The underrated

[Dexter Rutecki]

Songs/albums that are in some way underappreciated--so maybe a well known artist but lesser known work, or an album that was popular but isn't seen as a classic...or something totally unknown that for some reason no one ever picked up on. Whatever it is, you think it should be viewed as something more than it usually is.

For me something like Keith Jarret's 'Paris' concert would qualify. Keith Jarret is one of the bigger names in jazz, but that album is (mostly) a classically improvised solo piano piece and since his most popular stuff featured standards I think that album kind of gets lost. But have a listen, it's kind of transcendent if you get into it.



Seriously, listen if you haven't yet...I just accidentally started it playing when I was embedding and couldn't turn it off (although I've listened to it dozens, if not hundreds, of times over the years I actually hadn't played it in awhile). I've listened to a number of his other solo concerts, and for me this one always stood out.

I'll throw a second one out there...Matthew Sweet's album 'Girlfriend' was, IMO, one of the best rock albums to come out of the 1990's. Maybe the best (I'm kind of blanking right now on other contenders--guessing someone would suggest a RHCP album)? While it did pretty well, I think, in terms of sales and had a pretty big single, I just have rarely heard anyone talk about it over the past few decades as something that was really special. Robert Quine's guitar work is pretty much as good as it gets on that album (I guess Richard Lloyd played as well), and it worked so well with the other instrumentation and Sweet's knack for putting together vocal harmonies. First track that should make you want to hear the rest:



Was just reading about it and I guess the album has been compared to early Neil Young, which never occurred to me but in some ways is fair (more poppy, kind of California type harmonies I think).

So, what else? Hope some of you guys enjoy the two above.

[half-fast]

Nils Lofgren put out an album in the early 90s called Silver Lining that I thought had at least one hit/ Walking Nerve- but nope
https://youtu.be/49PScUXYh0I

[I Skied Bandini Mountain]

We Jam Econo

[Dexter Rutecki]

Nils Lofgren put out an album in the early 90s called Silver Lining that I thought had at least one hit/ Walking Nerve- but nope
https://youtu.be/49PScUXYh0I

Nils Lofgren is quite an interesting musical figure, IMO.

[MakersTeleMark]

Roger Waters, Amused to Death. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amused_to_Death

For audio:

[Mike Pow]

Furniture



https://www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...rz0Er0nCw69vYQ

[Buster Highmen]

Jorma Kaukonen. Most underrated rock guitarist evar.

[Buster Highmen]

Daevid Allen : GONG, Flying Teapot, You, Angels Egg, Gong Est Mort Vive Le Gong.

Mile Davis Agharta: panned by jazz critics, I found it to be awesome.

[Danno]

I love the Koln Concert by Jarrett, have the Paris one playing now.

So much of what I listen to couldn't be called underrated or rated at all, so hard to know how to respond. For ex, how would I know how Richard Thompson's albums are rated such that I could decide which one is underrated?

That said, Richard Thompson is an underrated artist. Brilliant guitarist and songwriter. Always get a kick our of the hippy bluegrass crowd fawning over Del McCoury's version of 1952 Vincent Black Lightning. I like Del and all and like his version, but listening to RT do it solo acoustic is mind blowing.

[MakersTeleMark]

If you like koln, check out toyoko

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tokyo_%2796

[bobz]

Plate'o'shrimp, I just listened to Bremen-Lausanne and selections from Mysteries (I never get tired of Rose Petals) this past weekend. I wouldn't say either of those are underrated, though.


Shifting to folk... I’m a big fan of Lucy Kaplansky, and I’m always amazed that she’s never gotten mainstream notice. Though she has done well enough to quit her day job; she’s a clinical psychologist, with a PhD, which I’m pretty sure has informed a number of her songs (such as Five In The Morning, about a woman who needs to leave home, "falling like a leaf from the family tree," to save herself). She has great voice, on its own or in sublime harmonies, and some fine songs, some her own and she’s covered plenty too (Springsteen, Thompson, Grateful Dead, Roxy Music, etc.) Here’s a cover, not deep or anything, but it captures her voice pretty well:


My favorite album is probably Ten Year Night. The title track has her recalling, to her sleeping partner, the night that they met, exactly ten years earlier:





While I’m at it, her frequent collaborator, Richard Shindell, is also fantastic. One of his better known songs, a cover, with Lucy K and Dar Williams on harmonies, has a dying man telling the story of a Montana forest fire, where he, the fire captain, was one of only two survivors (true story, by the way):


He writes his own as well. Here’s one set in the Civil War:


And, oh, just another song from the floor-trader-who-needs-some-more-Prozac genre:

[MakersTeleMark]

[MakersTeleMark]

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