Acts whose debut album is an afterthought in their overall discography

i always think that first my bloody valentine album is kind of the perfect example. something even some fans pretend doesn't exist. does anyone listen to the first primal scream album? underworld another good example given what they became.

Anyway, everybody but me seems to be way past this by now, but discogs says One In Versailles had 12 songs (so, probably a full album) and the even earlier Heads Or Tails had 10, albeit on 10-inch vinyl in the latter's case.

Do you mean "You Made Me Realize", the EP?

i kind of like the early primal scream better than the stuff that made them famous

matthew sweet columbia and a&m albums another good example. girlfriend is ground zero for most of the world.

wait never mind I looked at wikipedia, "this is your bloody valentine" 1985, never heard of it before

Hey, how about the first Aretha Franklin records? Except that gospel album probably has some traction, right?

no, this MBV thing. though i guess it's more of an EP.

http://www.discogs.com/My-Bloody-Valentine-This-Is-Your-Bloody-Valentine/master/5969

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in terms of currently radio play, etc. aretha franklin's entire tenure on columbia records is kind of forgotten/an afterthought. but it's nowhere near as obscure as some of the other examples on this thread.

the band's definitely revisited it live (they just did "box full of letters" at their last show!), and it's not a total embarrassment by any means, but kinda surprised Wilco's AM hasn't come up just for being so gestative, especially considering it's in grissos screen name.

I've got one - Giles Giles & Fripp for Robert Fripp.

woah i'd honestly never even heard of that

she's not really that famous or anything, but i don't know how many people have listened to the first lisa germano album. she didn't really have her thing down at that time. still decompressing from the mellencamp years...

http://www.discogs.com/Lisa-Germano-On-The-Way-Down-From-The-Moon-Palace/master/268055

ok, here's another one:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wailing_Wailers

the first wailers album, five years (i think) before "soul rebels." jamaican music at that time was very /not/ album-oriented, and most people probably don't even know that the wailers put out a LP this early.

of course, it's more of a compilation of previously-released singles than an LP, so this might need an asterisk.

I've got one - Giles Giles & Fripp for Robert Fripp.

― Vic Perry, Tuesday, May 12, 2015 8:11 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

good one! that said, i've been fucking w/ that album since the mid 90s.

re: germano i read about that album in rolling stone and lived in bloomington, indiana at the time, but even the progressive station in town didn't get on board until album two (the capitol mix)

and speaking of cougar..

http://www.discogs.com/Johnny-Cougar-Chestnut-Street-Incident/master/210401

i bought that capitol version of happiness back then just because i loved the album so much. the 4ad version anyway. played it once or twice. and i never played the first album much either.

David Bowie's David Bowie has to be the most notorious example of this, right? With "The Laughing Gnome" going top ten years later and Bowie having to cancel the interactive part of his Sound + Vision because of a prank campaign to make him include it? Are there other cases where the awkward debut was used to beat them with later?

MBV's definitely comes up as a "lol" for sure

but still, that pales to the gnome's fame

does john mellencamp still play any songs live from the first two johnny cougar albums? THAT is the question.

The second has "I Need A Lover" - though it got big in the US on the third, I think

the laughing gnome isn't actually on the first david bowie album. i really like that first album! but it is kind of a before and after thing with him.

also where worlds collide - there's an outtake for coug's first album of him covering "man who sold the world"! thank you, tony defries!

ah, didn't realize "laughing gnome" was one of the uk singles slapped onto us re-releases. those always trip me up.

i mean the album is that same kinda twee time style. but as far as that style goes, the first album is a cool artifact.

just remembered another case where someone's uncool past wound up haunting him later - Dr Dre's World Class Wreckin' Cru

http://techfaster.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/dre-1.jpg

though iirc dj shadow specifically thanks dre for their track "surgery" in the endtroducing liners

is Giles Giles Fripp any good?

By the way, I'm really sorry that Judy Dyble, singer on candidate lp Fairport Convention debut, didn't sing on the real first King Crimson record. I like her version of this a lot more than Greg Lake's, but according to her own note in the youtube contents:

Ian McD and I were looking for other musicians to work with, we advertised, and met up with Peter and Mike Giles and Robert Fripp, This song was one of the many that we recorded together in the front room of the flat GG& F were renting to see what we sounded like together and to get a feel for each other's music. For various reasons,I decided not to continue, and later Peter Giles bowed out. Then they added Greg, not as a replacement for me or as a substitute, but as bass-playing vocalist and lo! KC was born. I am so proud to have been a part of this process. Judy Dyble

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfqXh5s4t4k

i prefer johnny thunders-ish GG to what came later. not that i listen to what came later, but the first album has a kind of naive charm:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRLr_FrfVpo

renaissance s/t debut from 1969? never actually heard any of the later ones, though.

first renaissance album a really different thing from later albums. different people. keith and jane relf and jim mccarty were gone after the first two island albums.

Is the first Incredible String Band that different from the others? Maybe a bit more straightforwardly folky I guess, but it's a matter of degrees. I actually listen to it more often than the others. There's a lot of good stuff on it.

Sly's A Whole New Thing is probably my favorite albums that by most measures qualifies for this thread

it's so good! but no hits, didn't chart, and i'd be shocked any sly-adjacent touring act would bother with anything from it

Los Lobos - Del Este De Los Angeles (1978)

I was just going to mention them! Though discogs claims they had one even two years earlier than that, which I'd never even heard of before. Also had no idea they were (one of) the main artist(s) on the Eating Raoul soundtrack in 1982 (assuming this is right.)

http://www.discogs.com/artist/173717-Los-Lobos

First couple Dr. John albums might qualify, they were really trippy and weird, though I guess Gris-Gris (his second,, supposedly?) always had its cult and has been reissued several times -- and his recent albums have harked back to that period, in a way.

http://www.discogs.com/artist/15152-Dr-John

First couple David Allan Coe LPs, too, before he went country. First one, more a blues record about prison, got reissued a decade ago. Second one is supposedly spoken word with musical backing; never heard of it before today.

http://www.discogs.com/artist/619909-David-Allan-Coe

except almost all of those albums have cult reputations; i think there are plenty of people who know the first two dr. john albums as well as any of his others!

i mean, they are from before his period of biggest fame, but you could say that of a lot of debut albums.

I believe that Giles Giles and Fripp album is pretty well-regarded, at least among those who have heard it. Certainly it's somewhat well-known now thanks to the King Crimson connection but I think it sold only like 500 copies on first release. It's quite a curious and fun little album, outside of the last two tracks (which do sort of point the way to what Crimson would do) you'd never think Fripp was on it at all. It's actually sort of a comedy album, not just because of the 'skits' that run between songs but because of the somewhat droll and often funny subject matter. Favorite song from the band is Sinfield's "Under the Sky", which didn't even place on the original, and is really different from everything else, but it's a real gorgeous tune.

Renaissance is a pretty good one, though I think it's kind of a weird situation, as mentioned none of those members made it to even the 3rd album, back then they were known more as a Yardbirds knockoff. They do get credit for being one of the first bands to use really overt classical influences in their music, almost similar to The Nice. Their second album I think fits those criteria better, as it was written and recorded as members were leaving, and by all accounts seems to be unfinished.

I guess my thing with cult albums like those Dr. John ones (wiki says Gris-Gris came before Babylon) not after btw), is sometimes their cult is people outside of the artist's usual fan base -- i.e., some people are just plain fans of cult albums or weird music, period. And I don't get the idea Penitentiary Blues was released, necessarily, with David Allan Coe's usual fans in mind. Seemed like more a hipster item. Something similar might apply to the early Human League stuff, for instance, which most Dare fans might still be oblivious to. I dunno. I could be wrong. Maybe should be a consideration, maybe not. (And I was kind of ambivalent about the Dr. John ones when mentioning them above anyway -- maybe all his fans do love Gris-Gris, for all I know. And looks like Rolling Stone ranked it pretty high on their all-time album list, which I guess should disqualify it. And their early record guides gave it 5 stars! But it's not just that his later albums sold more; it's that he completely switched up his style, seems like.) (And had before doing the Night Tripper thing, too, of course when he put out more conventional early singles back to the '50s as Mac Rebennack.)

Also I figure every album mentioned on here is a cult album to somebody, and all these bands have their crazy completist collectors somewhere! So it's just a matter of where you draw the line...

“midnight oil would be another one. unless you are australian.”

The debut wasn't released outside of Australia until years later (didn't come out in the US until 1990), so yeah, it's far more likely that Australians had heard/heard of it.

So do people think Head Injuries is the first or


I didn't read the first post, just the thread title.

It’s really silly to take umbrage if you don’t bother to read the thread btw

Blimey, that really GG Allin?

wikipedia says that, after his success, Luther Vandross bought the rights to the two albums released by his band Luther to stop them being re-released, is this a common thing?

I think Mac Rebbenack went into the studio for Gris Gris thinking that he would get somebody else in to do vocals and use the name Dr John but both wound up falling to him. I thought Babylon was at least a year later.
I also thought Walk On Gilded Splinters was a hit, or was that just for other people?
Certainly one of my all time favourite lps anyway.

Marsha Hunt, I think.

The Beta Band