And you may tell yourself, "This is not my beautiful... band"

To use an analogy that I just came up with right now, music is like the opposite of the stock market.

In the stock market, if you look at things day to day, it all seems random. What happened yesterday doesn't really do a good job of predicting what's going to happen tomorrow. However, if you look at the stock market in the long-term, you can pretty must assume that it's going to progress in a single direction -- slightly up. (Thanks, Dr. Cunningham)

Music doesn't really do that. I mean, sure, there have been changes to rock music in the long term, but I'd contend that those changes haven't been predictable. Just look at any movie that tries to portray "futuristic" music, they always produce garbage (not Garbage, Shirley Manson's band) as music for the future.

However, look at music in the short term, and you can always see where things come from. Take two of the best examples in recent rock history: the 1977 Punk scene and the early 90s Grunge scene. Many people praise these genres to be groundbreaking. They're wrong, at least stylistically (socially they were very groundbreaking). Punk was preceded by the retconned genre known as "Proto-Punk", and Grunge was preceded by some of the noisier "College Rock" bands.

This post is about bands that decided to buck that trend and make drastic changes over the period of just a few years.

Ministry
"Work For Love" to "Rio Grande Blood"
Reason for Change: Al Jourgensen didn't want to do that kind of music anymore... basically after a single album. He called With Sympathy, the album "Work for Love" is on, an "abortion".

Japan
"Communist China" to "Blackwater"
Reason for Change: David Sylvian's Japan went through quite a few changes over the years. Heck, even from their very beginnings to when they first broke up, there was a huge stylistic change. However, the bigger change came a few years later when the band got back together. Only this time, David was going to make sure he was absolutely in charge. He renamed the band Rain Tree Crow and produced the music that he wanted to do.

(Brian) Eno
"Third Uncle" to "An Ending (Ascent)"
Reason for Change: On a hospital stay, Eno had a record player that didn't work too well. The volume wouldn't go up. But listening to the music, he had the idea of music progressing to be more like ambient sounds.

Pink Floyd
"See Emily Play" to "Shine on You Crazy Diamond"
Reason for Change: Syd Barrett's breakdown. When he left the band, Pink Floyd became less psychedelic and more prog...tastic?

Jefferson Airplane/Jefferson Starship/Starship
"Somebody to Love" to "We Built This City"
Reason for Change: No clue... Grace Slick switched from acid to cocaine?