In this respect, the Jam comparisons are red herrings, for if anything, Pope played the snottier, rebellious younger brother to Weller’s more respectful good son.
Most of the mod kids I know are more into the 60s r&b scene (or bands that try to sound like that) than the later mod labeled bands (with the exception of The Jam).
via AllMusic , Lost City Rockers
I Know You Fine But How You Doin’ is a magnum opus of dirty brilliance. Dirty in the grunge-covered sense. Dirty in the back alley and sleepin’ it off sense.
I already posted a track off this but I had it on the list again for some reason and The Gories rule so I’m going to post another one anyway.
via AllMusic
Strange twist for this series (which has been mostly lounge and funk), but a great batch of danceable uptempo fusion tracks and lost disco cuts from the euro club heyday of the 70s. Nudie cover, sexy groove, and a nice 11 track comp of lost clubby grooves.
I guess these are tracks from European adult movies. Which probably explains the cover.
via Dusty Groove
In the 1980s, of the dozens of bands who were mining the sounds of ’60s garage rock for inspiration, few were smarter or wittier about it than the Fleshtones.
I guess the lead singer was also host on an I.R.S. Records curated music show on MTV for a while. Back when they first started, and like, played music.
via AllMusic , Raucous Records
For the first time, Paul Weller built, rather than fell back, upon his influences, carving a distinct voice all his own; he employed a story-style narrative with invented characters and vivid British imagery à la Ray Davies to make incisive social commentary — all in a musically irresistible package.
You can pick up the remastered CD version of Snap!for the same price as the download, or find the original vinyl at your used record store.
via AllMusic
Drums, Eastern percussion as well as a typical assortment of documentary tapes, which can be of Arab demonstrations at embassies or PLO rallies or songs of their ancient religions, are used to produce original music.
I’m not going to get into the politics of it but I think the music of Bryn Jones a.k.a. Muslimgauze and the story behind it are pretty interesting.
via muslimgauze.org
The third disc is even more eclectic than its predecessors, embracing everything from lush pop ballads (the sumptuous “Busby Berkeley Dreams”) to winsome folk songs (“Acoustic Guitar”) to Reich-ian tape constructions (“Experimental Music Love”).
I was going to do “Yeah! Oh Yeah!” but my MF posts keep getting whacked so I’ll just go with “Underwear” since it exists on soundcloud and was a close runner up.
via AllMusic
There’s a strong ’90s vibe to Types of Wood — virtually every track is a shout-out to when thudding basslines and shouted or mumbled non sequiturs dominated indie rock.
Looks like you can stream the whole thing over on the Brille Records soundcloud.
via AllMusic
All the way from Sao Paulo, Brazil comes THEE BUTCHERS ORCHESTRA, three young chaps who give you another view to Brazilian music, not the Sepultura metal view, more the lower-class dirty rock and roll view of one of the biggest andmost dangerous cities in the world.
Brazilian garage-punk.
via VoodooRhythm
When ethnomusicologists of the future look back on the cult phenomenon that was twee pop, they need go no further for defining moments than “Twee,” the opening track on Tullycraft’s wonderful Beat Surf Fun: A catalog of icons and totems that includes nods to Sarah Records, 14 Iced Bears, and the Pastels’ Aggi Wright, its quintessentially adenoidal vocals and manic strumming culminate in the rallying cry “You can keep your punk rock, ska, rap beats and house, f**k me I’m twee!”
Yeah, I don’t care what anybody says, this record rules.
via AllMusic
The Giant Robots are a Rock’n’Roll band and are ready to conquer the World. Born in February 1996 (or was it in 1966 ?)
They never quite conquered the world but Too Young To Know Better, Too Hard To Care is some pretty great 60s influenced French garage-punk. It’s possibly still available from Voodoo Rhythm but it’s for sure on like iTunes and Amazon.
Paul Weller had spent the previous three years defining himself as one of the quintessentially English pop songwriters in the tradition of Ray Davies and Pete Townsend, and the advent of this song proved that he was on fire. The thundering drum and crunching guitar intro is an instantly arresting launch pad for social disgust Weller wrote into the song’s lyrics.
This was supposed to be a song off the live EP from Snap but those are like proto-Style Council songs so Imma steal one from disc 2.
via AllMusic
A true A-to-Z catalog of touchingly bittersweet love songs that runs the gamut from tender ballads to pithy folk tunes to bluesy vamps, the sheer scope of the record allows all of Merritt’s musical personas to converge…
Before you kiss me you should know.
via AllMusic
Larry Appelbaum, the recording lab supervisor at the Library of Congress, came across this tape by accident while transferring the library’s tape archive to digital. What a find.
I know I don’t share a lot of personal detail about my life since this is a music blog and who cares, but I don’t think I’ve really told anybody this so it probably won’t come back to bite me in the ass. When we first got cable internet (around 2005) as part of my Christmas present to my parents I decided to download a bunch of Jazz shows from a live show torrent site I ran across (like bt.etree.org). So I searched through their record collection and got a list of artists I knew they liked and went to work. When that was finally done (and it took weeks) I designed this cool set of related covers using artist photographs that I painstakingly researched to be contemporary to the shows, and then put it all together like a mini-box set, wrapped it up and put it under the tree. When they opened it instead of being happy that I’d put so much thought and effort into their present they gave me a lecture about downloading music from the internet. I was like — but, no, you see it’s free — and they were like … (well, OK, not like that but they weren’t happy. So I got them this instead).
via AllMusic
