Michael Hutchence. Largely forgotten?*

are you talking about the "reaches me" in Night of Rebellion maybe?

 

Underneath the Colours was produced by Australian rock star Richard Clapton and they were all trying to make it sound like a Steely Dan album.

 

Sadly with the size of the market a lot of stuff get short pressings and these days, so much is hard to get.
I am kicking myself about all the stuff I sold off .... twice, for valid reasons. It was so hard to replace some of it.

 

First time I ever heard that before. If you have the CD Stay Young The Deluxe Years each band member goes through discussing every song on the first two albums in the booklet that's included.

 

No it isn't that, but that was cool. I probably saw it on its original screening, but at thirteen the quirky new wave sound hadn't hit me yet, I was all about some grunty rock music lol

 

I saw them supporting the Ramones in 1980 and half their set was Ska covers.

 

They'd cover Pretzel Logic but also Elvis Costello, Steve Miller, Graham Parker, The Specials, Jimmi Reed, 801, Doobie Brothers, The Tubes, Roxy Music etc. around 79-80.

 

The only thing I remember was how thin Michael was and them playing Gangsters by The Specials. I saw them the next night at the Ballroom but I've no memory of it except that in a book it claimed nobody was there but I remember it being quite full.

 

They play Gangsters an hour and 4 minutes into this set

 

You've got to give them credit for covering Miss Shapiro

 

You are certainly entitled to your opinion on this but it would be wise to remember that much of this is subjective and that one man's "very good rock band" is another man's multi-male equivalent of Madonna but without anything near her level of accomplishment. If they came up the hard way ( I really don't know ), good for them and I'm glad they got their beaks wet for as long as they did. It's a tough racket. But in terms of addressing the question posed by the OP, it just seems more and more like the only sniff they get today is from nostalgic fans from back in the day and, particular to Hutchence, from rubberneckers gawking at his tabloid-stoking trainwreck of a demise. So yes, largely forgotten. So it goes.

BTW, this exchange kinda caught my attention :

Who exactly made you the arbiter of whose opinion is valid and whose is not ? What Lady of what Lake handed you Excalibur ? And it would be wise to remember that if you get tired of fending off the haters in U2 threads, you would do well to lay off the "especially considering your avatar" trash-talk. I may not share your fervor for INXS but I at least felt I owed you a civil response since you quoted one of my posts. Was I wrong to do so ?

D.D.

 

Blunt but fair overall assessment, I'd say.

D.D.

 

This thread has some really cool INXS discussion and then dives right back into the sea of negativity

I wasn't a fan from "back in the day" by the way. I was a bit too young. I only got into them in like 2013 so they do at least make a few newer fans.

 

I hope I don’t get accused of being pedantic, but when you say you actually seek out facts and then claim that inxs were at their highest profile during the peak of the cd era, it’s a bad look...

https://infographic-statista-com.cd.../chartoftheday_12950_cd_sales_in_the_us_n.jpg

You already established that their peak was 1987-1988 with Kick, so...

 

Give him a break. It’s only a difference of about 600m.

Wasn’t Tori Amos only big after Cornflake Girl as well? Which was like 1994 or something.

 

I'd say Tori broke out in 1992 with her Little Earthquakes. Still 5 years off of INXS' peak.

 

Speaking of pedantic, the title of this thread ends with a preposition.

 

Listening to the new Michael Hutchence Mystify documentary CD. Some interesting new stuff in there but the interview dialog stuff is a bit much at times.

 

I'm still holding out for a comprehensive solo collection with the unreleased material.

It was meant to happen last year but never came out.

 

That got cancelled.

 

First off, if either of you truly think that INXS were "mainstream pop/rock" than that's a big part of your problem right there. INXS were no more mainstream than David Bowie, except in those instances that the general populace caught up to what they were doing and became hip to it. They were alternative before that was even a term that was being used, and set trends more than they ever followed them. About the only album you could even try and accuse them of being mainstream on was X, and even then, it was because they essentially made a carbon copy of the album that brought them fully to the attention of the masses (and then some). Other than that, they were generally always a pretty cutting edge band. Secondly, when you make statements like that it's pretty clear that you've obviously never dug deeper into the band's catalog other than their hits. You should really give their complete works a fair listen before making such an embarrassingly styled broad strokes statement.

 

Sunspot42 seemingly only likes to quote "facts" when he thinks they support his argument, all the while ignoring the others that clearly counter it. Then he has the balls to call you pendantic if you're being too specific, yet "facts" are all about being specific. Never mind that he also wastes a lot of time getting in to it about a band that he supposedly really doesn't care for to begin with. Yes, he's that kind of special person.

 

All I know is that for me, they had a terrific run of 4 great albums (Shabooh - Kick), and I doubt I'd ever get tired of hearing them. I'd have been very happy to be doing anything in that band!

 

Yeah, I don’t know what’s going there. Tried listening to it but it somehow feels incomplete. Might make sense during the movie but not by itself.

Plus, that is the tackiest cover I’ve seen for a long time. Looks like they gave the project to some 15 year-old trying to learn Photoshop.

 

Would've looked better without the sheet music in the lettering I think.

Couple of interesting tidbits in the liner notes that I'm reading right now:

Tim Farriss: "...I had to warn him that if he didn’t stop spending all his time getting first dibs and chatting up girls after our shows, instead of helping the rest of us pack up our equipment and lug it out of the venues and into the van, we would have to find a replacement singer. Michael’s response was “but I don’t have any equipment, all I need is a microphone and a good mic stand"…Even after all this time, Michael is still in my dreams as though he is still with us, only unlike those of us he left behind, in my thoughts, he will never age.”