What are some really interesting bands? I was just thinking about how I'd like to know about some interesting bands. →[More:]By interesting, I don't just mean interesting music. "Good music," on some level, is a necessary but not sufficient requirement of being interesting. The further requirements of being interesting would be --
-- an interesting history
-- interesting personalities of the band members
-- lots of documentation about this stuff
-- influences that are worthy of exploring
-- a history that is idiosyncratic in the sense of not being a typical product of the music industry machine
-- at least some of the members are genuinely intense, brooding, poetic, loner-types who have succeeded in spite of this
-- a painful history of ups and downs that are documented
-- at least one intellectually interesting book has been written about them
-- they are at least arguably a real band that is driven by their members' passions for better or worse
-- knowing about their history, their dramas and personal mythology would make their music even more fascinating.

I got to thinking about this recently when I read a reference to the Smashing Pumpkins, and for some reason I find them interesting. (I'm not even sure how many of the above criteria they satisfy.) But I was reflecting on how I find them somehow inherently interesting. It would be hard to deny that the Rolling Stones and Beatles are interesting. Bob Dylan would be kind of a classic example of an interesting musician, as would maybe Jeff Buckley and Elliott Smith. I'm looking for under-recognized bands many people haven't heard of that are interesting.