Hi,
 
There were a couple, old and new.
 
Lighthouse - Canadian Band in the early 70's had a wonderful hit and their first album was very good.
 
Ides of March - Vehicle, was a radio hit and this first album was excellent and also had a super nice version of Eleanor Rigby.
 
The Crow - Hard rocking band that gave the image that they were bikers, and had a hit in the midwest with "Evil Woman". The whole album was actually very good, but it was the only album of theirs that was well done.
 
Sugar Loaf - Green Eyed Lady. The long cut is magnificent. Period. And they were just as good in concert.
 
Dan Hicks and His Hot Licks without Bapu! - Very nice California band and very well done, but really, the music was not better looking than the girls! Bapu would have made it wayyyyyy better!
 
Djam Karet - The first 5 albums all the way to 1995, rival anything that King Crimson or anyone else ever did in progressive music. Unfortunately they are from LA and no one wants to hear it and appreciate the ambient welcome to the church of the electric guitar thing that simply leaves "songs" in the dust in the wind!
 
 
 
Sidetrax - that I don't really care for their work, but there is always one piece or two:
 
Bob Weir - Ace. Cut called "It Looks Like Rain" is fantabulous. The rest of the album is not worth rememberbering.
 
Jerry Garcia - (not sure) - Eep Hour. I think this cut was the one that was a tip of the hat to the European eponimous solos on top of the orchestra, or anything else. It was so un-GD that we laughed about it when we heard it. I have to re-check as I am not sure that was the name of the song.
 
Ronnie Montrose - Open Fire. The album got trashed because it was guitar with orchestra and keyboards. It is a very nice album, that was never appreciated by silly rock fans that have never heard any other music!
 
Dr John - Right Place, Wrong Time - I always thought he was over rated and nothing else from him ever got my attention at all in at least 6 albums. That song, though, is still a nice one. 
 
Lou Reed - Quite over rated, though some of the earlier stuff was interesting, and after that he was just like all the other "fathers" and "dons" in the big city, and everyone thought his poop was gold. I never found another piece in there that stood out, and was worth while lyrically, since the one that made him!
 
Lothar Meid - 18 karat gold - All bums. The AD2 bassist had a solo album that was funny and neat. And a song that Bapu will never sing "If My Bapu Would Know" ... what would he do? ... what would he say ... if my bapu would know ... and other little gems that went un-noticed, as usual, for a band that few could handle the total abandonment to the radio/commercial elements in music.
 
I have a bunch of these from Europe ... and it's hard to list them all. Here's a short list:
 
Wally
Unicorn
Sutherland Brothers and Quiver (originally two separate bands)
Help Yourself
Neutrons
Deke Leonard (by himself, not with Man)
Brainticket
Franco Battiato
Michael Bundt
Richard Schneider
Space Art
7th Wave
Second Hand
Gryphon
Greenslade
Stackridge
String Driven Thing
Kevin Ayers
Robert Wyatt
National Health
Capability Brown
Byzantium
Quatermass
Spontaneous Combustion
Budgie
Alberto Y Los Trios Paranoios
Grimms
Mike McGear
Cozmic Couriers
Cherubin
Tanned Leather
Wig Wam
Eksception
Kayak
Triumvirat
Supersister
Malicorne
Mona Lisa
Sadistic Mika Band
Japan
 
...
endless list ... and too many of them no one ever heard of before.

Moshkiae
 
 
...
endless list ... and too many of them no one ever heard of before.

One I've never seen you mention - 'Cado Belle', (Maggie Riley was the singer). I remember seeing them on 'Rock Goes to College' back in the mid-'70's.

jamesg1213

Moshkiae
 
 
...
endless list ... and too many of them no one ever heard of before.

One I've never seen you mention - 'Cado Belle', (Maggie Riley was the singer). I remember seeing them on 'Rock Goes to College' back in the mid-'70's.

Ohh gawd ... another Maggie ... Stone the Crows I remember really well. That Maggie sang a song for Mike Oldfield, but I have never given her work a listen.
 
Gosh, you could take the list of folks that played with Mike Oldfield over the years alone and it would make my list look like high school. And that bass player lady that used the 5 string, was not a fluke either in all those albums. She has a web site on her own, but her name fails me right now.
 
 

For me it was pop bands from the 60's and 70's and a few from the 80's. In the 80's when I was gigging full time with a band of hard core rockers, I took endless grief for listening to this stuff. Eventually they began to like some of the stuff I listened to, and we even rearranged a couple into hard rock versions and began to play them live.
 
The look on peoples faces when we did Lonesome Loser by The Little River Band was priceless. We started out doing the 3 part harmony intro, then it was a balls to the wall heavy fest. Good times.
 
Randy

Rain

Old55
Time for true confession.  I'm looking for any band that you liked at a time when it wasn't "cool" to listen to them.  
 
 

I always seemed to pick stuff that wasn't cool. I remember walking in high school with a bunch of old Black Sabbath records and having the rest of the kids look at me as if I were the weirdest guy around. That's in the early/mid 80s when the 70s were absolutely not cool. 

Back then, even listening to KISS' Creatures of the Night was considered weird, because it dated back to their make up days - even if the album came out in late 82, just 2 or 3 years before.  For better or for worse, it was my favorite record for quite a while back then. Speaking of the aforementioned KISS, that's probably my biggest guilty pleasure...
 
Same thing when I discovered Led Zeppelin. Almost seems as if before the end of the 80s or the early 90s, 60s and 70s music was a big no go. It was our parents music... I was the only guy around playing trash metal wearing (home made) Beatles pins.
 
There are also specific albums that even fans of the artists seem to put down and which I enjoy. Alice Cooper's Lace and Whiskey and From the Inside come to mind, and everything from that period of his career. KISS Unmasked and even a few songs from The Elder. Stuff from Metallica's Load and Reload.
 
To be perfectly honest, guilty pleasures implies that one cares for other's opinions, and I don't. I'm kind of assuming by experience that some things aren't well seen by a certain kind of "serious" (frustrated) musicians. Like, you're not supposed to like The White Stripes, or Type O Negative or Stone Temple Pilots or Lenny Kravitz or Marilyn Manson or Cradle of Filth...
 
I like having self-proclaimed and wonderfully unknown real musicians getting all reeled up...
 
Oh - I'm a big fan of Oasis, too. :P
 
My guilty pleasure is to be able to hold my ground in a discussion with the people who put that stuff down. ;)

I had a similar experience with Sabbath at a different time.  I liked the first album when it came out and most people were horrified by it.  There was no goth or even heavy metal.  Some bands were doing "hard rock" but Sabbath was something different.  It wasn't until Paranoid came out and the they actually released the songs Paranoid and Iron Man as singles before anyone--even kids my age--started to realize that they were good.   For what it's worth, I started losing interest after the "4" album.  I don't have any reason for it.  I still like Sabbath and the genre, but I'm just not the fan I used to be.  
 
Another band of the same ilk and era was Dust.  Very hard and very dark, they only made a few albums.  Possibly New York's answer to Sabbath.  The musicians went on to bigger and better things.  One joined the Ramones.  The other two became producers and worked on several KISS albums.  

Old55
...
I had a similar experience with Sabbath at a different time.  I liked the first album when it came out and most people were horrified by it.  There was no goth or even heavy metal.  Some bands were doing "hard rock" but Sabbath was something different.
...

By the time these came out, I was already reading a lot of mystical and other literature, to know that what BS was doing was nothing but a good show and advertising. And there is no better one to "use" than a name like that, which shines in the middle of all other meaningless band names that were around in those days.
 
I only have 2 of their albums. SBS and the album right after that has "Are You Going Insane?" ... and the rest I can do without, as overblown stuff. I saw them in LA, and they got blown off the stage by Nazareth of all bands! That ought to tell you how much more seriously one band took their music and cared for what they were doing, instead of it being meaningless mumbo jumbo! And fame-ness!

Lots of softer music not appropriate to an aspiring rock guitarist.
The Carpenters, Bread, James Taylor, the Bee Gees etc. and so on.
 

Back in the androgynous glam rock era there was a Bowie wannabe named Jobriath that I sort of emulated...for a short period of time.  Boy, was I an idiot.  But thankfully, like the time I got turned into a newt, I got better.

Bucks Fizz

Little River Band....
 
guilty, guilty pleasure.