Klinger: It’s certainly no surprise to me why critics would be so taken with the Stooges, and Fun House in particular. As the decade changed hands from the 1960s to the ‘70s, rock still felt like it was very much in a state of flux. And it may well have seemed that one of the casualties of that changeover was the concept of the rock band as a bunch of blue collar buddies loading up on beer and using guitars and drumsticks as cudgels to pound their hormonal angst into crude representations of music. The initial wave of “garage rock” had given way to considerably more noodly blues experimentation, and the likes of James Taylor and Elton John were looming large on the horizon. Even if that first wave of rock writers were longing for a time that never technically existed, Iggy Pop, the Asheton brothers, and Dave Alexander were more than able to fill the Kingsmen-shaped hole in those critics’ hearts.

It’s also not too surprising that this second album nosed out the others in the mathematical race to the top of the Great List. Although it’s in a virtual tie with 1973’s Raw Power, Fun House certainly has the edge over their debut LP. Tipping the balance away from the Stooges’ primal basheriffics (and trading in the 10-minute psychedelic dreamery of “We Will Fall” for the freaked out babble-jazz of “L.A. Blues”—which only sounds like it’s 10 minutes long), Fun House presents a group that’s doing something quite nearly inimitable—not that loads of bands haven’t tried in the ensuing decades. Your thoughts, Mendelsohn?

Meat Loaf named his most recent album Hell in a Handbasket because that’s where the ‘70s rock icon—who now prefers to be known simply as “Meat”—feels the world is headed. 

“I keep hearing these stories about selfishness and ‘me, me, me, me, what I believe and all of you can just go to Hell’”, he said in a recent PopMatters interview. He heard a student sued a high school to remove a prayer that was on a wall. “It cost the school money and I’m saying to myself, ‘The money could have been better used in the school district by teaching students, helping students, supporting art programs’,” he said. “‘Go down and volunteer at the homeless shelter. Go to the Ronald McDonald House. Go to the kids’ hospital. Volunteer to help the homeless. Go do anything. Don’t just make it about me, me, me, me, me and this is my belief and I believe that I am right.’” 

For Meat, Hell in a Handbasket is about humanity, compassion, dignity, and being truthful. Meat says this is his most personal record ever:  “I want everyone to know who I am”, he says, projecting a straightforward, confessional honesty. In the first song, “All of Me”, Meat sings: “I caught a glimpse of myself today / It wasn’t a pretty picture /  I must say / This is my anger /  This is my shame. / These are my insecurities that I can’t explain”.

As Elvis Costello was wont to opine, radio seems to be solidly in the hands of such a lot of fools trying to anesthetize the way that you feel. Clearly, they are cutting up the catalog of many meaningful bands, reducing their import to a few selected songs. Granted, once you’ve traveled beyond the basics of many musical groups, their oeuvre seems less and less solid. On the other hand, many musicians are lucky if only one song out of their catalog makes it onto the air. As a result, several significant contributors to the medium’s cultural dynamic are left listed as ersatz one hit wonders—that is, a single overplayed track eventually represents everything they stand for. In that regard, here are our picks for 10 tunes that have become a pariah for their particular artists. Each act represented has dozens of definitive moments to remember them by. Radio, on the other hand, only recognizes these cuts.

In the late 1980s, British band the Cult held the banner high for glam-free, classicist hard rock. Given focus and muscle by producers Rick Rubin and Bob Rock, Cult LPs Electric (1987) and Sonic Temple (1989) found commercial favor by splitting the difference between AC/DC and the Doors, and matching ginormous meat-and-potatoes riffage with panoramic-voiced singer Ian Astbury’s unquenchable fascination with Native American spirituality.

Over two decades later, the Cult is still at it (with Astbury and guitarist Billy Duffy being the only members left from the glory day), and is releasing its first album in five years, Choice of Weapon, today in the United States. Fans of head-nodding metal-inclined Cult classics like “Love Removal Machine” will find plenty to like in the album’s lead single ”For the Animals”, and I myself have a soft spot for well-executed rock ‘n’ roll swagger of the sort employed by that track. But in spite of the virtues of its signature sound, the band was definitely more interesting when very early on, under the moniker of Death Cult, it was poised to lead the second wave of gothic rock.

Steven Wilson’s lyricism, especially in Porcupine Tree, is no stranger to bizarre imagery. Consider this stanza from one of the few classic tracks from the debut LP, the ballad “Nine Cats”: “A minstrel bought a crooked spoon / And gave it to a blue baboon / Who filled it full of virgin snow / And wandered in the afterglow”.

Though that would not be the last of Wilson’s psychedelic lyrics in Porcupine Tree’s career, the charm and humor of those early experiments (when the band was basically just Wilson working by himself) would later resurge on some of the group’s rock-heavy albums. The psychedelic material of Up the Downstair (1993) and The Sky Moves Sideways (1995) was, while displaying traits of the genre’s inherent absurdity, comparatively serious. You laugh when hearing about a toad in ballet shoes in “Nine Cats”, but you’re left pondering existence itself upon hearing the chorus lyric of The Sky Moves Sideways’ title track: “Sometimes it’s only afterwards, I find that I’m not there”.