Fans of 70's Power poppers like Cheap Trick and Boston should dig Sloan, a band of Nova Scotian boys who hit the Indie airwaves in the lower 48 back in the Nineties, but never made it big here like they did at home. Today's track is from their 1999 album Between the Bridges.

Losing California

David Berthy Guest Posts

When I was getting ready to DJ a little bit ago, I asked my friend David Baum in LA if he had any suggestions and he sent me this song. Being so bereft of musical talent that I once had a guitar teacher refuse to take my mother’s money anymore (hope ripping off Weather Report finally worked out for you Les, you killer of boyish dreams), I get over my skies fast talking about song structure, but I’ll try anyway. What I love here are the presence of churning rock guitars in a soul song, almost like a Bo Diddly thing, and the way the riff ramps up at the end for a great climax.
Thank You For Loving Me, Soul Soul Brothers Six

Like A Speeding Pantera

I'll be out of town until Monday, so we'll have a couple of Guest Posts from FI Rare Soul Afficianado David Berthy

This song, off James Murphy’s (LCD Soundsystem) Fabric 36 record, was an instant favorite. I don’t know anything about Jackson Jones or the genesis of this song, which is fine, because I prefer to make that kind of information up: It’s Hollywood,1980 and Jackson wakes up at 7 at night, still wearing his sunglasses because he got so loaded at the David & David release party. He lights a menthol and looks next to him, where he’s confronted with the presence of a woman he has no recollection of meeting. Look at that fox, he thinks. Inspiration hits him like a speeding Pantera. He grabs a pen and writes, “If I were a carpenter, I would nail all over you…” and the rest just writes itself.

I Love Music, Jackson Jones

In Color

For Heather, whose birthday is tomorrow... a song she loves, from a band she loves, who come from her neck of the woods.

DOWNLOAD SO GOOD TO SEE YOU

Daisy Age

We'll continue with that Spring feeling with a track from the First De La Soul album, 1989's Three Feet High and Rising. The album is a masterpiece collage of songs, skits, and pop samples (Steely Dan, Hall & Oates, Schoolhouse Rock)
The lighthearted vibe and flowery vernacular led to the group being dubbed Hippie Rap by the community at large along with fellow Native Tongue Posse acts Jungle Brothers and A Tribe Called Quest. To debunk the idea, De La Soul called their second record De La Soul Is Dead, and showed three dead flowers on the cover, one for each member, representing the end of the short lived "Daisy Age".




DOWNLOAD SAY NO GO

Spring is here technically, which means its a great time to start getting the XTC records out. I'm eschewing the more traditional early faves for this ode to Spring, a gem off of of 1999's Apple Venus, over 7 years in the making.


DOWNLOAD EASTER THEATRE

Today's track is the 1981 international club hit from Tom Tom Club, side project of Talking Heads rhythm section Tina Weymouth and Jerry Harrison.


DOWNLOAD GENIUS OF LOVE

Rare Souls Goes Pop

The Violinaires

In the soul, gospel, and jazz music worlds, its very common for artists to do renditions of rock and pop hits of the time, sometimes with disastrous results (ie-Aretha Franklin's version of the Doobie Bothers' What a Fool Believes). On rare occasions though, the hit is rendered in such a way that you get a whole new essence out of it in its new context. Such is the case with these two tracks. First, Its The gospel outfit The Violinaires with a soulful rendering of The Rolling Stones' "Salt of The Earth", originally appearing on their 1972 sprawling ode to American music, Exile on Main Street.

DOWNLOAD SALT OF THE EARTH


The second track is Bahamian Calypso outfit Ronnie and the Ramblers' version of Harry Nillson's hit "Everybody's Talking", mistitled by the band as "Midnight Cowboy" (It was on that movie's soundtrack"

DOWNLOAD MIDNIGHT COWBOY

I found both of these tracks on the terrific Joe Devivre site, a great resource for rare and free soul downloads. From what I gather, whoever runs this site is a clerk at Jazz Record Mart or some other vinyl boutique, and is transferring rare vinyl to digital and posting it.

Click here to check out the site

Belated St. Paddy's

Thanks to Quickdraw for sending this in to FI...the greatest version ever!

The Drummer Takes a Fall

MADRID - A former drummer for 1970s Swedish pop group ABBA, Ola Brunkert, has been found dead after an apparent accident in his house in Mallorca, Spanish police said on Monday.Brunkert bled to death from a throat wound which police suspect was caused after he accidentally smashed a pane of glass, a spokeswoman for the Civil Guard police said, adding that authorities were awaiting the result of an autopsy.
The official Web site of the band said Brunkert was possibly the only instrumental musician to appear on all the albums released by the band. Abba's two male and two female vocalists were among the world's best-known faces in the 1970s with hits including "Waterloo" and "Dancing Queen."

Ola Brunkert


DOWNLOAD WATERLOO

While manning the wheels of steel at Rodan this past Friday night, David Berthy
broke out this funk workout from Prince. The chorus hook stayed in my head all weekend. Its the title track from Prince's 4th album, released in 1981, just one year before 1999 would catapult him into international stardom. I believe that the album was written, produced, arranged, and performed in its entirety by his purple majesty.

DOWNLOAD CONTROVERSY

Ballad of a Tin Man

The Magnetic Fields, a band led by ukulele wielding New York City singer-songwriter Stephin Merritt, will be in town this weekend to play six (!)sold out shows at The Old Town School of Folk Music. The triple 1999 disc 69 Love Songs is widely considered to be their best work, and features, well, 69 love songs. One of my favorites, I think I need a New Heart, is deceptively sweet and jaunty on the surface, and downright brutal underneath, much like REM's "The One I Love".

DOWNLOAD I THINK I NEED A NEW HEART

Decatur, Illinois' Liverpool

FI welcomes Obscure Pop Sleuth and all around swell guy David Singer for a guest post today, as a follow-up to yesterday's Beatles post

Listen to this song. Would you believe that it isn't Paul McCartney? It's actually Decatur, IL's favorite son Emitt Rhodes, who had a couple of minor hits and then disappeared. The long and interesting story is here.

Luke Singer hipped me to his stuff, and I've managed to BitTorrent his second record, 1971's The American Dream. Great songs, amazing arrangement. He had a song on the soundtrack of The Royal Tenenbaums too - Wes Anderson is cooler than all of us.

The internet hasn't just leveled the playing field between majors and indies, but also between new music and old music - 10 years ago, I never would have been able to find this.....

Emitt Rhodes - "Holly Park"

Video Bonus! We Are The World Redux

Thanks to David Berthy for sending in this priceless video

Everyone Goes Solo In The End

After having listened to Abbey Road consistantly for the past 30 years, I recently learned something fascinating that I never knew. In the song "The End" towards the end of side two*, McCartney, Harrison, and Lennon perform a rotating sequence of three, two-bar guitar solos.I guess I always just heard it as one solo. With Ringo's drum solo at the beginning of the song, all four Beatles take a solo on what was meant to be the last song on their last album (It didn't work out that way). Its kind of fun to try to figure out who is playing what in this sequence, which begins at 53 seconds in.

DOWNLOAD THE END


*my vote for best album side ever

Lou, Lenny, and Regina

Today's track comes from the pixie-ish Soviet born Bronx bred singer, songwriter and pianist extraordinaire Regina Spektor, who was in attendance at Chicago singer songwriter David Singer's show this past Sunday at Joe's Pub in New York City (Hows that for straight up name-dropping!). The track is a live version of Leonard Cohen's Chelsea Hotel recorded on the BBC.

Speaking of Leonard Cohen, the gravelly voiced bard was inducted last night into the Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame by that other gravelly voiced bard and my personal clown hero, Lou Reed.




DOWNLOAD CHELSEA HOTEL BY REGINA SPEKTOR

Cowboy Psychedelia

A genre of country pop music whose main, and perhaps only practitioner was Lee Hazelwood. Best known for having written and produced the 1966 Nancy Sinatra US/UK #1 hit, "These Boots Are Made for Walkin', Hazlewood released several albums before moving to Stockholm, Sweden where he wrote and produced the one hour television show Cowboy in Sweden, which also later emerged as an album in 1970.

Here's a clip of the show featuring the song Pray Them Bars Away


Today's track, "Hey Cowboy" is a conversation between a tall Swedish Goddess and a little cowboy, out of place in the land of the midnight sun.

DOWNLOAD HEY COWBOY

Real Emotional Trash

Here's brand new music from Lou Reed Disciple and former Pavement frontman Stephen Malkmus. While I was a huge Pavement fan up through Brighten The Corners, Malkmus's solo material has been hit or miss for me, mostly the latter. This track, though, has that old magic, especially the instrumental interlude in the middle.



The new album, was recorded in Whitefish, Montana, and features former Sleater-Kinney drummer Janet Weiss. Back in In 2007, the reigning clown prince of Indie Rock provided the singing voice for Cate Blanchett's portrayal of Bob Dylan in Todd Haynes' film I'm Not There, contributing the songs "Ballad of a Thin Man", "Can't Leave Her Behind", and "Maggie's Farm" under the name The Million Dollar Bashers.

DOWNLOAD OUT OF REACHES

The Australian Beatles

The Bee Gees had a long and successful career before they became Disco Superstars in the mid-seventies. Here is the second single from their debut album in 1967, "To Love Somebody", which cracked the US Top 20 and has become a pop standard, covered by everyone from Rod Stewart to Nina Simone.

DOWNLOAD TO LOVE SOMEBODY

Born Again Music

"I was blinded by the devil
Born already ruined
Stone-cold dead
As I stepped out of the womb
By His grace I have been touched
By His word I have been healed
By His hand I've been delivered
By His spirit I've been sealed

I've been saved
By the blood of the lamb"

So begins the title track from Bob Dylan's 1980 LP "Saved" the second in a trilogy of straight up Evangelical Christian gospel records, released between 1979"s "Slow Train Coming" and 1981's "Shot of Love".



Dylan toured with a gospel choir, refusing to play any of his earlier secular material. This period would produce some truly beautiful songs, "I Believe in You" and "Every Grain of Sand" come to mind.

Today's download is a live version of "Saved" recorded in Toronto in 1981. To my ears the music is tight, uplifting, and played and sung with conviction.

DOWNLOAD SAVED

Adventure Rock 101

Adventure Rock /ædˈvɛntʃər/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[ad-ven-cher /rɒk/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciationrok]- A sub-genre of Classic rock and roll relating to songs from the 1970's featuring narratives of vague and epic challenges from the natural elements or unnamed mystical forces. The best known Adventure Rock Band is Kansas, with Carry on My Wayward Son, Dust in the Wind, and Point of No Return. Other examples of the genre are Riding The Storm Out by REO Speedwagon and Come Sail Away by Styx.

DOWNLOAD RIDING THE STORM OUT BY REO SPEEDWAGON



The definitive Adventure Rock Video Relic (Thank you Eva!)



BONUS!! YOU MUST WATCH THIS! YOU WON'T BE DISSAPPOINTED