Before Their Time...

I don't understand; Big Star are nothing if not the sum of their many influences, and that makes more 'of their time ' than anybody else. Merely being 10x better than most of your contemporaries doesn't make you somehow ahead of your time.

Kraftwerk were ahead of their time. It took at least ten years for mainstream pop music to catch up to them.

Dude, thank for posting that link. Helluva show.

I agree.

But my criteria for Polvo being before their time is listening to their stuff and then finding out it was from the early 90s, it sounds alot like some of the Avante Guarde stuff coming out now, like Hella.

Oh yeah, and Gang of Four(Fun fact, a few months ago I found an original pressing of Entertaiment at The Salvation Army for $1, in amazing condition just needs a cleaning to get a dirty fingerprint off of it)

I'll offer up: This Heat. I swear when I heard Made Available for the first time I thought I was hearing some sort of Steve Albini side project.

It's the being 10x better than their contemporaries that ensures their being before their time. It's taking a bunch of influences - the Beatles, Kinks, Simon & Garfunkel, old-school blues, whatever - and shaping them into a distinctive, awesome pop aesthetic which we've come to know as 'indie.' I can't think of a single band that came before Big Star that sounds like them, but I can think of a whole bunch in the 30 years after them that do.

yep!!

Well, I think this is just becoming academic. I can think of many bands that came before them that sound like them, for a song or two, but certainly nobody who sounded like them for all of the different styles they played in.

i'm no particular fan of them, but The Doors were yonks ahead of the other 60's bands.

aphex twin: still has,'t been reach by the pack
mogwai: wait a few years to see its seeds in modern mainstream
royskopp: its mixture of pop and ambiant sounds is particulary visionnary


and can't we say all 80's electro pop bands (Soft Cell, gary Numan,...) were ahead of their era when one looks at electroclash ?


jimmyjoe snark III
the weathermen( very frankly ahead of their time too, but only by 5 minutes)

[Edited on Mar 19, 2006 by jimmyjoe]

weakling
pentagram

Well put ... that's just what I was thinking. So many of these bands seem to me to be just right for their time.

That is exactly what I thought when I read the title to this thread....And I will add CAN and KING CRIMSON-because both were miles ahead of where the rest of music slouched in the corner of those eras...

my 2 cents

SPOILERS! (Click to view)

Finally, someone who shares in my admiration of this fantastic band. I am no longer alone with my strange addiction.

Agreed.

That said, I believe that when The Soft Boys put out "Underwater Moonlight" in 1980, most people - still in thrall to the punk explosion of a few years previous - dismissed them as being too 60's sounding, i.e. they were considered after their time, and in a sense they were - they may have fared better with their sound in the late 60s/early 70s. But they also had a something that influenced lots of key big indie bands through the 80s, right thru till now. So all these punk posers, turning their noses up at them, booing them, thinking that they had them sussed as 60s wannabe losers; in retrospect turn out to be the stupid ones - ha!

So really, the Soft Boys are special, cause they were possibly after their time, ahead of their time, and completely out of time all at once! And that's why when I listen to Underwater Moonlight, the feeling I get is timeless/agelessness; whereas most bands that influenced them, and most that they influenced have probably dated quite a bit.

Phew. I hate prattling on about music, but find it so compulsive.



[Edited on Apr 08, 2006 by synthmesc]

here is a question... what makes a band before there time? i mean if they are so ahead of everyone else why don't they just become instantly popular?

Because the masses don't like things that are new, they want to hear the same stuff a thousand times until the Major lables and Magazines pick a new fad for them.

Myself I'd say The Gathering. Given how popular all this Femme Metal is nowadays if they'd held on for 10 years they'd be huge. That said there wouldn't be much Femme Metal at all if it weren't for The Gathering.

[Edited on Apr 08, 2006 by Baletempest]

Can. if they were even in our particular time line, I'm not sure. I haven't even heard all of their stuff but some of their songs rocked so hard that it's surprising to think it was the late sixties. add to that their experimentation and they were way ahead of their time.

Big Black
Fugazi
Kyuss
and Neurosis

[Edited on May 18, 2006 by leopold]

HAWKWIND it's kind of early Floyd with Lemmy!

Suicide

ween

hawkwind fucking rules.

Voivod!!!

late 80s Voivod, at least... so far ahead of their time that there has yet to be another band that sounds quite the same...