I’m not sure I have an adequate example yet–U2 was the first band that came to mind for me, although they’d gradually went from “pretty cool” to “completely annoying” by the time of that Rattle and Hum movie. I also recall a lot of people thinking Duran Duran were hip when they came out, but after a brief spell of them getting an appropriate critical wedgie, they seem to have regained their slightly hip standing. Go figure.
What I’m looking for are artists who came out of the gate hipper than hip who then had a steep, sudden dropoff in hipster quotient. Painfully slow declines, such as the decades-long dropoff in hipness experienced by the Jefferson Airplane to Starship, are NOT what I’m looking about. (I know, Dylan’s line, “You ain’t got nothing when you’ve got nothing to lose” may spring to mind among Airplane hatas.) And this isn’t about “quality” or the jumping of sharks, necessarily. I might argue, for instance, that The Boss‘ quality shot up for a stretch while he went from hipster underground artists to mainstream rock icon.
Oh man, I just thought of a perfect example: that band from upstate New York that featured Natalie Merchant! Thankfully I’ve blanked out their name, but how many of you thought they were hip when they were opening for REM, and how quickly did they fall from hipster grace?
The band is 10,000 Maniacs. To me, they were always a sort of pansy version of R.E.M., if there could be such a thing.
TB
10,000 Maniacs is an excellent example. There will be no MOJO reappraisals or reissue campaigns in their future, I can tell you that.
How about ’70s art- and prog-rockers: Genesis, Pink Floyd, maybe Yes.
True, TB, still not the best example. There must be some more-recent examples of bands that came out of the indie world who now grate on their initial fans. Is a band like Arcade Fire headed that way? (Granted, asking questions regarding initial hipness in these Halls of Rock may be barking up the wrong tree.)
The prog-rockers never had a sharp dropoff, though. Once initiated into those bands, I thought fans stuck with them for a long time. The bands and their fans seemed to become irrelevant at the same, steady rate, no?
How ’bout The Hold Steady? Are they headed for a sharp dropoff? As with Arcade Fire and Bright Eyes, I’m curious whether young hipsters are turned off by approval from The Boss.
The Boss is cool now. The ’90s were his purgatory, and now he is forgiven.
Interesting… Rock Purgatory could be a topic unto itself!
Were the Smithereens ever hip?
In their heyday, I thought the underlying message and power of The Smithereens was that those who were not even close to hip could one day be liked by hipsters. I’m not sure that’s quite the same thing.
I happen to be wearing a Smithereens shirt as I type, but of course it is hidden under another shirt. It was a particularly sturdy promotional giveaway although a copy of the BEAUTY & SADNESS ep is undoubtedly around here somewhere.
I defend 10,000 Maniacs first ep and SECRETS OF THE I-CHING lp, where they’ve got a ringing guitar sound that reminds me of the early Chills. The first Elektra one with Joe Boyd is okay but they fall quickly and decisively from there.
Once hip? How about The Foo Fighters? I had that first record but they quickly degenerated towards an integrity level on par with Clapton’s Michelob years.
The Cowboy Junkies were pretty hip with The Trinity Sessions then lost it when they went more cowboy and less junkie.
Oats wrote:
I don’t know about that. I’ve seen local bands here and back home with female singers that sounded exactly like Natalie Merchant. They may be more influential than you realize. Oddly her career seems to have gone from frontperson-for-indie-band straight to Judy Collinsesque chanteuse without passing stop.
The Strokes come to mind as a band that was thrust upon the scene as “hip” to be into and then poof the same folks “hyping the hip” dismissed it. I guess you could add Whiskeytown and the subsequent Ryan Adams into the mix of hip decline too.
A few weeks back, I think I mentioned Freedy Johnston’s career arc in the Westerberg thread. How about him, Mr. Mod?
I wonder whether the whole concept of hipness is no longer operable. The media informs people about artists so quickly that they’re out of the underground before they know it, and then they’re chewed up and spit out just as quickly. The continuum of hip to square is now more like a mobius strip. A friend at work was just telling me his five year old wants his dad to bring him to see Vampire Weekend. So that band got what a couple of months of hipness?
As I was saying the other day Rolling Stone at one time was the absolute arbiter in such matters. But hipness arbitration is now so diffuse throughout the internet and other media that no one knows what’s what. It’s like that bit on the Simpsons where the two hipsters can no longer tell if they’re being ironic or not.
It’s hard for me to judge Freedy Johnston, Oats. He may be the only male rocker with less Rock Sex Appeal to me than Joe Jackson. Ken doll packs a bigger package than that guy. I suspect this guy’s more in that Smithereens’ camp. I’m not sure that “hip” for dudes at Main Street Music – or relatively unhip dudes like ourselves – qualifies.
Good points you raise, BigSteve, as I think have been reflected in the nomination of a band like The Strokes, whom I discounted when first thinking about this thread because their hipness was so obviously prepackaged. In the days when hipness was earned, or earned through favors to Jan Wenner, do you recall a band or solo artist who may have experienced a quick dropoff in hipness? Like, was there a brief time in the early ’70s when James Taylor was as hip as Neil Young and Joni Mitchell and then quickly became unhip when everyone’s big sister started buying his albums?
Arrested Development! That’s a band that white folks got all worked up about for a few months. Today, you might as well be talking about Spin Doctors.
How quick was Rod Stewart’s loss of hipness?
Splunge
Hi, been a while, then. I had a bit o’bother w/my computer, but it’s OK now.
Anyway, the band that comes to mind for me in this topic would be the Violent Femmes.
Also, as for Rod the Mod’s loss o’hipness, didn’t it start circa Atlantic Crossing & accelerate at warp speed w/”Do Ya Think I’m Sexy”
Violent Femmes is an EXCELLENT example!
Glad to hear you’re well, Diskojoe, and your computer.
I’ve been pondering this all day. The first artist that came to my mind was James Brown/ James is every bit as important to the history of music as The Beatles and Elvis Presley, but by the time he passed, he had become something of a joke and self-parody. His contributions were diminished.
You could almost say the same for Elvis, but he did die before he completely went down the same road as JB. He simply never had the chance to record crap in the 80s.
The one group that is still winning out in my mind is The Beach Boys.
When they burst onto the scene in the early 60s, Brian and the Boys carved an entire industry hooked on girls, cars, surfing, and America. This was during a time when rock was reduced to teen-idol submission. The Beatles came along and reminded America of its rock roots and brought about reform. The Beach Boys managed to hang in there commercially. Brian was beginning to get noticed for his obvious genius of arranging, production, and writing. As the accolades and burgeoning rock press took notice of Mr. Wilson, he rose to the challenge. He gave us some stunning work during the period of 1964-1966. On the eve of his greatest acheivement (Smile), Brian broke down and withdrew. The band (and its image) committed the ultimate rock crime: they became passe. As music expanded and the entire scene flew past, The Beach Boys were stuck in sand and cars. Much is this is due to the fact that Mike Love has played this image up in live performance for just about the last 30-35 years. As the nostalgic audience have paid for the tickets, it’s given Mike validation. (I hate Mike Love.)
Many of you probably know and have heard this tale many times so forgive me for repeating it here, but to answer the question, I have to say The Beach Boys. Maybe they were never “hip” in terms of the definition of Mod, but they have been stuck with an severe image problem.
Many of you might disagree, but The Beach Boys best material comes after Pet Sounds. While I appreciate the early hits, I love the later albums. Sunflower is one of my faves. I love Friends. There’s a warmth and beauty to those overlooked albums that seems to be missing from all the filler and fun of the earlier ones.
TB
TB, I’ll accept The Beach Boys. Your rationale makes a lot of sense, regardless of my feelings on the post-Pet Sounds material, which I find “spotty.” Good stuff!
I should have clarified my stance on the post-Pet Sounds material (which many people find spotty): TO MY EARS, The Beach Boys best material comes after Pet Sounds. I left that important tidbit out. Of course, that stuff is irrelevant to the discussion and the greater point, which I think you got, that is that they were once seen as very hip and are now seen as unhip (thanks to Mike Love).
TB
James Brown was more one of those gradual cases where someone’s outsized personality finally eclipsed their music for the worse, and the iconography negatively supplanted why they were popular in the first place. Happened to Elvis, happened to Little Richard. It wasn’t a sudden drop-off of coolness, but generations of people coming to know him only as the guy in Rocky IV.
That said, while I have no real backing for this, I kind of feel that Brown has reclaimed his musical legacy in death in a way that Elvis did not and Little Richard won’t. It seems like any reference to James Brown now is less likely to be the wacky ‘80s JB and more of an appreciation for how great he actually was, while Elvis may constantly be damned to images of Fat Elvis.
Beck had a quick coolness drop off after Midnite Vultures, which I remember getting really good reviews at the time, only for it (and him) to suddenly get thrown under the critical bus a year or so later.
Beck’s Midnite Vultures dropoff is an AWESOME example. Better yet, I got to witness E. Pluribus Gergely get really bummed out the day he excitedly popped in this newly acquired CD, a new purchase by a post-1981 artist he’d falled in love with based on his previous two albums. OH, THE HUMANITY!
petesecrutz, I think Whiskeytown is just done, but since Faihless Street and Stranger’s Almanac were both reissued with all the extra goodness reserved for the stuff that’s always hip. His solo career is a tougher sell because he releases too much stuff, but the good stuff is still really good and I know lotsa people that still dig the guy.
My choices are Pearl Jam, Jet and The Libertines. I never cared for Jet or The Libertines, but I grabbed that first PJ album. Their subsequent releases have been so bad I don’t think I’ve played the forst album in ten years. I saw them open for The Stones. Eddie Vedder drank red wine out of the bottle. It just looked stupid.
Doesn’t the sudden uncoolness always coincide with sudden popularity? I’m thinking of Smashing Pumpkins or the Bangles. God forbid a band should dare to have a hit.
BigSteve asked:
I don’t think so. Did The Bangles ever really get “uncool,” or did they fail to deliver much beyond their breakthrough album, which even cool people seemed to think was better than most mainstream albums of that time.
Smashing Pumpkins IS a great offering in this discussion. They were one of those bands promoted as having “indie cred” when, in fact, their “indie” label was distributed and/or funded by a major.
Prince was super hip during his most popular period. I think U2 stayed relatively hip for some time while getting very popular. I know the whole “sellout” thing works against a lot of artists, but I don’t think it’s a given.
I did not claim that popularity inevitably led to uncoolness. I said that sudden uncoolness, which is how the issue was originally framed, coincided with sudden popularity. The processes with Prince and U2 were more gradual, no?
And I do think the ubiquity of the Walk Like an Egyptian video, combined with the problem that the hit single was not characteristic of their sound, did make the Bangles uncool, at least for a while. In retrospect they don’t seem so bad, because we can see their entire recorded output in perspective.
I saw the Bangles play live a couple of years before they hit it big, and it was pure garage pop goodness.
i meant to set you all up for it but I missed.
Julian Casablancas(strokes singer) turned 30 on aug 23rd.
I thought that could be some kind of special RTH holiday
oh and hip is dead you old fucks.
Okay, I think I have the gamewinner right here.
Oasis is so uncool that in over 30 replies, NO ONE HERE HAS EVEN BOTHERED TO REMEMBER HOW UNCOOL THEY ARE!
If this was a Battle Royale, I’d say “Hand over the fuckin’ belt.”
Great One, check back with us when you’re done fantasizing about stroking Mick Talbot’s hair.
Post of the day, Mod!
I’m sorry, I didn’t realize so many of the fine upstanding gents in RTH fantasized about being Lucky Pierre between the Gallagher brothers. My apologies.
Alex, I hate to think that you’re right about Elvis, but you are. Elvis has certainly been remembered as more of an icon than an actual artist capable of delivering great music. It’s even sadder that he died such and untimely death and was never able to regain any sense of what made him so cool in the first place. He’s forever stuck as a hip-shakin’, overweight, Vegas dude.
For any doubters, I challenge you to watch Elvis: That’s The way It Is. Watch the recut version from 2001, featuring less of the talking heads praising E and more performance/rehearsal for his Vegas 1970 stint. It’s shocking to see how great he looks and how passionate he is for performing. It really is a powerful show with an awesome band. It’s rather sad that by 1973 (less than three years), he’d begun to parady himself. Many people remember the Aloha show as the ultimate “later years” Elvis concert. While it’s nice enough, it’s a bit of bore to me. The 68′ Comeback and That’s The Way It Is make great cases for Elvis The Performer in his later years.
TB
Great 48 is technically right, Oasis was popular without ever being cool. How did they end up on someone’s five-star album list, anyway?
Steve, uncoolness generally does track with sudden popularity, no argument there. But I think you chose two examples that don’t fit that pattern. Smashing Pumpkins were responsible for their downfall. Even before they became goth robot ghosts or whatever they were supposed to be on those later albums, their popularity peaked right as they started making longer, showier songs that chased any lingering “cool” away. Oddly, they followed Axl Rose’s path into making wannabe ELO songs without being able to pull them off. Which reminds me of another rock rumor I remember reading but have never been able to source: Axl named his mansion “Waterfall” after the ELO song. I really hope that one was true and not something I made up.
And with the Bangles, you have to (and seemed to) admit that breaking with “Walk Like An Egyptian” was Cool Suicide. That’s about as uncool as you can get, and having that be your ubiquitous introduction to the average listener irreparably damaged any kind of hip credibility.
Also regarding Elvis, beyond his fate of being stuck forever remembered as Fat Elvis, I’d argue that he became uncool considerably earlier. I agree about his having those flashes of greatness later, but his actual sudden cool drop-off was when he came back from the Army. Pre-Army Elvis was incredibly cool, but when he came back, his public image morphed into a neutered doofus doing Kissin’ Cousins and Clambake, hopelessly outcooled by the British bands.
I remember those rehearsal scenes in That’s the Way It Is as being great. What a terrific band, and it seemed like Elvis was really running the show, not just singing while a music director handled the musicians.
I saw that movie for a dollar at a discount theater in the burbs when it came out, and people in the audience actually clapped after the musical numbers.
Alexmagic, I lived in Hungary while Oasis was breaking bigtime in Europe. On European MTV and that Euro market, they seemed to come out of the gates about as cool as Blur and Oats’ boys, Pulp. Like Suede, however, by the time Oasis got to the US market, they were already a bit of an overhyped UK joke. I’ll grant The Great One that much.
I guess rock n roll made Elvis cool, and the army made him Army Cool.
I used to have the opinion that Elvis died while he was in the Army. It does seem that he was a different person after his mom died. The endless stream of formula movies he was making the music world was passing him by certainly killed his relevance. However, one listen to his ’69 Memphis album or his ’68 comeback sheds new light on the argument that Elvis died after the Army.. That black leather will always be hip to me. He may have been celebrating his past, but here was a man on fire, passionate about regaining what little respect he still had in the music world. Too bad he killed it within a few short years. I would say that Elvis was hip, lost his hipness, regained it a little, then lost it completely.
TB
In his prime — and all throughout his awful movie-making years — Elvis was never “hip,” in the same music critic-love kind of way that some of the other bands discussed in this thread were. He was just popular — big difference. By 1968, it was important to be “hip,” and Elvis felt he wasn’t; hence, the “comeback special.” Then, to LDB’s point, he lost it all in the next six years or so. Sad.
Sad indeed. Perhaps “hip” is the wrong word. Maybe Elvis was cool, then uncool, THEN hip, then unhip, uncool, and dead at the same time. I suppose the main point on Elvis is that it his uncool, unhip image that has endured the past 30 or so years. That is the travesty that underscores the major contribution that he made to popular music. “Elvis? That fat, dead, Vegas dude? He was important?”
My argument wasn’t ever really concerning E (or JB), I just brought them up because they are saddled with image problems that have endured. My group was The Beach Boys, who were also never probably “hip”.
TB
TB sez:
Maybe Elvis was cool, then uncool, THEN hip, then unhip, uncool, and dead at the same time.
I say:
Yes!
When the first couple albums came out, they were hailed in all corners of the UK music press as the biggest, the best, and yes, the coolest band since (pick one) the Stone Roses, the Smiths, the Sex Pistols, the Beatles. For a time, “Blur or Oasis?” was as self-defining a question for UK schoolboys as “Beatles Or Stones?” had been three decades before. TONY FUCKING BLAIR co-opted Oasis into his “Cool Brittania” scam to get elected PM, and it worked.
There was a time and place where they weren’t just cool, they were the coolest. It’s true that this aura never translated to the American market — because we quite rightly recognized that even at their best, they sucked — but that’s not the point.
I liked Oasis. I saw them on their first tour on the US behind the Definitely Maybe record. I really like those first two records, but especially the first one.
I will defend them as an American.
Of course, by the third or fourth record, I lost interest and don’t care. I feel the same way about The Cranberries. I actually enjoy those first two records, but could care less now.
On the other side of the coin, I can’t tell you the last time I’ve heard any of those albums. I might not even care about them now now. I’ll get back to you on that.
Or not.
TB
PS–I never believed the Oasis hype. I just liked their music for what it was worth. I never really bought into the Second Coming Beatles bit that tagged them. I just thought they were a crankin’ rock band.
TB