Acts whose debut album is an afterthought in their overall discography

Already mentioned upthread, but just look at this young man:

http://i.imgur.com/7pMB19v.jpg

Everlast - Forever Everlasting
Kid Rock - Grits Sandwiches for Breakfast
Fastball - Make Your Mama Proud
Blink 182 - Buddha
Finger Eleven (as The Rainbow Butt Monkeys) - Letters From Chutney

My mind keeps thinking of acts who got big in the late 90s.

Not sure about Neil Young, I think it's too strong to be here.

Lycia - Wake. It does have a few great tracks though.

Liars probably.

But I wouldn't quite count Sugar Ray or No Doubt in this category.

al green(e) -- back up train

Warren Zevon
Boomtown Rats
(U.K.) Squeeze
Swans (EP)
Zac Brown Band (first few)
Old Crow Medicine Show (first few)
John Hiatt (first couple, at least)

Mekons (maybe their first few, but almost definitely their first)

i feel like sixties california has more than their fair share of these (the utterly forgettable tim buckley debut hasn't been mentioned yet, for instance). to generalize, it seems like seventies punk bands when the scene started up didn't get to record albums, sixties hippie bands did get to record albums, but they were unrepresentative and generally awful.

also, great thread idea, kornrulez6969

Thanks. And I take back the first ZZ Top record, I just didnt recognize any songs and according to wikipedia it didn't chart. But it takes more than that to qualify for this thread.

I will, however, stand by the first Huey Lewis album as a near perfect example.

i feel like we've got two separate beasts in this thread - the modest debut, ie Neil Young and Rihanna, where they didn't have their defining aesthetic nailed quite yet, but still featured some hits people still care about now ("The Loner," "Pon De Replay" respectively). And then there's the straight up FORGOTTEN debut, like Randy Newman and Warren Zevon, where zero fucks are given by anyone but the most hungry-for-juvenalia fan.

oh yeah that huey one is perfect

Faith No More - we care a lot?

― StanM, Monday, May 11, 2015 1:41 PM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Not sure if this one qualifies - the title track gets played live a lot still (and is fairly well remembered by fans, even those that hated the Mosley era) and the Mosley era does have a lot of champions, even if it is more for Introduce Yourself.

Mike Patton even re-recorded "As the Worm Turns" from the first one.

Guess Who (first few)
Golden Earring(s) (first few)
Billy Ocean (first few)
Blackfoot (first couple +)
Whitesnake (first few)
Rick Springfield (first few, though his actual debut a little less so)
K.C. and the Sunshine Band
(Ambrose) Slade

i feel like we've got two separate beasts in this thread - the modest debut, ie Neil Young and Rihanna, where they didn't have their defining aesthetic nailed quite yet, but still featured some hits people still care about now ("The Loner," "Pon De Replay" respectively). And then there's the straight up FORGOTTEN debut, like Randy Newman and Warren Zevon, where zero fucks are given by anyone but the most hungry-for-juvenalia fan.

There's also the notoriously embarrassing debut (Ministry, Tori Amos, Pantera). I don't know the Newman and Zevon records, maybe they qualify for that.

Sylvester (first couple w/ Hot Band)

Tori also wasn't a solo act but in a band. Ministry's a funny one where the debut is an afterthought for sure in terms of aesthetic, but it actually charted higher than any later Ministry album until Psalm 69.

i'm hesitant to bring up groups that were kinda unknown and unimportant for a long while (ie Pantera) - the ones where they got it at least HALF right on the second album are the most fun - but I'd just like to note that on the Goo Goo Dolls self-titled debut, all the songs are sung by Robby Takac. Johnny Rzeznik wouldn't take a lead until the second.

Hawkwind

Pantera - Metal Magic
Prince - For You
Michael Bolton - Michael Bolotin

lol croup I thought of bringing up that Goo Goo Dolls album. it's funny because even on the second he only sings about two songs, didn't even get a 50/50 share of lead vocals until Hold Me Up, really.

oooooh Hawkwind is a good one

i just love when, rather than a gradual build to where they were going, the group just has this one really gawky thing at the top of an otherwise polished discography. Like a UK Squeeze thing.

like if Elvis Costello had a self-titled album from 1974 where he's got a moptop and no glasses

Judas Priest

like that BA Robertson album? Xpost

ABBA perhaps ?

Girl Talk - Secret Diary

UK Squeeze had "Take Me I'm Yours" on it, which I think still makes the comps and all that (though, wasn't it recorded separate from the rest?)

ABBA perhaps ?

totally get the logic for this, but i kinda wish some continental european would get really mad about it. "Ring Ring was a #2 hit (in Austria)!"

fair enough .. never knew of it until i got the boxset last week.

tis ace ..

yeah see there you go, i didn't realize uk squeeze had a top 20 hit on it. i just know it as a two star asterisk kinda thing

Styx debut (and arguably a few of the surprisingly hard rocking Wooden Nickel ones that followed, though the second one did have "Lady.")
Also seems like Bob Seger deserves an asterisk on this thread at least (not so much for his debut as for a couple of his later early ones).

...and for the non-album singles before his debut, too.

Sonic Youth s/t EP though I guess Confusion Is Sex would be true for general public if not hardcore fans

They played "Burning Spear" when I saw them in 2000.

is there an afterthought definition? because Sorry Ma cuts get played on tour to this day for the Replacements.

It's neat to see Underworld and Kraftwerk mentioned in succession, because both those are examples of bands that started as something clearly something different than what they got famous for. I mean the "original" Underworld was basically an entirely different band, a five-piece whose direction seemed to be 100% controlled by the record company, though plans from a scrapped third album DID make its way to the more famous version of the group ("M.E." and a few of the dubnobasswithmyheadman-era tunes that didn't make the album originated from the early band). Anyway, that seems like a different thread

another good example would be Yasutaka Nakata's group Capsule, whose first album was a P5-style Shibuya-kei thing that has almost nothing to do with any of their other albums

Age Of Chance are kind of like that, too. And Onyx. But neither of their early versions put out more than a single or two.

Also, though only country people even know her:

Pam Tillis -- Above And Beyond The Doll Of Cutey (from 1983, a sort of fake new wavish thing 8 years before her country debut)

Also there's that '70s Roches album with only two of them.

And David Banner had an album or two before he hit (plus one with Crooked Lettaz), but with rappers you probably start to get into grey areas thanks to mixtapes etc. and who knows how that affects the rules here.

Also the first couple Rapture EPs when they were doing a sort of quasi Gang Of Four thing (one of which gets considered an album I think -- though EPs might be another grey area. And I really have no idea if people care about the Rapture at all anymore anyway.) (Unlike, uh, Blackfoot and Age Of Chance, who I mentioned above and who clearly still get talked about all the time.)

And oh yeah, duh.

k.d. lang & the reclines - angel with a lariat (and one even before that, apparently.)

(Okay, now I'm starting to remember why I stopped posting here. I get too obsessive about this stuff.)

is there an afterthought definition? because Sorry Ma cuts get played on tour to this day for the Replacements.

Not sure Sorry Ma fits the criteria for this thread.

Early Glass Candy and Chromatics albums before they went synthy.

First two Supertramp albums?

Lou Reed's s/t debut certainly has its awkward moments---sometimes the writing, sometimes the drumming, sometimes both at once---but certainly has its keepers too, like "I Can't Stand It," the jangle-pop x Bo Diddly beats of "Love Makes You Feel," and especially "Wild Child"--did he ever do that live? Just so VU Lou, in a Loaded way.
Somebody mentioned Garland Jeffreys' s/t debut in passing: didn't get the (deserved) hype of Ghost Writer(which he'll be performing at Highland in NYC 5/30), but, as with the xpost Joni debut, musical sensibilities seem fully, distinctively formed (though both artists got more topical & varied the arrangements later on).
His phrasing is fluid, alert and adaptable, like he's found a good spot for busking, while keeping an eye on those creeps coming up out of the subway. Kind of a Dion vibe, although doesn't literally sound that much like Dion.
Da Croupier, there's a set of tracks (maybe an album) by Flip City, Costello's pre-Stiff band. Dunno what he looked like or how it sounds (posted here and there), but originally saw it referred to as bluegrass...

Queen

'Keep Yourself Alive' didn't even make it onto Greatest Hits, if I remember. I guess 'Great King Rat' and 'Liar' are fan favourites, but casual listeners probably would know very few tracks on it. The band seemed to approach the material on this album very rarely, if ever, after the mid '70s.

idk his narrative that well at all but isn't Alice Cooper's first album really totally different/not usually talked about?

― soyrev, Monday, May 11, 2015 8:09 AM (13 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yes, and this goes for their second album too. Both Pretties For You and Easy Action are generally seen as early curios really, by pretty much everyone. I think Love It To Death is generally considered their debut even if it isn't.

I actually almost mentioned Glass Candy and Chromatics up there with the Rapture, I swear. (Then decided that with '00s indie acts, for all I know, their career trajectories might not even be all that unusual, and wasn't sure if anybody else even knew them. Was probably wrong on both counts.)

Somebody mentioned Miranda Lambert above, and it occurs to me that starting with CDBaby or whatever, this probably isn't rare at all in country -- Kacey Musgraves even self-released a couple albums as a teenager, to sell at shows or serve as demos. And she's far from alone in that. Jamey Johnson put out a self-relased album, then one called The Dollar with an actual top 20 country single before he got the idea to dress up more like an outlaw. That got him a whole different audience that might barely even know The Dollar existed, much less the first one.

Also, Shania Twain put out a flop self-titled album nobody remembers before hooking up with Mutt Lange -- And if you don't have hits in mainstream country, you might as well not exist.

Alanis.

Happy that you brought up Queen, Turrican. I was too chickenshit because I didn't know what the extent of "Keep Yourself Alive" was, hit-wise, and I knew some might harp on "Seven Seas of Rhye"'s original version (sans vocals) being on it.

but yeah, I think it fits perfectly. It's very quaint compared to the material that came later, and maybe not a 'forgotten' album but certainly kind of a dull thud of an introduction.

a gold record can qualify for this imo

can't qualify imo