Though typically I see little reason to take pity on bandwagon-jumping bands when they’re later judged by history to suffer bad comparisons to the original bands that they’re ripping off, there are times when you have to acknowledge tragically bad timing. For instance, even though they clearly took inspiration from the other bands of the British Invasion, who knows how massive the Kinks might have been had they not spent their entire careers playing a distant fourth to the Beatles, Rolling Stones and the Who. Sure, today they’re rightly regarded as one of the greatest bands in rock’s history, but the disparity between the acclaim they’ve received compared to their similarly talented peers is nothing short of a karmic injustice. Take John Prine or Townes Van Zandt, two singer-songwriters whose smart writing and lack of commercial appeal kept them buried ...