Cool in the Xxtreme !
Sixties dance jazz funk instumental from harpist Dorothy. Complete with organs, flutes and bongos it is driving classy joyful music .

The album also contains the awesome "Action Line " which is weirdly atmospheric and deeply strange

A trippy sounding track from the One-man-with-variou-people-helping-out band "Netherfriends. A Korg making weird sounds in the background, piano, a nice drum beat, and some pretty good vocals too.

�sound and instrumentation:Slightly garage-sounding psych rock with Portuguese lyric- creative use of 1960s sound processing methods to give a somewhat spacy aspect. This is one of the more commercially rocking tracks from a very creative and groundbreaking psychedelic rock group.

Pat Fish of Northhampton, England, is not a rock star for reasons which might include his naturally reticent and embarassed nature, excessive amounts of Oxford education, and the vagueries of the marketplace, but would not include his songwriting talent, which is massive, if perhaps a wee bit limited in scope (no weird chords, all songs about heartbreak, drunkenness, or cannibalistic fantasies about the Prime Minister). "Big Saturday" is a rousing near-rock number in Pat's heartbreak mode. His singing is liquid, soulful (but not shouty), tender, and helpless in the face of love...a love that MUST remain unrequited for the good of other friendships and sundry considerations of duty and fidelity. At least, I think that is what is going on in this simple, yet devastating tune. For more info, see http://www.jazzbutcher.com/htdb/albums/sex.html

The title track from Goldfrapp�s second LP is everything pop music should be � sexy, glamorous, smart and weird - but rarely is these days. If their debut album was all about, in the duo�s own words, �Ennio Morricone and disco�, then the follow-up is all about disco and�Ennio Morricone � only wrapped in a shimmering gown early 1980�s inspired electronic textures. Electro-clash with heart and soul, a Madonna song with 170 I.Q., a tune for Milva to sing on Moonbase Alpha � I could go on and on�

From the godfather of filthfy rap comes this FUNKY,slamming tune. It tells the story of trucker with a CB radio(timewarp) who is, in his mind anyway, the baddest bastard around. On his journey he picks up a transvestite hooker, masterbates, has a fight with the Grand Dragon of the klu klux klan, claims to be related to Mohammed Ali, and drinks a bottle of wine. The killer rhyme is "We got to the room, pulled off her clothes, and the funk from her p***y started f**king with my nose." If you don't mind that sort of talk, you'll love this cut.

Considering how much I like this track, I'm surpised I didn't recommend it earlier. To me this is the standout from the band's seminal 1991 album 'Loveless'. To MBV fans, this track might seem an obvious one to recommend, but I think it sums up their appeal very well, with its beautiful ambient noises and simple but catchy melody. MBV's trademark use of weird echoey effects on the vocals and guitars is in full effect, and it's quite beautiful.

Funny, fast, w/ weird stream of conciousness lyrics. Mary Prankster (a funky mix of punk, rock, and rockabilly) is in-your-face, vulgar, clever, and original. Also great live--check out MaryPrankster.com for tour dates.

"I'm really stoned, and I think mom put acid in my orange juice again"

this song is weird but so catchy! and it can mean something else if u know what i mean haha

Great weirdofunk song, it demonstrates best aspects of the sound of the seventies turning into the eighties. The insanely catchy bloop-twang bassline was sampled by Daft Punk for HarderBetterFasterStronger, but this is a gem in its own right. Five minutes and ten seconds go by amazingly fast when i'm listening to this baby.

short, bouncy cover of the broadcast song.
it's interesting because it removes all the dissonant electronics that make up the "broadcast sound", leaving a much purer-sounding piece of 70's style pop-psych.
in a weird way, this now feels like the alternative universe original version, and the original song the cover.
i love the giddy woooh-ing in the chorus.

The first track from the first of Joni�s �jazz� LPs of the late 1970�s is all about opposition and equilibrium, (as are all her songs from this period). It is both richly melodic and dense/chant-like in structure, empty and lush in arrangement, its propulsive/hypnotic groove studded with Jaco Pastorius� weird, atonal bass speed bumps. Joni�s words/voice/performance is likewise wildly romantic and knowingly jaded simultaneously. The song is the sound of best singer/songwriter ever elegantly/effortlessly pushing the envelope.

i heard this song for the first time in spain at the purple weekend. the dj (mike stax) is as rather famous guy in the mod/garage/60's-scene. so i didn't have the guts to mail him about it for a year or so. but eventually i did and he gave me the details and told me that it was his girlfriend ho spun it. the song is a weird version of black sabbath's paranoid. i love this stuff. can be found on some german comps various artists as well as c&b comps. i saw the original cornet single on ebay a couple of months ago for a mere $180.

dreamy, ultrascandinavian mellow forest music played on drums and electric organ. beautiful. simple melodies that make me think of mist, small cabins in the woods, owls and little lakes.
try listening to this when you're far from civilization. it's amazing.

It took me a long, long while to �get� Gorillaz. Oh come on, who didn�t like �Clint Eastwood�? I dunno, having sunshine in a bag is a nice lyric to repeat when people are pissing you and your shit off� yet, �Clint Eastwood� didn�t make me a fan.

No, in fact, no Gorillaz track did more to bring me into the fold than �Dirty Harry�, with its amazing keyboards, bassline and children�s chorale�

It�s just been a while since I�ve come across pop music that was so far off the beaten track, that it redefines what is �mainstream�. This is always fun for music lovers, but once again goes to prove that noone with taste thinks the cookie cutter approach to popular music is the right way.

Well I�m a Gorillaz fan now, maybe three or four years late, but I�m a fan for sure. �Demon Days� has quickly jumped up to �Heavy Rotation� status in my last.fm and musicmobs profiles in a heart beat.

It�s weird, because someone brought a pre-release copy of �Demon Days� for me way back in April, but I listened to it a few times and then ignored it, forgot it for the most part (if you ignore the iconic billboards and posters everywhere across London). I�m famous for that though, I tend to err on the side of not believing the hype, a la Public Enemy.

It was only about three or four weeks ago, after my flatmate�s accidental stop on the �Dirty Harry� video one night, while I was in another room working.

Said keyboards, bass line and chorale, made me stop what I was doing, get up and go into the living room, calling incredulously as I went, �What are you listening to?�

That my friends, is all Big Mami wrote on the matter�

One of former drummer Brian Bennett's best tracks. Mellow space funk with synthesizers, a deep bassline and weird sounds. Almost gives the feeling of floating around in space.

vocals, guitar, drums, synthesizers. Flaming Lips songs remind me of impressionist paintings with little bursts of color everywhere. This song isn't as colorful as some of their others, but it's definitely likeable. The lyrics can be interpreted as deep, but they're delivered really casually in a flowing manner. This isn't a sparse piece. There's little interesting details happening all the time, like intermittent cymbal crashes to little guitar moments to weird synthesizer noises. It creates a texture that's interesting to listen to, but at the same time simple enough to listen to without exploding your brain or something. A really enjoyable piece overall.

By late 1983, when Altered Images' third and final album, Bite, was released, Altered Images were already dead in the water. The group had never made any particular headway in the US, where their blend of Siouxsie and the Banshees and the Monkees (not to mention Claire Grogan's bizarre, baby-talk hiccup of a singing voice) was just a little too weird for mainstream tastes, and in their native UK, their colorful look and bubblegummy 1982 singles "I Could Be Happy" and "See Those Eyes" had forever typecast them as a kiddie-pop band. Grogan was already branching off in her second career as an actress (she played the title role in Bill Forsyth's 1982 cult classic Gregory's Girl), and Bite seemed like a mere contractual obligation. For the most part, it sounds like it, too, but the brilliant single "Don't Talk To Me About Love," which led off side two, was a welcome surprise, and possibly the best song they ever did. Mike Chapman's production recalls his work with Blondie, while the disco-tinged electronic beat, chicken-scratch electric guitar part and rubbery, melodic bass part all sound closer to New Order's "Blue Monday" than Bananarama's "Cruel Summer." Grogan herself is in an entirely different mood than usual, with her newly-lowered singing voice (and slightly improved enunciation) displaying a rueful, almost petulant edge that suits the cranky lyrics. Only at the very end does she shoot into her usual helium-pitched unintelligibility, with an air of "See, I can still do this, I just choose not to anymore." Coupled with the most indelible chorus of the band's entire career, it all adds up to a minor masterpiece. Sadly, however, nobody wanted to know.
(AMG)

hell on wheels is a three piece outfit from oxelosund in sweden. this song is one of my favourites. how is sweden's best live band in their genre (weird-nothing-like-it-pop).

From a recent cd re-issue of a for once real lost classic from the enigmatic but well connected Mr Lincoln. This sort of mines the same seam as Syd Barrett but this is psyche pop firmly rooted in English folk/folkloreand the joining of a collage of three different song parts,what some would refer to as an opus or epic.Haunting nursery rhyme intro makes way for weird fairground interlude and lysergic distraction before concluding with the painfully beautiful intro section,before finishing way too early for its own good.They dont make them like this anymore and couldnt if they tried this is from a different time and place.

I can just imagine people sitting in a seedy New York movie theatre on 42nd Street back in 1961 watching a b-movie called "Satan in High Heels". The film is in its last reel and suddenly the main female character comes out on the nightclub stage wearing a leather outfit complete with 6-inch dominitrix boots and a riding crop! The music swells and she starts to sing:
---
i'm the kind of woman, not hard to understand,
i'm the one who cracks the whip and holds the upper hand
I'll beat you, mistreat you, til you quiver and quail,
the female of the species is more deadly than the male.
---
This little film isn't likely to have ever had a soundtrack album which in a way is sad because in addition to this camply little gem there are a couple of other cute vocals by Meg Myles and the other actresses in the film and some great jazz instrumentals sprinkled throughout as well. The fine folks at Something Weird Video have kindly put this little film out on DVD. You can also catch the scene containing this song on their compilation of movie trailers (where I first discovered this film) released to inform people of their DVD catalog.

King's X is my favorite hard rock band by far. This song is on Faith Hope & Love, a very psychedelic record with a sound different from their others. They must have had the fairy dust going on at the recording sessions for this album because the sound is just beyond bluesy and groovy. The guitar just sounds...slinky! that's the word. Slink and snaky and dark. Their harmonies are a wonder to behold as usual, and the lyrics are mystical and weird.

Originally done by Phish, but I kinda prefer Jimmy's version. Check out either one. Crazy, steam-of-conciousness (or something like that) lyrics, good beat. Weird song. But good, very good.

"Spittle is everywhere enraged...

This track has got such a weird message, and though it's not in the track, the lyrics at the end of the song really pull the song around. This is copied from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/He_Hit_Me_(And_It_Felt_Like_a_Kiss)

Goffin and King wrote the song after discovering that singer Little Eva was being regularly beaten by her boyfriend. When they inquired why she tolerated such treatment, Eva replied with complete sincerity that her boyfriend's actions were motivated by his love for her.

The song was written and intended as a sort of protest song from the point of view of an abused woman. Phil Spector's arrangement was ominous and ambiguous. Dave Thompson writes, "It was a brutal song, as any attempt to justify such violence must be, and Spector �s arrangement only amplified its savagery, framing Barbara Alston�s lone vocal amid a sea of caustic strings and funereal drums, while the backing vocals almost trilled their own belief that the boy had done nothing wrong. In more ironic hands (and a more understanding age), 'He Hit Me' might have passed at least as satire. But Spector showed no sign of appreciating that, nor did he feel any need to. No less than the song�s writers, he was not preaching, he was merely documenting." [1]

Upon its initial release, "He Hit Me" received some airplay, but then there was a widespread protest of the song, with many concluding that the song was an endorsement of spousal abuse. The song soon became played only rarely on the radio, as now.

Weirdly wonderful electro-folk-rock number.
It reminds me of "space oddity" by Bowie but in a K-Hole.

Just unbelievably awesome stuff!

It's a song about a suicide pact gone wrong. Amazing falsetto (and non-falsetto) vocals. Great glam production. Fantastic guitar solo at 1:40.

It's hard to choose just one track to recommend by this group, but I've settled for this one for now. 'Thank God it isn't Christmas' was a close runner up.

(weirdly, there are a few tracks by them that I would really rather never hear again in my life. Like 'Get in the swing'. Have you heard this track? I have serious trouble with it!)

Anyway, 1974 - great year!

This song is cute, jittery and even just a bit creepy. Teague Cullen is brilliant.

A great track with that supreme thick kind of arrangement that reminds me of Scott Walker's late 60s solo work.

Julie's vocal delivery is interesting. She's hipper sounding than Jackie Trent; more like a slightly looser Dusty Springfield. But she also has a weird kind of Annie Lennox way of sounding over the top.

The song is pretty simple, but the production and arrangement are so vibrant and colourful that it works very well.

An extraordinary track that begins its life as an awkward attempt at country and western before very quickly resolving itself an removing it self from conventional pop music ,seven minutes later your life will never be the same again.How four conventional instruments could carve something so cosmic is beyond belief,not cosmic in a Floyd way or even a Grateful Dead way but truly other worldly.Ferry,s pledge that he would do ANYTHING for his girl resonate against weird synths ,weird guitar and heart breaking saxophone ,the wiords become the music and the music becomes the words ,a truly cerebral conclusion is achieved This is used to staggering effect in the Daniel Craig film "Flashbacks of a Fool" and to hear and see this track is almost overwhelming.

A weird and unsettling piece of lounge music ,nightmarish backing vocals and jazz like vibes set the tone ,with a bontempi like beat pushing the track into shark infested waters and tropical scariness .A brief but perfect vocal passage from the sardonic Terry Hall sends this track in to the realm of sublime brilliance .

The Hellers were a group of L.A. ad agency people making a pop record, and it shows in this slick opener to their only album. I love the mellow pacing, the otherworldly early synths, and the so-corny-they're-good group vocals. Overall, it comes off like a weird, wonderful hybrid of '60s AM radio promos and mildly psychedelic pop.

A lovely triptych. Plaid keep their trademark odd noises (creaking doors and weird duck quacks in this track) more in check than usual, and the result's a little more conventional than a lot of their work, but it's also very pretty. It's tightly structured, with a happy little introduction followed by three sections marked by their different, though related, warm basslines. Each has a gentle melody of its own, and between each there's an interesting break. Warm, sophisticated, and full of beauty.

If ever there was an excuse to learn to speak French, this is it. Mesmerisizng guitar work, the back beat is so.....right. Just what the hell are they talking about?

The Crimea are the current guise of 90's Welsh indie band The Crocketts, who were pretty rubbish and best forgotten. However, this song, which I think was their first single as the Crimea, is fantastic. It has a great summery feel thanks to some steel drums, goood weird lyrics, and thanks to Davey Crocketts always ammusing fake American singing voice sounds like its come straight from 60s California. This is the only song I've heard by the band since they became the Crimea so not sure whether it's a one-off or they really have improved since the days of the Crocketts (Aberystwyths most famous band!).

Middle-Eastern '60s teenpop! Wild backup singers and a groovy guitar/flute solo add a distinctive, exotic touch to this lovers-from-different-cultures song. Still, it's Gene Pitney's incredible, dramatic singing that pushes this over into the "so weird it's wonderful" arena.

Belle Epoque (or La Belle Epoque as they were billed in the UK, presumably to further Francophy them) get shoved in that black hole of Eurodisco, based on the evidence of their perky 1977 cover of Black Is Black. Were I not a Eurodisco weirdo who is more than happy to delve into the careers of various sequin-chested nobodies I would never have learned the truth.

This song is as glam-rock as they come. The sound of Miss Broadway is that of a female Noddy Holder, complete with that talking-over-a-hairdryer voice. The orchestration is crunching and stomps all over the disco beat holding it all together.

In short: Silver Convention's older sisters who secretly like Wanda Jackson.

Sweet fuck, what pure morning joy. I get a maximalist bliss-out every time I play this. But then, wait, what's that weird jazzy comeback at the end of the song? It's like an army of ghosts of all the happinesses I've ever had coming back to haunt me. It's too much. Holy cow, it's a beautiful day.

A wonderfully weird piece of synth pop from Belgian electro pioneers Telex ,a sublime layered ,warm pop song ,both commercial and avant ,its repetition is its strength ,the tune seemingly going nowhere but all the time rushing to the part of your brain that says "this is f---ing brilliant,it celebrates life in the moment and the mundane and cannot fail to improve your mind and your day.

A grandiose harpsichord entrance gives way to almost choirboy melody regerding our lack of concern over this planet of ours , add to this a vaudeville waltz time middle eight sung through a megaphone and we are firmly in the land of strange though not just for the sake of it . Weirdly wonderful and a Top 10 hit as well

Memory's a funny thing. Especially romantic memory.
The first time I heard this song was two days after the first time I fell in love. Everywhere I went, I sang its earnest chorus "And you are always on my mind" in my head, thinking about the one I was in love with. In the shower staring at a bottle of hair conditioner, I sang, "You are always on my mind". On the subway, trying to ignore a potential fistfight about to break out, I sang, "You are always on my mind". In the supermarket produce section, holding the perfect shape of a lemon in my hand, I sang, "You are always on my mind". I was giddy and happy and the song understood. "Hey!" the song said, "Hey!" Will Oldman sang, "I got a new partner now!"
But jacket weather set in and things grew colder and we broke up and I was miserable and I stored the CD away on a top shelf with other memorabilia of that love who's happy power was really freakin' painful for me to think about now.
Things weren't always so bleak and I got me a new love and some years later, when I listened to the song again, I noticed something about the lyrics I hadn't before. See, in reality, the song isn't joyous at all. Will Oldman is singing about a past love, a love who is always on his mind when all the time he is seeing another girl, a different girl from the one always on his mind. He can't be with that girl. He has a new partner now. What I thought was a song about new joy was a song about nostalgic loss.
I didn't see how it was possible that I had suppressed that true meaning for as long as I had, considering how often I sang the song and how much it meant to me at the time. I knew the lyrics like the back of my hand and when I listen to music I dredge up all I can get from the lyrics like I'm a devout scribe interpreting the bible.
One of the beauties of pop songs is that they take on the flavour of your life at the time you listened to them and carry that flavour on to whenever you listen to the song again, while meanwhile you're morphing and changing and discarding what songs you don't want to remember that you loved and making mixed Cd's for long cartrips of the songs you do you do want to remember. This song is weird in that IT seemed to be the one that was morphing the next time I heard it and not me, like it was a person that had changed over time that I was encountering again.
Besides which, what a fucking lovely song it is.

The Kings of electro-funk strike again! This has got to be thier funkiest song. Weird synths battle against funky beats and moog style bass. Was there ever a better tasting jam? Pretty much undescribable, but fantastic. Simply fantastic.

I heard this, weirdly enough, at some random film festival in Rotterdam? In a short film, at that! Pretentious! Luckily I remembered to memorize some lyrics so I could search for them when I got back to the USA and my computer. This song is perfect for listening to while strolling an English park, preferably with an umbrella that is subbing as your walking stick (because you're the kind of person who needs one). You're just checking out a park that you've never been to before. If you then come home and eat some yogurt for lunch...I think you know what I'm talking about here: mood.

It sounds weird and great at the same time.

some nice tom waits-esque norwegian gipsy punk/ folkpop for you. You probably won't understand a word of what they're saying, as it's sung in a weird norwegian dialect, but most of it is about russian roulette, alcohol, corrupt priests, floods, polka, treachery and other things we enjoy here in norway. it's dramatic, fun and entertaining, so go ahead and buy it/ download from some file-sharing service. you won't regret it.

One of the more famous song-poems, this is sung by the man with a thousand names, Rodd Keith. Being English, I had never really heard of the song-poem concept until an article in (I think) Cool & Strange Music magazine. Then this compilation CD came out and, wow, pinch my cheeks and call me a convert.



Anything that encourages the bizarre side of human nature gets my approval and song-poems certainly do that. Especially the right wing freaks, who seem to be over-represented in the genre. This is one of those very over-zealous numbers, stating (pre-Watergate) that Nixon is "a man of priceless worth".



What I love about Rodd Keith is that, no matter how banal or weird the lyrics kicked out by some Arkansas dweller are, he gives a sterling performance. This is no different. The spirit in which the song is written is strictly adhered to by Keith, adding of course to its overall charm.

The B-52's were one of several late-'70s bands for which there was no real category. With their modified surf guitar sound, their thrift-shop fashion sense, and their jokey demeanor, they certainly weren't in the rock & roll mainstream, but they exhibited none of punk's sneering rebelliousness or musical aggression, either � the only anarchy that seemed to interest the B-52's was of the sartorial variety. "Rock Lobster" was the first B-52's song to catch popular attention, and it's easy to see why. The minimalist guitar lick is like a beach-bum's rendition of the James Bond theme, the one-note organ ostinato complements it perfectly, and Fred Scheider's campy sprechgesang jumps out at you immediately. Yet despite the song's self-consciously weird texture and silly lyrics about earlobes falling off and communal towel coordination, there's a thread of darkness weaving through it. Make no mistake � this is not a song with hidden meaning lurking below the surface. But its surface is a little more complicated than it seems to be at first. For one thing, it's almost seven minutes long, and it does start to drag toward the end. Right when it does, you notice the mood getting darker � Schneider delivers lines about "having fun" and "baking in the sun" in a hoarse croak, and the guitar starts sounding repetitive in a slightly creepy way. Suddenly you realize that the whole song has been in a minor key, and as Schneider shouts and the guitar barks out its angular riff over and over, you start to wonder if maybe there's some kind of commentary going on here. But then Kate Pierson's angelic voice comes in with a surprisingly pretty falling harmony part that can only be described as a descant, which repeats several times, gradually paring itself down to a single phrase, and abruptly the song is over. The whole song ends up being a goofy party confection with a slightly crunchy center � a pretty satisfying overall flavor combination.
(AMG)

It's a cover of the Small Faces classic that's about as far removed from the original as it is possible to be. Instead of replicating the mod-beat pounder, producer Mark Wirtz slows the pace down, blends in all kinds of weird percussion instruments and gooes for broke with a kitchen sink finale. Some Small Faces rate this as bordering on blasphemy, I think it's an easy listening classic

Weird song. Great Song. Taylor Hollingsworth sings this one and its the perfect closure to the great album that is Outer South. It's sad and slow and yet it is able to make you smile and sing along.

I came across this on what's probably quite an obscure compilation called Surfbeat Behind the Iron Curtain Vol 2. I know very little about it. It's kind of like classic surf, but with some overtly 50s big band influences thrown in. The production sounds very odd - I'd guess this was recorded maybe in the early 1970s but I could be way off. Lots of nice horns and reverb-laden guitar and some weird radio-interference type effects.

A masterpiece of jazz meets garage rock meets middle eastern music by a musician who constructs his own instruments out of junk. The whole album is fantastic.

Weird song, with weird lyrics. Calm and melancholic.

the fairly stereotypical genre song title aside, this is a brilliant, totally weird multiinstrumental exotica track from the mind of french avantgarde-easy listening maestro Michel Magne. I'm really astounded by the way the arabic flute-thingy works alongside the voices. there's always a sense of controlled dissonance, wich really makes it stand out from other examples of the genre. The sheer diversity of the instruments used is another attention grabber- listening to this could probably bring you to a cultural identity crisis.
what this track does so well, like all other great exotica compositions, is conjure up an image of some exciting, fictional jungle swamp culture straight from the pages of some old style pulpy adventure stories. Was that a headhunter i saw over there?

on a post-moldy peaches roll today.
lo-fi, blackly humorous, unrelenting singer-songwriter antifolk material. the lyrics are a stream-of-consciousness portrait of life in lower-class america, filled with weirdo pop culture references. i fell in love with this song from a badly recorded live version, available on her homepage: http://www.kimyadawson.com/audio/10_Kimya_Dawson_-_The_Beer.mp3
there`s an album version of the track on "my cute friend sweet princess", but i think it lacks a lot of the drive from the live recording (and the sound quality`s not really that much better, anyway. i wonder how this would sound on one of those ludicrously expensive hi fi sets that guys in cornflower-blue shirts tend to buy)

"even though i`ve never ever been in a band,
i`ve got cool as black ice tattooed on my hand.." gotta love that line.

The Glow Pt. 2 was on so many "best of 2001" lists that it pretty much had to be true. The biggest Microphones fans even state The Glow Pt. 2 as being their favorite. That has to show something.
From the opening track you are immediately hooked. The first two tracks build up for my personal favorite, "The Moon." The moon has such a beautiful beginning that that alone makes it my favorite. The lyrics tell a little romance but still remain to keep the weird feeling when listening to The Microphones. Fuzz, drums, piano, and horns make up the pretty sounds that carry the song along. Of all the great songs this album contains, "The Moon" contains Phil Elvrum at his best.

These guys did some weird effects using pianos, ending up with spacey percussive effects.

An underrated '70s singer-songwriter, Ackles was a weird hybrid of Scott Walker and Brecht-Weill. He had a macabre, darkly humorous streak, but he could be almost embarrassingly sentimental at times; this is one of those times. It's a delicately orchestrated ballad about a guy whose family left him because he didn't have time for them. Comes from his best album, 'American Gothic.'

Another song from the Bang Contractual Sessions (see my previous writeup for "Ring Worm"). In this one, Van actually has a conversation with himself:

"You want a danish?"
"No, I just ate. I've just aten."
"D'you want..."
"Like, I want some bread up front."
"Oh, bread up front? You want a sandwich?"

The remainder of the lyrics is basically the phrases "have a danish," "you want a sandwich? have a sandwich," and "have a seat" repeated ad nauseam. (The song is only a minute long.)

Along with introducing the word "aten" and the phrase "bread up front" into our lexicon, this might rank as Van Morrison's strangest recording... and given the rest of the Bang Contractuals, that's saying something. You've gotta love his delivery, though.

I get the impression that even a lot of Pavement fans don't know this one very well, presumably because it's on a pretty duff album (wowee zowee). However, it's one of my absolute favourite pavement songs. Musically it is very quiet - it's essentially just an acoustic guitar, though the funny noises the band make are quite entertaining. However, I really love the structure: there's nothing that can be called a verse or a chorus there - he just rambles on until he is finished. It has the full extent of Pavement's lyrics - completely ridiculous, funny, and sometimes very moving. Plus, as ever, malkmus' weirdy voice is a joy to listen to. So, if you like the pavement style - slow, quirky, funny, and often amazingly beautiful musically, and you don't know this one, you should really look into it. There's a brilliant solo version of it you can get off Napster (legally - Pavement distribute this stuff) - search for "we dance acoustic" - means you don't have to cough up for the album too.