martha wrote:This is inaccurate. I never had Quo, I did have Neu -- but not until the 80's.Copehead wrote: None of us in our 40s had a fucking clue who Neu were in the 70s but we all had a Quo album. That is is the great unacknowledged truth hanging over this poll like a thunderhead rumbling in a distant overture!
i didn't have neu *or* quo.
i get the principle of what copehead's trying to say with the quo example, though. and i actually kinda buy it... the idea that many of the albums critically considered to be so great now are after-the-facters. they were never spun regularly then, never in people's stacks, never on the radio. his specific examples may not work, but there's an idea there that does.
of course, being an after-the-facter album doesn't have any bearing at all on whether the album in question is actually kickass or not. that right there's the rub.
quo was one of those bands that got absolutely no airplay in my american corner of the world. the only quo anybody heard, had or knew was 'pictures of matchstik men'... not 70s piledrivin quo. i didn't hear any of that til i met reap. i think there are certain ocean-divided bands that were after-the-facters for me by necessity: there was simply zippo exposure at the time.
golden earring... everybody knew radar love. in the MTV era, everybody knew twilight zone. but the scads of worthy albums that band had, several at the least? unknown to me. (wishbone ash is a bit like that, although i got an ashy bug up my butt early, when i heard "silver shoes" on the radio, and i went and fount out all their stuff. again, though, scads of albums of primo material, almost entirely unknown by american classic-rock fans, either now or back in the day before rock had had the time to become classic.)
as i've talked about a million times before, just in america, there were regional differences in which bands got airplay, which cities certain bands hit on tour, all of it. in part, i was lucky to be in new orleans, cuz allll manner of groovy, warped bands of diff types enjoyed going there. but i was just as selectively cut off from certain other types... the very types reap was steeped in. and i definitely had to dig around for the kinds of bands in the early 80s that probably every single brit knew backwards and forwards... like the furs live.
um, i still don't own a neu album. i'm kinda skeered.