Dec 14

Wendy Bagwell and the Sunliters

Under Appreciated

WENDY BAGWELL AND THE SUNLITERS
 
 

This month’s Under Appreciated Rock Band, the Silencers come from the same tradition as Davie Allan and the Arrows but are of more recent vintage. having formed in the mid-1990’s.  I had tentatively picked them out as the UARB for November, since I was fresh out of Christian rock bands; but I later found a non-rock replacement, Wendy Bagwell and the Sunliters. 

 

(December 2014)

 

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For the first in the Rock and Religion series, the UARA Mikki is African American, at last.  Stratavarious probably is also, but there is no doubt with Mikki.  For the most recent, Wendy Bagwell and the Sunliters does not fit the title “rock band” in the slightest, but I put ’em in anyway.  

 

Job One in the UARB and UARA posts is that their music must be good.  Period.  It doesn’t hurt to have some historical significance also – for instance, Wendy Bagwell and the Sunliters had the first million-selling gospel single, and Silverbird is the first Native American rock band to be signed to a major record label – but simply put, if I don’t like their music, I am not going to cite someone as an Under Appreciated Rock Band or Under Appreciated Rock Artist.  (That doesn’t mean that I like everyone that I say something about, however.)   

 

(Year 5 Review)

 

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I also have a CD or two of potential UARB’s in the religious category, but I have already written extensively about “rock and religion” in five earlier posts, so coming up with something new to say is also going to take some time.  As it turned out, I had more to say about rock and religion than I had UARB’s to talk about:  One of the UARB’s had “Christ” in the name but that’s it, Mötochrist; and another was a gospel group called Wendy Bagwell and the Sunliters that was not in the least a rock band.  Same thing about “women and rock” – I have five posts on that also, but that will be an easier topic to expand on.  Anyway, we’ll see how the year goes.  It is going to be hard for me to top the list of UARB’s for this past year, that’s for sure.  I have even considered changing the definition of UARB to include those that do have a Wikipedia article but nothing in Allmusic, but I haven’t gone that far yet.
 
(Year 8 Review)
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Ten years ago, in December 2009, I wrote the first of my 82 posts on Under Appreciated Rock Bands, i.e., rock bands (and artists) who did not have a write-up as yet in Wikipedia. It wasn’t much to look at, just four short paragraphs, but I got a lot wordier and more wide-ranging as the years went by. I had hoped to keep this up for at least 5 years, if not 10 years; as it happened, my last post was dated December 2017 – 8 years later, and 2 years ago.
 
For two of the Under Appreciated Rock Bands – the Rip Chords (who had a major hit in the surf era with “Hey Little Cobra”) and the Iguanas (punk icon Iggy Pop’s first band, and the reason that he came to be called “Iggy”) – I managed to write my post literally the month before someone started a Wikipedia article on them. For another two – the Piltdown Men and Haymarket Square – it turns out that there was already a Wikipedia article on them; for the latter band, I just plain forgot to look! And one of the UARB’s, Wendy Bagwell and the Sunliters was not even a rock band – and I just found a Wikipedia article about them also, so I suppose I didn’t look closely enough when I started that post either. But I don’t care at this point: They are all Under Appreciated, from one end to the other, even for the handful who do have a Wikipedia article these days.
 
(Year 10 Review)
Last edited: March 22, 2021