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A collection of one-off songs or interesting pieces of music which have an important, unusual or curious back-story. Some by famous artists, others by those you may never have heard of. And might wish never to hear of again.
Enjoy or endure.
Buffy Sainte-Marie: The Big Ones Get Away (1992)
There are three distinct but overlapping public faces of Native American singer/songwriter Sainte-Marie: the woman who wrote and sang Universal Soldier and the theme to the film Soldier Blue in the Sixties; the permanent cast member of Sesame Street between '76 and '81; and a lifelong activist in the Native American movement. But there was always much more to her: she is a much exhibited... more >>
Added: 8 Mar 10
Kyu Sakamoto: Sukiyaki (1963)
It wasn't really the name of the song that Sakamoto recorded, but that hardly mattered. When this catchy piece of MOR pop from Japan made it to the West it enjoyed enormous success. Sakamoto, who was 22, was the first and last Japanese artist to top the Billboard charts. It was also his first and last international success. Back home of course he wasn't a one-hit wonder, he was a national... more >>
Added: 6 Mar 10
Genya Ravan: Junkman (1979
By the time New York singer Ravan got to her album And I Mean It, from which this track is taken, she'd already had a few careers: she'd been the singer in the Escorts in the early Sixties (the line-up included soon-to-be-producer Richard Perry); she was Goldie of Goldie and The Gingerbreads who scored a top 10 UK single with Can't You Hear My Heartbeat (produced by Alan Price of the Animals)... more >>
Added: 28 Feb 10
Brenda Lee, I'm Sorry (1960)
Little Brenda Lee -- who stood 4'9" -- was never a threat. Not to girls in her audience. "My image wasn't one of a heartbreaker," she once said. "I was the little fat girl your mother didn't mind you playing with." When Lee went to number one with this powerful and aching performance she was one of the few women -- she was 15 -- to crack the charts. Just two years... more >>
Added: 25 Feb 10
Tom Verlaine: Souvenir from a Dream (1978)
After the exceptional Television fell apart in '78 following their classic debut Marquee Moon and the lesser Adventure, guitarist/singer and writer Tom Verlaine dropped from sight for a year during which time he quietly went about recording his self-titled debut album in two and three days sessions. With a core of Television bassist Fred Smith and Patti Smith's drummer Jay Dee Daugherty... more >>
Added: 21 Feb 10
John Cale; Chinese Envoy (1982)
As with anyone who was there, I have a vivid memory of John Cale's show at the Gluepot back in September '83, and in fact I still have the poster ("Tickets sold! Limited door sales. Be early!") Cale's Sabotage/Live from '79 can't be topped for the sheer intensity he brings to material like the thrilling seven minute version of Mercenaries (play at full volume and then put on... more >>
Added: 19 Feb 10 
3 Comments
Larry Wallis: Police Car (1977)
The punk era tossed up -- threw up? -- some real oddities, few more unexpected than Wallis who was no spring chicken in the world of short haired rock'n'roll for angry 18-year olds. He'd been in the music game for over a decade and in the Sixties had been in such household names as The Entire Sioux Nation and Shagrat. To be fair, Shagrat morphed into the Pink Fairies (which had... more >>
Added: 16 Feb 10 2 Comments
The Warlocks: Can't Come Down (1965)
By the mid Sixties the spirit and style of poetic Bob Dylan was everywhere as singers and writers tried to match his surreal wordplay. Dylan's harmonica, image heavy lyrics and monotone is everywhere in this demo by the Warlocks out of San Francisco. Of all the Bob-copyists the Warlocks had the best claim to similar territory: they were heavily into acid, had made their own way to... more >>
Added: 15 Feb 10
Jim Carroll: People Who Died (1980)
When Jim Carroll died in September 2009 at age 60, it went largely unnoticed by the rock culture which had once embraced him, and spoken about this New York poet-turned-singer in the same breath as Patti Smith and Lou Reed. Carroll's rock career was admittedly short -- a few albums in the early Eighties and little else -- but his literary life was fascinating. And well known to the... more >>
Added: 15 Feb 10 1 Comment
Dean Martin: My Rifle, My Pony and Me (1959)
As Nick Tosche revealed in his remarkable biography Dino: Living High in the Dirty Business of Dreams, Dean Martin didn't have to try hard at anything: he was good looking, could sing whatever was put in front of him, was a natural straight man and comedian, and he'd just turn up on a movie set and do his lines with charm, ease and utter indifference. No, Dean didn't have to try -- so... more >>
Added: 13 Feb 10
The Ivy League: For and Twenty Hours (1967)
The British Invasion of the mid Sixties saw any number of bands shoot into and out of the spotlight very quickly: Peter and Gordon, Chad and Jeremy, Freddie and the Dreamers . . . And the Ivy League (John Carter, Ken Lewis and Perry Ford) who had been session singers but scored two self-penned hits -- Funny How Love Can Be and Tossing and Turning -- in '65. Because of their wide musical... more >>
Added: 12 Feb 10
Ian Dury: Razzle in My Pocket (1977)
With Will Birch's biography and the film of his life Sex and Drugs and Rock'n'Roll (Andy Serkis as Ian), there is something of a revival and re-appreciation of Ian Dury going on, a decade after his death at age 57. Dury came to the punk era as someone more than a decade older than most performers, and he had considerable stage experience: his band Kilburn and the High Roads gigged for five... more >>
Added: 11 Feb 10
Dirty Red: Mother Fuyer (1947)
Blues and jazz artists often used coded language to get their lyrics past record companies and radio programmers, so you would get a song like When I'm In My Tea (by Jo-Jo Adams, 1946) about marijuana or Dope Head Blues by Victoria Spivey about cocaine. Sex was everywhere and there is no mistaking the meaning of songs like Poon Tang (by the Treniers), Big Long Slidin' Thing (Dinah... more >>
Added: 10 Feb 10
Lesley Gore: You Don't Own Me (1963)
For someone who was only semi-professional, tiny Lesley Gore (5' 2") was astonishingly busy in the Sixties: Between '63 and '69 she released 29 singles (19 of them went Top 100) and eight albums - outside of greatest hits packages. And she had some great hits: her first was It's My Party ("and I'll cry if I want to") when she was only 17. It was produced by Quincy Jones and... more >>
Added: 10 Feb 10
Gary Lewis and the Playboys: This Diamond Ring (1965)
The offspring of Hollywood were just as swept up in Beatlemania as anyone. The two sons of comedian Soupy Sales -- Hunt and Tony, drums and bass respectively -- were in Tony and the Tigers who appeared on Hullabaloo and had a couple of records out . . . although went on to more interesting things later when they joined Todd Rundgren, Iggy Pop (on Lust for Life) then David Bowie in Tin... more >>
Added: 9 Feb 10
Waylon Jennings: Are You Sure Hank Done it This Way (1975)
Just from the repeated electric strum here, Waylon Jennings was announcing a different kind of country music: and its minimal sound threw even greater attention on his lyrics which questioned the whole country music establishment as epitomised by the smooth Nashville Sound, the Grand Ole Opry and the Music Row writers cranking out generic songs. Long hairs and post-hippies had started to... more >>
Added: 9 Feb 10
Roy Buchanan: The Messiah Will Come Again (1976)
There have been any number of Southern blues, soul and rock'n'roll musicians whose souls have struggled with their pull of their secular and spiritual sides: Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard, Son House, Al Green . . . and the great guitarist Buchanan. Arkansas-born Buchanan -- who died in an apparent jail-cell suicide in 1988 at age 48, although that has been seriously questioned -- was... more >>
Added: 8 Feb 10
King Kurlee feat. Blackmore Jr: Smoke on the Water (1991)
The merging of hip-hop and rock (via Run DMC with Aerosmith, Anthrax with Public Enemy, and others) lead to nu-metal and its many unfortunate bands such as Limp Bizkit. But, as with the early days of hip-hop when there was an innocent and enjoyable experimentation, some of nu-metal's predecessors were more interesting than their offspring. This single out of Germany by the litle known... more >>
Added: 8 Feb 10
Victoria Spivey and Lonnie Johnson: Dope Head Blues (1927)
When Lou Reed took a bit of flak for writing about street life (drugs, hookers, transvestites) he just picked the wrong idiom. These topics were common enough in literature and pulp fiction, but new to rock music. Dope songs were certainly common in jazz and the blues -- in fact there has been a long tradition of singing about marijuana, cocaine and heroin. These drugs were familiar in the... more >>
Added: 6 Feb 10
Aretha Franklin: Don't Play That Song For Me (1970)
It's a well established fact that some songs write themselves into our autobiographies: we remember our first love by our favourite song, can be taken back to exactly where we were and who we were with when a certain piece of music plays, songs conjure up time and place . . . Talkin' 'bout them Night Moves. Classic hits radio plays on this fact, and rock'n'roll has become a nostalgia... more >>
Added: 6 Feb 10 1 Comment
