I swear this on a stack of Bibles: I have yet to try a song on Napster’s search engine that didn’t come up. I’ve even deliberately tried some extremely off-the-wall stuff just to see if someone had it. Wouldncha know it, they did!
Here are two of the more obscure things I found on Napster:
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Life is a Rock by a band called Reunion. Heard it once in college and was pleasantly surprised to find it on Napster.
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A whole slew of stuff by a white-supremacist hate-metal group called Rahowa. I only looked them up because I saw them on Dateline NBC one night and wanted to see if that sort of sh*t was for real and if Napster had them. Sure 'nuff, they did.
So what are your most obscure Napster finds? Anything you tried to find but couldn’t?
I did find:
Josephine (a live version) by Slobberbone, a band from Texas I’ve seen a couple times (they came threw central Illinois once or twice). Very much dug that song, and was happy to find it, even if the live recording isn’t the best sound (the studio version wasn’t released yet).
Oi to the World by No Doubt. Really, the only song of theirs I actually like. Saw the video once on 120 Minutes years ago. I thought that I was going to be unable to find it on Napster, until I tried searching for “Joy to the World.”
lots of bizarre covers (Dinosaur Jr. doing the Cure, Fountains of Wayne doing Brittany Spears, Sex Pistols doing the Monkees). My favorite thing to do with Napster now is to search for the term “cover.” I brings up whole loads of these little gems–for some reason, people have to mark their files “cover” so they know the Dave Matthews Band didn’t write that Beatles song. Sheesh.
I couldn’t find:
anything by Mt. Pilot, another tiny band with a CD or two out there. They were on a label, and the CD was sold in stores, so I expected to find it.
I’m trying to get a song called ‘Letter From An Occupant’ by a Canadian band called The New Pornographers, featuring Neko Case. I know it exists on CD, but it never comes up on napster. if you ever see it can you reply here and tell me which user has it.
Please.
I found, (I wanna)“Fuck You In The Ass” by the Outhere Brother’s. A classic.
Your right, though, everything I’ve ever pondered was on there somewhere. The amazing part to me is that at any given time they are almost always available, regardless of how many people are online at that moment.
::Slight Hijack, but on the same topic::
Does anyone have any search tips that they find usefull?
The cover one looks good, and I’ve gotten some good hits using ‘dance’,‘retro’, etc… But I’m really interested in extended and 12’ CD versions of popular songs.
Buck-Butt the Turtle by Jimmy Buffett.
And some song called Western Union by some off-the-wall group.
“Jesus Touch My Heart” have yet to find it since getting it the first day I was online in my room at college.
Have yet to find anything by “Sweet Lizrd Illtet”, my cousin’s band.
Have yet to find the complete score of “Newsies” on Napster.
Using the word “live” under title will pull up some good stuff. I am a brand new Napster browser, and lack both a fast enough connection and a fast enough computer to download them, but when my ibook arrives, and I cart it to library with my external CD burner, momma’s gonna burn herself a CD of wierd ass covers. Just looking up my favorite band, Guster, turned up such inspired covers as “Like a Prayer” “Sympathy For the Devil” “Hungry Like the Wolf” and a slew of other wierd stuff. Cool. I’m gonna like Napster.
Found some Guster stuff (yay!) and found a bunch of stuff by the guy who did ‘Detatchable Penis’- rather strange and funny! My favorite is called “angel” or something. It’s about a guy who meets some kind of wizard or pixie by his mailbox, and then has an angry discussion with him, even though the pixie is a -good- pixie. Another is called “metro north” about a angry guy on the train. Found some Dread Zepplin too. Wacky.
I can’t find anything by Cheap Trick off of their Woke Up With A Monster CD. I was wanting the song Didn’t Know I Had It but I could only find it live.
I already posted my finds here: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=34003
Well, let’s see…it took me a month and a half before latching onto Neil Sedaka’s “The Immigrant”, which surprised me, but folks who like Sedaka don’t tend to care for that song, preferring his more typical stuff like cumma cumma down doobie doo down down…
Similarly, it took awhile before I could scarf up a copy of Queen’s “The Prophet’s Song”, although I could’ve DL’d a couple dozen copies of “Bohemian Rhapsody” or “We are the Champions” had I been interested…
For reasons of personal nostalgia, I wanted a copy of “Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep” [which I first had to have identified for me based on my recollection of lyrics and melody line] and although 3 or more different versions were recorded (god knows why), I wanted the version that played on the cafeteria juke box when I was in 7th grade, Mac & Katie Kissoon. That took a month of daily searching.
I had better luck last night doing classical, finding a copy of Also sprach zarathustra in a single night’s searching, although I had to log on, off, on, off, etc., 20-30 times before connecting to a server and getting a copy of the whole piece and not just the first (“2001 A Space Odyssey”) few minutes.
I never found any of Michael Hurley’s blues tunes.
It took awhile to get Variations on a Theme of Eric Satie from the BS&T album.
I could not find Knotty Pine by gordon lightfoot.
I know he sang it, but I’ve never even seen it on a CD.
Dammit!
AHunter3-
That a great suggestion that I’ve only tried recently. Logging off and then on again usually gets you a different server and different songs. But, like you said, sometimes you have to do it a number of times before you find a good one.