Feature: Highly Influential Artists with Incredibly Sparse Catalogs

Leaving behind a legacy is a tricky thing. Plenty of bands have risen to legendary status by releasing an insane amount of great music in very short periods of time. I've alway been sort of perplexed by how many albums The Beatles delivered throughout their relatively short existence. And then there are bands that have released every single thought that comes to mind, such as Sonic Youth and Guided By Voices, whose legacies are attributed to their output being so ridiculously abundant. But every now and then a band releases one or two albums and then disappears, only to watch their legacy grow far beyond what some of their more prolific peers could ever have achieved.

So here is a list of seven bands who have become extremely influential despite having a very small body of work. My only criteria for choosing artists for this were that they only released less than three studio albums and have had a remarkable influence on music that followed them.

Our Band Could Be Your Life tickets released

The extremely coveted, extremely important, and extremely fascinating book Our Band Could Be Your Life: Scenes from the American Indie Underground 1981-1991 celebrates its 10th anniversary this year. In tribute, Tiger Mountain Presents will be putting on a tribute show to the Michael Azerrad-penned book this Sunday, May 22nd at the Bowery Ballroom. Tickets were previously sold out but it appears as though some more have been released, so grab one while you still can. Below is the list of performers and the band they will be paying tribute to. It will be exciting to see these more contemporary acts take on some of my favorite bands ever. Special guests are to be expected…

Nat Baldwin, David Longstreth and Brian McOmber performing Black Flag
Delicate Steve performing the Minutemen
Citay performing Mission of Burma
Ted Leo performing Minor Threat
Grooms performing Husker Du
Titus Andronicus performing the Replacements
callers performing Sonic Youth
Dan Deacon performing the Butthole Surfers
St. Vincent performing Big Black
Wye Oak performing Dinosaur Jr
Buke & Gass performing Fugazi
White Hills performing Mudhoney
Yellow Ostrich performing Beat Happening

Very Special Guests Janeane Garofalo and Eugene Mirman will host the event.

Fugazi... digitally archiving EVERY live show and possibly reuniting!

Being a devoted Minor Threat fan since a teenager, and later discovering the greatness of Ian MacKaye's other band Fugazi, news of the latter digitally archiving every one of the live shows gets me giddy. In a recent interview with Approaching Oblivion, MacKaye announced that for the past two years he's been cleaning up a database worth of thousands of live recordings Fugazi has accumulated over their lengthy run. Eventually they plan on having a website where they will slowly unveil all of their shows, available for download at a reasonable price. This is the band after all that refused to charge more than $5 for their shows throughout the majority of their career, so don't expect to pay an arm and a leg for these recordings.

In the same interview, MacKaye also suggests a possible Fugazi reunion after going on "indefinite hiatus" in 2002. My take on this info: Fugazi will be back touring together by the time this website goes up, so expect a full-fledged Fugazi resurgence within the next couple of years. That's just what I think though. And of course, Fucking Nostalgic will be there to document the NYC shows. Check out some great Fugazi performances below.