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The Monkees Shorty Blackwell (1969)
The closing song of The Monkees’ least successful album Instant Replay is a real head-scratcher, an indulgent avant-guard piece of God doesn’t know what.
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Bee Gees Lemons Never Forget (1968)
“Lemons Never Forget” is a forgotten track from the Bee Gees’ Horizontal which is considered the heaviest album they ever recorded.
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The Fall Bonkers in Phoenix (1995)
This was supposed to sound as if you were at a festival (e.g. Phoenix!) with all the sounds of the different music tents merging together.
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Pink Floyd Several Species of Small Furry Animals Gathered Together in a Cave and Grooving with a Pict (1969)
The track consists of several minutes of noises resembling rodents and birds simulated by Roger Waters’ voice and other techniques, such as tapping the microphone played at different speeds, followed by Ron Geesin providing a few stanzas of spoken word in an exaggerated Scottish burr. There is a hidden message in the song at approximately 4:32. If played at half speed, Waters can be heard to say, “That was pretty avant-garde, wasn’t it?” Also, at the very end of the rant, Waters is heard to say, “Thank you.”
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Lou Reed Bottoming Out (1983)
“Bottoming Out” is told from the point of view of a person an awful lot like Lou Reed at the time, but not exactly, into discipline and control but weakened and tortured by addiction and a deep hunger for redemption, a drunk by the sound of it, with a searing drama about a terrible night and a bad accident.
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Nine Inch Nails This is How It All Begins (1999)
From The Fragile era, this song was on the NIN.com website. I have never found it anywhere else.
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Bryan Ferry She’s Leaving Home (1976)
from the All This And World War II Soundtrack Album
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Siouxsie & the Banshees Il Est Né, Le Divin Enfant (1982)
On November 26, 1982, Siouxsie and the Banshees released a double AA-side single off their album A Kiss in the Dreamhouse that included the song “Melt!” penned by bassist Steven Severin and their cover of the traditional French Christmas carol “Il Est Né, Le Divin Enfant” (English: “He Is Born, The Holy Child”) which comes from the region of Provence in France and was first published in a 1874 collection of Christmas tunes titled ‘Airs Des Noël Lorrain’ compiled by the organist of the Cathedral Saint-Die, René Grosjean.
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Yoko Ono Greenfield Morning I Pushed an Empty Baby Carriage All Over the City (1970)
Using a discarded recording of Harrison on sitar and a Lennon break beat, Ono exorcises about a miscarriage through that hallmark wailing.
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Iggy Pop Five Foot One (1979)
New Values was released in April 1979 by record label Arista. Although well-received critically, the album was not a commercial success, only reaching number 180 in the Billboard Top 200 album chart. Videos were made for “I’m Bored” and “Five Foot One”.
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Pavement Cherry Area (1997)
Rare gay panic-themed b-side from the Shady Lane EP
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Black Sabbath Spiral Architect (1973)
The band invited an orchestra to play on ‘Spiral Architect’ “but couldn’t cram all of the musicians and their instruments into Morgan Studios. They ended up at the nearby Pye Studio along the road, with Ozzy trying to explain what he wanted them to play like some sort of mad conductor. He had no written music to give the orchestra, he just hummed the part and they picked it up.”
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Kraftwerk Heavy Metal Kids (1971)
A few years into the 21st Century, an astounding new recording arrived onto the world wide web – a lovingly remastered professional radio recording of the lost original Kraftwerk line-up. The opening track is listed as “Heavy Metal Kids” an intriguing title but one that begs the question is this just the bootlegger referencing how heavy the music sounds or were Kraftwerk referencing William Burroughs? One thing is certain, it is heavy.
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ABBA Tiger (1976)
The city is a nightmare, a horrible dream / Some of us will dream it forever / Look around the corner and try not to scream, it’s me.
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Sonic Youth Queen Anne Chair (2001)
from the Noho Furniture sessions.
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David Bowie All Saints (1976)
A gnarly squall of low-end electronic noise punctuated by sprite-like coils of treble, this track originally intended for Low more than matches the original industrialists for uncompromisingly ugly beauty and offers a stark contrast to the far less visceral instrumental pieces which made the album’s final cut.
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The Rolling Stones Schoolboy Blues (1967)
“Schoolboy Blues” (1970) is a parody of Dr. John’s “The Lonesome Guitar Strangler”, released on his 1969 album Babylon. It was written and played by Mick Jagger to be the Stones’ final single for Decca Records. The Stones were leaving Decca and starting their own record label, but Decca claimed they were owed one more single under their contract. So the Stones delivered this song, with its context and language chosen specifically to anger Decca executives; there are explicit references to fellatio and anal sex in the lyrics. Decca refused to issue the song on an album, although about 100 promotional 12″ singles of it were pressed in the United States.
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ELO Look at Me Now (1971)
The sound is unique on this recording in comparison to the more slickly produced ELO albums of the subsequent Lynne years, incorporating many wind instruments and replacing guitar parts with heavy, “sawing” cello riffs, giving this recording an experimental “Baroque-and-roll” feel.
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The Grateful Dead What’s Become Of The Baby (1968)
“What’s become of the Baby” only includes Jerry Garica’s vocals, and some odd back ground, wind sounding noises. The song sounds like it was recorded in a stadium. Similar to how the the national anthem sounds when sang in some kind of stadium.
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Neil Young Last Dance (1973)
Eighth and final track from Neil Young’s (in)famous and unissued on CD live album Time Fades Away, taken from the HDCD test pressings made around the mid-1990s.
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Leonard Cohen Queen Victoria (1972)
Recorded by Cohen alone in his Tennessee hotel room in 1972.
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The Beach Boys Funky Pretty (1973)
A cosmic love song to an astrological lovely, it mounts its grit in a swirl of harmonic complications with a defiantly baroque choral signature: Vivaldi meets the Regents on a magic synthesizer built on economical and even monotonous musical premises that delight in their unreasonably complex development.
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Led Zeppelin Four Sticks (1971)
The title came from the fact that drummer, John Bonham, played with two sets of two drumsticks, totaling four, a result of him being very frustrated with not being able to get the track down right during recording sessions at Island Studios. After he grabbed the second pair of sticks and beat the drums as hard as he could, he recorded the perfect take and that was the one they kept.
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My Bloody Valentine Forever and Again (1985)
An unfocused and derivative song of post-punk goth rock that offers no indication of the revolutionary guitar sound the group would later create.
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The Cure A Boy I Never Knew (1986)
Arguably the saddest song The Cure has ever done, so sad that its not even an “official” song and lost in the catalogue.
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Fleetwood Mac Tell Me All the Things You Do (1969)
Kiln House is an overlooked album that marks Fleetwood Mac’s transition with the departure of Peter Green from being an acclaimed Brit-blues group to a much tighter alt-rock group. The kicker, “Tell Me All the Things You Do” is a blistering number that stands as one of the finest achievements of Fleetwood Mac!
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XTC Pulsing Pulsing (1979)
B-side for a single from XTC’s Drums And Wires album about blood and where it goes.
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The Who Real Good Lookin’ Boy (2003)
This weird paean to Roger Daltry’s “good looks” was one of two new ‘Bonus Tracks’ The Who released on their 2004 Then And Now compilation.
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Sparks England (1975)
Obscure b-side of the equally obscure “I Want to Hold Your Hand” Beatles cover single and one of Sparks’ jewels of the 1970s.
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Radiohead We Suck Young Blood (2003)
Like Thom Yorke fucking around on a piano while someone clapped in another room and it was accidentally recorded, but not one of Radiohead’s GOOD songs where Thom Yorke is fucking around on a piano while someone claps in another room and it was accidentally recorded.
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Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band Upon The My O My (1974)
The one really good if compromised song on the first of Beefheart’s two dismal commercial albums Unconditionally Guaranteed, about which Magic Band drummer Art Tripp recalled, “When the band finally got our album copies, we were horrified. As we listened, it was as though each song was worse than the one which preceded it.”
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The Kinks He’s Evil (1977)
From Preservation Act 2, a 1974 concept album, and The Kinks’ twelfth studio album. It was not well received by critics and sold poorly (peaking on the Billboard 200 at #114).
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Fugazi Ex Spectator (2001)
“Ex-Spectator,” the first time you hear it, appears to do nothing. But the more you listen to it, suddenly all the disparate bits (double drums, loud smashing chords at intro, busy-as-hell breaks) make sense as a unified whole. That’s smart songwriting – refusing to rely on overused riffs, intensity for the sake of intensity and song constructions that do what the audience expects them to.
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Alice Cooper Refrigerator Heaven (1970)
None of Easy Action’s songs have ever been performed live by Cooper since the 1971 tour in support of their third album Love It to Death.
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Tom Petty I Don’t Belong (1998)
Tom and the Heartbreakers do a rare unreleased song from the 90s that I found on a rare bootleg.
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The Byrds Tribal Gathering (1968)
It’s so hard to place, it’s such a strange track. What were they on when they wrote it? How do you get a time signature like that? They were such a strong writing force, individually and collectively, and there was always something explorative about what they were doing as a unit.
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Blink 182 I Wanna Fuck A Dog In The Ass (2001)
Though many people do not know it, all of Blink 182’s songs are about oral and anal sex except for two which are about suicide and one which is about divorce.
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Bob Dylan Seven Curses (1963)
What makes “Seven Curses” work as a song by Dylan, is that apart from being a haunting and moving story sung well to an exquisite tune, there is no bile and no vindictive feeling coming from the singer, for he is still singing the same song in the same way with the same accompaniment – the emptiness is endless. But instead the repeating of “him” is like the hammer blow. It seems quite extraordinary that this was not released as part of Freewheelin.
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Throbbing Gristle Zyklon B Zombie (1978)
B-side of the 1978 single “United”, “Zyklon B Zombie”, has been seen as a parody of punk rock music.
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Paul McCartney Kreen-Akrore (1970)
The last track on McCartney’s solo debut is a four-minute instrumental garnished with some guitars, bird calls, and a splash of vocal harmony, but it’s mostly McCartney playing the drums.
*
p.s. Hey. This weekend, a kind, sort of semi-stranger to the blog has commandeered the space to give you a gig full of lesser known oddball musical instances by largely well known musical artists from mostly the past and often distant. It’s fun. It’s low-key enlightening. So find out what Jamie Fitzroy has unearthed over the next two days’ course, thank you. And thank you for thinking of all of us, Jamie! ** Bill, Hi, B. I read them out of order too. It was fine to do so as far as I could tell. Gigs there, right, and excellent! Envy about the tough choices. Let me know what the Vaginal Davis show is like. I hope/trust they’ll show some of her brilliant early videos. ** Steeqhen, So, sexy maybe for masochists. A MES leftover, that makes sense. Great about the Ssnake event, and no surprise, and … great! It’s a superb book. She’s really great in general. Why were/are the Irish discriminated against in Scotland? Weird. Probably too long a story. I should know my history better. I guess try to productively take in the depth charges from the state of feeling off as that can be instructive. ** jay, Cool. It’s terrific, she’s great. Haha, that’s amazing that the Kirk thing got your friends to read ‘Pale Fire’. Wow. Water into wine and all of that. Gotta play that game. Gotta get off my ass and do that. Or at least cue it up. Have a thoroughly splendid weekend, mister. ** Dominik, Hi!!! You’re most welcome. Countdown to SCAB! No, I don’t know the interviewer. I’m definitely going to go into the interview less open and cheerful than I normally do. But, anyway, the film got a great review today in a much more populated context, so fuck them, haha. Love about to employ GPS to try to find the closest Office Depot, G. ** Steve, So often the case. Early Swans with more electronics sounds promising naturally. ‘The Long Walk’, don’t know it. I’ll see if it’s around here. More of a weekend of errand running than physical packing, but, in a word, yes. We’re having a hard time getting a NYC screening, so I don’t know when I’ll have news about that. Immediate news is that RT will screen in Baltimore at a really cool festival at the beginning of October. So we’re edging closer, at least. Everyone, Steve has two reviews for you to peruse this weekend: … of Dag Johan Hauguerud’s DREAMS (SEX LOVE) here, and of Oliver Hermanus’ THE HISTORY OF SOUND here. ** Carsten, Hey, pal. The bureaucracy here in France is thick as thieves, but there does always seem to be English speakers at end of the hours-long waiting on hold. You are living the life, man. What a great turn your move turned out to be, as you knew it would be. I’m too busy and pre-trip stressed as per usual, but I’m looking forward to the cities and the screenings and the people who show up. ** HaRpEr //, She’s great, seriously worth reading. People always seem to say that about Damon Albarn. I haven’t really paid attention to him after Blur’s heyday. I’ll check out the Frost Children newbie. Right, I never think of McCourt or Firbank, say, as qualifying as purple prose writers, but I guess they are, relatively speaking. I’m not sure how to describe their kind of writing. Dense, extremely detail oriented, presentationally extroverted, but … ? I don’t know. Robbe-Grillet’s description is spot-on, of course. Unpredictable, exactly! ** Uday, Listen to your gut and get that picaresque book out of limbo. Seems like. It’s true that writers get to be young for a long time. Maybe because people’s immediate idea of a writer is a wise old sage? Which is odd in and of itself. But, hey, lucky us. Well, I’m post-young now, but it did take a long time before I became, whatever, a veteran. ** Hugo, Sometimes pop stars try. I think Miley Cyrus is trying? I remember when Sean Cassidy tried to go New Wave progressive, and that was the end of him. Thanks for sharing your friend’s ‘Closer’ thoughts. Interesting. You can tell her I wasn’t making any kind of broader statement about anything. Broad statements are for the birds. Peace be with you. ** darbz 🐻, The fish only gussied the place up. And now the bear has something to eat. You can send 5 pages, no problem, but it’s going to take me a while to get to it given my upcoming trip where I will be unlikely to have any time to pleasure myself with reading things. Fellow commenter Carsten is very knowledgeable about Native American wisdom and practices. I will watch the video and try to learn something. You have a great weekend too. I just have a lot of things I need to get finished before I’m largely incommunicado for, whatever, 10 days. So just making a list and checking it twice and that kind of stuff. But, yeah, make the most of yours. ** horatio, Hey! Hm, I haven’t thought about Simon & Garfunkel in ages. What did I used to think … Um, I think I kind of liked how adventurous they got as they went along. My main S&G thing is that when I was 15 I helped organise a concert by them that they did as a benefit for this leftie Presidential candidate Eugene McCarthy that I was a campaign volunteer for. I met them briefly, and they were sort of nice. Why, are you interested in them? Yay, thanks for coming to the screening. I have to remember to hit Quimby’s while I’m there for sure. Crazy day big time there. I’m good, thank you, and you be good and have a really swell weekend. ** Nicholas., Oh, yeah, I remember that era. That was an exciting point. Maximalists are highly needed, so … good! You sound really fiery. Excellent! Here’s to staying power. ** Okay. You already know what you’re in for or were in for this weekend. Please do your utmost. See you on Monday.
Now available in North America 
Hey Dennis,
The history is interesting as Scotland seems to have a very mixed history on Ireland: there’s a lot of similarities and shared history, and I’m not that educated on the millennia of history, but at the same time I imagine that Ireland always being viewed as savage lands of lesser beings by the British didn’t help. I think because Glasgow has Celtic Football Club, there’s a large Irish population, but at the same time that probably draws a lot of negative attention. Near my friend’s accom was spray paint saying UVF (Ulster Volunteer Force which without getting into the whole complex intricacies of Ireland and the 20th century, is like the reverse IRA that hated Catholics and wanted to be considered British, not Irish) as well as KAT which stands for Kill All Taigs which is another slogan that basically means Kill All Irish. The latter is most likely football hooliganism, and I’m not afraid or actually worried that I’m gonna be picked up by a white van and killed, just interesting to have all this history connected to my identity that is basically forgotten or not known about outside of Ireland and the UK (and even then, most people in the UK aren’t taught anything about Irish history and probably just assume we were dumb poor savages). The fact that the cultures of the UK and Ireland are very similar makes the differences here really stand out, like when you’re dreaming and then suddenly you realize that this person you dated as an adult didn’t go to your primary school, and you realize you’re not where you thought you were…
I feel ashamed to not know many of these, especially for artists like The Cure who I love. I did know the Radiohead song, though I’m not really a fan of that song nor the album it was on. I should try and give a lot of these a listen whilst waiting in the airport or the trainride home…
Anyway have a good weekend, and I will try to have one too!
hi dennis!
i’ve never heard of renee gladman or ‘event factory’ they both sound super interesting so now i wanna check them both out!
seeing dj sprinkles/terre thaemlitz mentioned was a treat! basically every dj sprinkles/terre thaemlitz song is like that. her music is famously full of ‘audio footnotes’ as she calls them. thanks for steve and you mentioning the new mix tho cuz i wasn’t aware of it! terre thaemlitz/dj sprinkles is my favourite musician!
thanks for your advice about trying different forms. i really appreciate them and it helped me think about it better. at the very least it’ll help me feel less frustrated.
@Carsten
thanks for the recommendation! ethnopoetics sound super interesting! do you have a starting point you’d recommend?
Hi!!
Oh wow. I’ve never heard most of these! Thank you, Jamie – a very fun weekend treat!
Countdown to SCAB indeed! Literally just a couple of days!
Well, yeah, that’s absolutely understandable. I guess they’re lucky you didn’t call the whole thing off. How did it go? Congratulations on the positive review, though! Fuck everything else.
Did love find a (hopefully nearby) Office Depot?
Love coming across a post that compares Yungblud to Ville Valo in his late ‘90s/early 2000s era and not seeing the resemblance, Od.
@ Jamie, congratulations on this! Would seem to be a very worthwhile selection and I look forward to perusing its wares.
This very morning I sprung for this new record by my friend and fellow Dundee Fine Art graduate Cara Tolmie in collaboration with the mighty Rian Treanor. Their album is on the Planet Mu label and in my opinion is really good. Cara is now living in Stockholm and as a performance artist is doing very well for herself by all accounts.
A cute pic of Cara and I here back in the day.
Thanks for sharing Jamie. All of these are very unique – that ABBA one is particularly “huh?”-inducing. I’m not a huge fan of their music, but their early phonetically-taught stuff before they could speak English is truly bizarre. I’m a bit resistant to stuff that’s delibarately horrible with fun music, but the accidentally strange ABBA stuff is incredible. “I am behind you/I always find you/I am the tiger”… words to live by. If I could add one thing, I’d probably choose “Black Eyed Dog” by Nick Drake, but that song may be too famous to include.
Yeah, it’s really great, the Kirk/Pale Fire thing I mean. I’ve accidentally let Nabokov obsession creep up on me for the past few months, so I’m really in the mood to read more of his stuff – I managed to find a cheap “collected short stories” thing by him in a charity shop recently, which has definitely been excellent. I’m glad you also like his writing, I’ve always thought he’s about as good as unemotional writing can get.
Haha, I would maybe advise against “Limbus Company”, it’s in a particular Korean genre of game that’s designed to be as frustrating as possible in order to draw money out of consumers by offering tolls for easier paths through the thicket. I don’t believe it’s on the Switch either… but who knows. Best to you, hope your weekend is extremely spectacular too.
I’ve heard of most of these bands and know some well, but funny enough have only heard the Throbbing Gristle song.
That’s a great story about your Simon & Garfunckel/Eugene McCarthy experience. I was last at Quimby’s 2-3 years ago, still great. I picked up Dr Doom dog poop bags for my dog owner friends.
I enjoyed the Vaginal Davis show (at Martin–Gropius-Bau). They showed The White to be Angry, which I’ve heard of a lot but somehow have managed to miss all these years. Also a lot of band footage, and her odd little sculptures and paintings which I’ve never seen.
Bill
Hi Dennis!
I discovered your work this year, and this is my first time commenting! Just wanted to say The Sluts has quickly and easily become my favorite mystery story of the 21st century, and the George Miles cycle has been profoundly affecting to me thus far. I began with Try (Ziggy and Calhoun’s friendship will stay with me a long time), and am about halfway through Closer. Last night I dreamt that a Frenchman kept following me around and plead with me to come to his home and let him eat my shit, and I rarely dream about books I read, so it must have had a pretty profound effect on me, haha.
Anyway, thank you for the new obsession and for the occasional nightmare. I really regret not being able to make it to your upcoming showing of Room Temperature in Chicago. I’m in Fargo, and it would be pretty amazing if Room Temp could make it into the 2026 Fargo Film Fest we hold here each year.
Best wishes!