bah, milos beat me to it. foetus uber frisco, foetus under glass, the foetus all nude revue, phillip and his foetus vibrations, foetus art terrorism, you've got foetus on your breath, scraping foetus off the wheel, foetus uber alles, just plain foetus, and all other varieties of foetus. and how'd you like the foetus songs i threw on that tape mix i sent? 'lust for death' and 'i am surrounded by incompetance' if i remember correctly?
judging by the stuff on the mix you sent me, i've actually been listening to a couple of bands lately that you might dig. 'gun club' and '100 flowers', both very good. you might also like 'the talking heads', if you havent heard them already. i havent fully gotten into all the early stuff i have by them yet, but 'little creatures' is one of the best pop albums i've ever heard, definitely one of the best that i own.
i just cant recomend tom waits enough. for me all the stuff after 'heart attack and vine' is just unspeakably cool and weird, but it's all good and all worth listening to for yourself.
if you want something odd but good check out klaus nomi, weird guy from the early 80s who sings parodic synth-pop covers of oldies [which rival the originals, in my opinion; 'you dont own me' is an instant fave of mine] in an operatic falsetto, great stuff. nomi died with hiv in '83.
for more good cheese, the sparks are also quite good [and they've bee around like, forever], i have a pretty good 2 cd best of by them which i've been enjoying immensely. i recently heard their newest album [lil' beethoven] and it's not what one would expect at all, the cheeky cheesiness factor is still there [especially on songs like 'ugly guys with beautiful girls' and 'suburban homeboy'], but it's all, very oddly, not conventional pop music at all. the instrumentation is more in the forefront, with the lyrics just sort of thrown in the background, often just one line repeated over and over
["-how do i get to carnegie hall?"
"-practice, man, practice"]
again more seriously, a band that i've been quite obsessed with recently is 'the handsome family'. actually a husband/wife duo, she writes the lyrics and he does the music. they're sort of a weird country/folk group that does really provocative, depressing little songs, which often seem more like morbid, disjointed semi-stories [the wife i think started out as a professional writer, before her and her husband started releasing music]. anyway they're a recent favorite and in particular their album 'through the trees' has very quickly become one of my most listened to albums in the last two months since i first heard of them.
if you havent already, might i suggest jonathan richman and the modern lovers? richman was the guy who acted as the comedic love-minstrel in 'something about mary'. his stuff is very unabashedly square, and especially some of his later stuff [he has a song about vincent van gogh which has the classic chorus line: "vincent van gogh, well what have we here? the baddest painter since jan vermeer!"] might not be for everyone [though it's definitely for me]. but at least check out the first album ['the modern lovers'], it's a great garage rock album from the early seventies [though it wasnt ever released until years after it was originally recorded]. richman cites the velvet underground as a major influence, and even has a song about them. also amusing is the 'jonathan goes country' album.... which pretty much speaks for itself.
i'd strongly suggest the severed heads, but er, good luck finding them...
suicide is another cannonical group that you should give a chance. they're often credited as punk icons, but i think that has more to do with their reputation as a couple of whackos than their sound, which i think starts out closer to maybe "no wave" sounding, but catchier, and then by the second album just turns ridiculously catchy and awesome.
and speaking of "no wave", the residents are a group that has to be heard to be believed, and even then chances are you wont believe a band like them ever existed [let alone has been putting out all sorts of strange music along with mixed media products since the late 60s / early 70s]. 'duck stab' and 'the commercial album' are my favorites, but any of their great cover albums ['the third reich and roll', which is sort of a mangled collage of top 40s hits, 'stars and hank forever', part of their "american composers series", where they cover on the first half, hank williams [1], and on the second half, john philip sousa, or 'the king and eye' [the title is actually the king + a little residents eyeball icon thingy], which as you might have guessed is the residents doing elvis, as only the residents can.]. they also have a few really great concept albums, such as 'eskimo', which is all "genuine traditional eskimo music" from an entirely fictional eskimo culture, 'god in three persons', which is actually one long story, all sung and with great backing instrumentals and vocals, about a two-bit cowboy huckster who tries to use the mysterious healing powers of a pair of siamese twins he meets on the street to make a killing, and ends up falling in love with one of them, madness ensues..., or 'wormwood', which is all musical stories from the bible, interpreted by the residents... great idea executed quite well. unfortunately i think their sound generally degrades with the introduction of keyboards [too midi sounding for my taste, the residents are really at their best when they have a higher degree of creepy dissonance], and their stuff after the 80s tends to be a mixed bag.
i dont know if i sent anything by wire on that mix, but if not, you'd be doing yourself a huge favor to own 'pink flag', and '154' [their first and third albums, respectively]. pink flag is especially worth checking out if you want to hear the most experimental and refined of the major first wave british punk bands. just make sure you get the rerelease of pink flag, with the bonus tracks [including one of their very best songs, 'dot dash'].
damn, there are plenty i'm no doubt forgetting, but eh my fingers are getting tireeed, time to take a break. hope somebody gets something out of this...
Last edited by linespalsy; 08-30-03 at 01:36 AM.
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) for some suggestions.
) are great for starters. 