I saw Screaming Cheetah Wheelies at my first rock concert ever . . . opening for Meatloaf on his Bat out of Hell II tour.
And yay for Strangefolk! Local guys (for me); they played my high school ‘project graduation.’ Someone graduating was friends with the band. This was before (I think) they were anything other than a local group.
Morris On. Traditional British folk songs with a raw Steeleye span kind of vibe. Ashley Hutchings, Richard Thompson, John Kirkpatrick, Shirley Collins – what’s not to love?
This crystalises the difficulty of answering the OP. I have all 6 CDs of Andrew Bird’s stuff including Armchair Apocrypha and he was on Letterman a couple of weeks ago so I assume he is not obscure. But by the same token anyone I play him for has never heard of him.
So I will offer a few other things that no-one ever seems to have heard when I play it for them, but they seem mainstream to me:
Beirut - Orkestar: A 19 year old makes an album where he plays virtually all the instruments - accordion, keyboards, saxophone, clarinet, mandolin, ukulele, horns, glockenspiel, and percussion; that is a weird melange of mariachi bands and klezmer and gypsy music but instantly puts a smile on your face.
Soul Coughing - Ruby Vroom: A weird combination of beat poetry and improvisational jazz and whatever else was in the neighbourhood has been a favourite for many years.
CocoRosie - Noah’s Ark: The most minimalist album I have enjoyed. Very bare percussion and instrumentation and lots of found sounds but somehow it all works.
Well, then, don’t leave out The Compleat Dancing Master. Mostly the same lineup as “Morris On,” it offers a wider range of music (including Renaissance and Medieval), with short readings by superb actors interspersed.
If I gave you links to mp3s would you actually go listen?
Thought not.
Ooops, I missed the edit window because the phone rang. I didn’t mean that to sound so snippy. I was amused because OPs like this aren’t meant to get responses, they’re meant to tout whatever the OP is on about (in this case, Rick Danko). There’s nothing wrong with that. I’ve done it. Many of us have done it. It was just amusing to me, that’s all.
Great Sky River is very good.
Mike Oldfield - Amarok. 60 minutes, one track. Starts with an amazing bit of guitar work, goes on to Spanish style playing, and it’s hilarious also. Include tooth brushing, an alarm clock, Morse Code encoded by a chain saw, and about four endings, one narrated by a Margaret Thatcher impersonator. It was the second to last album he had to do to fulfill his ripoff contract with Virgin, and he felt free. Not a bit seller, but high on the list of favorites of Mike fans.
Wazmo Nariz
Frank Zappa meets Talking Heads
*Amarok * is excellent!
Anything from Vicky Richards
*Eden * by Eden
Anything from Les Nouvelles Polyphonies Corses
not so obscure:
It’ll end in tears from This Mortal Coil
en Attendant Cousteau by Jean Michel Jarre
If you like that, check out Swamp Dogg from the early 70s.
Excellent Sides of Swamp Dogg Vol 1
If I Die Tomorrow and Synthetic World are great tunes. Very bluesy but funky too. It’s worth a good listen.
I came in to recommend Beirut too. They’re great aren’t they? I remember the first song I heard off of it was Postcards from Italy. I thought it was very strange the first time I listened to it, but by the second listen, I was hooked. I had no idea that he was 19 though, pretty cool.
My suggestion is The Lemon of Pink by The Books. I don’t really know how they make their music, but it is all beautiful and really exciting to listen to. I think they’re pretty obscure, although I’ve heard one of their songs in a hummer ad back in the states.
What ZipperJJ said. I bought this album as a 16 year old in 1970, thinking I was getting more David Clayton-Thomas, but this was far, far better. I loved this album right away, and still do.
Let me add:
Convertible Music by Josie Cotton. I was browsing the books one day in Books, Strings, & Things in Blacksburg back in 1983, when they played this over the sound system, starting (of course) with “Johnny, Are You Queer?” When the next song turned out to be almost as good, I bought the record.
Let It Bee and Honey Lingers by Voice of the Beehive.
Third World Child and Shadowman by Johnny Clegg & Savuka. If you liked Paul Simon’s Graceland but weren’t sure where to go next, here’s your answer.
Hopefully, not after The Final Swing.
Dude, you’re alright! Loves me some Bolin, especially Private Eyes, exactly the one I came in to mention. Post Toastee and Savannah Woman are just such awesome works.
Briefly, his record company screwed him. They didn’t seem to promote his songs as singles, and then insisted he tour (since he played all the instruments himself, that was a problem). Then, they insisted he come out with a followup album ASAP (again, since he played all the instruments, that was difficult). The followup, Mirror was rushed and did poorly and Rhodes was dropped.
Unjustly obscure in the US, Love’s **Forever Changes ** is rightfully on most critics best of all time lists.
Phil Ochs, Pleasures of the Harbour. Unjustly obscure because the only people who like Phil Ochs are hardcore leftie folkies, and this record isn’t particularly folky and is short on politics, being mostly deeply sad and poetic songs with lush orchestration, with one brief ragtime/comical cynicism interlude, and culminating in a 12-minute electronic-music epic about the Kennedy assassination. This record is huge in several parallel universes.
Raincoats, Odyshape. In between their first record (amateurish but charming girlpunk) and their third (almost-professional off-kilter worldbeat), the all-female Raincoats released a record where they hadn’t quite learned how write songs or play their instruments in a normal matter, but this record has the power to scare the shit out of me for some reason. The ticking alarm clock gamelan of “Only Loved at Night” especially.
Mahmoud Ahmed, Ere Mela Mela. A friend of mine described this record as jazz held up to a mirror. Slinky R&B band rocking the Sultan’s harem with a muezzin sitting in on lead vocals.
Bülent Ortaçgil, Benimle Oynar Misin. He’s the Turkish Nick Drake.
Older than dirt, and probably not re-released these 30 years, but:
Chapin Music. First album by Harry Chapin, with his brothers Tom and Steve (who has an amazing falsetto). Recorded while all three were in college/grad. school. Sounds nothing and everything like what made Harry and Tom separately famous.
Any album by Nanci Griffith. She has a beautiful voice, a little high-pitched but very listenable. She’s been putting out albums since the early 80s but has never reached mainstream status. I saw her live several years ago, still can’t get her out of my head.
Having just received it from Amazon yesterday, and having never heard of it before the song on the Planet Terror soundtrack, I will recommend Nouvelle Vague. Soothing bossanova covers of songs by such artists as the Dead Kennedys (the song on Planet Terror was “Too Drunk to Fuck”), the Specials, the Cure, Sister of Mercy and P.I.L.
Very nice. Good work music. 