seems to have decided to , I've got to say that I'm not a huge fan of Dave Matthews Band. I won't say I haven't enjoyed some of their stuff, but I'm just not part of the Dave Nation. I have seen them in concert as well (so there's no need to tell me that I need to see them live to understand), at Farm Aid '95 (short set), in Fall '96, and in Fall '98 (my best friends are Dave freaks, as it happens). I was impressed by the Farm Aid set, satisfied with the '96 set (of course, I was with my then-girlfriend, who was a DMB fan, and I reaped the romantic benefits of having gotten her seventh-row seats, so my judgment may be clouded), and disappointed with the '98 show. I think the "legendary" live shows must be hit-or-miss, depending on the song selection. The '98 show (Rupp Arena, Lexington, KY) was focused largely on solos by LeRoi Jones, and thus was a more laid-back set; I found it rather boring. I would have preferred a focus on Boyd Tinsley's violin work, as I'd seen at the two previous concerts.
And for the record, I'm a fan of varied musical styles and have a several-hundred-deep CD collection, ranging from Robert Johnson to Miles Davis to the Who to the Stones to U2 to The Replacements to Beastie Boys to Weezer to Jay-Z. So I'm not as '90's-centric as the rest of this post paints me to be.

 

[Jonathan Perregaux]

I can't name any crummy 90's bands because they're so crummy that they've failed to make any impression on me whatsoever. I don't even know their names anymore. Now that's gotta be the ultimate in crummy.

I had to go backwards in time to find "new music." I've always had a hankering for The Doors but only heard their double greatist hits album. I plunked down for the big, remastered box set and loved every minute of it.

Screw new music. Most of it sucks so badly I can't even take listening to the radio for more than a millisecond. What a shame.

 

[Ken_McAlinden]

I always thought the really bad 90s stuff was the likes of "Ace of Base", "Color Me Badd", and "Right Said Fred" - the really disposable stuff that noone really thinks of and noone will ever look back on with nostalgia. Most of the bands listed so far may as well be the Beatles compared to that kind of stuff.

Regards,