Open My Eyes

Here's an obscure nugget from the classic rock pantheon.
Its Nazz, featuring a young Todd Rundgren, from their self-titled 1968 debut LP. Rundgren would later go on to become a successful solo artist and producer. The song Hello its me, the unsuccessful first single from this album, would become a hit later
as re-recorded by Rundgren.

DOWNLOAD OPEN MY EYES

Typewriter Tip Tip

I recently picked up the soundtrack to Wes Anderson's latest film The Darjeeling Express. Always terrific, WA soundtracks mine and compile the more obscure nuggets from the classic rock pantheon,along with original compositions from former Devo frontmant Mark Mothersbaugh (abesnt here for the first time) .

While I love the Kinks as much as the next guy, its the music composed by Bengali filmmaker Satyajit Ray and other artists from Indian cinema that make this a must-have collection.

Download Typewritwr, Tip Tip Tip

Freaky Friday

I played this song at my desk at work at least 15 times back to back this past Wednesday. Put it on in your car on your way home from work this evening and do some righteous headbanging at the wheel...start your weekend right. Its an early Indie rock Nugget from Dinasour Jr, Freak Scene, from their 1988 album Bug.

DOWNLOAD FREAK SCENE BY DINASOUR JR

Great music today from Psychedelic Popsters The Apples in Stereo. I've listened to three tracks from this album, Electronic Projects for Musicians, and it sounds like their best effort since the year 2000, which figures, since it a compilation of B-0sides and oddities from years past. AIS frontman Robert Schneider was the leader of the Elephant Six Collective, A pyschedelic pop movement in the mid-90's that also included Neutral Milk Hotel and Olivia Tremor Control among others.

I'll never forget seeing these guys live at the Empty Bottle in the late nineties. Drummer Hilary was about 7 months pregnant and the audience watched her eat an entire Hoagie in about 15 seconds between two songs.

Interested parties should pick up 1997's Tone Soul Evolution, a shimmering, hook laden
masterpiece from start to finish.

You Can buy it here

DOWNLOAD GOLDEN FLOWER

Like A River

New music by Neil Young disciple Sun Kil Moon, from the album April, released, oddly enough, yesterday, on April 1. SKM is Sunday Morning/Woodshop music at its finest, and on this one we get Will Oldham on backing vocals to boot. Upon first listen, its a return to form after the radical misfire of Ghosts of the Highway, an album of Modest Mouse covers released a couple years back.

DOWNLOAD LIKE A RIVER

Me Want Berries From Bushes

Does this gray post-winter have you feeling down? Maybe this track will put a smile on your face...but beware, it may instead drive you further into the cave. Yes, its the Louisville joke rockers King Kong, The B-52's of Indie Rock, with the lead track from their 1995 rock opera Me Hungry. Its the story of a caveman who falls in love with a yak. Enjoy!

Download Animal

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

To Tha Extreme

Houston Rapper Devin The Dude

Over the past couple of years I've become a big fan of Houston rapper Devin The Dude. The Dude has enjoyed a long career on Rap-A-Lot Records and first came to prominence as a guest on Dr. Dre's 2001 Album.

Stylistically, DTD is the James Taylor of Hip Hop, with his frog in the throat voice and laid back delivery. I know its crossed his mind because he covered "Handy Man" when he played Intonation in 2006 and sampled "Shower the People" on his 2004 album To Tha Xtreme.

Contentwise its mostly about smoking weed and rolling with the ladies, but something about the juxtaposition of his crass lyrical content with his sweet, relaxed style makes his music wickedly funny.

I highly reccommend both To Tha Xtreme and the 2007 album Waiting to Inhale, featuring today's download, "What a Job This Is". Listen for great guest spots from Andre 3000 and Snoop Dogg on this ode to the recording life.

DOWNLOAD WHAT A JOB

Pure Pop Pt. 2

Yes, its another pop nugget from Nick Lowe, who's just re-issued his seminal 1978 album Jesus of Cool (renamed Pure Pop for Now People for its original US release). The hook laden bevy of tunes on this record stand the test of time, sounding as fresh today as they did back in the seventies. The cover is a pretty good representation of the music, which shifts stylistically from song to song. Highly recommended! B

DOWNLOAD SO IT GOES

Tonight You Belong to Me x 3

David Singer and Eva Yusa performed a lovely version of the ditty "Tonight You Belong To me" at The Ukulele Cabaret. It was written in 1926 and recorded many times throughout the years. The uke version was made famous by Steve Martin and Bernadette Peters in the 1979 movie The Jerk, with Martin playing the ukulele and Peters playing the cornet:



Oh and here's David and Eva Playing it (sorry so dark!):



And Fiona Apple with Jon Brion and Nickel Creek:

Hawaiian Sunset

David Berthy sent me this track prior to his terrific Elvis monologue at the Ukulele Cabaret a couple of weeks back. His reading, both funny and sad, was a first person rumination from beyond the grave about a variety of real life issues and events from Elvis including cars, karate, Richard Nixon, Colonel Parker, and more... revelaing a core of loneliness and loss as he read.

The song is from the 1961 Album and movie Blue Hawaii, and I can't stop listening to it. One thing Elvis' swindler/svengali Colonel Parker always insisted on was that Elvis record at least ten songs for every movie he made so that he would have a full album ready with every film he released.

I believe a full scale Elvis phase is on my horizon.

DOWNLOAD HAWAIIAN SUNSET

Heroes and Villains

Brian Wilson & Mike Love

When I was little, my parents took me and my brother to Streetside records from time to time and let each of us pick out an album. After a few missteps (Most notably Sha Na Na Live), I scored Endless Summer from the Beach Boys, a double best of collection.

Though I wasn't hip to who was singing what at that tender age, I could tell that there were two very different things going on. On the one hand, there was a high school guy football captain type singing faux Chuck Berry songs about surfboards, chicks, hot rods, and school lockers, and on the other was the class outcast singing complicated love songs and aural renderings of a strange and beautiful inner world. They featured incredibly lush harmonies and a warm emotional center.

I didn't think of it in these terms of course, but
it was the songs of Brian Wilson I was drawn to and the songs of Mike Love I skipped:

Brian Wilson (Hero):

The Warmth of The Sun
In My Room
Good Vibrations
God Only Knows
Let Him Run
Don't Worry Baby
Caroline No
Wouldn't it Be Nice
Wendy
Surfer Girl


Mike Love (Villain):

Surfing Safari
Be True to Your School
Little Deuce Coup
California Girls
Catch A Wave
Surfing USA
I Get Around (I Like this one!)
KOKOMO!!!!!!?????

No wonder Brian Wilson eventually lost his mind!

So as I head out today for a vacation to warmer climbs, it is of course a Brian Wilson Gem I leave you with.

DOWNLOAD SURFER GIRL

PS> FI will return next Tuesday

Back in The Game

Like Syl Johnson, FI is back in the game! By way of explanation, I had decided to stop posting because I truly thought that no one was Fingerhutting. Well, you all proved me wrong, so thanks for chiming in! Let me know you're out there from time to time...

Here's a fitting track from Chicago R&B Legend Syl Johnson.
In the 70's, he recorded three albums for Willie Mitchell's Hi Records label , produced with the Hi house band ( who created that signature Al Green sound). This song, certainly not his strongest material (downright brutal actuallly), is the title track from his 1994 comeback album on the local Delmark imprint.

DOWNLOAD BACK IN THE GAME

DOWNLOAD A REALLY GREAT EARLY SYL SONG-DIFFERENT STROKES

Adieu, Adieu!

Well, folks, all good things must come to an end, and FI is no exception!
We're going on hiatus until further notice, so heres to many sonic adventures for us all until we meet again on these pages!

DOWNLOAD GOODNIGHT LADIES

This is the outer and inner sleeve photos from Daryl Hall & John Oates Self-titled 1975 album. Daryl Hall later said in an interview of their androgynous look that he made himself up to "look like the girl I had always wanted to go out with". John Oates looks utterly like Prince, 8 year before the purple one would hit the scene.

The hit Sarah Smile appears on this record...blue eyed Philly soul at its finest!

Ten years before his first solo #1 hit Lucille, Kenny Rogers formed The First Edition in 1967. The country rock outfit signed with Reprise Records and recorded the pop-psychedelic single "Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In)". Two years later tehy again hit the charts with this complex love song "Ruby, Don't Take Your Love To Town", about a disabled veteran slowly losing the one he loves.

DOWNLOAD RUBY, DON'T TAKE YOUR LOVE TO TOWN

Happy Valentines Day from Reggae Legend Horace Andy!

Download Sea of Love

Vision Deferred

Reading the paper, I saw a review
Said I was a visionary, but nobody knew
Now that's been a problem
feeling unseen
Just like I'm living somebody's dream

What am I doing anyway
Telling myself it's not too late

My children look away they don't know
what to say

So starts the first track "Not too Late" from Lindsey Buckingham's 2007 solo album, Under The Skin, released 34 years after his debut album with Stevie Nicks in 1973. Buckingham Nicks would be dropped from their label after the record stiffed and then join Fleetwood Mac a year later.

Buckingham is a hero of mine... as a guitar player (fingerpicker, no pick,ever), producer, singer, and songwriter. I like his willingness to lay himself absolutely bare before the listener. Hushed and direct, his voice is so close it sounds like its inside your head and his gorgeously amped up fingerpicking creates a suitably claustrophobic aura.

For my money, its one of the finer and more overlooked efforts of 2007.



DOWNLOAD NOT TOO LATE

They All Look Just The Same

I've been enjoying a WEEDS marathon as of late, and never seem to tire of the theme song, Little Boxes, sung by Malvina Reynolds. For season two and beyond, the suburban sprawl ditty is performed each week by a different act, including Elvis Costello, The Shins, Regina Spektor, Deathcab and more, but its the original I like best.


DOWNLOAD LITTLE BOXES

Herbie Takes Off

Congratulations to Jazz Pioneer Herbie Hancock, who beat out both Amy Winehouse and Kanye West to win the Best Album Grammy last night, an honor which hasn't gone to a jazz musician since 1964. The Album, River-The Joni Letters, is a collection of Joni Mitchell Compositons including performances by Leonard Cohen, Tina Turner, and Norah Jones who appears on today's track, Court & Spark.

DOWNLOAD COURT & SPARK BY HERBIE HANCOCK WITH NORAH JONES

Worst is Best Vol 1

For me, there are very few artists for whom the formula is this:

The worse their music is, the more I love it.

Lou Reed tops the list by a margin of infinity

I will prove this to you periodically

lets start with a track thats only marginally terrible, so that we have somewhere to go from there later.

After his "music to slit your wrists by, Vol 1" 1973 opus Berlin, RCA begged Lou to lighten up, literally. In 1974, He died his hair bleach blond and put out an R&B record, Sally Can't Dance. I think the logic was that his "doo doo doo" back-up singers worked to make Walk on the Wild Side a hit on Transformer two years earlier, so lets try again! The results are hilarious. Lou gets funky ala Robert Palmer!


DOWNLOAD SALLY CAN'T DANCE

Winterlong

my long distance dedication to Spring.
Its the Pixies covering Neil Young's Winterlong from The Bridge Tribute Album.

DOWNLOAD WINTERLONG

Like Father Like Son

Music from Liam Finn, Son of Neil Finn of Split Enz and Crowded House Fame. From his 2007 debut album I'll Be Lightning, on which the younger Finn plays most of the instruments himself, with dad joining on bass.

DOWNLOAD LEAD BALLOON

Here's to a Super Super Tuesday



DOWNLOAD CHOCOLATE CITY

Upper West Side Soweto

I caught these guys on letterman last week and liked their mix of Indie Rock and afrobeat. Their self-titled debut came out last week.

DOWNLOAD MANSARD ROOF BY VAMPIRE WEEKEND