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The Underrated

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“William Blake” Thomas Phillips, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

There will be no review this week because my Director handed me a very interesting assignment a couple of weeks ago. She asked me to meet with a group of European far-right activists she had assembled and engage them in dialogue concerning their objections to LGBTQ rights and opposition to laws designed to reduce domestic violence. She stressed that I should not approach the meeting from a “know thine enemy” perspective but a genuine attempt to understand their position so we know where they are coming from and can plan accordingly.

The meeting will have taken place by the time you read this, and with the need to prep for the meeting, the travel, and the likely travel delays, I realized that I wouldn’t have enough time to pull off a review, but I was determined to adhere to my weekly schedule. The obvious choice for a substitute was to provide a more detailed explanation of my decision to stop reviewing American artists, but I’m sick of thinking or writing about that fucked-up mess of a country.

As luck would have it, I remembered an incident that took place a few weeks ago that gave me an idea about how to fill the gap in publication. While taking care of a few weekend chores and singing along to the tunes in my melodic playlist, the XTC song “The Disappointed” popped up. If you’re not familiar with the song, one of its notable features is the repetition of the title to begin each of the five verses.

Anyway, I immediately joined in with Andy Partridge, largely following the melody but occasionally trying to add harmonies to the mix. Tasking myself with double duty may have led to a brain fart, because on the fourth verse, instead of singing “The disappointed,” I sang “The underrated.”

“Why did you do that, Ari, you dumb shit?” I asked myself. After mulling it over for a few days, I came up with a logical explanation: my brain must have switched to subliminal mode and exposed my belief that XTC is a highly underrated band.

Hooray for me! I don’t have early-onset dementia!

That memory gave me an idea: why not do a Chick Riff on underrated musicians? I knew I could pull that off because I hate it when a great musician is underappreciated, and I already had a working list in my head. I talked things over with Alicia, and that conversation sparked another idea: why not make this a learning experience and let my readers share their lists of underrated musicians?  I am blessed to have many readers who know a lot about music, and I’m 100% sure that I am unaware of hundreds of great artists whose work has gone unnoticed or shoved into the background.

I feel very strongly about this issue because history is full of artists in every field who received scant attention during their lifetimes, and artists do more to make life worth living than any politician you’d care to mention. I chose William Blake as my icon for the underrated because he was largely ignored while he was alive and would not receive the recognition he deserved as one of the greatest poets in the English language until thirty-plus years after his death. The closest analogy in our time is Nick Drake, but I have other plans for Nick.

Here’s how I created my list of the underrated, but feel free to follow your own methods and selection criteria:

  1. I limited the list to rock, folk, and soul/R&B genres because those are the genres my readers are most familiar with. Underrated jazz musicians are a whole other story. I skipped some sub-categories if I couldn’t come up with a musician I felt was underrated. I also omitted members of the so-called “Wrecking Crew” because they were obviously underrated until recently. I suggest you consider this a starter list that allows y’all to fill in the gaps.
  2. I used two criteria to determine “underrated.” The first step involved googling “Great XXXS” and eliminating those musicians from consideration. The second step was to check the corresponding list of greats on Rolling Stone (if there was one) and cross those folks off the list. Casual listeners may not recognize some of the musicians who appear on those GOAT lists (like James Jamerson), but that’s beside the point. If they’re there, they’re not underrated.

One note of caution: during my research, I stumbled across several articles by fans arguing that their favorite musicians were underrated, most notably Ray Davies. Since Ray is #18 on the list of Rolling Stone’s greatest songwriters, he is obviously not underrated. You may think he’s underrated in comparison to Dylan or Lennon-McCartney, but that is not the point of this exercise. Please choose musicians who, through bad timing, poor luck, or the deafness of the listening audience, failed the receive the attention they deserved. Another possibility is to choose musicians who have achieved success in one area or another but are unrecognized for a particular talent that has been overlooked.

Here’s my current list of The Underrated, and I’d love to hear yours! This is your opportunity to rescue great musicians from oblivion and strike a blow at the Establishment!

It just so happens that my next review features three of these underrated musicians. See ya next week!

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