“Here name is a knife”…GREAT song! Thanks for sharing!
Dean Friedman’s “Ariel”
“Sharon” by David Bromberg
The delightfully perverse rocker (I Love It When You ) Call Me Names by Joan Armatrading
Willie Nile. I think he’s been in and out of the limelight since the late 70s. Deserves a lot more attention.
Love this one. Found it when I was searching out all the samples from my favorite Beastie Boys album, Paul’s Boutique (Sharon sample is on Johnny Ryall if you are interested in the flip side of my search).
If we’re going Garage, then I submit The Sonics. Check out Psycho and Strychnine but definitely checkout “The Witch” below. (Alas, the awesome mashup with a Raquel Welch dance number has been disappeared from the Internet.)
According to Allmusic, Dan Zanes is “the former Del Fuegos frontman who later turned his talents to a highly successful career in children’s music.”
But in between those two careers, in 1995, he put out a solo album called Cool Down Time… that disappeared without a trace. I just don’t understand how that happened!
One of the few available reviews praises it as “equal parts Booker T. funk, CCR swamp boogie, and crisp jazz standards.”
I found my copy in the CD bargain bin, and they will have to pry it from my cold dead hands.
There’s not a dud song on the album, and yet I can find only two tracks on YouTube (not even including the best one, which is “Tested”).
The Ludes (not to be confused with umpteen other bands of the same name) were a short-lived Camberwell band who produced one record and vanished again. Just straight-up catchy raw garage band shit:
The flip side to “Chantilly Lace”:
I figure all you cool cats know Mink DeVille, but just in case, here’s She’s So Tough (instead of the more popular Jolene!)
And Southside Johnny is no kind of obscure, but if you haven’t had the pleasure…
How about Approved By The Motors?
Nice choice! My first choice would have been “It’s Been A Long Time,” but yours is better.
Came here to say the same about Black Pistol Fire. They are great!
I first heard this record when I was about 19, when a friend who ran a record store introduced me to it. Every track begins and ends with a free-form freakout (power tools, motorcycles, that sort of thing), and the first comment on Youtube accurately describes it as “sounding like it was mixed by wrestling on the mixing desk”. Recorded in Texas, released in June 1967. The Red Crayola “Pink Stainless Tail” from The Parable of Arable Land
… but he’s been on my bucket list for decades! Finally got to see him this summer, and even at the age of Pushin’ Seventy, he and the original Asbury Jukes had SO much energy. This song was one of the high points:
Though I still love the more controlled studio version.
Recommendation algorithm actually pushed me some old gem that I never knew about and I love it. Brazilian 70s psychedelic rock is the genre I didn’t know I needed…
Hehehe, I’ve heard them a few times before due to the company I keep. Complete echo and fuzz laden goodness.
And to put out the most rough, crazy, and fairly obscure but very influential straight ahead rock 'n roll I am aware of: Hasil (pronounced “hassle”) Adkins, “No More Hot Dogs”:
Ok, it’s not “We Got A Date”, but it’s pretty unhinged.
Hasil apparently figured if a record said “By So-and-so”, then So-and-so performed all of the instruments at once on the recording, and with this misconception he proceeded to figure out how to play all of the instruments at once on his own recordings. As far as I can tell, he figured out how to play drums with his feet and simultaneously play guitar and sing at the same time. That seems like enough. He sounds more put together and rockin’ than a lot of full bands from the same time, not to mention way more terrifying. If he had gotten popular, I can’t imagine where the parents would have imagined their children’s minds were going. “Green Door” would have seemed like Bugs Bunny in comparison to Hasil’s chicken fried Nosferatu.
But then again, someone made a documentary about him, so I guess he’s not that obscure. Either way, Hasil rules.
This thread seems to trend more towards punk and garage so let me go in a different direction. Probably well known if you follow prog at all but totally unkown to others due to zero radio play, Flying Colors is one of my favorite bands. It’s made up of members of Dixie Dregs, Dream Theatre, Transatlantic and Spock’s Beard. They come together now and then to make an album and tour. They put out 3 studio albums and 2 live albums. No one can convince me that Steve Morse isn’t the greatest guitar player ever and the Morse/LaRue guitar/bass combo may be the best ever. I was lucky to see them twice on their limited tours. The benefit of living reasonably close to NYC.
Unfortunately Steve Morse has put music aside because his wife is in very bad health with cancer. He was also having tendinitis problems.
The drummer Mike Portnoy is involved in a seemingly infinite number of bands. If you like prog to hard rock check out Sons of Apollo, Winery Dogs or many of his other bands.
I love that song, but the lyrics sound very excel these days.