So I bought “The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway” last week and have been thoroughly enjoying it. That said, it’s one of the patently weirdest CDs I’ve ever heard. Knowing it was a 95 minute prog concept album about a possibly schizophrenic Puerto Rican ragamuffin, I expected nothing less. But it was even more bizarre than I’d expected: the tones, the song structures, the creepy horror-voice Gabriel signs in on a song I can’t quite recall the name of.
It got me thinking about other undeniably weird albums I enjoy and thought we could powwow about others I’ve never heard of or had the nerve to purchase.
A few that come quickly to mind:
System of Down (self-titled): Probably the most interesting metal CD I’ve ever heard.
Joanna Newsom (Ys): Songwriter/vocalist/harpist. Her voice is bizarre enough, but on her first album, the songs are generally folky. Her second effort is 5 songs, the shortest coming in at over seven minutes.
The Books (Thought for Food): Two-piece that uses largely string instruments and samples (both spoken word and percussive). Unique in the truest sense.
More will come to me, but I’m just curious: What are your favorite, genuinely bizarre albums? I’m feeling like expanding my collection.
It’s 90s Euro-dance-pop, and not THAT weird, but I adore Army of Lovers’ “Massive Luxury Overdose”. I can listen to that whole album multiple times per day.
What’s funny, Birdmonster, is that sometimes the weird becomes the way, you know?
Legendarily, the Velvet Underground’s infamous first album (VU and Nico with the Warhol banana on the cover - and yeah, I know you knew that already ;)) was considered just whacked-out bizarre back in the day, but set the blueprint for arty bands coming after it…
The Ramones first album, while critically lauded, never took hold while the band was touring and has only become the Punk Blueprint™ over time…
But that is more about styles coming into vogue. On a purely weird front, I remember buying the Breeders’ CD that had their hit Cannonball on it. Just out there.
ETA: and speaking of the Velvets, doesn’t **Lou Reed’s Metal Machine Music **serve as the illustration in the dictionary entry for “truly bizarre CD’s”??
Includes instrumental solo piano versions of Dead Kennedys, Ramones and Seven Seconds songs, as well as a classic called “Airplane” with vocals that I just can’t do justice in describing. Utter genius.
I really love Mr. Bungle. All their stuff but particularly the albums *Disco Volante *and California.
I also love **The Fiery Furnaces **Albums Gallowsbirds Bark, Blueberry Boat, *EP *and Bitter Tea.
Both bands take traditional pop and rock ideas and twist them around and mash them together to create something new. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t, but all of the above albums have some spectacular music on them.
I also dig on Faun Fables, anything, and Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, Grand Openings and Closings which are occasionally less wierd than the above bands.
Oh, hey - **Birdmonster **- does “modern” music, which is by definition more *avant garde *vs. commercial music count?
If so, then I gotta go with Steve Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians - totally, totally cool, but weird when measured on a commerical scale. Minimalist classical at its best, it creates hypnotic patterns that ebb and flow - even more aggressively minimalist than Philip Glass - and more compelling, IMHO…
Dude - if you don’t know this work, you would totally dig it.
The first time I ever heard Tom Waits’s Frank’s Wild Years, my musically sheltered mind simultaneously thought, “WTF is this weird shit?!” and “This is amazing!”
I have their CD with the tune about the Philadelphia Judge - certainly qualifies as weird. I just wish they could stick with a song - it all sounds like pasted-together fragments - great fragments, but fragments nonetheless…
Yeah, they are fantastic live. They come from a performance art background so their shows are amazing.
The band that spawned them, Idiot Flesh, is quality too but too creepy for my taste.
Youtube Proof. Warning 8 minutes long and creepy as hell. They have better music, see related videos, but it’s all weird canival metal. Freaks my shit right out.
Check out the Faun Fables links while you are there though. If you dig SGM and Mr. Bungle you will probaly like them.
Yeah, they started moving away from that sound in more recent albums. The idea was that every song told a complete story with a beginning middle and end and that the different fragments were part of the story. So each song is a little mini opera (harkening back to The Who’s “A Quick One While He’s Away”) They don’t always suceed. But it’s fun to see them live if you know there music well because they will take those bits apart and put them back together in different orders with different songs creating 90-120 minute medlies of their music.
I rarely listen to a whole album of theirs anymore though. They are an iPod set to shuffle band for me. (I don’t sit down to listen to a whole album ever but I am always delighted when one of their songs pops up on shuffle.)
I happen to like weird music and I have a lot of it. Most of my favorites are British art rock of the 70s. Some of my favorites just off the top of my head:
“Lizard” by King Crimson. Actually I love all the studio LPs by the “original” ('69-'75) King Crimson, and they’re all pretty weird.
The three albums by Gong that are collectively referred to as the “Radio Gnome” trilogy – “Flying Teapot”, “Angels Egg”, and “You”.
The two albums by Hatfield and the North – the self-titled debut, and “The Rotters’ Club”.
“Foxtrot” and “Nursery Cryme” by Genesis – these came out a couple of years before “Lamb”.
The first few solo albums by Brian Eno – “Here Come the Warm Jets”, “Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy)”, and “Another Green World”.
(By the way, I put most of these in the “moderately weird” category… the really way out stuff, like Can and Henry Cow, I can’t claim to truly love. But I would say they’re all at least as weird as “Lamb.”)
I’m also very fond of the early Frank Zappa/Mothers of Invention albums, and the early Residents.
