Who Is The Most Obscure Artist You Listen To?

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by Jerryb, Dec 29, 2012.

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  1. TCEckels

    TCEckels Forum Resident

    Well, not a whole lot of parameters specified for posting who my favorite obscure artists are, but these are some names that I've been listening to via my Ipod for the last year or more.....

    Chris Anderson - Old Friend
    http://www.chrisandersonband.com/


    The Boomers (Ian Thomas' band from early '90's to 2003
    http://www.ianthomas.ca/Ian_Thomas/Home.html
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugwDYM13gl4

    Randall Bramblett
    http://www.randallbramblett.com/
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hIEoL0VMFlo&playnext=1&list=AL94UKMTqg-9B4Mad73RJ54_uoc_Bi6ATf

    Stephen Bruton
    http://www.stephenbruton.com/
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9mGOLBaf8I

    Austin Collins
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e_U80VAhb8k

    Delta Moon
    http://www.deltamoon.com/Delta_Moon___Home.html
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_y2koaQML4

    Livingston
    http://www.livingstonmusic.co.uk/wp/
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_BVYhzcnP38

    Romi Mayes
    http://www.romimayes.com/
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLWgJeoXwbc

    Robin Overall
    http://www.amazon.com/Shadowlands-Robin-Overall/dp/B000IMV1R6

    Guess that's enough for now.....gotta be pretty obscure these days if I can't find stuff on YouTube on 'em. If there's any interest I'll post more. Thanks for looking and hopefully listening.

    Tom
     
  2. Picca

    Picca Forum Resident

    Location:
    Modena, Italy
    Terry Allen, unknown legend. Texas music at its best. Country music's Randy Newman. His Lubbock On Everything: one of the greatest double studio albums of all time in my humble opinion. Pure genius. album-lubbock-on-everything.jpg
     
  3. Steve Carras

    Steve Carras Golden Retriever

    Location:
    Norco, CA, USA
    Sailcat for their 1972 hit "Motorcycle Mama"
    David Dundas who someone else cited

    Two white Brits with hits in 1975, sounding like blakc US singers:
    Johnny "Black Superman" Wakeliun
    Pete Wingfeild - "18 with a Bullet"

    Russ "Music i the Morgan Manner" Morgan and his orchestra, who scored many hits in the 1930s,1940s,and 1950s with his sweerter than sweet music style.
     
  4. Steve Carras

    Steve Carras Golden Retriever

    Location:
    Norco, CA, USA
    Or old time MGM radio/movie character actor who played severeal roles,inc.the title, in the "Wizaord of Oz
    ",either.:) LOL
     
  5. Yannick

    Yannick Forum Resident

    Location:
    Cologne, Germany
    Well, if I go along those lines you suggested, Pat McLauglin would be obscure, too, and Raisins in the Sun would be the "obscurity supergroup". Or would that rather be Low Stars?

    To most people on this board, Van Dyke Parks is a household name, but to most people out there, he would be pretty obscure, especially when they listen to his solo work for the first time.

    I'm rather reluctant in mentioning artists on a list such as this on a board with such a high presence of people from the industry, so as to do their careers no harm. I mean, today we live in the days of "sounds like (insert list of popular artists here)", and if you as an artist are included on a list calling you obscure such as this one, a list who was compiled by some musically very knowledgable people, it might mean an almost nil percent chance of getting signed anymore because the list is googleable in an instant.

    And I listen to these people because I like their music, so I want them to make new records. You know as well as I since how long Tonio K has not made a new album.
     
  6. johnny q

    johnny q Forum Resident

    Location:
    Bergen County, NJ
    Well.....they ARE! obscure :) It simply means "not known about" the thread is not meant to disparage anyone or lesson thier chances for success.......... In fact, if I were a music industry insider perusing this forum I think I would be more inclined to go check out a name I never heard of after seeing people rave about them.
    JQ
     
  7. hurple

    hurple Forum Resident

    Location:
    Clinton, IL, USA
    hmmm....

    Bonepony
    The Greenberry Woods
    The Swinging Steaks

    I think two of those are even still functional groups...
     
  8. Fitzroy-paradise low. Heard this In Jamaica on a music video channel. Great modern pop/reggae sound from this guy. His second album is real garbage though. there are no bad songs on the first title paradise low. Definitely worth finding out about. You may find on YouTube but not in any stores.
     
  9. Icenine1

    Icenine1 Forum Resident

    Oren Ambarchi Audience of One. "Knots" is just killer!
     
  10. Yes, but it doesn't count unless they're also obscure in Belgium. :wave:
     
  11. ginchopolis

    ginchopolis Forum Resident

    Location:
    ginchopolis, usa
    One of my all-time favorite bands.
     
  12. Harlanator

    Harlanator Forum Resident

    Location:
    Alameda, CA, USA
    Karlheinz Stockhausen - German experimentalist, beloved by John Lennon, strange, haunting and demands full immersion
    Cecil Taylor - well known as a ground breaking avant-garde pianist, very, very few people actually listen to his music. Once one becomes used to listening to such truly seismic, tectonic, abandoned piano "playing" it's addictive. He plays the piano the way Buddy Rich plays the drums, infinite variety, total command.
    Malo - the salsa band of Carlos Santana's brother - Jorge Santana - great introduction to high charged salsa, fantastic band, no one seems to follow them. I believe they still perform.
     
  13. ggergm

    ggergm another spring another baseball season

    Location:
    Minnesota
    He's hardly obscure if you are into bluegrass music but I have a complete vinyl collection of John Hartford, plus most of his CDs. I listen to his best record, Aereo-Plain, maybe two or three times a year, and much of the rest of his catalog along the way.
     
  14. SoundAdvice

    SoundAdvice Senior Member

    Location:
    Vancouver
    Kinnie Starr
     
  15. ElizabethH

    ElizabethH Forum Resident

    Location:
    SE Wisconsin,USA
    Slagerij Van Kampen: A Long Walk On a Short Pier.
    Found the CD years ago in a cut out bin. Since then i also found the LP.
    Great music. His other later stuff is totally uninteresting..
    This is one of the Cds I use for auditioning equipment.
     
  16. dlemaudit

    dlemaudit Forum Resident

    Location:
    France, Paris area
    great power pop
     
  17. dlemaudit

    dlemaudit Forum Resident

    Location:
    France, Paris area
    this last week it was for example :
    The Finkers
    les Thugs
    Demons claws
    Mojomatics
    Earls of Suave
    Doctor Children
    andre Ethier
    La secta
     
  18. Yannick

    Yannick Forum Resident

    Location:
    Cologne, Germany
    Sunny Levine's group Maata Haari surely is obscure. I got into them through the Ry Cooder connection, as his son Joachim Cooder used to play percussion for the band in the early 00s. Sunny Levine has become a producer in his own right by now. The other band members such as bassist Giuseppe Patané, guitarist Eamon Ryland Shumov and violinist Amir Yaghmai join him rather often on his productions. So does his father, producer Stewart Levine, on various horns and reeds. But it's the mixing, sampling and programming skills that make Sunny's productions sound unique. Juliette Commagere also maintains a presence with this band as a backup vocal collaborator.

    I have no idea as to why he is not more popular, but the main reason for this is probably that most of his body of work is out of print and to make matters worse, almost nowhere to be found digitally, either. The albums he and his band put out were mostly self-released up until the mid-00s. His solo album "Love Rhino" and the EP which contains 5 tracks from the long out of print self-titled Maata Haari album should be available in larger quantities, though. Look for the songs "Walk Right", "Sweet And Naive", "Daylight", "Love Rhino", "Holding You" from those 2 discs. They represent Sunny's pop side but he also got an artsy side to his work. Maata Haari's double CD "Art And Money" has got both sides seperately. Listen to "All Too Happy", "Spaceman", "Under the Sun", "The Mountains", "Get With It", "Up There" , "Crazy Fool" and "Good Life" if you can find that album.

    He's done some amazing production work for other artists as well. Feel free to check out the following songs if you are curious: "Wear And Tear" by Pete Yorn & Scarlett Johansson, "Love Like Sunshine" by Orelia Has Orchestra, "Death On the Beach" by Bangkok Starters featuring Ry Cooder, "LA River" by Asa Soltan, "Sideways Smile" by Keepaway, "Ourselves Together" by Alekesam, and "Catalina" by Trilambs. "We Don't Have To Worry" by Corlea Botha is probably impossible to find on the web, though.

    Sunny Levine has also got a new solo album ready for release but he has already postponed it for the sake of an EP with rather plinky-plonky piano music and has plucked it apart to get some of the songs into a movie. "As For Tonight" by Sunny Levine featuring Orelia is quite nice but I would very much like to hear the whole album in lossless rather sooner than later.
     
    littleugly likes this.
  19. Yannick

    Yannick Forum Resident

    Location:
    Cologne, Germany
    And while I'm still at it, how about these 2 bands whose recent albums Steve Berlin of Los Lobos fame produced, and who both quit because not enough people turned up at their shows anymore. It's hard to believe people don't want to hear handmade rock music anymore, especially when you listen to the 2 records in question, "Good To Be" by Backyard Tire Fire, and "National Bohemian" by The Bridge, a band from Baltimore.

    There is also lots of great stuff coming out these days which largely stays under the radar because it's self released an thus suffers from an inherent lack of promotion in the national and international media.

    For example, look for Michael Sackler-Berner's folksy debut album "MSB" which Bob Thiele, Jr produced and Ed Cherney engineered. The recording budget went into high profile studio musicians and it's completely worth it (David Mansfield of Alpha Band, Val McCallum of Jack****, Jim Keltner, to name but a few). Look for him on youtube. It's unbelievable this album never actually was on CD apart from CD-Rs the artist sold at gigs.

    "Witness" by Nathaniel Street-West from a few years back, which was produced by Mark Howard, is both raw and polished at the same time. Modern folk blues, I'd call it. Street-West plays all the guitars by himself, Darryl Johnson guests on bass, drummers are Tony Mangurian and Jim Keltner, who obviously liked this kid so much he decided to produce his next album. Unfortunately, that one has not seen the light of day yet, but I'm very much looking forward to it.

    Other albums I would like to namedrop are "Bounce Back" by Creed Bratton, "Long Time" by Nicole Gordon, "La Vie En Rouge" and "Another Sweet Mess" by Kirstin Candy, and my newest discovery "Picasso's Party" by Dogs Of Bali (the duo of singer Dyan Ondrovchik and multi-instrumentalist Grant M. Olsen sounds like Emmylou Harris if she were more into progressive rock than country, and features studio stars such as Tony Levin, Jerry Marotta, Jim Keltner (yet again) and even L. Shankar).

    Also look for the group Buffalo Nickel's album "Longplay 33 1/3" which was later reissued as "The Albatross" under the moniker of their lead singer Gary Stier. They could have become as big worldwide as an Americana version of Bon Jovi due to Stier's songcraft and Charlie Starrr's guitar prowess alone, but their label Universal dropped them shortly after their album came out, as part of their merger with Seagram. Stier reportedly was even out of music for a while. I have no idea what he does these days, but in a better world, he should be all over the radio with his next hit instead of selling antique furniture somewhere.

    Mind you, all these albums came to my attention thanks to websearches for the names of the amazing studio musicians playing on them.

    This thread is incomplete without the mention of singer Holly Palmer and her 2nd album "Tender Hooks" which was produced by Howie B and David Kahne and was deemed too uncommercial for a release by Warner Bros at the time. When she finally got out of the contract, she released it by herself, and it's an amazing piece of electronic pop.

    You surely notice the music on the airwaves these days sounds so same-y no matter to what station you tune in. The reason is good stuff like this goes largely under the radar.
     
    littleugly likes this.
  20. ROLO46

    ROLO46 Forum Resident

    RVJ did not record blues
    He was clueless in this genre and many others imho.
     
  21. hurple

    hurple Forum Resident

    Location:
    Clinton, IL, USA
    I was looking forward to great things from them. The store I managed at the time played their CD almost constantly. We sold quite a few, too. I guess it just wasn't to be. How many stories like that are there in the music biz? Far more than there should be, I bet.
     
  22. RickStark79

    RickStark79 Forum Resident

  23. getitgoin

    getitgoin Forum Resident

    Location:
    LA, CA, US
    Scratch Bongowax
     
  24. mantis4tons

    mantis4tons Forum Resident

    Location:
    Denver, CO, USA
    Dalek I Love You were phenomenal. There is a decent, if clunky, fansite for the band that has their 1985 cassette-only album, Naive, available for download.

    A few relatively obscure artists I've been listening to lately:

    Yura Yura Teikoku were a Japanese psych-rock band that I would put forward as one of the best acts of the last 20 years or so. If they had sung in English, they would have been huge (at least by indie rock standards).

    Shintaro Sakamoto, the lead singer of Yura Yura Teikoku, put out an excellent solo album last year. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t08i_cWdcbM

    Drive Like Jehu were a 90s hardcore/indie band from San Diego featuring John Reis (of Rocket from the Crypt). Yank Crime is the album to get. They played driving angular indie rock with dueling guitars. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YCrp8VJDZvE
     
  25. AbsoluteDestiny

    AbsoluteDestiny Forum Resident

    Location:
    Mystic, CT
    Pop-O-Pies,
    Novo Combo,
    The Royal Macadamians,
    Mucky Pup,
    Deathray (Sacramento, CA Band)
    and a lot of really obscure late '70s-early '80s dance music
     
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