Who's your favorite obscure band, musical artist?

The DB comments are a bit old and tired. The guy started a thread asking for something specific. Not all encompassing.

As to bands:
Say Hi To Your Mom
Jets to Brazil
Sunny Day Real Estate
One True Thing
Modest Mouse (they did have one or two hits somewhat recently, I guess)
Minus the Bear
Kaiser Chiefs
Archers of Loaf (long since broken up, but were quite obscure)
Promise Ring
The Paper Chase

 

Import version: The Jam. Very obscure over here (except for Fred listeners); I discovered them 10 years too late. (Paul Weller was on Conan last night, BTW.)

Domestic version: Flaming Lips.

 

F-B, just listening to the Jam Live At the BBC. What a shitkicking live band they were. Like many British bands of that vintage, the Jam was very big in Canada. I'm sure Mr. FotF heard them a lot on CFNY (at the time the best radio station on the continent) or picked up their records as imports at the Record Peddler like I did.

My picks: the Squirrel Nut Zippers and Joe Ely.

 

The Pernice Brothers. Their last album "Live A Little" is the best CD I've heard in years.

Others...

Neil Finn (obscure in the US, anyway)
The Bees
New Radiant Storm King
The Bellrays
Paul Kelly

(By the way, I think I still have the Jam "All Mod Cons" shirt I wore in high school back in 1982.)

 

Here are a few of my faves:

Martini Bros. (old-school rockabilly)

Brave Combo (a fusion of polka, rumba, latin, and many other genres. Sounds crazy, but it works)

Man? or Astroman? (Dick Dale surf music infused with sci-fi influences)

Those Darn Accordions (you have lived until you've heard their all-accordion version of "Fire" by Jimi Hendrix)

 

Love the Pernice Brothers! I didn;t thik they could out do theirlast one, but they have. Loved that Joe Pernice was one of the may troubadors on The Gilmore Girls last season.

Josh Rouse would be my fave obscure artist. Since I don't listen ot the radio or any of that crap, I 'm not sure if Ryan Adams or Lucinda Williams would be obscure or not. But they're both great, so who cares.

 

http://www.bethanyandrufus.com/

Female vocalist and a hip cello player. NPR turned me on to them last week.

Also, http://www.billyjoeshaver.com/

Great Texas singer-songwriter.

 

Brave Combo rocks. They've won several Grammys (Grammies?) in the polka division, but don't let that throw you. They're an awesome, awesome band and put on a great live show.

 

Of recent vintage: Camera Obscura, which this year with "Lloyd, I'm Ready to be Heartbroken" gave a really great response to Lloyd Cole's 1984 song "Are You Ready to be Heartbroken?" itself a great song. Also, the Lamented.

Of older vintage: I would recommend grabbing stuff off the MP3 sites postpunkjunk.com, up to and including the podcasts. Great music, plumbing a relatively undiscovered time (1978-84 underground, new wave-ish, punk-ish stuff, although it gets into other stuff, including a hilarious song called "Loose Shoes" that riffs off the joke that got Earl Butz tossed out of the Ford Administration). I would also recommend the Gizmos (versions 1.0 and 2.1), Dow Jones and the Industrials, Zero Boys, and the Indiana-era stuff on the web site of Brad Garton, former Industrial and now head of computer music at Columbia University (and for your Hoosiers, he is the son of recently ousted Senate Pro Tem Robert Garton) -- http://www.music.columbia.edu/~brad/music/index.html#EARLY

 

XM 75 has turned me on to a bunch of good, if not particuarly well-known, artists.

Among them: Guster, Mason Jennings (the two are doing a show at the 9:30 Club in D.C. at the end of the month, and I'm there), Turin Brakes, Jonah Smith, Isobell Campbell, Sia and Tim Seely.

 

My roommate recommended this singer/pianist named Vienna Tang to me a few days ago and I haven't been able to stop listening since. She has an absolutely beatiful voice.

 

Put me down for David Ford.