Música Obscura

01 - Last Of The Mohicans
02 - Marathon Man
03 - Baby Freeze Queen
04 - 40 Watt Solution
05 - Glory Eyes
06 - Monterrey Honey
07 - AMPs Of Sugarland
08 - Panama Slides
09 - Pine Box Builder
10 - Story Of Anna
11 - Condo Lights
12 - Ramon Finds Waterfalls
13 - Waterfalls
14 - Running Coyote Advances


Label: Rainbow Quartz/Laughing Outlaw

The following was borrowed from a review at http://home.iprimus.com.au/laurapalmer/cotton.htm
There putting strange things in the water supply down Austin, Texas way if Cotton Mather's second release in anything to go by. From the word go on "Last of the Mohicans", with a rip of feedback and a wailing FX-box, Cotton Mather's psychotic acid rock raises a pretty yet raucous kind of hell. But it's singer Robert Harrison's voice which draws the most attention. Somehow he's channelled John Lennon's spirit and reprocessed it through a Texan sneer, attitude, regret and anxiety wielded as one with hummable harmonies to boot.

There's only so far you can ride on nostalgia though, and thankfully Cotton Mather mix it up enough to avoid falling into the precipice where Oasis have dived before. "Monterray Honey" sees the band expanding from the traditional four piece, using a succulent harmonium rift that drifts across the tune like a blast of nitrous oxide. This is dreamy pop, celebratory yet thoughtful, and sometimes, like in "Pine Box Builder", down right scary, dark undertones rising to the surface.

There is something vaguely unsettling about hearing a band come so close to sounding like a contemporary Beatles, and it may hinder Cotton Mather's progress in the future. For now though it's enough to let this album wash over you. Some records are for thought and depth; others like The Big Picture, you have to just sit back and enjoy the harmonies.

Links:
http://www.rainbowquartz.com/artists.asp?BC=CM
http://www.popnews.com/popnews/cottonmather/
http://www.trouserpress.com/entry.php?a=cotton_mather

Encoded at 320K from CD. Includes CD artwork.

http://rapidshare.com/files/57468107/cmather_big_picture.rar

Password: music

Also see Kontiki and Cotton is King

01 - Camp Hill Rail Operator
02 - Homefront Cameo
03 - Spin My Wheels
04 - My Before And After
05 - Private Ruth
06 - Vegetable Row
07 - Aurora Bori Alice
08 - Church Of Wilson
09 - Lily Dreams On
10 - Password
11 - Animal Show Drinking Song
12 - Prophecy For The Golden Age
13 - She's Only Cool
14 - Autumn's Birds


Kontiki is Cotton Mather's 2nd album. If you liked the Austin, Texas power pop bands first album Cotton is King, wait until you hear this one! Some of these songs sound like the missing Revolver sessions. Right down to the backward guitar and vocals. Some of the songs are much more experimental than King, but all the "hooks" and great melodies are still waiting for you. Cotton Mather was formed 1991, named of course after the famous 17th century Puritan preacher and author. They disbanded in 2003.

From TrouserPress.com:
Harrison and Williams recorded Kontiki with some friends and brought the tapes to producer Brad Jones (Jill Sobule, Steve Earle), who helped them chisel out a record. The swirling opening chords of "Camp Hill Rail Operator" sound as though they are being piped in from Venus; tape splices and sound collages punctuate standouts like "Homefront Cameo," "Password" and "My Before and After" ("Cracked the code on the Rosetta Stone / Said the word for 'alone' is 'alone'"), Revolver-shaped nuggets so catchy that surgery may be required to extract them from your brain. The inevitable Beatles comparisons are rendered irrelevant by the quality of the songs and the imaginative recording techniques; Kontiki is an innovative power-pop gem that stands up, and stands out, on its own merits.

Links:
Wikipedia
Eternally Yours Blog - Great article, a must read!
Robert Harrison information
Trouser Press
Future Clouds & Radars - Robert Harrison's new Band

Favorite songs: Camp Hill Rail Operator, My Before and After, Spin My Wheels, and Lily Dreams On.

Encoded at 320K from CD. Includes CD artwork.

http://rapidshare.com/files/52564408/cmather_kontiki.rar

Password: music

Also see Cotton is King

01 - Native Son
02 - Daylight
03 - Convalescing In Spain
04 - Don't Drop The Baby
05 - She Lives (In A Time Of Her Own)
06 - Incognito
07 - In Like With You
08 - Woman In The Garden
09 - Waiting For The Rain
10 - Counting Sheep
11 - Perfumed Lies
12 - The Wanted Man



Back in the late 80's and early 90's I used to go down to Deep Ellum, a cool alternative area of town in downtown Dallas, Texas to hear lots of great bands. At the time there were lots of great music venues like Club Dada and Club Clearview, just to name a few. One night I got the chance to see The Judybats, a band from Knoxville, Tennessee, at Clearview. They were great! The band was made up of six nerdy, yet hip musicians. Interesting note, the song She Lives (In a Time of Her Own) is a song written by Roky Erickson of the Austin, Texas based 1960's psychedelic rock band The 13th Floor Elevators. If you like early 90's alternative music, you're sure to like The Judybats. Plus, I love their name.

The Band:
Jeff Heiskell - Lead Vocals
Ed Winters - Electric Guitars
Terry Casper - Drums
Peggy Hambright - Keyboards, Violin & Vocals
Timothy Stutz - Electric Bass & Vocals
Johnny Sughrue - Acoustic Guitar & Vocals

Favorite Songs: Don't Drop the Baby, Convalescing in Spain, and Native Son

Links:
Wikipedia
Native Son video on YouTube

Encoded at 320K from CD. Includes all CD artwork and 16 page booklet.

http://rapidshare.com/files/51539266/jbats_ns.part1.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/51542813/jbats_ns.part2.rar

Password: music

Hard to find Tommy Keene EP


1. Love Is a Dangerous Thing – 3:56
2. Driving into the Sun – 3:29
3. Down, Down, Down – 3:58
4. Alive – 4:17
5. Waiting to Fly – 5:13

The Musicians:
Tommy Keene — Vocals, guitar, keyboards
Brad Quinn — Bass guitar, back-up vocals, piano
John Richardson — Drums
Justin Hibbard — Guitar ("Driving into the Sun", "Waiting to Fly")



Yet another great and hard to find Tommy Keene album Extended play (EP) from my collection.

Links
Wikipedia
Keene biography
tommykeene.com

Encoded at 320K from CD. Includes CD artwork.

http://rapidshare.com/files/51214200/tkeene_soarc.rar

Password: music

Also see Based on Happy Times

1. What Can I Say
2. Dancer
3. Freezing Hot
4. There's Been A Mistake
5. Harder
6. Woman In My Dreams
7. All Your Lonely Hours
8. What You Need
9. Halo
10. Smile On Me




I loved this album back in college. I get a chill when I hear that great out-of-phase Fender Stratocaster sound in the introduction to the first song What Can I Say.

The Pousette-Dart Band was an American pop rock group active in the 1970s and early 1980s. Originally conceived in 1973 as a string band from Cambridge, Massachusetts. Comprised of Jon Pousette-Dart, John Troy and John Curtis.

Both Jon Pousette-Dart and John Troy are both still active in the music business.

Links:
http://www.pousette-dart.com/
http://www.johntroy.com/

320KHz

http://rapidshare.com/files/50469328/pousette_dart.rar

password: music

1. Nothing Can Change You (3:19)
2. Light of Love (3:00)
3. This Could Be Fiction (3:24)
4. Based on Happy Times (3:47)
5. When Our Vows Break (3:20) (Keene/Shear)
6. The Biggest Conflict (3:42)
7. Highwire Days (3:37)
8. Our Car Club (3:22) (Brian Wilson, Mike Love)
9. If We Run Away (4:06) (Keene/Shear)
10. Hanging on to Yesterday (3:53)
11. Where Have All Your Friends Gone (2:25)
12. Pictures (3:34)
13. A Way Out (4:09)


If you've never heard Tommy Keene, you've been missing out. Tommy Keene has been around for a while, and has released over 10 albums. Recently, I read that the Gin Blossoms had asked Keene, their hero, to go out on tour with them. Keene has always been one of my favorite musicians since I first heard him on vinyl back in the 80's. One of my favorite songs of all time is "Places That Are Gone" from his The Real Underground album. I've never heard a guy with so many hooks in his songs. He is definitely a musician's musician.

Based On Happy Times was released in 1989 on Geffin. What make this disc special, is his collaboration with one of my favorite song writers, Jules Shear. Jules co-wrote two of the songs and plays (sings) on the album as well. I've never heard a bad song come out of Keene. My least favorite song on this album is Our Car Club, which is actually a Beach Boys song, so I guess it doesn't count against him. I hope you enjoy Tommy Keen as much as I do. This CD is no longer available.

A Google search turned up this review...

Tommy Keene is one of those guys who should be much better known, though he is highly regarded by critics and a small group of fans (for example, a used copy of this out-of-print cd is currently selling for $99 on amazon.com). I’d always heard good things about him, and major music fan (with a particular interest in ‘60s and ‘70s music), historian, collector of high end rock memorabilia, and all around good guy Steve Potocin was kind enough to furnish me with a copy of this album for this review (thanks again, Steve!). Right away I was surprised, as the album is more straight rock ‘n’ roll than the “power pop” I expected, though the jangly guitars commonly associated with that sub genre do appear on stellar songs such as “When Our Vows Break,” “Highwire Days,” and “If We Run Away.” Elsewhere, harder rocking songs such as “Nothing Can Change You,” “Light Of Love,” and “Our Car Club” (a rather obnoxious Beach Boys cover) recall bands such as The Replacements and Soul Asylum, while Keene’s not particularly pretty yet effective nasal vocals (which bring Tom Petty to mind) are especially affecting on mellow, moodier songs such as “Based On Happy Times” and “A Way Out.” Keene isn’t above unleashing a guitar solo if it serves the song, and most of these tracks are memorable and catchy (if not immediately so), with intelligent relationship-based lyrics that veer towards the bittersweet (example: “all you’ve got to say is hanging on to yesterday”). Perhaps Keene wouldn’t win many points for originality, and there are a few merely solid songs on side 2 (“Our Car Club,” “Where Have All Your Friends Gone,” “Pictures”), but overall this is a really good rock ‘n’ roll record that makes me want to hear more from Tommy Keene.

I also found this information on Wikipedia.

Encoded at 320K from CD. Includes all CD artwork (14 page booklet), with pictures and lyrics to all songs.

Favorite songs: Based On Happy Times, When Our Vows Break and If We Run Away.

http://rapidshare.com/files/49786669/t_keene_boht.part1.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/49789540/t_keene_boht.part2.rar

Password: music

1. Hey Grandma
2. Mr. Blues
3. Fall on You
4. 8:05
5. Come in the Morning
6. Omaha
7. Naked, If I Want To
8. Someday
9. Ain't No Use
10. Sitting by the Window
11. Changes
12. Lazy Me
13. Indifference


The following review was borrowed from Wilson & Alroy's Record Reviews

Yet another unjustly forgotten 60s group. This is a weird story all around. Skip Spence, a budding singer-songwriter, was recruited by the Jefferson Airplane to play drums (!) in their original lineup. He cut one record with them and quit in mid-1966, at which point he and the Airplane's manager hatched a scheme of forming a new band in the same mold. Like the Airplane, Byrds, and Buffalo Springfield, the new group was to be a harmonizing alliance of singer-songwriters with a fan following of rebellious teenage girls. And like those groups, Moby Grape was to go within just a few months from initial rehearsals to full-blown recording sessions.

The plan almost worked: Spence landed four talented songwriters, all from the West Coast and all with extensive gigging credentials. The group's first album was a careful blend of compositions by all five band members. Released within weeks of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band, it was full of trendy pseudo-psychedelic two-minute pop songs. At this point, however, everything fell apart. The record company's efforts to hype the album's release (e.g., foolishly releasing five debut singles at once) were a total flop. The same week, three of the band members were busted for drug possession and (ahem) contributing to the delinquency of minors. The album's cover photo had to be modified when someone noticed that it showed a band member flashing a finger.

And so on. Things got worse and worse, with the group falling out with its manager, its performances deteriorating, and Spence consuming enough hallucinogenics to kill a stadium full of Deadheads. In early '68 Spence flipped out completely, running amok with a fire axe and landing in Bellevue for six months (!), which needless to say weakened the group's second album. The Grape cut a third album without him, and later a bizarre country-western fourth album with only three of the original band members, but the spark - and opportunity to cash in on the nation's Summer of Love cultural detour - was gone forever. Nonetheless, Spence cut a solo record in 1969; the other members released their own solo records throughout the 70s, 80s, and 90s; and various combinations of the five founders have regrouped to cut no less than four reunion records, all of them hard to get except by mail order - I've listed them, but omitted most of the solo records.

Lineup: Peter Lewis (guitar, vocals); Jerry Miller (lead guitar, some vocals); Bob Mosley (bass, vocals); Skip Spence (guitar, vocals); Don Stevenson (drums). Spence died of multiple medical problems, April 1999.

For more information on Moby Grape, check out Wikipedia

Encoded at 320K from CD. Includes CD artwork.

Favorite songs: Omaha and Hey Grandma

Download Moby Grape

Password: music

1. Deliver Love
2. Chain Within a Chain
3. If She Knew What She Wants
4. Trained For Glory
5. Different Sands
6. Eligible For Parole
7. She's In Love Again
8. I Didn't Know Your Smile
9. You Are My Heartache
10. He Tore My World Apart
11. Take The Risk
12. All Through The Night
13. I know You're Not Alive


Songs 1-6 (side one on the album) are 24-track demos recorded with a revolving cast of musicians, many of whom Jules didn't know before the sessions. He used the recordings to not only get his fresh songs on tape quickly, (usually six tracks a night), but to find new players he could use for his solo albums. Songs 7-14 (side two on the album) are more like home demos recorded on eight-track.

From djangos:
Though he's never been able to record a hit of his own, singer/songwriter Jules Shear has recorded several albums of highly accessible, hit-worthy material, and as a testament to his abilities, he's penned hits for others, including "All Through the Night" for Cyndi Lauper and "If She Knew What She Wants" for the Bangles.

Born in Pittsburgh, Shear began writing songs as a teenager. He relocated to Los Angeles in the mid-'70s, joining his first band, a typically laid-back combo called the Funky Kings. The band released one album for Arista in 1976. While "Slow Dancing" from the album (written by Jack Tempchin) would later be hit for Johnny Rivers, the three Shear songs were clearly the highlights of the album. Shear left the following year to form his own group, Jules & the Polar Bears, who released two critically acclaimed, though commercially overlooked, albums for Columbia. When a third album was rejected by the label, Shear forged on as a solo artist.

Signing on to EMI-America, he released two solo albums, 1983's Watch Dog and 1985's Eternal Return; both received critical praise but few sales. Once again, he was dropped by his label and unable to secure another deal. Shear then formed the Reckless Sleepers with the Cars' Elliot Easton. In 1988, without Easton, the Reckless Sleepers released their sole album for IRS, Big Boss Sounds; it failed to make much impact, though "If We Never Meet Again" from the album was later covered by Roger McGuinn. In contrast to the Reckless Sleepers' hard rock tendencies, Shear teamed up with the Church's Marty Willson-Piper for an all-acoustic, Dylanesque album, The Third Party, in 1989. The album ultimately led to a spot on MTV, where he hosted the first 13 episodes of Unplugged -- he left when the show switched to the single-artist format. Shear followed with two critically acclaimed, more or less pop-oriented albums -- 1992's The Great Puzzle and 1994's Healing Bones -- two of his finest albums to date. In 1998, he released Between Us, an album of duets for Highstreet Records. Shear moved to Rounder Records subsidiary Zoe Records for his April 2000 release, Allow Me, and to Valley in 2004 for Sayin' Hello to the Folks. 2006 saw the release of Dreams Don't Count on the Mad Dragon label. ~ Chris Woodstra, All Music Guide

Demo-itis was released after The Eternal Return, and never been released on CD

Digitized at 24 bit, 96 kHz

Encoded at 320K from original pristine vinyl album. Includes album cover artwork.

Download Demo-itis (part 1) and Demo-itis (part 2)

NEW SINGLE PART FILE: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=U9BPOJ68

Password: music

1. If She Knew What She Wants
2. Stand Tall
3. Steady
4. Change (Change)
5. The Fever's On
6. Her S/he Comes (with Pal Shazar)
7. Memories Burn Hard
8. You're Not Around
9. Empty Out the House (Throw it all Away)
10. Every Time I Get The Feeling




Musicians:
Jules Shear, Anton Fig, Tony Levin, Jeff Silverman, Rob Fisher, Richard Stekol, Pal Shazar, Moris Pert, Richard Bredice, & Bill Drescher.

From Wikipedia:
Jules Shear is an American singer and songwriter born in Pittsburgh in 1952. Although he has had only one minor hit as a performer ("Steady", which reached number 56 on the US charts in 1985), he has recorded almost twenty albums to date. He made his first appearance on vinyl with The Funky Kings; he also led the critically-acclaimed but commercially-unsuccessful pop group, Jules and the Polar Bears, along with later groups The Reckless Sleepers and Raisins in the Sun. He also conceived (and hosted the first 13 episodes of) the MTV series Unplugged.

His songs have been more commercially successful in the hands of other artists, notably Cyndi Lauper, whose recording of "All Through the Night" reached number 5 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1984, and The Bangles, whose recording of "If She Knew What She Wants" reached number 29 in 1986. Singer/songwriter Iain Matthews (still using the spelling "Ian" for his first name at the time) recorded an album of Shear's material, Walking A Changing Line: The Songs of Jules Shear, with synthesizer-dominated arrangements (and containing some previously-unreleased songs by Shear), in 1988; Matthews had previously recorded songs by Shear on other albums.

Shear was the subject of a song by 'Til Tuesday, "J For Jules", after the end of his relationship with that band's singer, Aimee Mann. He also co-wrote the title track of that album, Everything's Different Now, with Matthew Sweet. Shear is married to singer/songwriter Pal Shazar.

The Eternal Return is Jules Shear's 2nd album. It has never been released on CD, which is hard to believe.

Digitized at 24 bit, 96 kHz

Encoded at 320K from original pristine vinyl album. Includes artwork and track listing.

Download The Eternal Return

Password: music

1. Mystic Love
2. From This World
3. Still You Stay
4. Egypt
5. Lil' Dragon
6. Climbing To The Sky
7. No One Else
8. Sapphire Skies
9. 1000 Desires





The Band:
Cinde Lager - vocals & additional keyboards
Steve Monaban - bass
Forest Padgett - drums
Eric Schermerborn - guitars
J. McGill Winston - keyboards
Alan Whetton - Saxapone on Sapphire Skies

I haven't been able to find any information on this band. I bought this CD in 1990 out of a used CD bin. I liked the cover and the fact that they had a female singer. The liner notes indicate their management was in Ardmore, PA.

This CD is definitely out of print, since I couldn't find a reference to it anywhere on the net.

Encoded at 320K from the CD. Includes artwork and track listing.

Download East of Eden

Password: music