Settle a bet: Name a GREAT album that hardly anyone has heard.

Not a good or very good album-- a GREAT album-- either in its innovativeness, originality, or great songwriting, etc (use your best judgment regarding definition) that hardly anyone has heard.

(FYI: This is to settle a bet with a friend. I am arguing (wishful thinking, perhaps?) that anything truly great WILL find an audience sooner or later. I want to hear some counterexamples.)

margo guryan's take a picture

i have not heard of that... but that has a wikipedia page that isn't slated to be deleted. doesn't that suggest that it has an audience?

yeah it was also reissued. it's a cult favorite. but when you listen to it, that's not what it sounds like. the songs are so perfectly executed and also well sequenced... it sounds like something that would have been very famous

in general, i tend to think that the best art tends to never see the light of day. we very nearly never had kafka

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BPDv6pUsVCQ

Pontius Co-Pilot's "Madagascar"?

http://www.amazon.com/Madagascar-Pontius-Copilot/dp/B000056MRJ

Depends on your definition of "great" and "hardly anyone," I guess, but I love it, and it never made it much farther than its little local scene in Lexington, KY.

Self's Breakfast With Girls.

moreover, PEOPLE YOU MEET, self-titled. written and fronted by this guy Nathan Partain. self-released 2004. something that had it been promoted at all could have been an '00s sensation on the level of a primetime Sufjan, Beirut, etc (but incalculably better than any of them, imo). absolutely beautiful songs, hangs together as an album perfectly, and is maybe the only album i know to be written from an identifiably Christian perspective (granted, something you might not notice the first few listens) in a genuinely artful and moving way. just absurd that no one knows it. the Self record has maybe 500 diehard fans, but literally almost nobody knows PYM.

Yesterday's Work (2009) by Ecstatic Sunshine. the future of guitar music.

in general, i tend to think that the best art tends to never see the light of day

what basis could you even have for thinking this

How many people is 'hardly anyone'?

3

Kent 3 - Stories of the New West

one of the best garage rock albums of the 90s, imo. seems almost entirely forgotten now and wasn't much heard outside the pacific northwest even in its day. two RYM ratings. no wikipedia page for the band, much less the album. a few youtube vids with a few views (including one i uploaded three years ago). guess you had to be there.

in general, i tend to think that the best art tends to never see the light of day

what basis could you even have for thinking this

― j., Thursday, February 12, 2015 2:01 AM (7 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

wrote this late at night. a more accurate thing to say is that some of the best art never sees the light of day, although this is probably more true of literature than other forms

you shouldn't walk that back! it's likely to be true.

what basis would anyone have to arguing that the best art DOES tend to see the light of day? the world is full of people making good stuff that no one gives a shit about. there's an overwhelming amount of it, and the well-known stuff doesn't necessarily "rise to the top" as much as miraculously poking its face above the ocean into the air, snaggling down a few gasps of air, before being pulled back down into the dark. well-known art is usually well-known because whoever made it was well-connected. occasionally there's a godlike genius who makes it purely on the account of her own overwhelming talent, i suppose.

as for the OP, there are plenty of threads on ILX that are full of amazing albums that like 32 people have ever heard, tops

what basis could you even have for thinking this

oh, i guess i misinterpreted this, sorry j. are you saying that you can't even ask whether or not the best art is well known or not, because since it's unknown you can't begin to make a judgment on the quality of it the first place? that's true.

i was granting the quality, and questioning how it would even be known how the best is unknown if it's unknown

but i do recognize that treezy caught feelings in a late-night swell of love for all the art

The Glands self titled album from 2000.

that karen alexander album, Voyager, i love and that i wrote about for that pitchfork mag, i dunno, i consider it a great album. and hardly anyone has ever heard it, i can guarantee you that. when i wrote my thing not a single copy had ever been sold on discogs. and it was on a u.s. label with good distribution. wish there were good youtubes of it, but the ones that are up suck. they sound so bad. two songs up there i think. and a couple of positive comments, so, a couple of people like it anyway. it's not something that would ever have universal appeal though. it's also possible that it's not great at all and i just love it anyway!

but that's a boring answer. there are tons of great albums that only a very small amount of people listen to. like, a thousand people or less. most great albums that quickly go out of print on tiny labels have very small audiences.

how many people own this album? put out on a pretty big label - A&M - and its one of the greatest records of the 1970's and i know for a fact that 99.9 percent of the world has never heard it. there are a LOT of records like this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pK7pJCUNOoo

isn't this just the just world hypothesis applied to music

(xp) can't see that, Scott, what is it?

Self's Breakfast With Girls.

I actually like Subliminal Plastic Motives more but this is a good choice.

did that video not show up?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pK7pJCUNOoo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pK7pJCUNOoo

still not working, just tell us pls :)

haha, sorry: pete jolly - seasons

look it up on youtube if you haven't heard it...

(so many jazz examples....but really any genre. and yeah every country has decades of great stuff that is unknown to most people. sheesh, India alone...)

anyway there are so many of these, probably now more than ever. the biggest personal example that springs to mind is 'D-Boy' by New Birth Brass Band (1997). sure, it's a niche style of music, but this one in particular captures something that's very hard to capture, it's lightning in a bottle. i've listened to it more than any other record probably, hundreds of times at least. it recently came back into print digitally, which is nice, but is still relatively unknown.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GQELLw2A_nw

Related is, "how great could it be if I haven't heard it," which everyone thinks at some point, and is always wrong.

isn't this just the just world hypothesis applied to music

sort of, but my argument is not a hope that all good things get the recognition that they should, but that true greatness (and only true greatness-- not just goodness) is irrepressible. Obviously, one problem is quantifying and qualifying greatness, since it's obviously subjective. The Pete Jolly link posted above seemed fine, but I guess if I had heard that in a record store I wouldn't have rushed up to the counter dying know what it was... so it's not an easy hypothesis to even anecdotally support.

my argument is not a hope that all good things get the recognition that they should, but that true greatness (and only true greatness-- not just goodness) is irrepressible.

my argument is that in that at least in the modern world, recognition has as much to do with networking than quality. or maybe a better way to put it is that while quality of the art is an important factor that accelerates recognition, it's the quality of the network that's the prerequisite.

maybe there was some golden time when the world was small enough that if someone was doing something amazing it would undoubtedly be recognized because there just wasn't much going on, but as far as i can tell in 2015 you have to scream like an annoying fucking asshole 24 hours a day in order to be temporarily heard above

Good/VG/great being of course highly subjective, this album by Fine Art was self-released in 1978 before they had ever performed a gig, at a time when the Minneapolis punk scene was barely newborn. Not really a punk record, though; it contains elements of garage rock, folk and psych. Although they went on to play live for a number of years, they only made one more EP. I really love this one though, DIY when there really was wasn't much like this going on locally. Their name is tough to Google anything on, and seems there's ultimately very little out there. They do have a listing on Last.fm so I guess SOMEONE has heard them.

http://collectorsfrenzy.com/gallery/271180992537.jpg

and there are so many stories about great works/artists that were unrecognized in their own time, and would have been lost if it weren't for the efforts of one passionate & determined advocate. but you could make an argument that that's how it works, that something truly great will inspire at least someone to keep telling other people about it, and so on.

xpost

ugh, i should just register the username King Typo and banish myself to the wilderness (with internet). all i'm trying to say is that when something is widely recognized, it means at some point someone or something with an extensive network was involved. not everyone has access to someone with an extensive network. amazing art gets made, enjoyed by close friends and family, and is lost forever. it must happen all the time. conversely, shitty stuff gets made by someone with good connections and is enjoyed by people with bad taste. that happens all the time too.

otm

or, shorter version, just buy a numero group comp and read the liner notes

seems like w/ things like cd baby and bandcamp and soundcloud and so forth there'll be an endless amount of this stuff to wade through in the decades to come ... obviously tons of it will be terrible, but even if like 1% of it is good, that'd still be a lot of great, unheard music.

'D-Boy' by New Birth Brass Band (1997)
― lil urbane (Jordan)

yes this x1000

Karl Malone otm itt.

Karl, I tend to agree with you on a rational (realistic/cynical?) level ... but it's hard for me to believe that there's a Big Star out there that no one will ever hear. How is this possible??

Well, maybe the OP's wishful thinking has become easier to accomplish thanks to the Internet/Web, but I still think there are some music with a small audience, relatively speaking.

For example, the Italian band Celeste's first album is still under-heard, I think. Some of the band members were from a pretty important prog rock band in Italy, but Celeste itself never gained any widespread fame.

I think I'm thinking of a lot of non-English-singing bands. If you don't sing in English, it's quite difficult to get a big following (relatively speaking--the way English-singing bands do). So you get really amazing bands from small non-English-speaking countries with very little fame.

As someone who has done music, I've heard songs and projects from friends that I thought were amazing, but they never even got signed. We used to just make music for ourselves, anyway, because a lot of them couldn't deal with the whole getting signed, touring, etc. side--the more 'business' side of music.

And yeah, like someone said above, there are many examples in jazz.

xpost
i think big star made it relatively big compared to the complete obscurity of other great artists - they didn't sell a million records but they kicked ass at one of the first (THE first?) rock writer conferences in the early 70s, and everyone apparently walked out of there thinking they were amazing. but even with all that going with them, another kind of network failure - shitty distro through Stax - kept them from wider recognition. there are plenty of great artists who didn't even get that far.

yeah big star definitely had fans in the 70's. the unreleased third album was first put out in the 70's. didn't take people decades to figure out how good they were. and they did sell SOME copies of the first two albums. old stock copies are not impossible to find. someone was buying them.

seems like w/ things like cd baby and bandcamp and soundcloud and so forth there'll be an endless amount of this stuff to wade through in the decades to come ... obviously tons of it will be terrible, but even if like 1% of it is good, that'd still be a lot of great, unheard music.

― tylerw

otm, although there's no guarantee that anyone will wade through it. an example that comes to mind is IUMA, which was kind of a proto-soundcloud/bandcamp/etc in the late 90s/early 00s. it's forgotten now, but it used to be quire popular. a few years ago the Internet Archive got a hold of all of IUMA's data - not just the uploaded songs but also the metadata along with it - and made it public. i figured, when that happened, that eventually some music journalist would start going through some of the stuff searching for diamonds in the rough, but i'm not sure that anyone ever did!

weird I had a college roommate who did a bunch of development work on the IUMA db right when they were getting started

yeah, and mp3.com, too (or was that part of IUMA? I forget).

Jeff Stelling's Galaxians - Hastings Banter

i think mp3.com was separate from IUMA, but who knows. some crazy shit happened when the dotcom bubble popped.

heh, from IUMA's wikipedia:

In 2000, IUMA offered US$5,000 to couples who named their baby "Iuma". Several families took up the offer.[4]

an acquaintance put out this electronic album in college around '00/'01, made a huge impact on me and some friends but no one ever heard it. it was prior to Myspace i think, and i don't know how he tried to get it out there beyond taking the cd to local stores. it's not even available digitally now.

i think this track is just impeccably composed & produced (and btw i uploaded it to Youtube in case i lost my mp3 version):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qBXxtLhsglg

despite my efforts no one has heard any of the young sinclairs great records.

https://theyoungsinclairs.bandcamp.com/

^i've got a few of their singles which are pretty good

Best album I heard wasn't titled cos the band immol ate themselves and the masters after recording wrapped.

Dalida - Dalida (1968), most but not all of which is included in this:

http://www.allmusic.com/album/le-temps-des-fleurs-barclay-mw0000420889

Golden - s/t

Some of this is relative, I mean I could name jazz records, but there are very few jazz records that aren't obscure to everyone other than jazz fans.

I think 22 Band's Venez Voir is a great record that not many people in the US have heard, but I'm sure a lot of afropop nerds know it.

anyway this is the 53911532857th time I will plug _love live_ by tychonaut/the tycho brahe

*life

So maybe jazz is kind of cheating, but Mihaly Dresch is a great Hungarian jazz guy who very few people in this country seem to know about:

http://youtu.be/MwkNijaN5Vc

has anyone mentioned Avalanche Perseverance Kills Our Game? that is a GREAT album way too few everyday people have heard

yup, grabbed the Young Sinclairs 7"s at a Flamin Groovies concert.

my top 2 not exactly obscure but still largely unheralded albums are ClockDVA - Advantage and Eyeless In Gaza - Rust Red September. both terrific in many aspects and both reminding me of Wire - 154 production-wise. I'd add in ClockDVA's later Buried Dreams but that has a larger cult following in the goth/industrial/electronic-music set.

another that fits the bill is Tim Maia's self-titled mostly in English 1978 released album (recorded 1976?) on his own Seroma label (not to be confused with his also-great 1978 Disco Club album). it's a superb soul album in the Marvin Gaye/Al Green vein.

What is the yardstick for greatness, here? I feel that many "rediscovered lost classics" like Lewis or Jackson C Frank are just OK albums with cool backstory. I have dozens of albums, left unreleased, mostly by friends, that I wouldn't say are as good as Big Star but are easily as good as your average "lost classic". My perennial recommendation for a great band with no fans is Kitchener's HANK https://vimeo.com/103242354

I feel that many "rediscovered lost classics" like Lewis or Jackson C Frank are just OK albums with cool backstory.

More true than most people are willing to admit.

I listened to a bunch of the Young Sinclairs stuff posted above. Very good!

This Pete Jolly is great, and it also reminded me to relisten to that Tamba 4 album scott recommended on that one thread

this record is legit great imo, and if it hadn't been on Mutantsounds even less people would know about it

http://www.discogs.com/Care-Of-The-Cow-I-Still-Dont-Know-Your-Style/release/1695113

do you guys have friends who make great music and then never release it

Great thread for mentions and links previously unknown to me! Have heard revelatory Third World 60s rock tracks, often on comps, like the Thai Beat A-Go-Go series: more good tracks on Vols. 2&3, more great ones on Vol. 1. But all vols are keepers.

if you don't think I have terrible taste, you might enjoy this: http://shrubbies.bandcamp.com/

would have gone for a North Sea Radio Orchestra record, but they actually have been listened to by a few people. back when they were called Shrubbies, nobody gave a damn, which is a shame, because the album is at least 80% as good as NSRO's debut, which is one the best albums ever. I'd have Memphis In Texas as their second best record overall, maybe joint-second with I, A Moon. I might shut up now

this band is a band I refuse to not be ridiculously enthusiastic about atm because they are coming to be one of my favourite acts in all of time, dealing with english pastoral concerns in the most staggeringly beautiful way (i.e. located somewhere near the centre of my heart)

will probably check out a few other recommendations here as well, seems like a good thread has broken out

lewis was maybe at the right place at the right time, but jackson c. frank i would put at least on the same level as tim hardin or fred neil...

How am i supposed how many people have heard something, where do you get the hipsterati newsletter or horoscope or whatever it is you guys use?

I think the best formula for this is minor artist + musical genre that is momentarily in fashion + 10-15 years where absolutely everyone loses interest and it becomes unfashionable / even the most musically curious regard it as not worth investigating further.

Very few people outside the drum & bass community have even heard about Raiden, who came along during the lull of the early 2000s. Even for people in the scene they'll know a few stand-alone tracks. So why would anyone bother to pick up 'Beton Armé' his 2011 concept d&b LP about British brutalist architecture? According to last.fm I'm the only person who is listening to this in 2015.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmHaNfssQFk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7rAKyz8M1CI

the bends by radioshack

Plastic - Plastic
Abhishek Mueller - Lifeforms

as far as people hearing stuff goes, i FINALLY found an actual compact disc copy of Studio's West Coast album that Tim F. turned me and other people on to on here many moons ago and i was very happy to finally have it (five bucks!) and it sounds awesome and i gotta wonder: how many people have heard it? 2000 people? 5000 people? more than that? i mean, it can't be THAT many people. oh and its still great. someone should reissue it.

Henri Texier - Amir which I was turned on to by JaXon.

That Studio album was pretty talked up at the time IIRC so I doubt it's super obscure.

I want a reissue of that Studio record so bad! I only own the only slightly different "Yearbook 1" which I love. I want to hear West Coast via a proper copy. $5 is great for the CD, but here's hoping I come across a vinyl copy some day as well.

Have:
443
Want:
564

yeah, i don't hold out any hope of finding their vinyl. and online prices are high. but, you never know, keep hope alive. that's my motto.

Big fan of The Young Sinclairs...got into them when they were still selr-releasing so have most of their albums & bunch of singles.

Pauline Oliveros - Crone Music

Philistines Jr
'The Sinking of SS Danehower'

or any of their stuff really. All delightful.Twee but funny and good tunes

Now a 'famous' producer is that Peter Katis

Toni Basil - Word of Mouth
Gwen Guthrie - Padlock (is this pushing it? idk)
Gerling - When Young Terrorists Chase the Sun

omg

your top ten albums ... that haven't yet been mentioned on ILM

Gerling! A bunch of us went in for that, cool band!

Plenty of self-released / tour-only / almost-self-released albums could fit into this.

My favorite least-known album is Bob Neuwirth's 1999 Havana Midnight, recorded in Cuba in the late 90s.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDtxSj0jC7w

Back in the day it used to be a lot harder to find music - any kind of music - online. When I was in college 1999-2003 I used to search through people's home directories that were open and ended up indexed on Google, random FTP sites etc, often for specific things but would download whatever random stuff that was in there. There were lots of things I found and held onto but never heard mentioned elsewhere and couldn't find much from searching. There was a guy called LoopSouth that did kinda simple melodic SAW85-92 style techno. I tried looking him up and just found a forum post where it said he'd freaked out from too much acid and lost his creativity and warned others not to touch it. There was a guy who did a couple of tuneful electronic field recordings called Charles Glass. There was also stuff that I found trawling Epitonic.com that was great from crowds I never heard of again. I can try and find some but I suspect some is languishing on CDRs and old hard drives.

i've heard that metro album. it's good.

nobody replied when i bumped a bay area rap thread to talk about Cydal so

Cydal - Cydalwayz

anybody remember the Sound Of Confusion FTP back in the day? I got a decent psych/drone rock education downloading stuff there.

(xxpost) The Metro album is great!

Yeah, I have that Metro album and the followup "Wild Places." I didn't know he (Duncan Browne) died in 1993 though.

http://www.discogs.com/Germ-Parrot/release/89728

SK Army guys really only did a couple tapes and 7"s but I always dug them and they were a blast live. You could boil the tunes on this site down to a good compilation. Quite a few of the Bloomington/Indy bands in the 80s and early 90s never really got their recordings together, as there wasn't a local label yet of any note like say you would have in Chapel Hill or Seattle or other towns of the time.

http://www.musicalfamilytree.com/band/steve_kowalskis_army

There is a bunch of cool stuff on this site which compiles punk/indie rock from Indiana from the 70s to now.

Holy crap, there are Dancing Cigarettes reissues?!!

Unfortunately they had a server crash a few years ago and some items that were uploaded are now gone.

U of L is sponsoring putting together a similar site for Louisville.

http://louisville.edu/library/archives/luma/