Marc Fagel's Blog: Jittery White Guy Music: The Blog, page 154

Black Nasty: Talking To The People (1973)

As noted previously, and as should be obvious from the name of this blog (as well as the like-titled book I keep hawking here), I've been (not unfairly) accused of having very "white" taste in music. Not much I can say about that; I've just never been a big fan of soul or R&B (obvious outliers like Prince or Sly aside). The one exception is early 70s funk; it's a subgenre I've always loved.

Here's an obscure nugget that's a personal fave, a one-off from a short-lived Detroit band. While it's got ...

Holly & The Italians: The Right To Be Italian (1981)

Here's a fun little new wave-era gem that never really got its due. Think Joan Jett and the Go-Go's: crunchy Ramones-derived guitars, a bit of 60s girl-group style, a lot of lighthearted power pop. It's a thoroughly fun if inessential affair, and while you can hear the album's influence on later bands like Katrina & The Waves and the Darling Buds and Transvision Vamp, it's unfortunately largely relegated to the outskirts of early 80s nostalgia.

Holly Beth Vincent and her band started out in L.A. ...

Wild Carnation: Tricycle (1994)

Between the 1991 release of the Feelies' final album of their original run, and the band's return to the studio in 2011, most members found other outlets for their musical passions. Frontman Glenn Mercer and percussionist Dave Weckerman soldiered on with Wake Ooloo; drummer Stanley Demeski played on the first few Luna albums.

Meanwhile, bassist Brenda Sauter released a pair of albums with Wild Carnation. The band's sound is somewhere between the post-punk jangle of the Feelies (particularly their...

My 500 Favorite Songs (Revisited, Sort Of)

[August 2020 Update: I originally posted this list back in March 2020. I said at the time that I was hoping to update the list, which I created back in 2016, or maybe even expand it to a Top 1000. Alas, neither of those things has happened yet; but I did go into Spotify and update the playlists to add a few songs that weren't streaming previously. Of the 500 songs, spread over 10 playlists, we're down to less than a dozen that aren't available on Spotify (in a few cases, I had to substitute a li...

New Multitudes [Jay Farrar et al.]: S/T (2012)

Given the turbulent history between Uncle Tupelo co-founders Jay Farrar and Jeff Tweedy, as Tweedy swiftly rose from Farrar's understudy to the revered genius of Wilco, the last thing one would expect would be for Farrar, who'd carved out his own distinguished post-Tupelo path with Son Volt, to take a deliberate step in Tweedy's footsteps.

Yet a decade and a half after Wilco (with Billy Bragg) released the Mermaid Avenue album based around unrecorded Woody Guthrie lyrics, Farrar set some addition...

The Who: Quadrophenia (1973)

I don't spend too much time here with the obvious biggies, but after a week spent dredging up some obscurities in the collection, figured it was time to circle back to one of my all-time favorites. And Quadrophenia is not just my favorite Who album, but undoubtedly one of my top 15 albums of all time, every bit as wondrously powerful today as it was when it first blew me away as a young teenager some 40 years ago.

I spent a chapter of my book -- hey, if you haven't checked out the book, I wish yo...

Pylon: Chomp (1983)

Pylon are one of those bands held in great reverence by music critics and indie bands alike. They're definitely on the more challenging side, so I won't oversell them here; but there is no doubting their influence, and they do hold up as a solid example of intriguing, bracing early post-punk. And since their brief discography, in and out of print over the years, is now back up on Spotify and headed for a remastered box set later this year, figured they were worth a check-in.

Along with the B-52's...

Space Waltz: S/T (1975)

Another obscurity today, this time from the glam rock 70s. Space Waltz was a one-off created by New Zealander Alastair Riddell and his band (various editions of the album credit it to either the band Space Waltz or Riddell), and to say it mimics David Bowie is almost besides the point. The album basically sounds like what would happen if an artist's record collection was comprised solely of The Rise & Fall Of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars (and maybe a couple Cockney Rebel or Be Bop De...

The Beat Of The Earth (S/T) (1967)

Time to once again indulge my love of obscure and bizarre albums of the psychedelic '60s. And you can't get much more obscure or bizarre than this.

The Beat of the Earth was a one-off recording by a Southern California band fronted by a guy named Phil Pearlman. It was limited to a few copies, but found some admirers and was ultimately reissued on CD decades later. The album is just two songs (unclear if they were untitled, or titled "This Is An Artistic Statement 1 & 2"), each the length of the a...

The Railway Children: Reunion Wilderness (1987)

Heading back into my beloved jangly guitar mid-80s college radio scene... 

...and while UK band The Railway Children had much in common with the American jangle-pop bands of the era, they also had a British melancholy to their sound, shades of the Smiths as well as legendary Australian band the Go-Betweens. The original line up released three full-length LPs, as well as a number of EPs and singles (a later hits collection pulled together the singles and b-sides). All are pretty much equally worth...