Musicians Out Of Their Time

Um... all the 80s rock/hair-metal bands?

Journey
Poison
Motley Crue
Def Leppard

I'm not sure if this counts, but Badfinger is a standout. They did the Beatles almost better than the Beatles did the Beatles, only they started in about 1970, by which point people had sort of stopped caring for wussy feelgood pop groups. Their music is as lovely as any you'll hear, but they got eaten alive, to the point where 2 of the 4 members killed themselves.

"No Matter What" and "Day After Day" are their 2 biggest hits, and are 2 of the best songs of all time. Not exaggerating.

Then there are the Beach Boys, who put out some great stuff in the early 70s, long after anybody stopped caring about them, but well before Brian Wilson stopped producing new material for them and they became a chintzy oldies act who made guest appearances on FULL HOUSE. I guess the Beach Boys in long beards counts as incongruous.

Another good indicator that a musician is out of their time is when they start appearing in shitty modern music videos in which they are wearing black leather Matrix-style gear. See: The Rolling Stones and the Bee Gees.

Agree something "out of their time" about Little Richard. Chuck Berry and Jerry Lee Lewis never exactly evolved either, but they continued to do their thing. Somehow, even with not giving a shit or showing up drunk-- they stayed cool.

What about the post-Brian Wilson, Mike Love led Beach Boys? "Kokamo" and that Fat Boys collaboration were pretty painful.

Jefferson Airplane morphing into Starship? Just crass selling out or a derperate attempt to fit in with mall kids.

Prince embracing hip-hop in the early 90's with C & C Music Factory calabor M.C.s?

McCartney beats me with the Beach Boys!

Does this count?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnqUAbGMjLI

David Crosby--fat, druggy, and always kind of douche-y; As time marched on, became epitome of the arrogant Boomer you wanted to punch in the face. Somehow he fits with this.

To be fair, Little Richard during the glam rock period has to be one of the less incongruous post-50's contexts for his stuff, what with the likes of T-Rex hearkening back a bit to the sound of early rock and roll. But the problem with those old early rock and rollers and that whole genre is that they showed pretty much no capacity for evolution or development whatsoever, and so are always going to be locked in time. Kind of how hearing ragtime tends to feel like falling into a timewarp because it's so era-specific.

Gary Numan escaped the early eighties and became an unfortunate product of his time in the mid-to-late eighties, only to capture the nineties' industrial sound, where he has remained since.

Neil Young did kind of a fake-out in the 80s. He seemed kind of like Crosby - this old hippie who's gamely attempting to appear relevant in the high-gloss 80s (even when it meant slamming it from within like on "This Note's For You"), but coming off like a relic.

But then Freedom happened, and it turns out the guy not only had life left in him, but could occasionally even one-up his old stuff.

He's starting to come off a little relic-y again lately, though. A concept album about his car?

I was so let-down by "Are You Passionate?" that I haven't been back to the Neil well in awhile.

The Neil apologist in me likes to think that Neil didn't expect his rockabilly, synthesizer and Bluenotes stuff to sell, but went ahead and did them anyways just out of curiousity.

In other words, I don't think he counts as a musician out of his time (at least for his '80s stuff, which is what I gather that DaveB was saying).

Yeah, that's what I was referring to. I agree that his intent was to be experimental. But he still came off as a bit of an anachronism - an old guy playing with old guy styles in the middle of the shiny 80s.

Lou Reed was sort of the same way during the same period. Post-Blue Mask, it turns out there were some decent songs buried on the albums, but I mostly remember awful shit like the video for "I Love You Suzanne." And then he put out New York...

Heh. I met Lou when he was touring for New York. I was the senior buyer for a good-size chain of music stores, and when he found out I was the one doing the Billboard reporting (WAY before Soundscan), the only times we spoke, he would rag on me to report his record in our Top Ten. In fact, my autographed copy of the album actually says "... Call Billboard now! Lou Reed."

I think Red Joy Stick is far worse then either of those.

Well coming from the other end of the spectrum, I'm always shocked when I'm reminded that the Animals version of, "House of the Rising Sun" was released in 1964. An song from the past with a sound from the future...yet somehow I still don't think it fits in this thread.

I can't quite figure out the criteria. Old men trying to be cool?

I'm tempted to say that the 80s synth era brought alot of musicians from the 70s out of their 'time'; I cite Rush and Queen as prime examples.

Rush: Changed from being a guitar oriented, progressive rock band into a synth heavy band for a few albums. While there is some quality material in there, this period is largely written off as the band's lowpoint.

Queen: The band advertised 'no synths!' on all of their albums in the 70s (people often thought that some of Brian's guitar work WAS from a synthesizer), and then fully embraced them in the 80s, changing from a rock band into more of a pop band. As with Rush, they lost alot of their fans and strayed from what made them a major rock band (in the US, anyways).

I'm trying to figure out if the Eagles would count. I'm a rather large fan of Don Henley and Joe Walsh but their recent tours and their recent output seem to fit your description.

ETA: Stevie Wonder in the eighties, perhaps? His work with Paul McCartney and I Just Called To Say I Love You is so insipid it makes you wonder what happened to the guy who created Superstitious and Uptight (Everything's Alright)

Huh. Maybe it has everything to do with when I got into Rush, but I've always considered the Permanent Waves - Presto version of Rush to be sort of their defining era, and that includes some of the synth-oriented stuff. It doesn't seem anachronistic to me since the synths had already started becoming prominent on Moving Pictures and Signals.

You could say pretty much the same thing about Jimmy Buffett. There's really no comparison between his 70s output and anything from the 80s, 90s, or 00s.

I got into Rush around the time 'Hold Your Fire' came out. While I liked it, I grew to really prefer the rawer, guitar based band of the 70s. Yes, they had started to use the synth to accentuate the guitars in 'Permanent Waves' and 'Moving Pictures', but it didn't become the lead instrument until 'Signals'. By the time that 'Power Windows' came out, they had gotten into using soundbites/samples that really DATES the material in a bad way.

I'm a Buffett apologist and even I can't stand a lot of his eighties stuff. Lots of his recent songs sound good in concert is the best I can do for his recent output.

There's got to be a difference between "out of their time" and sucking (or falling off). Don't think Stevie, The Eagles, or especially Neil Young count.

With Neil, even at his worst, there's a sense (ever so slight it might be) of artistic integrity and danger. David Crosby is just sad. His arrogance can't cover the waste of natural talent.

Other examples:

Rick James post-80's heyday.

RUN DMC in the gangsta early 90's and with that Santana-like collaboration heavy sell out

The Sex Pistols reunion tour?

I agree totally, but he's also a phenomenal live act. The alcohol helps, I guess.

Almost any reunion tour from a band that doesn't include at least an attempt at coming up with some new material that they care about would qualify here.

The Pistols reunion show just bored me (and they're one of the few bands I've ever cared about that I'd never seen live). I suppose Lydon would call the whole concept post-modern and/or ironic. I call it a chance for Matlock to finally get a taste.

We were given tickets to the Police reunion as an anniversary present, and both my wife and I agreed that they probably sounded better, and had their chops more in place, than they had when we saw them in the 80's. But they were even more boring than the Pistols, and if I'd spent my own money on the show I'd have been nauseated.

The Dolls, on the other hand, did the profit-taking tour, but then went back to the studio and came up with one of the sharper reunion albums I've ever heard. I wouldn't say it made them up-to-the-minute, but that album cover was all over last year's iPod ads, so that must count for something.

I'd say pretty much the same for the B-52's: they'll always be lumbered with MTV's love affair with "Love Shack" and "Roam", but last year's album felt like a natural progression from the previous ones that was just interrupted by a decade or so of dicking around. Don't know anything about their current live shows, though.

I loved their most recent album. Lots of fun and some real progression musically.

Mid-to-late eighties Cheap Trick? Or is that more an example of a how a really good band can have a creative shitty period, still have hit songs and then follow it up with some really good albums.

I think a lot depends on just how close to the zeitgeist (sorry) a band seems to be when they hit. Bands that define an era (virtually any synth band of the 80's) are the ones that seem weird and anachronistic.

Cheap Trick, though (like the Dolls), always felt out of place musically in their day, drawing on musical forms that were either already out of fashion (Beatles harmonies in their case, 50's/60's R&B and punk for the Dolls), or never went away (loud guitars). So I'd say that in the case of Cheap Trick, it's mostly a matter of a band with only one real writer, whose fairly limited muse only hits now and again (but hits hard when it does). I don't think they "belonged" in the 70's-80's any more than they do today.

The way I'm thinking of Phil's original question I wouldn't include '80s era Cheap Trick. It wasn't that their "sound" was out-of-date, they just weren't making music that was any good.

I know some folks around here like them, but for me Metallica is a band that sounds like the world has completely passed them by. They're trying to catch up but just sound OLD. Ditto what Axl Rose is doing.

I'm assuming that nostaliga acts don't count (like .38 Special, The Allman Bros. Band, Motley Crue, or anyone else who plays biker-themed shows in Myrtle Beach).

I was thinking about how I'd categorize Metallica for this thread, and I think that you probably nailed it. Too many newer, younger bands have beaten them at their own game now.

Good point. Also notable is that their two big hits in the mid-late-80s were a cover and a song they didn't write.

But, no, they never seemed anachronistic to me, mainly because I, like most people my age and slightly younger, weren't all that familiar with the 70s stuff when Lap of Luxury came out. Ultimately, I've found that "The Flame," "Don't Be Cruel," and "Ghost Town" erected more barriers to me convincing people of a great band's quality than any other album ever made.

Ugh. I had managed to forget Cheap Trick's cover of "Don't Be Cruel." Worst coversong ever?

Does anybody remember Pat Boone's "Metal" album?

Jesus, just Pat Boone existing past the early 1960s makes him a musician out of his time.

Edit: I think with Limp Bizkit reforming that they will fit perfectly into this discussion.

That doesn't really count, though. I don't think that ANYONE took that album seriously, including Pat. Everyone was in on the joke. Hell, Ronnie James Dio even participated on the backing vocals for 'Holy Diver'.

Admittedly, i'm a fan, but I don't think the Allman Brothers Band count. They're somewhere between the Stones and The Dead. And unlike those other dinosaurs, their new material is actually pretty good. (helped by keen ability to constantly discover new great guitarists and plug 'em )

How about Ozzy? The whole "prince of darkness"' bit reaks of the early 80's!

But just the fact that he was reclaiming his title of "professional blander", joke or not, kind of fits into this category, imo. It wasn't him "cleaning up" Tuitti Frutti for the white audience but it did sell some copies to the blue hairs. I worked at a music store at around the time when it was released and we sold a bunch of copies (at least 10) to Seniors who saw that he had a new album when they saw him on Regis and Kathie Lee.

Blue-hairs notwithstanding, this was a novelty album; nothing more.

I worked at a used CD store at the time that this album came out. It was a great CD to put on when you wanted to 'encourage' people to leave the store at closing time.

That's a whole thread in and of itself, and while I'm no fan of that record, it would come WAY down on my list of the worst.

MC Hammer definitely fits into this when he tried to ride the gangsta rap wave to keep making mortgage payments.

He went from this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2c4L4CPfQY8

to this:

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x1u...n-a-bump_music

And who can forget his collaboration with Deion Sanders!! for the Street Fighter Soundtrack.

Gary Numan became unstuck from the eighties in the nineties, where he has remained since.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jG57MyicowU

KISS is a great oddball time capsule example, but Black VS White pre/post-surgery Michael Jackson blows my mind. You can never go back after that WTF transformation.

Speaking of re-inventions, Madonna got old, but never stayed the same (unless you consider her shocking demeanor predictable).