November 05, 2004

Curious George: Underrated talents Inspired by the interesting and voluminous responses to wendell's "overrated talent" thread I am curious to know who MoFites think are underrated artists, performers, personalities etc.

I am a musician and I can name many, many musicians who I think deserve a lot more attention than they get, but one particular Canadian singer comes to mind: Danny Michel. He is a hugely gifted songwriter and a very engaging performer but I have yet to see him "break through" beyond the limited circles I travel in. I want the world to discover this guy but at the same time I am happy to share him with a limited but very vital and appreciative audience. As far as dead people go I think Béla Bartók was the greatest composer of the 20th century, but not many 'classical' music afficionadoes agree with me. Please share your favourite 'famous but not enough', 'unknown' or 'sorta-but-not-enough knows', living or dead. And if you can provide links to some of their work all the better.

posted by Jerry Garcia 20 years ago
  • I'm just going to sit and wait and see who shows up most often on both lists.
  • Heh. Good plan el_hombre, I am sure there will be a few. There are are a dozen or so samples of Danny Michel's work here (scroll down).
  • Fela Kuti is so incredibly underknown in the states it's mind-boggling.
  • Aimee Mann. Moderately famous (especially since the soundtrack of "Magnolia"), but she deserves even greater success.
  • Widely known, famous even, but I think still vastly underappreciated: Mark Knopfler.
  • Daniel Clowes, author of Ghost World and the Eightball series; Carol Lay, of the Story Minute strips; Tom Tomorrow of This Modern World.
  • Michael Leunig
  • ZZzzz...
  • John Sayles (movies) Dennis Lehane (books)
  • (All that while listening to Aimee Mann's Ghost World.)
  • my boner of whom I am the owner
  • Catherine O'Hara, who only Christopher Guest seems to know what to do with. Hal Hartley, although Monster was pretty sucky. And up until recently I would have said Brad Bird.
  • John Hughes, pre-1990 anyway. I always say that if "The Breakfast Club" has been about 40 year olds and not teenagers, he would've needed a wheelbarrow to carry away all the Oscars. There's such a bias against the idea that anything involving young people possibly being great art, but it is, and so are many of his other films. So often Oscars go to movies that have the superficlial trappings of "art" but there's nothing really there. (see "Lost in Translation") Honesty is not often appreciated in its time, especially presented in the form of a teenage comedy. [thrusts fist in air like Bender, walks away across football field]
  • (wow I just realized how grammatically terrible that paragraph was but you get the idea)
  • Sexiest. Woman. Ever. Storm Large (her real name). Obligatory Quebec underground bands Grim Skunk and Groovy Aardvark. If you like French rap, you'll like Sans Pression and Muzion, Quebec's finest, IMO.
  • Oh yeah, Storm's site is not entirely SFW.
  • Obscure artists I know personally, all have garnered a certain amount of success but remain outside the megastar orbit. In a just world all of them would make it big: Thomas Bolt, winner of the 1089 Yale Younger Poet Award, still to sell his novel or break into the serious literary world; David Leonard, painter marrying a wonderful combination (to my mind) of both realism and impressionism; The Isotoners, friends, neighbors and all-round nice boys.
  • So this Thomas Bold, he's a bona fide 11th century poet, yes?
  • Shane Meadows.
  • *sigh* Bolt. And 1989.
  • Sherman Alexie. Writer, poet, film director & screenwriter. William Least Heat Moon. Writer
  • In music, Greg Sage (The Wipers), American Music Club, The Lemonheads and Husker Du come to mind. Actor Brian Cox. In politics (historical) Robert Kennedy (no one since has had a tenth of what he had). Economics: David Ricardo (blows away Adam Smith and Karl Marx). Film maker: Sid Davis. Pop culture: Negativland.
  • There could be a major buttload of underrated musicians, but I would have to say that three on my list would be: Nanci Griffith and Vance Gilbert and The Kennedys (with apologies to Maura, don't judge their music by their web site). : )
  • Jhumpa Lahiri. Proof that winning the Pulitzer for fiction doesn't mean jack to anyone except english majors.
  • Gustav Meyerink.- Although he is not among the literary giants of the century, his dark and expressionist writing did have glimmers of true inspiration. Jaroslav Hasek- Underrated anywhere outside of the Czech Republic, that is. Overrated there. His drunken rambling prose, the unexpergated Svejk in particular, is some of the funniest shit I have ever read. And one of my all time favorite artist/film-maker/animators Jan Svankmejer.
  • Beer Chan the most delightful of all things
  • ...if "The Breakfast Club" has been about 40 year olds and not teenagers... ...it would have been "The Big Chill".
  • ...if "The Breakfast Club" has been about 40 year olds and not teenagers... ...it would have been "The Big Chill". Or rather, it would have been a remake of "The Big Chill" (which was itself a remake of "Return of the Secaucus Seven")...
  • P.G. Wodehouse. Because some people persist in rating him #2 to Shakespeare.
  • ...if "The Breakfast Club" has been about 40 year olds and not teenagers... ...it would have been "The Big Chill". yes, my point exactly
  • My band is an underrated talent.
  • Thomas Ades
  • The Vapors folded before they could make it big and were unfortunately labeled as a one-hit wonder. I love their stuff. Lean, spikey Britpop.
  • George Michael. He rarely gets positive reviews, and seems to be simply ignored by critics most of the time, but he's a talented songwriter, and a really good singer (check out Songs from the Last Century if you don't believe me). And a truly lousy dancer.
  • He's big in brazil but Egberto Gismonti is only marginally known in the US. Too bad because his music straddles classical, brazilian folk music and jazz in a powerful and thoroughly original manner. Trust me, he is one helluva kickass guitarist, pianist and composer.
  • BTW Jerry, Bartok was undoubtedly one of the greatest composers of the twentieth century and probably somewhat underrated relative to his expansion of musical vocabulary. However, as is so often the case when discussing giants, it's difficult to pin "greatest" on him. Strong cases can be made for Debussy, Stravinsky, Schoenberg, Webern, and Hindemith. Actually another nomination I have along these lines is Benjamin Britten whose stature grows every year. He wasn't so much an innovator as the others mentioned above but a synthesist of the highest order. One aspect of his genius was that he wrote very sophisticated music, from a harmonic and structural POV, in a style that was uncommonly clear and texturally simple in a period where complexity and sophistication of means had begun to be commensurate with confusion and incomprehension. And yes, Bartok was one of his primary influences
  • An underrated album from a huge star: Pinups
  • George Michael Ooo, thank you calimehtar! I was reluctant to put his name here as he is very popular still (although not superstar status), and feared that some people may regard him as more of a poseur. Just bought Ladies and Gentlemen... and you can really tell that his later songs (esp. post-Duran Duran) are so much better.
  • I would also like to put in a good word about the banjo. I don't mean a band or anything like that. I mean the thing with 5 or 6 strings that you pluck to make sweet sweet music. The banjo has been the most unfairly reviled instruments since the bagpipe.