Would anybody be interested in weekly summaries, or merged playlists of this stuff, or a "best of" thing periodically? I'm not sure if I want to do it or not, but it might be interesting. I'm also unsure if people want me to throw in random related songs onto these playlists or not. As always, I await your deafening silence down below. Accompany that silence with some tunes!
Ooh, we had our first repeated song today! MU330's "Tune Me Out" showed up again. I'm going to skip it, because repeating songs is not what this project is about.
Paris Combo, "Living Room"
Paris Combo returns for more French jazz and cabaret. Megan speculated that we wound up with this after investigating it for my mother, which seems as plausible as any other reason. Still kind of fun to listen to.
(NB: The version I selected here isn't actually the version on the live album that I have, which I couldn't find. It's instead a live recording at Seattle's mightly KEXP.)
Wiseblood, "Stumbo"
J.G. Thirlwell, the mind behind Foetus as well as many other acts, has been making music since at least 1981, which was when he put out Deaf (technically as the band "You've Got Foetus On Your Face"). Over the next thirty whatever years, he's put out a variety of strange, dark, bizarre, and often amazing music. Wiseblood is one of his many bands, which he formed with Roli Mossimann (Swans) to put out one proper album and a couple EPs. This song actually should give you something of an idea of what you're often dealing with: his lyrics involve a narration of a dark personality, the arrangement is noisy and driven by programmed drums and synthesizer stabs, and the whole thing just seems off. We'll encounter Thirlwell plenty, so I'll save a roundup of Foetus albums for when we hit an actual Foetus track, but he's had a fascinating career. Oh, incidentally, the most famous thing he's probably ever done was provide the music for the Venture Bros show.
Vertigo, "Love Withdrawl"
Amphetamine Reptile Records was known mostly for aggressive noise rock, in the vein of Helmet and the Cows. Vertigo stood out a little for instead being more towards the psychedelic pop end of things - a little noisy, to be sure, but still far more tame than basically any of their other label mates. As a consequence, they ended up pretty overlooked, although Ventriloquist is a fine album that deserved more attention. I think it's almost entirely forgotten today.
De La Soul's Plug 1 & Plug 2, "Clash Symphony"
This was a hip-hop opera, along the lines of Prince Paul's A Prince Among Thieves (down to being about a fictional rap act), with De La Soul's two primary MCs with a couple different producers. It's actually a really strong album, one of the best in De La Soul's later career, so if you haven't checked it out, definitely do that.
Randy Brown and Her Company, "Did You Hear Yourself (Part 1)"
Here, we hear a single from Volume 3 of the Stax/Volt compilations, covering the CBS years (1972-5). Since it was the early 70s, you can obviously hear a lot of funk making its way into the sound of the artists on the label. I could listen to this kind of stuff all day.