“Nobody but me” is mighty strong. But if I had to pick my favorite (relatively) obscure song by a variety of artists (or, at least, songs I never hear on the radio and that the acts never seem to perform live), I guess I’d name:
Aerosmith: Lightning Strikes
Cream: Dance the Night Away
Electric Light Orchestra: Summer and Lightning
Kinks: Shangri-la
Led Zeppelin: I’m Gonna Crawl
Pink Floyd: Fearless
Scorpions: I’m Going Mad
Van Halen: On Fire
Yes: Future Times
ZZTop: I Got the Message
I agree they’re not hugely obscure, as I took the title as a bit of hyperbole: Trying to imagine something that only you have heard of, which isn’t something like someone singing in the shower or some similar very private event, is futile, and the Internet is good at proving it futile.
So I pitched my post at less “back of the Goodwill shop ultra-oddities which showed up on WFMU once in 2002” and more at stuff that almost hit the mainstream but has since been mostly forgotten except among the true fans.
Diving into the WFMU archives again reminded me of two more tracks:
Linda Laurie - “Ambrose (Part 5)”: In keeping with my previous picks, this is a novelty track from 1958 which never got played much on nostalgia stations. Maybe because she did both voices, and at seventeen, no less.
Tom Waits - “What’s He Building”: There are whole genres of TV show and video game which would sacrifice interns to become half as atmospheric as this track.