Post The Greatest Song that No-one Ever Listened To...

[zhivago]

The rule is simple,

post a link to a Youtube video of a song that was absolutely amazing, but somehow no-one paid attention to.

My entry? Anna's "Coming Down", off their album '101-ism'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVKpiwjizZI" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I was blown away when this song came up on MTV's 120 Mins back in the 90s. Luckily enough they repeated it the week after, and then it disappeared.

Pre-internet it was near impossible finding this record. Years later with the internet still new, I managed to track down a 12" version of the single via some random shop on 'Gemm'....two weeks later I walk into a shop and I find ANOTHER copy of the 12" single! This is like lightning striking me twice!

Fast forward a few years and I managed to track down a CD copy of 101-ism...then we got burgled...the thieves took a bunch of stuff. My copy of 101-ism was THE ONLY CD THEY STOLE!

So I have a history with this band...from Croydon in the UK. God knows what happened to them.

...god also knows this is a KILLER track!


Post your entries, and maybe give a bit of back-story to the tune, if there is one.

[marqueemoon]

Idaho - Pomegranate Bleeding

https://youtu.be/GIwORQAriac" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

From the only album Jeff Martin recorded with a 4 piece. I saw this lineup in Cicero's Basement Bar in STL at a pretty depressing time in my life. Seeing this show and hearing this song in particular was just the kick in the ass I needed.

[rank]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxsQwZTuHSI-It's" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; so "unlistened" to that I couldn't even find a studio version of it . Great live version.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RnVa8XHmbf8-A" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; great song from a great album not many have heard of.

Yeah, I'm a big John Davis fan. Most youtube searches come back with Korn or Folk Implosion though.

[PJazzmaster]

I guess I could list here 2 full pages of songs but to keep it simple, these gems came to my mind:

"nouvelle vague - Lena" - no, it has nothing to do with with that french bossa nova / new wave cover band with the same name. This band had the name first but the bossa nova guys had the better lawyers
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=THcoc3H ... 3H8I5U&t=5" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

"Film 2 - my fish is a Fender" appx. 2kviews in almost 10 years (the song is at least 15 years old)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jUUjckAexkI" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

"trost - ducky"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Ijk36ETCvs" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Addy Bart]

The rule is simple,

post a link to a Youtube video of a song that was absolutely amazing, but somehow no-one paid attention to.

My entry? Anna's "Coming Down", off their album '101-ism'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GVKpiwjizZI" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I was blown away when this song came up on MTV's 120 Mins back in the 90s. Luckily enough they repeated it the week after, and then it disappeared.

Pre-internet it was near impossible finding this record. Years later with the internet still new, I managed to track down a 12" version of the single via some random shop on 'Gemm'....two weeks later I walk into a shop and I find ANOTHER copy of the 12" single! This is like lightning striking me twice!

Fast forward a few years and I managed to track down a CD copy of 101-ism...then we got burgled...the thieves took a bunch of stuff. My copy of 101-ism was THE ONLY CD THEY STOLE!

So I have a history with this band...from Croydon in the UK. God knows what happened to them.

...god also knows this is a KILLER track!


Post your entries, and maybe give a bit of back-story to the tune, if there is one.

Thanks for sharing... I grew up near Croydon and I've never heard of this lot. Weird looking mic he's using there!

[PJazzmaster]

and not to forget "koko von napoo - polly", I had the pleasure seeing them on their first and last tour ever (I guess)
Original: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZObHJlkwCA" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
Remix: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wris1_OrMUc" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

"Pop Tarts - I turn my radio on"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9x1Td5Gsaxc" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

"Just Friends and Lovers - Showdown"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w9r8e1ccXc4" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[windmill]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPFHq9aybKc

Beat Farmers - Southern Cross

Don't know if this was popular in its day.

I heard a version of this song on a public radio show back in the pre-internet days of the '90s ,covered by a Sydney band in a stupendous grandious classic rock style. Being from downunder it has a resonance that others from the top half of the world might not appreciate, the movie "On the Beach" came to mind.

I have never heard that version again, at the time I missed the name of group and of the song, and it took a concerted effort of youtubing and googling to track the original down to the Beat Farmers, still haven't found the version I heard on the radio.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V99A85OqgCw

Busstop Hurricanes - Atom Smasher

So in the early internet days I stumbled on Live365 online radio with its "you be the DJ" concept of people uploading a few hours of music of music,chat or whatever which would be listed under genres. In my search for guitar based surf rock I came across a show playing a mixture of early rockabilly and surf music and an live acoustic version of this tune using a nylon string guitar for the riff.
Fortunately the shows were on a loop of repeats, so logged in the next night in the hope of hearing it again and was successful, over the next few weeks,until they changed the programming, I would listen to the show, sometimes hearing the song and sometimes not.

Over the years spasmodic youtube searching turned up nothing on this band, until a couple of years of ago when they uploaded a bunch of songs they must have put on a cd. Its not the version I originally heard but its still fantastic

And a way back version of this idea

As a teenager doing my homework I had my transistor radio on the local radio station which played a mix of easy-listening and top40 songs and occasionally would play an "old" rock song from the sixties.
And they played this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0HLYoIwVFjA

Wild Cherries - That's Life

I had never heard it before and have never heard it on the radio since.

It was like an aural supernova

They played it at the same time for the next 2 nights and then it disappeared, never to be heard of again.

[eskmsaul]

J.T. IV - Out Of The Can
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uMxLWGrAFqg

JT was a dude from Chicago who was influenced by lots of the same artists I was influenced by (Bowie, Roxy Music, Velvet Underground.) He's kind of a Chicago legend and his stuff saw super limited release, but luckily Drag City was able to compile enough to make an LP's worth of stuff titled Cosmic Lightning. I would've never heard of him were it not for running into an article online about that release. I listened to that album nonstop back when I was about 16, feeling super cool for having such an obscure musician on my mp3 player. While it's not all great, it hit me during my super formative years so I'm very fond of it. It also gave birth to one of strangest videos I've seen on youtube.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aEfZX2M-QBQ

[soggy mittens]

Grammatics - Polar Swelling

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D-rMzCLQUl8

Ticks all the boxes for me.

[countertext]

There were a lot of great Atlanta bands in the '90s that tried hard to make it, but most withered on the vine with little video evidence. I found one here: Joybang!

They were a phenomenal live trio, thanks to Roe Ethridge's personailty and songwriting and Steve Lindenbaum's clockwork drumming. Roe went on to be a celebrated photographer, I'm not sure where Steve is these days. What about the bassist, you ask? Well, let's say the less said the better.

[antisymmetric]

Flamin' Groovies- She's falling Apart From the excellent (IMHO) Flamingo album- I'm assuming that no-one much ever listened to this, as they were a pretty underrated band generally. I've always really liked the chord sequence, particularly in the chorus- my playing skills aren't great, but I've had fun spending the time figuring out how to play it on my 12.

[MechaBulletBill]

Johnny Barakat & The Vestells - The Wedge

An awesome take on Dick Dale's folk-derived surf rock masterpiece. I found it either on sg101 or tdpri, bookmarked the link, but I can't find anymore about the band.

[shadowplay]

My entry? Anna's "Coming Down", off their album '101-ism'
.

I'm a fan of an earlier Anna, best known for the (absolutely not rock) single Systems Breaking Down, which if you'd been at my disastrously unsuccessful futurist Disko 'Die Zukunft' at Old Cathcart Church Hall in 1982, you'd have heard not long before the brawl that proved Glasgow wasn't quite Future ready.

To be honest I think the Internet has in many ways swept obscurity away, though I guess owning the actual records possibly counts for something but even that has diverged from the sort of journey you relate. Most stuff is just so easy hear nowadays, generally broken down and out if physical context. Even my Anna has gone from being rare like the yeti to be reissued...sadly sounding dodgy. Being old I remember people coming up to me in the street because they'd heard I owned a record and actually offering me money to tape it for them and the sheers struggle to get hold of even new records (distribution often incredibly arcane), let alone hard to get older ones.

D

[PorkyPrimeCut]

That Petrol Emotion - Can't Stop

Not hugely obscure but they rarely get mentioned these days, even though their output was fantastic. I can never get tired of this song & on a number of occasions over the years I've completely forgotten about it, only to hear it again & get that very same rush from the opening intro that I got when I first heard it. Absolutely brilliant!

[zhivago]

I agree David, it is pretty hard to call something obscure nowadays...owning the actual record is still pretty cool in my book