There are many cases of bands being in the right place in the right time. R.E.M. hit it big partially because the B-52s had focused record companies’ attention on the Athens, GA college music scene. CBGB was responsible for launching multiple careers in the 70s and 80s. And these days bands push to get into high-profile festivals like SXSW and Coachella with the hopes that they will be seen and boosted by influencers.

But there are plenty of stories where those things didn’t happen. There are many worthy bands that, for one reason or another, were not as lucky. Whether they were in the wrong place or whether their sound was just not what people were into at the time, these bands had talent, drive, and lots of great songs, but they didn’t necessarily hit it big. I’d like to look at four of my favorite overlooked bands of the 80s and 90s, with the hope that someone else might discover something new for themselves.

The Ocean Blue

The Ocean Blue came from Hershey, PA, and they showed it. When they first broke into the public view in the late 80s, they looked like a group of high school seniors who had just come from their lacrosse practice, which was not entirely inaccurate. However, their sound was much more mellow and their writing much more sensitive than you might expect with that kind of aesthetic. This could be at least partially attributed to the fact that they were mentored through their early development by fellow Pennsylvanian band, The Innocence Mission.

With their atmospheric guitar and earnest vocals, The Ocean Blue fit well into the late 80s / early 90s sound that was common to the American alternative scene. They had a bit of an early Manchester sound, akin to James and The Smiths, earning them my own personal epithet of “the best British band ever to come out of Pennsylvania.” This sound earned them a three record deal with Sire, who marketed them aggressively on tour (with The Mighty Lemon Drops, where I first saw them) and on MTV (particularly 120 Minutes).

After that deal, the band managed to sign with Mercury Records, but by this time in the mid-90s, their sound was no longer as marketable. This was a band that was never going to hook into the Grunge or Industrial trends, so Mercury decided not to spend much on videos or promotion. The band tried to power on through a couple of independent releases, but soon had to hang it up…at least for the moment.

In the 2010s, vocalist David Schelzel worked with members of several small indie bands to create Korda Records, an artist-owned collective based in Minneapolis. The label even added The Innocence Mission to their roster just to bring the story full circle. The Ocean Blue has released three more albums with Korda, and is currently touring, so it’s not too late to get in on this amazing band.

Scruffy the Cat

Boston-based band Scruffy the Cat has retroactively described themselves as roots-pop-cowpunk, and that’s such a perfect summation that I have to include it. Their sound was anachronistic for the mid-80s: too Country for Pop, too happy for Alternative, and nowhere near hard enough for the direction Rock was going at the time. They had an updated late-50s vibe that was perfect for college town clubs but unlikely to break into wide release.

It’s difficult to track down visual references of the band, since they never really hit it big on MTV (and thus never really hit it big). They had 3-ish albums in the mid to late 80s, and they did a little bit of national touring as an opening band, but they mostly stuck around the Boston area playing live. However, there’s now an anthology of basically all of their music called “Time Never Forgets” (after one of their songs), and you can check that out pretty much anywhere. Here’s a sample from YouTube that isn’t a video, but does feature their iconic cubist-guitar-cat logo:

The Reivers

The Reivers were a band from Austin that had a lot going for them. Every album they released in the late 80s was praised in reviews, yet they never sold many copies. They were not ideally suited for the MTV era, but could have easily fit in with mid-80s Alternative icons like 10,000 Maniacs and R.E.M. Their real problem, it turns out, was that they were either in the wrong place at the right time or the right place in the wrong time.

At the time, there were a small number of music scenes where you were likely to gain the college radio following you needed to gain traction as an Alternative band. Aside from the New York and LA scenes, the biggest Alternative town at the time was Athens, Georgia. The B-52s hadn’t been discovered there, but they were from there, and IRS Records had used that information to mine the town for another massive success in R.E.M. During the mid-to-late-80s, record companies and MTV kept expecting Athens to produce the next big thing, so they paid an inordinate amount of attention to the town, sometimes to the detriment of other thriving music scenes.

It wouldn’t be until the mid-90s that SXSW was big enough to draw national attention to Austin for things other than Country and Southern Punk. By then, the Reivers had hung it up. Ironically, their “new sincerity” songwriting style would have fit in well with some of the SXSW headliners of the early 90s, like Lisa Loeb or Matthew Sweet. If they had emerged just a few years later, or perhaps if the B-52s had been from Austin, the Reivers could have been much bigger.

Area / The Moon Seven Times

I have talked several times in various lists about Area / The Moon Seven Times, but they definitely deserve to be featured on this list. The first incarnation of the band, Area, was formed in the late 80s in Champaign, IL, another college town that was not on many record companies’ radars for its music scene. Guitarist Henry Frayne and vocalist Lynn Canfield recorded several albums as Area, all of them ethereal dream-pop. They signed with UK-based Third Mind Records, a label that covered a mix of Industrial and pre-Shoegaze ethereal, so Area fit right in.

Eventually, the band started looking at expanding so they were more equipped to play their music live. They added bassist Don Gerard (later mayor of Champaign) and changed their name to The Moon Seven Times. The band was even developing a sound that would fit neatly into the 90s Chicago club scene. Unfortunately, they ran into an issue with their label. Third Mind was acquired by Roadrunner, a label almost exclusively focused on metal. Only the most eclectic listener would group The Moon Seven Times with the likes of Type O Negative or Dream Theater, so the band did not get the kind of promotion and booking they might have on a different label.

Most of the band’s members have continued playing live music and even doing side projects (like Lanterna), but they never had much widespread success.

There are plenty of other bands that I wish more people knew about, but these stick out to me in particular. I wanted to talk about them so I could hopefully get them in front of just a few more people who might enjoy them. And if you have a local band you wish more people knew about, feel free to say so in the comments!