Underrated bands of the 90’s

BoozeCube

BoozeCube

Von Clippowicz
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I still contend AiC is under rated and never got the level of love the other the other Seattle bands of the time but if we're looking for something a little more off the radar then here are a couple.

Sponge



Eve 6 - is probably remembered as a one hit wonder with "Inside out" but they actually put out some awesome albums.



Silverchair - One of my favorite bands even still today for a group of 16 year old kids they were amazing but got written off as Nirvana light.

 
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A

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Grim1 said:
Saw AiC just after their first album came out. Baccanal was the name of the club, in San Diego, held about 500 people max.

Opening act was a band calling themselves Mookie Blaylock (after the basketball player). Never heard of them. The crowd hadn't showed up yet. So it was just about 30 or 40 of us in the club watching this act. Most of us back at the bar getting a head start on the buzz. The singer came out and was very shy, had long hair and stared at the ground the whole time. Couldn't see his face. The guitarist kept encouraging him.

The singer was amazing though. The few of us there started to drift into the front of the stage. We were all just blown away at how good this band with the wierd name was. The rest of the crowd eventually showed up as Mookie was leaving the stage. Packed house for AiC. They came on and was amazing, Layne Staley had this devil goatie thing going on and he played it up. Great show.

But afterwards i went to the local music store, the one that had all the weird and new bands and asked them for Mookie Blaylock, they had never heard of them.

They changed their name and a few months later their first album came out. It was Pearl Jam.



Bah: Can't believe I fucked that story up. Pearl Jam was originally Mookie Blaylock. Eddie was the shy singer and Stone Gossard was urging him on. Pearl Jam played a few small venues in San Diego (Eddie is from here) before they blew up. Had Nirvana on the brain while typing. The early 90's were amazing for new bands. Saw Nirvana a few months later at the Del Mar fair grounds. That was a great festival, Megadeth also played.

For under rated bands from then: The Jesus and Mary Chain, Butthole Surfers, The Flaming Lips, Body Count, the list is huge.
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Different club, but:

 
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BoozeCube

BoozeCube

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Fuck it I'll throw in some more, even though I am sure people will say they aren't underrated.

Cracker



Cowboy Mouth


Veruca Salt


Social Distortion

 
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OU Ariakas

OU Ariakas

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BoozeCube said:
I still contend AiC is under rated and never got the level of love the other the other Seattle bands of the time but if we're looking for something a little more off the radar then here are a couple.

Sponge


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LiquidDeath LiquidDeath will have a ton to say about Sponge; but suffice to say that they are vastly underrated. Wax Ecstatic the song AND the album are both criminally underrated.
 
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Grim1

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Arden said:
I went to Clash of the Titans in 1991. It was supposed to be Slayer, Anthrax, Megadeth and Testament, but for some reason Testament dropped out. The opening act instead was some band nobody had ever heard of called Alice in Chains. I thought they were pretty good, but they got no love from the crowd that night. The Slayer fans basically booed them off stage. Looking back it's always funny to me that I watched such a great band get booed off a stage. In 1991 the media/promoters/etc. were still trying to lump the brand new grunge bands in with the old guard metal bands. Obviously it didn't work out very well most of the time. Not only was the music very different, but so was the style/attitude of the fans. It took a couple years for people to realize that grunge was its own thing entirely.

I actually saw the Butthole Surfers, The Flaming Lips, and STP a couple years later. Show was an absolute blast. I don't know about the Surfer's being underrated (I think they might be rated just right), but I totally agree the Lips are. I actually think it's pretty hard coming up with underrated 90's bands tbh. Blind Melon is definitely a great example of an underrated 90's band. I remember everyone in my crew absolutely hating the MTV vid for No Rain ( the general consensus was that it was "gay as fuck") and everyone wrote them off after that. It was literally decades later when I rediscovered that we had totally missed a ton of great music because of that stupid video.

I dunno- I guess I'd probably say the Meat Puppets were underrated. Maybe GWAR? Primus? Those are bands with a huge catalog of great music the stretches back into the 80's that a lot of people still haven't heard of today. Not sure if that's the standard for "underrated" though.
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Clash was a great festival, didn't recall AiC being there when I went but it's possible, memory is foggy for a lot of the shows I went to. Did a ton of concerts in the 90's. One of the best times for live music ever. I was a metal head (still am I suppose), but bands like AiC had enough of an edge to make it work for me. And Meat Puppets definitely were underrated.
 
Alex

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Arden said:
I dunno- I guess I'd probably say the Meat Puppets were underrated. Maybe GWAR? Primus? Those are bands with a huge catalog of great music the stretches back into the 80's that a lot of people still haven't heard of today. Not sure if that's the standard for "underrated" though.
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I thought about Primus, but they're still rocking out to pretty big crowds to this day. I think it's wild they've gotten as big as they have for how weird they are.

So many ignorantly trash them or have no fucking clue what their music even is, but I gotta say Phish. The 90s are considered their glory years even though they're still selling out arenas and amphitheaters now.
 
Sterling

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Meat Puppets are really interesting in that they're constantly covered and a lot of their songs are better known by those covers. Being a band other bands like is usually a good sign of there being something there though for sure. AiC being called underrated is pretty wild to me considering they were very popular both at the time and later as well as being critically acclaimed.
 
Arden

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Grim1 said:
Clash was a great festival, didn't recall AiC being there when I went but it's possible, memory is foggy for a lot of the shows I went to. Did a ton of concerts in the 90's. One of the best times for live music ever. I was a metal head (still am I suppose), but bands like AiC had enough of an edge to make it work for me. And Meat Puppets definitely were underrated.
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Very possible you went to one of the shows before AiC jumped on board. The first half of the tour it was either Testament or Suicidal Tendencies. AiC didn't become involved until second half of tour. Also possible you just missed them as the opening act. Like I said, they were unknown and largely ignored by the crowd.
 
Sadre Spinegnawer

Sadre Spinegnawer

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Arden said:
Maybe GWAR?
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No. We must not get confused. GWAR should never be rated. GWAR is GWAR. It's like seeing two dogs humping on the side of the road as you drive to work. You don't stop it, you don't stop in order to watch, you just go on your way, maybe slow down a bit, maybe mention it to a few people at work, but you certainly don't rate it.
 
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Arden

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Sadre Spinegnawer said:
No. We must not get confused. GWAR should never be rated. GWAR is GWAR. It's like seeing two dogs humping on the side of the road as you drive to work. You don't stop it, you don't stop in order to watch, you just go on your way, maybe slow down a bit, maybe mention it to a few people at work, but you certainly don't rate it.
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Can't say that I fully understand your post, but I can say that it feels correct.
 
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Phazael

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These guys always flew under the radar, but wound up being a core part of the rise of QotSA moreso than Ghroll was. Probably my favorite underrated group of that entire era.
 
Sadre Spinegnawer

Sadre Spinegnawer

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Arden said:
Can't say that I fully understand your post, but I can say that it feels correct.
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I think what I mean is, let's say I see two dogs humping on the side of the road as I drive to work. I might go into work and go, "Saw two dogs humping on the way here" or such.

But people will never eat lunch with me again if I say, "I saw two dogs humping on the way here and furthermore I think dog humping is underrated as far as things to see goes."

GWAR is just GWAR. If you see GWAR, you go, "I saw GWAR." No reason to gild the lily.
 
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Whidon

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Honestly it's hard to really find anything truly "underrated" nowadays but i'll go with a few.


One of my favourite album covers.

 
Fadaar

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Just off the top of my head bands I still listen to often that were never super huge:

Eve 6 (already mentioned)
Hoobastank
Less Than Jake
Mad Caddies
Pennywise
Piebald

I would say Deftones but they're incredibly popular globally, just seemingly moreso outside the US. Piebald is about the closest I can come to an obscure band. I downloaded like 15,000 songs my first year at UCF in 2004 thanks to the way iTunes library sharing used to work, discovered so much stuff I would have never heard of otherwise.
 
Alex

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Phazael said:
These guys always flew under the radar, but wound up being a core part of the rise of QotSA moreso than Ghroll was. Probably my favorite underrated group of that entire era.
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Never heard of these dudes and dig it. Look them up and see Alain Johannes is the guitar player. That dude is awesome and has done countless collaborations with Josh Homme including being a part of QOTSA at one point. He also played live with Them Crooked Vultures.
 
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Chukzombi

Chukzombi

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Paradise Lost: Draconian Times is an incredible album and they were so underrated probably few here ever heard of them
 
Mist

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Fadaar said:
Just off the top of my head bands I still listen to often that were never super huge:

Eve 6 (already mentioned)
Hoobastank
Less Than Jake
Mad Caddies
Pennywise
Piebald

I would say Deftones but they're incredibly popular globally, just seemingly moreso outside the US. Piebald is about the closest I can come to an obscure band. I downloaded like 15,000 songs my first year at UCF in 2004 thanks to the way iTunes library sharing used to work, discovered so much stuff I would have never heard of otherwise.
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Piebald was a fantastic band but I associate their best stuff with the very very very late 90s and really the very early 2000s.
Can't really say Pennywise was underrated since Unknown Road and Straight Ahead were both very popular albums, at least as far as punk goes.
 
Fadaar

Fadaar

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eh I may be a bit young for this topic i think, born in 85 so most of the 90's stuff I didn't really discover and appreciate until after 2000 when I started high school
 
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