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Underground > Radio & Music >

Recommend one song

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22:53 / 08.09.03

I need some new music in my life. a while back we had a thread that people used to recommend one song for people to track down on the filesharing servers. i got a lot of good music out of that, music I wouldn't've come across otherwise.

let's do it again.

Me, I'm gonna recommend "Pancakes" by Marvin Pontiac (aka John Lurie).

go get it.

m.

at the scarwash

23:25 / 08.09.03

I would highly reccomend "bostich" by Yello.

Matthew Fluxington

01:15 / 09.09.03

You miss the good ol' fashioned Barbelith Song Pimpin' Club, don't ya?

Well, please remember that one of the rules of those threads was that people MUST describe/explain the song they are pimping. Otherwise, it's just a boring list thread and it's not too helpful.

01:19 / 09.09.03

'Book of the Month' by Lovage (Dan the Automator, Mike Patton, Jennifer Charles) because it features great Automator production, mixed with incredibly hilarious/sexy lyrics, and great interaction between the two vocalists. The whole album's great, but this is probably the most singularly accessible track.

foot long subbacultcha

07:43 / 09.09.03

arghh I have to choose one...

ok - "Go", by KaitO

07:49 / 09.09.03

Okay, thanks for the headsup, flux.

Pancakes, by Marvin Pontiac, is a cruisy ballad with a deep, soft baritone vocal over a sort of african vibraphone lead. the song's about a woman who visits her grandma, keeps bears in her hair, and won't make the singer of the song pancakes.

is cool.

m.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

10:56 / 09.09.03

Okay, so mine's kinda predictable and anyone who doesn't already appreciate its true wonder is obviously a replicant and should be retired tout suite.

BUT... (I fear I may be repeating myself...)

Patti Smith. Horses. It just doesn't get any better than this. The cool Burroughs-esque spoken intro... the dumb rock'n'roll bit in the middle... the total fucking freakout it develops into...

When the world ends, I want that to be playing. Really fucking loud. (Yes, I did watch "that" episode of Millennium. And I was tripping. But it left a deep mark.)

12:00 / 09.09.03

Jamelia: Club Hoppin' ft Bubba Sparxxx
Pop/RnB/hiphop collision. Guaranteed to make your ass shake in time.
Off the new album (I've had it for months tho) which is a bit too pop for its own good.
Should be huge. But won't be. Shame.

Jack The Bodiless

12:39 / 09.09.03

'I Wanna Go Where The People Go', by The Wildhearts.

One of the best examples of their fantastic mix of pop, punk and metal. Harmonies like the Beatles, melodies like the Ramones and Cheap Trick, and occasionally more brutal and frenetic than Pantera. This one has their usual chopping guitar riffs and a football hooligan chorus to die for, as well as the line "I wanna be where the cunts like me are buried six feet underground". I still don't know what Ginger means by that, exactly, but it definitely rocks.

I think I may be obsessed by the Wildhearts at the moment.

I'm Rick Jones, bitch

12:48 / 09.09.03

"Call of the West" by stan rideway's old band Wall of Voodoo. Country meets 80's synth indie rock and they go to mexico to find themselves. The WOV song everyone knows is "Mexican Radio", but this is better stuff by far.

13:48 / 09.09.03

The Man Who Loved Beer, by Lambchop.

It haunted me for about two years until I found the album it came from - acoustic, entirely miserable and utterly beautiful. I don't know if I'm still allowed to use the term 'alt.country', but that was certainly what it was called when it was released... it is, essentially, a song to mooch around to.

If Jack hadn't already mentioned them, I would probably have said something about The Wildhearts as well. So that's two votes in their favour.

I'm Rick Jones, bitch

14:07 / 09.09.03

What's the song that plays when they're fucking in the headlights at the end of Lost Highway? If I knew what that song was I'd recommend it.

14:38 / 09.09.03

The Lost Highway song is "Song of the Siren" by This Mortal Coil and it is indeed absolutely magnificant.

My fave song at the moment is "I'll call before I come" by Outkast, off of Stankonia. Great hook, great beats, gets me humming along and fantasising I'm a southernplayapimpallistic in gator skin shoes while I clean the kitchen.

Matthew Fluxington

16:00 / 09.09.03

I recommend Mandy Moore's cover of Blondie's "One Way Or Another" from her upcoming Coverage album. It fucking rocks. You'd think it would just be lame karaoke, but it's really exciting and super pop, and rocks harder than most every other faux-new wave rock band currently going. It's also very cute in how it's going for breathy-sexy but ends up kinda ironic-spunky instead.

And just as it starts, you hear the drummer say "1, 2, c'mon Mandy!" How can you not love that?

Boy in a Suitcase

16:11 / 09.09.03

Gotta be:

"Meet Me At the Airport" by Baader-Meinhof

Because it's the most evil song ever.

Regrettable Juvenilia

11:53 / 11.09.03

‘Guitar Anthem’ by Chicks On Speed featuring Peaches

Isn’t it great when you know the moment you first hear a song that it’s the one you’ve been reading about and dying to hear? And you knew it was always going to be great, but it’s even better than that… This is the record that joins the dots between the current ‘nu’ iterations of riot grrl and electro and punk rock and synth pop… This is the bastard daughter of ‘Walk This Way’ and ‘LT Tour Theme’. This is intelligence and stupidity, this is deadly serious comedy, this is a treatise on cultural attitudes to gender, technology and the myth of ‘musicianship’ in rock… This is a manifesto you can dance to (yes, again). This is an instant classic, 100% anthem as it is, but the finishing stroke of genius is the inclusion of Peaches’ appropriately contrary and combative guest verse: “C-o-S may not play guitars, but uh, P-E-A-C-H-E-S plays guitar… I play guitar… and I love it!”

uncle retrospective

23:16 / 11.09.03

Do you realize? By the Flaming Lips.

Turn it up really loud and sing along.
Loudly.

02:39 / 12.09.03

Patti Smith. Horses. It just doesn't get any better than this.

Utterly wonderful song (great album), but is now forever coloured by the fact that it's on The Hobbit jukebox (if you remember the establishment), and one particular Hawkwind-lovin' bartender now chants along in a West Country accent, every time it comes on:

He saw: arses arses arses arses arses! (&tc.)

My recommendation is my favourite ever New Model Army track: Eleven Years. It came out when I was seventeen and it still expresses so much of how I feel. It mixes magic with mundanity, despair with indomitability, it teeters on the edge and it's raw with emotion roughened by experience...

Forever running even when we're standing still,
Driven, hearts on fire, as the whirlwinds blow
And shout it out inside: 'I'm proud of you! I'm proud of you!'
Ten thousand footsteps echo down a Brixton road.

Eleven sweet years, still no nearer home,
A hundred thousand miles through this battlezone,
Still high on the wire, above the hollow darkness,
We try not to look down. We try not to look down.

05:15 / 12.09.03

I'm comming off a huge Elton John's Greatest Hits kick and what better to take its place than my Imperial Teen jones. Be thankful this thread is only asking for one song...

Imperial Teen
Our Time
On

The whole album is great but Our Time has really got my number right now. Its upbeat livingroom-dancing music that starts out with a playful little piano jingle for a dozen seconds or so before the drums and vocals pop in.

Yeah we are dancing tonight
Under a strawberry light
And its our time

All the girls are dressed in leather
And the boys are wearing feathers
It's our time

Its a fucking 70s Rocket Man style jam that has the good sense to end well under the three minute mark.

You can wear what you want
You can say what you want
'Cause it's our time

All the little girls sway
It's a holy holiday
And it's our time

It makes me want to put on a wig and play spin the bottle in a room with shag carpet, vinyl furniture, and a rock fireplace.

We will blow
Until it glows
It's on fire!

Hey, jump the line!
This is our time
Don't look behind

We are in time.

Its a manifesto. Joycore style. You need it in your life. Can a brother get an Amen?

08:53 / 12.09.03

War Against Sleep - Story Of Adam

I saw this guy play live recently with a knackered old keyboard, a CD player and microphone in the corner of a pub in Kings Cross, a complete revelation. Shades of people like Nick Cave and Scott Walker in the epic sleazy intimacy of it all. Looks like his drug of choice might be Benylin.

Matthew Fluxington

13:14 / 12.09.03

Bio is 100% correct about that Imperial Teen song, and the early Elton John stuff.

16:49 / 12.09.03

Trash Can Sinatras: Earlies (from I've Seen Everything)

16:52 / 12.09.03

Everybody Knows by Leonard Cohen. 'Cause if you don't have any Cohen.... what the hell is wrong with you?

Phex: Dorset Doom

17:56 / 12.09.03

'Amplifier' by Jucifer. Think the best parts of 'In Utero' sludged up a notch with a pretty little surfer girl singing.

22:38 / 12.09.03

"Mr.Brown" by Bob Marley. Because it's not on Legend, and it conjures. Conjures heads to bob, hips to sway, any part to uncoil and catch the flow.

We're The Great Old Ones Now

09:33 / 13.09.03

'Mercury' by the Ronsons.

09:58 / 13.09.03

I suggest everybody a singer: Franco Battiato. He has this incredible skill to put very hard philosophical texts (influenced by sufi and hesoterism) on a good, delightful pop music. Suggested titles: "Cerco un centro di gravità permamente", "Voglio vederti danzare", "I treni di Tozeur". At your disposal for the translation of his verses.

17:25 / 13.09.03

Damn! That sounds awesome! I've never heard of the Ronsons before but I'm gonna go right out and find the album that has 'Mercury'.

Thanks, Sam!

02:48 / 14.09.03

I have no idea what it means, but it's full of soul:

'Un lobo por tu amor' by Mana, okay it's 'a *something* for my love' will figure it our later...

03:16 / 14.09.03

"It Mek": Desmond Dekker
A perfect groove for slow-mo dancing.

08:33 / 14.09.03

"Rock Steady" by The Marvels, found on the '100% Dynamite' CD. Because it's a flawless alchemical marraige of funk and rocksteady.

10:24 / 14.09.03

"Go", by KaitO

I'll second this one. Exciting, novel punk-pop to lift the spirits.
Demands to be played loud.

05:58 / 15.09.03

would have to be kelis's milkshake...

my housemate won't stop giving me shit about this, because when he first played it for me it was about 4 am and i was shitfaced and hated it, and bitterly ranted about how wrong it was: this is shit, it's too fast, it's horrible... of course, the next morning, it sounded fantastic. it sounds like a milkshake, only healthier, slick and bubbly and wonderful. and it has the best, best chorus:

my milkshake brings all the boys to the yard
and they're like, it's better than yours
damn right, it's better than yours
i could teach you, but i'd have to charge

08:22 / 15.09.03

My recommended song for the week is "I think I'm in love" off of Moldy Peaches "unrealeased cutz and live jamz 1994-2002"

It is dreadful. I could probably sing better than that and I can't sing to save my life. But the bloke is singing the part of a drunk stupid person, so that's an excuse.

It's great to hear something so fun that it doesn't need production values.

It feels like a song which all your mates love but you've never actually heard the origional of, but you sort of know it really well from their drunkenly singing it all the time.

08:35 / 15.09.03

After much deliberation, I think I'm gonna recommend

"My Friend Jack" by The Smoke

because it is possibly the ultimate in fantastic freaky psychedelic pop obscurity - it's got a great foottapping 60s pop tune, a guitar sound so spaced out in could make Kevin Shields weak at the knees and the most bloodcurdlingly obvious 'hidden' drug references ever..

..the best thing is that apparently the BBC decided it was perfectly innocent and didn't ban it. Clearly it's just a simple tale of a nice chap who travels the world sampling different kinds of sugarlump. And who "watches the hawk fly high to hail the setting sun". Also features the fantastic announcement that "On the West Coast he's real famous / kids all call him Sugar Man".

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