well, by now i think i've broken any 'n' all of the rules of "under-ratedness" that i may have established in my initial response to ken light's demonstration of how to show an abject lack of understanding about the... well, about most anything really.

but this is no longer just me showing off how much smarter i am than mr light. i've begun to put together a team of people who someday will demonstrate that being smarter than ken light ain't as impressive as it may sound.

at THIS point... this is merely a public forum through which i can vent my impotent spleen about the opinion most people have about the musics of the past. yer not gonna like all of 'em... you may not like any of 'em...

i just think the world would be a more interesting place if people stopped listening to the sh%t that gets played on the radio (right... satellite radio is somehow better... piss off) & started listening to stuff like they don't make anymore.

here's this week's five...

1. abba
WHAAAAA? well, whatever shreds of "esteem" i may have had in my gentle readers' eyes will be gone after this one. but hear me out. mr light included lynyrd skynyrd because they're more than just "sweet home alabama". so i'm throwing in abba 'cause they're more than just "dancing queen." now, they shouldn't be eligible for consideration since there was a few years' stretch where they were sweden's leading export (ahead of VOLVO, for god's sake!). now, of course, sweden's leading export are nhl players... but you get the idea. now that we're in the post-disco-retro backlash... let me tell you a story. i grew up on abba (got their 1st "greatest hits" record for my 9th birthday) & had to keep it a secret 'cause the kids would beat me up. then when i was in my early 20s, a dancefloor group called eurasure put out an ep called "abba-esque", featuring the two queens mincing around singing abba covers. i saw their video for "take a chance on me" & after some reflection, realized that i heartily disliked it because it didn't have the intensity, passion or emotional resonance of the original. & until that moment... the words intensity, passion & emotional resonance weren't the sorts of things i would have associated with abba. now, i'm not saying that abba deserves to be on here any more than the monkees. i'm just saying that 84% of the people reading this are going to write in telling ME that abba SUCKS. but that's just 'cause of the shit that gets played to death during the disco revivals... dig out waterloo... ring, ring... does your mother know... mamma mia... that's rock 'n' roll, baby!

2. the bonzo doo-dah dog band
still with me? aw... yer a sweetheart! now since ken light only considers a band to be eligible for under-rated status if he's heard of them (seems odd... but that's ken), then he may not consider these pranksters eligible either. but these boys are as responsible as any for the bridge b/w rock music & comedy in england in the late 1960s (while the mothers of invention were building said bridge stateside). their best known song, of course, is "urban spaceman" which made the top 5 in england in 1968 (& which frontman neil innes played at monty python's hollywood bowl concert... included in the film of the same name). but paul mccartney produced much of their early work... "trouser press" provided the name for a lost-n-lamented underground rock magazine... & neil innes went on to some fame working with eric idle in a beatles-pastiche called the rutles (he was also the lead minstrel in "monty python & the holy grail"... oh... THAT guy!!). in the 1970s, vivian stanshall cut a single, "labio-dental fricative", which featured eric clapton support. if you like monty python... if you like frank zappa... then the bonzo doo-dah dog band was MADE for you! NOTE: after their debut record, they dropped the "doo-dah" from their name. i guess they wanted to be taken more seriously... or something.

3. suicidal tendencies
they probably aren't under-rated 'mongst fans of skater-punk. at least i hope they aren't. 'cause i may have to head down & stomp a mudhole through blink 182... or green day... or whoever else is preventing suicidal from getting their just desserts. & i bet mike muir might come with... he always sounds pretty pissed off. from the same music scene that gave us metallica & the 800 metalliclones... this could have been the band that led to nirvana & the grunge explosion had there not been a guns n' roses. "institutionalized", from their eponymous 1983 debut, is a classic teen angst thrasher (or at least... it had BETTER be!). the follow-up disc, "join the army", gave us "possessed to skate", but suffered from lackluster production & the standard sophomore jinx. & if their 3rd record "how will i laugh tomorrow when i can't even smile today?" isn't in your collection... then you oughtta correct that, STAT! just to get yer hands on "trip at the brain"! after the lukewarm sales of "lights... camera... revolution" (whaa? it had "you can't bring me down"... "get whacked"... "disco's out, murder's in..."), muir & bassist robert trujillo split off to form infectious grooves. & eventually rage against the machine stepped in to fill the void left by the dissolution of one of punk's great shoulda-beens.

4. television
like the velvet underground & the replacements... it may be that television doesn't earn its spot on this list because everyone knows what a great band television should have been. but the band was among the first punk bands... & came through the same cbgb's scene as the ramones & blondie. after their demo tape (produced by brian eno in 1975) failed to garner a reaction, bassist richard hell quit (was fired) & headed off to join the heartbreakers w/ johnny thunders (see new york dolls, pt 2). two of the great-underknown punk albums of 1977 were television's marquee moon & richard hell's blank generation. after television's follow-up record "adventure" tanked, tom verlaine & richard lloyd headed off to their respective solo careers... & television would resurface in the wake of nirvana's success to cut an eponsymous reunion record in 1992. but listening to television back in their day... one gets a sense of what punk might have been like had it hit more with college kids than with punks. i'll wager a crisp canadian ten-dollar bill that most of the indie bands of the 1980s had a well-worn copy of marquee moon in their record library.

5. wire
ok, clearly i've got to get over my little punk thing. 8 of the past 10 bands i've listed have been "punk" bands... & that wasn't my intention. but i would be somewhat remiss to mention marquee moon & blank generation & then fail to acknowledge wire's 1977 debut "pink flag" as still another underknown punk albums of that year. carrying on the ramones' tradition of short bursts of song... wire's debut record packed 21 songs into 36 minutes. i once heard this album described as "the ramones go to art school," which is a fair assessment. imagine the ramones brought up on the late-period beatles rather than on the surf-rock of the beach boys... & you'll get a bit of an idea. after two more records (chairs missing & 154), wire got seriously strange. they stopped making albums (until 1987's the ideal copy) & just started cranking out ep's & getting all studio-crazy. while their late-80s return garnered a mild critical fawning... it still resulted in no record sales & the boys packed it in for good (?) in 1991. but if you've listened to a punk, goth or britpop song in the past 30 years... then you owe it to yerself to track down wire & find out where the rest of 'em got it...