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From Paste Magazine, 2009, I don't remember if it was already posted here....

Jeffrey Lewis' 10 Overlooked or Misunderstood Musical Gems
Published at 7:00 AM on June 7, 2009

Jeffrey Lewis' 10 Overlooked or Misunderstood Musical Gems
Comic book fiend, anti-folk hero and Paste Artist of the Week Jeffrey Lewis recently dug through his record crates to share with us, in his own words, ten overlooked or misunderstood musical gems. (Enjoy the tracks we could find online, and have fun hunting down the rest.)

1. The Hook - Will Grab You (1968)

It’s really an interesting crossroads between mid-’60s simple garage stuff and late-’60s "heavy rock" blues-jam slop. It’s very Cream/Hendrix influenced—these guys must have listened to "Foxy Lady" a lot, but it’s strangely thuggish. The singer talks about beating people up and having his friends join in to help! Beware their second album, Hooked—it’s mostly not very good.

2. The Fall - Dragnet (1979)

It’s weird lo-fi carnival-esque punk with very bizarre and engaging lyrics. Tons of enthusiasm and imagination, so who cares that it was recorded so shoddily that the studio engineer apparently demanded not to be credited?



3. Prewar Yardsale - Lowdown (2001)

A gal banging buckets and a guy strumming two chords on an acoustic guitar with a distortion pedal. Lyrics that seem stupid the first time around until you realize how many surreal puns and idiosyncratic visions they’re chock full of. The rhythms ain’t exactly tight, shall we say, and the first track’s 16 minutes long. The true sound of New York City! A huge influence on me.



4. Donovan - For Little Ones (1967)

This one is his best batch of songs, perfectly beautiful and charming and trippy and childlike.

5. Phil Ochs - All the News That’s Fit to Sing (1964)

It’s truly a brilliant and beautiful album, and if he hadn’t had the bad luck to be completely overshadowed by the mega-genius of Dylan, Ochs would have reigned supreme as folkie king.


6. Lou Reed - Mistrial (1986)

Most people seem to find the super-’80s production (and Lou’s attempt at a rap song) to be even more un-listenable than Metal Machine Music’s two discs of undifferentiated guitar feedback. I really do think this album is one of Lou’s absolute best collections of songs, I’ve been covering "Tell It To Your Hear" for years. I thought maybe I oughta record my own version of this whole album, just stripped down so people can hear how good the songwriting is and give it another chance (I would call my version "Retrial").


7. Daniel Johnston & Jad Fair - Daniel Johnston & Jad Fair (1989)

This has been re-issued on CD under the title It’s Spooky. Maybe the single greatest album either of these geniuses put out, and that’s saying a lot. Life-changing.


8. Pebbles Vol. 3 (Various Artists) - The Acid Gallery (1992)

I was a fan of weird ’60s psychedelia through my school years, but prided myself on not buying compilation albums. Naive me, I had no idea there was a vast universe of ’60s music thousands of times more obscure, more psychedelic and more bizarre and mind-blowing than I had ever known. I resisted buying this compilation album for a long time despite the record store clerk’s recommendation. There are actually many mind-bogglingly good volumes in the Pebbles series, particularly Vol. 23 and Vol. 10, but this one, Volume 3, is extra-special. It’s just magic.

9. Whodini - Escape (1984)

I don’t know why Whodini is rarely mentioned alongside other early rap greats like Run DMC and Grandmaster Flash, but from what I remember hearing on the streets of NYC as a child, Whodini songs were just as likely to be coming out of boomboxes as any others. In fact, a lot of these Whodini songs were big rap hits, at least in NYC, I remember hearing them all the time—"Big Mouth,” "Five Minutes of Funk,” "The Freaks Come Out At Night” and "Friends.” Some of these have been sampled by Nas and Sonic Youth and probably elsewhere.


10. Acetone - Cindy (1993)
It’s a perfect mix of ethereal ballads and brutal garage grunge, often with a strange surf-rock gleam. Glorious vocal harmonies and whammy-bar guitar feedback. Great songs. How was this album totally overlooked and forgotten by the world? For my friends and i at college, we considered this album part of the 90s pantheon, and assumed everyone else did, too. Unfortunately, Acetone’s following albums were a decreasing spiral into more and more boring, placid ballads with nary a rock song to balance it out, and one of the trio eventually committed suicide. But this is still one of my favorite rock albums of the 90s!