Recommendations of the Editorial team
Some of rock’s greatest stories are short stories. After recording a single studio album, these acts were promptly derailed by death, internal band politics, or the simple desire to leave something behind and never return to it again. Here are the best one-hit wonders.
39. Rites of Spring, “Rites of Spring” (1985)
Before Guy Picciotto and Brendan Canty formed the band Fugazi with their producer Ian MacKaye, the two were part of the influential, rough and raw Washington, DC hardcore band Rites of Spring
The band appeared and disappeared from the hardcore scene as quickly and aggressively as their songs on their only LP. The band’s fast and frightening, frenetic sound is considered the origin of “emo”, which eventually gave rise to chart-toppers such as Fall Out Boy and Panic! at the Disco developed. Rites of Spring rejected that term, but what’s more hardcore than revealing love, pain and sadness?
38. Thunderclap Newman, “Hollywood Dream” (1970)
Pete Townshend’s chauffeur and roommate John “Speedy” Keen, jazz pianist and postal worker Andy “Thunderclap” Newman and youthful future Wings guitarist Jimmy McCullough made up this one-hit wonder band. They are best known for “Something in the Air,” a pulsatingly perfect pro-revolution anthem. But the rest of the trio’s only album is also pretty great.
It revolves around songwriter and drummer Keen’s contrasting fantasies about the seedy pleasures of Hollywood. And odes to the sexy pleasures of country life. Townshend, who produced the album and played bass under the pseudonym Bijou Drains, was impressed by Keen’s songwriting (he also wrote The Who Sell Out’s opener “Armania City in the Sky”) and Newman’s jazzy jangle.
However, the band had difficulties on stage and broke up six months after the album’s release. Newman attributed the failure to a combination of personal and artistic differences.
37. Silicon Teens, “Music for Parties” (1980)
Had they achieved Gorillaz-level success, this fictional group could have made the soundtrack to The Big Chill for the Blade Runner generation. Silicon Teens were marketed as a quartet of teenagers who played rudimentary, calculator-sounding synth rock and spread upbeat nostalgia à la 1962’s “Dirty Dancing.” Like “Doo Wah Diddy Diddy,” “Let’s Dance,” and “Do You Love Me?”
In fact, it was all performed by Mute Records founder Daniel Miller, while Fad Gadget’s Frank Tovey provided “Face” for the accompanying music video and press photos. The project’s “chip ‘n’ roll” sound was a perfect Venn diagram of respect for pop history, dry punk pranksterism, and welcoming an emerging electronic revolution.
One of the project’s early fans was Depeche Mode, who were soon signed to Mute themselves. And – presumably – monopolized the time Miller would have had for a sequel.
36. Hermann Szobel, “Szobel” (1976)
Let’s assume that this lost masterpiece of jazz fusion would never have seen the light of day if Vienna-born Hermann Szobel hadn’t been the nephew of concert promoter Bill Graham. Other than that, the album is a stunning masterpiece in every way. A delirious, virtuoso collection of zigzagging Zappa-esque melodies and moody emotional breakdowns. Played by an obscure quintet who temporarily channeled the authority of Weather Report.
However, the 18-year-old pianist and bandleader didn’t stay long enough to record a follow-up album. Szobel, who probably suffered from mental illness, disappeared from the music world. His mother reported him missing in 2002, saying he liked dogs and hashish.
However, in 2015, Szobel resurfaced in the documentary Looking for Jesus, for which he allowed director Katarzyna Kozyra to record him on the streets of Jerusalem, where he was apparently living as a homeless artist. But not to film.
35. Convicts, “Convicts” (1991)
The only LP from the Convicts – the duo of Big Mike and Lord 3-2 – is one of the dirtiest and funniest documents of the Houston shock rap that followed in the footsteps of the Geto Boys in the early 1990s. Released on the pioneering Texas label Def Jam, the Convicts took the provocative lyrics of Ice Cube and 2 Live Crew into the realm of the utterly ridiculous and utterly irresponsible.
“Fuck School” is the anthem of dropouts and “1-900-Dial-a-Crook” explains in detail how to steal a car. Like an Andrew “Dice” Clay number with funky breaks, there are over-the-top, intentionally offensive forays into sexism (“Woop Her Ass”) and racism (“Illegal Aliens”) that would rightly be described as “problematic” today. But “Convicts” is an artifact of a different era. A historic document from a time when rappers were America’s most vocal defenders of the First Amendment and when mouthpieces were as interested in pushing buttons as pushing boundaries.
Between the jokes are lively and intense critiques of the prison-industrial complex. No wonder that former NWA member Dr. Dre was a fan. The Convicts had a brief affair with Death Row. But the group eventually disbanded when Big Mike replaced Willie D in the Geto Boys in 1993.