All too often, while on the search to discover new music, I find myself getting caught up in the hunt for the “latest & greatest.” I’m all for creating new classics. The world has had enough Beatles and Led Zeppelin… we need to support the artists today who are making tomorrow’s classic rock. But it’s also good to go back and pick up those little pieces that get missed: the artists who made the right music at the wrong time and wound up tragically overlooked. Here’s a couple gems from the last decade, bands I’d forgotten were really superb.

You wouldn’t think that a band with a name as cumbersome as All Natural Lemon and Lime Flavors could easily slip through the cracks, but that’s precisely what they did. They had a couple factors working against them. Being from New Jersey doesn’t help unless you’re Bon Jovi or The Boss. And playing music that people stopped caring about since a decade prior is also not going to work in your favor. It’s unfortunate that such things should matter, but that’s life. At any rate, the Flavors put out three great records between 1996 and 2000. “Your Imagination” from 1998’s Turning Into Small should give you an idea of what they were about and also make you wonder, as I did, “why didn’t more people dig this band?”

If the Lemon and Limers operated on the noisier side of the noisepop fence, The Curtain Society are firmly entrenched on the pop side. The three-piece from Worchester, Mass., rarely ventures out of their home territory and is known for taking their sweet time when it comes to releasing records. Nine years passed between the release of Life is Long, Still and 2005’s Every Corner of the Room. The gap made it hard to discern whether they are currently active, but apparently they’ve been playing dates as recently as last month. Although the trio are a talented group of musicians and songwriters, they’re not blessed with an abundance of good looks, which sadly probably explains why they have long toiled in obscurity. It’s a damned shame that that matters at all, because we’re talking about a band whose music should be good enough to earn mainstream radioplay and chart attention. Give a listen to “Beautiful Song” and imagine a world where music made it to the radio purely on its own merits.

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If you enjoy these tunes, tune into my radio show on kxlu 88.9fm 10a-2p every monday. we’re also streaming live at www.kxlu.com.