Skip to main contentAs Xmas approacheth, it's time to remember the less fortunate: those poor, orphaned CDs shunted to the bargain bins and specialty racks, far outside the sights of most Whitney Houston-hunting spenders. We've chosen 14 albums and one massive underground reissue series worthy of your honest American dollar this holiday season. Whether your personal cup o' poison is hateful comedy, songs about severed ears or '80s garage rockers who are probably selling insurance by now--it's all here. For added convenience, we've jammed these chestnuts into a few easy-to-chew categories. Have fun--and God bless you!
FEAR THE OUTSIDERS or ODDBALLS' DELIGHT!
Outsider music is defined by Irwin Chusid as the work of self-taught artists who "lack conventional tunefulness and self-awareness, but...display an abundance of earnestness and passion." Chusid's two-disc series Songs in the Key of Z, Vols. 1 & 2 is a compendium of weirdness and transcendent genius, including the charmingly inept pop of the Shaggs, the unhinged observations of Daniel Johnston and Wesley Willis, the enigmatic folkie Jandek and legendary eccentric Tiny Tim.
Conventional children's music is condescending. Or so thought intrepid Langley, B.C., elementary-school music teacher Hans Fenger, who discovered that kids in his classes cherished songs evoking loneliness and sadness. In the mid-'70s, Fenger gathered approximately 150 students to record their favorite tunes. The resulting Innocence & Despair: the Langley Schools Music Project is incredibly captivating. Such "adult" songs as David Bowie's "Space Oddity," the Beatles' "Long and Winding Road" and Fleetwood Mac's "Rhiannon"--recorded live in the school gym--become haunting, epic mini-symphonies, truly the sound of youthful desolation.
Polka, the Rodney Dangerfield of music, is often maligned as a geeky, Old World ethnic embarrassment. But thanks to the folks at Trikont, a German label specializing in myriad overlooked and forgotten music, a thorough collection surveys the finest of American Polka old and new. From the punk-infused accordion attack of Polkacide to the classic beer-chugging romps of Frankie Yankovic and onward, it's a rollicking ride through spastic rhythms, drunken vocal antics and delirious accordion acrobatics.
Reefer. Jive. Viper. "Stuff." Roaches. Leaf. If you thought Sabbath-fetishizing heshers and scarlet-pupiled hip-hop dudes were the only musicians penning paeans to marijuana, Trikont's Dope & Glory offers food for thought. D&G anthologizes 50 antique big-band jazz songs from the '30s and '40s about the Evil Green. Hey, why do you think they call 'em "jazz cigarettes"? While Sabbath's "Sweet Leaf" certainly has its charm, there's something ever-more cool and daring about such songs as "When I Get Low I Get High," "All the Jive Is Gone" and "Reefer Man." (DC)
COMEDY IS STILL NOT PRETTY
The golden age of the comedy album--when post-Beat, proto-hippie college kids could kill an evening with a bag of shake and a scratchy Tom Lehrer LP--are gone. But a recent burst of releases seems to indicate renewed interest in listening to ha-ha. With stand-up comedy, old-fashioned skits and cruel pranks, indie labels like Sub Pop and Drag City are eagerly, intrusively groping at your funny bone.
David Cross, co-conspirator of the brilliant (and thus defunct) cult HBO sketch comedy series Mr. Show, demands Shut Up, You Fucking Baby! on his furious and funny Sub Pop double-disc of ranting stand-up. Cross is a man unafraid of sociopolitical discourse, as long as he can say "fuck" and "shit" as much as he wants, which he does.
Bill Hicks' uncompromising and astute assault on lowbrow America profoundly influenced many of today's "edgy" comics (Dennis Leary--where is he now?--is rumored to have ripped off much of his act from Hicks). Since the vitriol-chucker's 1994 cancer death, Rykodisc has reissued four of his albums. Earlier this year, this archival campaign reached its peak with Philosophy: The Best of Bill Hicks, a distillation of this Southern man's implacable (and hilarious) "comedy of hate."
Neil Hamburger, make-believe comic, serves subversive satire of stand-up itself as fake audiences heckle the pathetic character's so-unfunny-it's-funny act on five Drag City albums. If you've caught the live show, which has hit Portland clubs a few times, you understand the depths this man can attain. Hamburger reaches new lows of absurdity on Laugh Out Lord, on which he protests "Waiter, I Didn't Touch That Woman's Ass!" and salutes "Triumph in Kabul."
Tom Scharpling hosts "The Best Show" on the legendary New Jersey free-form station WFMU. Every Tuesday night, the disc jockey's call-in show features inane conversations and semi-scripted phone calls from absurd characters, played by quick-witted Superchunk drummer Jon Wurster. Chain Fights, Beer Busts and Service with a Grin (available from stereolaffs.com) features show highlights, harking back to the era of classic comedy duos while satirizing modern talk radio.
If you prefer a little more acidic weirdness, Vol. 4 by prank phone callers Longmont Potion Castle takes the played-out crank-call genre to an entirely new level. Unsuspecting victims at Radio Shack, record stores and fast-food joints feebly attempt to maintain a sense of social responsibility and normalcy while a caller speaking through a digital delay poses ridiculous questions, his voice flitting between a demonic growl and elfin chirp. Truly the vanguard of comedic terrorism. (DC)
COUNTRY: CREEPY!
Count on America's Music to give you the stone-cold shivers. This year, Sony released a Johnny Paycheck retrospective, The Soul & the Edge, a document packing more unrefined sociopathic fun than your average Too Short afterparty. In some quarters, namely maximum-security wards, the Paycheck compilation was considered "overdue." Start, why don't you, with "Colorado Cool Aid," a near-spoken-word tale involving gallons of Coors and one severed ear. Such anthems as "I'm the Only Hell (Mama Ever Raised)" and "11 Months, 29 Days" are not only peerless honky-tonk, they also make the Nashville pretty boys of today (Toooo-by, come out and play!) look like the prancing nancies they are.
Further down the obscurity food chain, worthy spookfests come from indie artists Iron & Wine and Devendra Banhart, neither of whom would probably be too thrilled to be called "country." Hey, man--get rid of the acoustic, hire a DJ, grow some dreadlocks, whatever, and we'll talk. I&W's superb Creek Drank the Cradle and Banhart's superbly freaky Oh Me Oh My... (the full title is 23 words long) both take the soft-spoken high road to Creepsville.
The 22-year-old Banhart, a genuine human oddity in the calculated music world, makes you feel like you're being recruited for some opaque acidhead death-cult. Tape hiss is often the most clearly audible element in his ultra-spare recordings, warming up his quavery vocals and hypnotized voodoo guitar. Iron & Wine's album (on Seattle's Sub Pop) channels a manor house full of Southern ghosts over whispery, allusive bedroom recordings. This may be the anti-Paycheck: Iron & Wine is haunted in a subtle way, heavy on dusty evocations of abandoned agricultural spreads, regrettably short on severed ears.
Sub Pop's other recent wanderers in this hayseed Sodom, Texas' Baptist Generals, practice some unholy barnyard husbandry. If you happened to stumble across a doddering front-porch guitar savant in rural Idaho singing viciously surreal lyrics through an old telephone (or maybe something just exactly like that), you might have found a lost Baptist General. Sub Pop released the four-song "Void Touching Faster Victuals" EP this year and threatens a full-length album in February. (ZD)
"OFFICIAL BOOTLEGS" GIVE PUNK'S LOST WORLD MOUTH-TO-MOUTH
In the late '70s and early '80s, punk, power-pop and hardcore gave birth to hundreds of bands and uncounted thousands of self-released 7-inch singles and LPs. Most examples of this protean outpouring were of limited manufacture, distribution and, naturally, quality. However, anyone who had favorite local bands (mine being the Frantix and Bum Kon while growing up in Denver) probably can name at least one song they think could've been legendary had the rest of the world been privy to a scene's resident geniuses.
A rather successful bootleg reissue movement has emerged, based on the premise that much of the overlooked would-be collectible vinyl of the era just might become highly sought after, if only obsessive music fans could hear it (thus cleverly raising its resale value). Unlike the haphazard assembly and poor quality of such bootleg reissue series as Killed by Death, the Hyped2Death collection of CD-R compilations sounds great, selects outstanding material and actually attempts to track down bands and pay them royalties. Record collector Chuck Warner (responsible for the Throbbing Lobster comp series in the '80s) has put out 50 discs of ridiculously rare music, organized alphabetically by region, each loaded with 30 or 40 tracks and detailed liner notes about each band. Portland punk historians rest assured, Dead Moon's punky precursors the Rats are amply represented with selections from each of their three albums. For more information, visit hyped2death.com. (DC)
WWeek 2015