1990: "Fly Me Courageous", Drivin' N' Cryin'

There were any number of bands toiling away making sloppy, inaccessible roots rock throughout the 80s, and by the dawn of the new decade - with metal-tinged arena rock all the rage - many of those who had failed to gain recognition on their own terms decided to give the more commercial route a shot instead of just packing it in altogether.

As one might expect, most of these bands made a mockery out of themselves and quickly faded into the obscurity they seemed destined for all along. One of the more promising success stories was Kevn Kinney's Drivin' N' Cryin'. The band hailed from Atlanta, GA, just a stone's throw from the 80s college rock hotbed of Athens. By 1990, northern Georgia wasn't quite the A&R recon zone that it used to be, and - likely emboldened by the mainstream success of fellow Atlantans the Black Crowes - Kinney and cohorts hooked up with producer Geoff Workman and refashioned their scuzzy southern rock into a slick AOR formula.

The results were a rare home run in the "sell out" sweepstakes: Fly Me Courageous became a brief crossover hit when the album dropped on Jan. 8, 1991, almost a full year to the day after the Black Crowes debuted with their own Shake Your Moneymaker [the "Fly Me Courageous" single was serviced to radio a few weeks before the album proper came out, which is why it makes the cut for 1990]. Unfortunately for the band, the increasingly slick, vapid strains of hair metal and AOR were rapidly turning listeners off in droves, and by the time Smoke was released two years later it seemed largely anachronistic in what by then was the heyday of grunge.