Next to the bass / turn up the radio!
J Church, "The Heroic Trio"
Cat Food is a quickie album that J Church threw together by recording some songs in a day, adding in a couple compilation tracks, and calling it good. But punk never really suffers from being a little slapdash, and the resulting album is pretty entertaining. Basically, Lance Hahn is good enough that most everything he does is worth listening to. This is how the album opens. It's good! Listen to that solo!
Modest Mouse, "Sleepwalking"
If you're thinking, geez, this song sounds really familiar, that's because it takes the 1959 instrumental hit "Sleep Walk" and adds some lyrics. The result is really quite sweet, especially for how early this was in the band's career.
Rudy Robinson & the Hungry Five, "Got It Together (Parts 1 and 2)"
Ohhhh yeah, hell yeah. Gimme some of that! We're right in the heart of the Stax run here, in 1969, and goddamn.
Ghostface Killah, "The Forest"
Nestled in-between the magnificent Supreme Clientele and the ridiculous majesty of The Pretty Toney Album sits Bulletproof Wallets, a misstep in Ghostface's discography. It's an album where Ghostface started to move away from the RZA's production, but hadn't yet forged its own identity. The result is kind of a mess, an album that just doesn't hang together without any part of it being bad.
Negativland, "What Is Your Idea Of God, Let Us Have Faith..."
Ah yes, nothing says rockin' quite like two minutes of random-ass vocal samples from a live show performed by a bunch of avant garde sound wierdos.