I mean, I've got the Stumblebunny single mentioned once in the second edition of The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock and Roll (New Wave: America chapter). That only took about ten years of looking. I own the Hackamore Brick LP, which is sort of famously obscure. I've got the vinyl semi-bootleg of Rocket From the Tombs (pre-Ubu) which only had a pressing of 2000.
The bootlegs I have are pretty famous ones, like Patti Smith's Teenage Perversity & Ships In The Night (her greatest recording by far, incidentally), and the early Television demos with Richard Hell (which rewrite punk history, in my estimation).
The rare exotica (Russ Garcia's Fantastica, White Goddess), crime jazz (Johnny Staccato) and bubblegum (Lancelot Link) LPs I've got are all expensive collector's items because collectors know about them. But I guess they're obscure to the average music fan.
Emusic has tons of Kozelek stuff - not just his solo albums (almost everything minus some tracks from Rock 'n' Roll Singer) but Red House Painters and Sun Kil Moon as well.
Kozelek has a penchant for slowcore covers of 70s metal.
And lordy are they gorgeous. He also does a really beautiful cover of "Around and Around" by John Denver.
I am actually making a best of Kozelek mix - but it's only in its baby stages.
I'm trying to think of what I've got that really qualifies as obscure.
How are we defining obscure? I have tapes of local bands that never made it to the label level - is that obscure? Or do we mean odd cross genre covers and like albums by 70s kid TV stars that later become porn stars? Do we mean hard to find, impossible to find or just really really strange?
Do we mean hard to find, impossible to find or just really really strange?
All of these qualify. Though now I'm sort of mentally just listing the things which haven't come out in digital media. Because once that happens then it's on a blog and everybody has it.
How are we defining obscure? I have tapes of local bands that never made it to the label level
Which just reminds me that I MUST ransack all the boxes at my parents' and find my copy of the original Alice n' Chains demo, from back when they were convinced that "Lip Lock Rock" was going to be their ticket to the bigtime.
I'm trying to think of what I've got that really qualifies as obscure.
I'm wearing a "Vivians" t-shirt right now! (AIFG!)
Music is beginning to sound like "blah, blah, Ginger," again.
This bums me out, but I suspect it's my fault.
So, am I overreacting when I call this guy the tooliest tool who's ever been compared to a socket wrench?
Not hardly. He needs a healthy whack of the get-over-yourself stick.
I don't think I have anything truly obscure. I doubt I own anything anyone else who went to shows in D.C. in the mid-90's doesn't have, and most of my peers have much better collections of Dischordania and related.
There's many ways to get to the obscure stuff.
I have (ok, compilation) CDs by both the Classics and the Classics IV.
The problem with me and obscure is that it's quickly not obscure. I bought the first Be Good Tanyas album in March 2001 (in Vancouver), because I saw a throwaway bit about them on CBC. About a year later, the NPR set discovered them.
The best I can offer is some CDs by South Carolina bands a friend of mine sent me in exchange for an OOP Pierce Pettis album.
