This playlist is exactly why we started this column, to be able to soak up all the knowledge. Click to Stream.
1. The Velvet Underground – “Pale Blue Eyes”
In the category of least surprising news of the day, the source of city-underbelly explorers VU’s name is journalist Michael Leigh’s examination of sexual mavericks of virtually every kind, from strippers to sadists to object fetishists and everything in between (and outside).
2. Generation X – “Ready Steady Go”
Generation X, studied by Jane Deverson and Charles Hamblett in the book of the same name, and which I may or may not belong to depending on your reading of the category, are the youth (not so youthful any longer) whose identities remain vague and futures unknown. The UK-youth studied, in this sociological exploration of counterculture, “sleep together before they are married, were not taught to believe in God as ‘much’, dislike the Queen, and don’t respect parents.” Modern analysis indicates that, despite this ominous look at lost innocence, the X-ers did just fine for themselves. Billy Idol wasn’t too shabby either.
3. Love And Rockets – “Mirror People”
Okay, okay, Love and Rockets is a comic book, but it is also one of several early underground series contributing to the obliteration of superhero-comic stereotypes. In fact, Love and Rockets takes on a serious exploration of a semi-marginalized culture. While the band, spun off from Bauhaus in 1985, generally did not explore the lives of a similar demographic, it did make a mark in giving mainstream acceptance to “goth” music with the band’s crossover into more straightforward alternative rock.
4. Count Zero – “My Mockingbird”
William Gibson’s cyberpunk followup to Neuromancer helped cement science-fiction-turn reality concepts into our collective psyche. The Internet (the cyberspace matrix – sound familiar?), virtual reality, corporate control of technology and government, and pretty major components of modern science fiction literature and film are present. Ten years after its publication, Boston electro-rockers built their angular and cybernetic pop songs under the moniker.
5. The Divine Comedy – “Everybody Knows (except you)”
An epic post-romantic band named after an epic pre-romantic poem. I’d call it fitting.
6. Belle & Sebastian – “Get Me Away From Here, I’m Dying”
This tale of a scrappy young outcast and his friendship with a Pyrenean mountain dog was a natural name for an unassuming, underdog twee collective from Scotland.
7. Okkervil River – “Calling And Not Calling My Ex”
This story named for a muddy little stream in St. Petersburg, written by Leo Tolstoy‘s great-grand-niece Tatyana Tolstaya, follows a fan obsessed with an obscure singer – a singer that can’t possibly live up to expectation and fantasy. Both the story and the band often examine how art lives outside, and without the creator of the art.
8. Tilly And The Wall – “Bad Education”
A mouse with big dreams of overcoming the obstacular, titular wall taught the band that a lack of a drummer should never stand in the way of rocking out. Whether the solution is burrowing or tap-dancing, free thinking always wins.
9. Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds – “The Weeping Song“
We love Nick Cave so much that we even covered “The Weeping Song” on our debut album. When The Birthday Party (a little foreshadowing here) came to a halt, Mr. Cave looked no further than the title of a late work of his former band – a name borrowed from William March’s 1954 novel, The Bad Seed. Early in the age of juvenile delinquency, the novel’s exploration of nature vs. nurture in the evil behaviors of a young girl made a fine banner for the dark and stark tales of death and doom that the band would come to present.
10. My Chemical Romance – Welcome To The Black Parade
Ecstasy: Three Tales of Chemical Romance, a collection of three novellas by Irvine Welsh, tells tales of a necrophiliac, a victim of an ill-marketed drug that caused birth defects, and those toeing the line between drug-induced euphoria and destruction. The oft-underappreciated (by the serious lot anyway) New Jersey “mallrat” band often tells complex tales with layered production and obtuse tonal underscoring.
11. Mott The Hoople – “All The Way From Memphis”
The tale of a misfit who joins a freak circus is pretty much the same story expressed in ATWFM’s musician-who-forgets-his-guitar tale. If for nothing else, the band deserves their place in musical history for the amazing shove singer Ian Hunter gives to Ariel Bender around 1:30 in this live performance of the song.
12. Art Of Noise – “Born On A Sunday”
The Art of Noises (L’arte dei Rumori) by Luigi Russolo is a 1913 letter to friend and Futurist composer Francesco Balilla Pratella. Russolo argues that the human ear has become so used to the noise of the urban industrial world that traditional music composition methods are no longer valid. Russolo proposes that technology will allow futurist musicians to “substitute for the limited variety of timbres that the orchestra possesses today the infinite variety of timbres in noises, reproduced with appropriate mechanisms.” Not a bad name for an avante-pop band.
13. The Fall – “The Man Whose Head Expanded”
Camus’ confessions of a Parisian lawyer are an exploration of a Biblical fall from grace into a life of amorality. The band, well, the same.
14. The Birthday Party – “Sonnys Burning”
A down on his luck man’s birthday party is turned into a nightmare after the arrival of two strangers. Impending doom and gloom were staples of The Birthday Party and Nick Cave’s subsequent Bad Seeds.
15. Genesis – “Invisible Touch” – 2007 Remastered Album Version
The most famous book ever. Where it all began. Genesis – not the most famous band ever…or the first one, but they are pretty good anyway.
The Michael J. Epstein Memorial Library is the world’s only male-fronted, all-female, librarian-attired, downtempo, indie, ensemble-pop act featuring intricately constructed, tongue-in-cheek tortuous songs with an emphasis on narrative. The band released their first album, Volume One, last May and have recently collaborated with BalletRox to create and perform a three-song indie rock ballet.
