I Love My Job by Vinx.
He was on the Olympic team (triple jump) in '80, when we boycotted the Moscow games. He was discovered by Sting. And he makes some of the most original music around.
Vinx sang a cappella at a close friend of mine’s wedding. The man is good, good, good.
Dadgum, that’s awesome. I’m extremely jealous. I just wish he’d play a club in Dallas sometime.
Ashley MacIsaac - Hi ™ How are you Today?
Long live scottish canadian fiddle-rock!
Yeah, I remember them. I never had the album because my brother had it. But I think they were an L.A. band.
Got this one too. A couple years ago he was on tour opening for Nancy Griffith and I think the Chieftains. He was apparently a little too wild with his balls out (literally) rockin’ act, with his kilt and high kicks. Nancy thought this was a bit too much to expose her audience to she she dropped off the tour.
Yeah, something similar happened to him on Letterman or Conan, I think. They had to mosiac it out. 
I’ve had the pleasure of seeing him live 3 times. (twice with the band, and once without) A great performer. The new album Helter’s Celtic is really good too, but I’d suggest HHAYT to start…
Atlantic Soul Classics, one of my first CDs. The songs are (mostly) ones everyone knows well, but this is a great early compliation disk. The one semi-obscure track, “Tighten Up” by Archie Bell & the Drells, is my favorite song on the album.
[aside]It still blows me away that I can go to Amazon, right now, and buy this album. I still say they should charge more, not less, for their service[/aside].
For dark, depressing music you can’t beat Ecto by Happy Rhodes. I have yet to figure this out, but somehow it winds up in pawn shops all over my neck of the woods… I’ve got 3 copies of it “just in case.”
-BK
One of my favorite(and hardest to find) albums is
"Catholic Boy" by The Jim Carrol Band. It’s an awesome
album that I seem to ‘lose’ about every 2 years. If you’ve never listened to the album, I whole-heartedly suggest that you do. Man…I’ve loved that album since it came out.
Great Uncles of the Revolution Stand Up! by Downing, Turcotte, Zubot & Dawson (Black Hen). Quiet chamber music that in the manner of Bill Frisell, Bar Kokhba & Dave Douglas splits the difference between jazz, folk, country & klezmer. The instrumentation is: trumpet, Hawaiian guitar, fiddle & bass.
Canvas in Quiet by Yosuke Yamashita (Verve). I’m sure this is familiar to Japanese jazz fans, but I don’t know too many Yamashita fans in North America. This is solo jazz piano performances of Corsican folksongs.
All About Ronnie by Ronnie Ball (Savoy). This should be easy to dig out of delete bins. An English pianist who studied under Lennie Tristano, & seems to have dropped out of the jazz scene after the 1960s–I think he’s still alive, but I’ve no idea if he’s performing. This 1950s disc has him with tenorist Ted Brown (who recently resurfaced on Lee Konitz’s The Sound of Surprise) & the great, ill-fated trombonist Willie Dennis–probably only familiar to most jazz fans from a brief appearance in the Mingus canon. This is some of the most astonishing trombone playing ever committed to record–it has a fluency that rivals even JJ Johnson.
Dance, World, Dance by Rodney Kendrick (Verve). This seems to have been already deleted, even though it’s only a few years old–if so it’s a disgrace. A very idiosyncratic pianist whose style owes something to Randy Weston & Thelonious Monk but sounds very much his own man. He’s got a first-rate band on this disc too, with Arthur Blythe & Graham Haynes.
Do many people know about Sepultura’s Roots?
If not, I’ll say that I love this album. The vocals and melodies are your usual heavy metal crap, but the rhythms are incredible. This band interwove traditional Brazilian and native drumming into a metal album. They’ve even got a couple of chants on the CD. It’s wonderful stuff.
Ok, oddly enough, five seconds before I read this, I started playing Utopia Parkway on my computer cd player.
cue spooky music
My cds that no one has heard of but I love:
The Push Stars, After the Party
Moxy Fruvous, Live Noise
Rasputina, How We Quit The Forest
Great Big Sea, Road Rage
Could be, I can’t remember what album said.
Anything by the V-roys, especially “just add ice.”
Sir Rhosis
Hey, finally someone mentioned a CD I have. Great choice, too.
For me:
Mel Cooleys, Live? in Seattle
John Wesley Harding, Here Comes the Groom
Cub, Box of Hair and Come Out, Come Out
Shonen Knife, Rock Animals
Jane Siberry, No Borders Here
Terry Garland: “Trouble in Mind”- One of my all time favorite CDs. This guy is THE best slide guitarist/singer I’ve ever heard. Gut bucket blues with class. This particular release is basically only Terry on guitar and vocals. He has another musician play some awesome blues harp on a few songs but otherwise it’s all Terry. Sharp looking white guy in a suit who plays the meanest National possible! What a musician. If you dig blues, get it. Don’t worry so much about his other releases, this is the one you need.
John Campbell: “Howlin’ Mercy” - Another fabulous bluesman who is now gone (RIP) but left us with this masterpiece. He has another CD (“True Believer”) which is great too but I prefer HM. This guy is a cross between Stevie Ray Vaughan/Jim Morrison and Dr. John all in one. Sounds like the devil himself. Campbell is from the darker side of the blues and he certainly evokes whole crossroads/soul sellin’ creepiness ala Robert Johnson. Love his stuff, but wouldn’t have wanted to meet him in a dingy bar on a bad night!
“Kids in Philly” by Marah. Local Philly band. Excellent live show.
“Blueshift” by Splashdown. The band has been screwed over by a major record label and it’s doubtful the album will ever see wide release.
“Bonk” by Big Pig. An Australian band with a bizarre combination of elements … two drummers, two singers, harmonica player, etc,… their only claim to fame is the theme song to 'Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure"; the album that song (‘Breakaway’) is excellent but never sold well.
“Naked Self” by The The. Never had a top 40 hit but had a couple of decent sellers in England. He (the frontman, Matt Johnson) has been bouncing around labels for at least seven years now. His latest, “Naked Self”, is an awesome album.
DarkRabbit
Well, I could list stuff that I feel like no one’s heard of, because no one around here knows them (e.g., The Angels, Steeleye Span), but for truly obscure stuff, I’d have to go with these two:
Fischer-Z, Going Deaf For A Living
The Horse Flies, Gravity Dance