Top Five Vastly Underrated Rock Bands

[Scandal 2000]

First the rules:

1) List five bands that you consider vastly underrated bands.

2) The bands must be considered rock bands (any genre of rock will qualify)

3) The Band Must Have Been Around At Least 20 Years

4) The Band must have had limited or no commercial success. In other words, you might claim the last four Metallica albums are underrated, but they would not qualify because they have had tremendous success. I will allow bands that perhaps were one hit wonders or had a limited run of successful albums.

5) Here is the kicker. If someone respectfully disagrees with one of your picks, you have the right to request the person (let's have fun with this) to  "defend their thesis." The person defending will have to explain why the band is underrated, but the person who has requested your pick to be justfied must also explain why he/she disagrees with the band being underrated.

For example, let's say I list one of my favorite bands "Uriah Heep." To me, they are vastly underrated with a ton of good albums and good songs. Someone may disagree with me and their argument could be "Their recent albums may be underrated, but they had a fair share of hits and successful albums in the 70's so they had their moment in the sun." I would then have to counter with my justification.

My List:

5) The Spooky Tooth

4) Overkill

3) Junkyard

2) Doro Pesch

1) Rose Tattoo

[RJhog (Admin)]

I'm not Jon, but I'm gonna defend his choice of Thin Lizzy.  We live in the U.S. (except for Niels), and TL had only 1 US gold record and 2 Top 100 hits here.  I'd say that's very little success.  Doesn't mean they don't have fans, but the rule says limited success, and I think they should qualify.

 

P.s.  Facts I mentioned are from Wikipedia.

[Scott]

Then pending final decision from Scandal my list is considered as "penciled in" because Thin Lizzy goes to the top if they are allowed.

[RJhog (Admin)]

I agree, the author of this thread is Chief Law Maker.  The decision is totally his.

[Scandal 2000]

I think Thin Lizzy qualifies because outside of the Jailbreak album and a couple of hits, they were criminally underrated.

[Jon]

Thanks Rjhog! I wonder what those two top 100 songs and gold album were.....

[Jon]

Here's my defense:

Take a typical music fan that doesn't know a lot about Thin Lizzy. Then have them name a song or two or an album WITHOUT mentioning either "The Boys Are Back In Town" or "Jailbreak" or the song "Jailbreak". 

And listen to the radio...what songs by Thin Lizzy are played? TBABIT and SOMETIMES Jailbreak. Europe they were much bigger than here and I'm sticking to my list!!!!!!!!!

Also, the same could be said for UFO....

[Alan Christensen]

I will need to think about this also.  Tom Scholz (Boston) is very seldom in top guitarist lists, but I wouldn't put Boston as an Underrated band.

[Jon]

Boston as underrated? Not considering how much their first three albums sold. lPus I think people just didn't care less about them since it took too long between album 3-4 and 4-5. There was a huge gap between 2-3, but people still bought that 3rd album, but I think the next waits killed the band.

[Troy S]

5. Fastway

4. Riot

3. Zebra

2. Badlands

1. Vandenberg

[Niels (Mod)]

Riot is an excellent choice!!!

[RJhog (Admin)]

Once again, I managed to get my list together before reading anyone else's reply.  I don't want to be swayed by popular opinion, you know?

 

5. Dreams So Real

 

4. King's X

 

3. Mother's Finest

 

2. Europe

 

1. The Smithereens

 

Now, I can finally read all these other replies.

[Mike Mills]

I considered the Smithereens, but I thought they were too successful. Never heard of "Dream So Real", but I like the other picks.