Image: The Cut-Out Bin

The Cut-Out Bin

In the old days of LPs, the cut-out bin was a trough of music-business effluvia, a collection of has-beens, misfires and record-label miscalculations. But if you were tuned out of musical trends, and had adventuresome tastes and could suspend judgment -- or if you were just cheap and constrained to bargain shopping -- you could dredge up some surprising finds from the mishmash, gems that could be treasured all the more for the improbability of your ever having stumbled upon them or for the independence it took to embrace them even though they had been ignored or reviled. In that same spirit, PopMatters writers share some of their finds, making the case for worthy-but-neglected discs rescued from the Cut-Out Bin of culture. May it inspire some searches of your own.
— Rob Horning

Wheat: Medeiros / Hope and Adams

[10.Jun.09] :. It would be tremendously heartening to view the Rebel Group's reissues of these albums as a corrective measure to the attention and praise that eluded them at the time.
 

The Misfits’ American Psycho (1997)

[25.Sep.08] :. This Danzig-less "reunion" album from the most recognized brand in horror rock isn't nearly as bad as you'd expect.
 

Judgment Night: Music from the Motion Picture (1993)

[4.Apr.08] :. A look at the album that may have spawned rap rock and that supplies the missing link between Biohazard and Emilio Estevez.
 

Youngblood Brass Band: Center:Level:Roar

[27.Mar.08] :. As a new generation continues to reshape traditional ensembles from big band to chamber and play it punk by adopting pop, it's useful to go back and marvel at one of the albums that truly innovated in this new-jack band geek era.
 

Marillion, Afraid of Sunlight

[6.Mar.08] :. Having made a name as prog-rock revivalists in the '80s, Marillion then lost its singer and slid slowly into semi-obscurity, the band responded with a dark album that assessed the fallout of fame.
 

Souled American,  Around the Horn (1990)

[28.Feb.08] :. Chicago’s Souled American's album, Around the Horn, may be the most uniquely beautiful alt-country album you’ve never heard.
 

Al Kooper, New York City (You’re a Woman) (1971)

[31.Jan.08] :. This album features some of the best of Kooper's original compositions and is free of his tendency to include reinterpretations of over-familiar songs.
 

Mojo Nixon & Skid Roper, Bo-Day-Shus!!! (1987)

[3.Jan.08] :. Two decades later, Bo-Day-Shus!!! stands as the ultimate musical document of America's '80s love affair with redneck culture.
 

Monty Python’s Matching Tie and Handkerchief

[19.Oct.07] :. Humor is a funny thing. Here to prove it are three Monty Python albums, revealing the revolutionary constructs of their work, the dangers of self-parody, and, well, something completely different.
 

Losing California

[5.Oct.07] :. After the Mamas and the Papas, unheralded songwriter John Phillips released one perfect solo album before disintegrating into addiction and self-recrimination.
 

Fire Engines: Hungry Beat

[3.Oct.07] :. Cowbell-crazed, no-wave noised, robot-funk grooves from the short-lived Scottish band best known for inspiring Franz Ferdinand. Even the most cursory listen provides that they were much, much more interesting than that.
 

Reg King: Reg King

[12.Sep.07] :. One of the great lost '60s pop and soul also-rans, Reg King's only solo album is a murky snapshot of the dissolution of musical promise as an industry rolled on by, but remains a rawly emotional experience.
 

Howard Devoto: Jerky Versions of The Dream

[24.Aug.07] :. Erudite perspectives on the romantic dream from a shape-shifting man-insect who left punk before we knew it existed. Awkwardness has never sounded so varied, cinematic, stupid and sexual.
 

Alice Cooper, Love It to Death

[9.Aug.07] :. Love It to Death is the beginning of Alice Cooper as we know him, with his storytelling bent and Ezrin's drapes of the epic. From there Cooper got more external about the nature of evil in his stage shows and symbols.
 

Robyn Hitchcock: Storefront Hitchcock / Jewels for Sophia

[2.Aug.07] :. These reissues of two late '90s Robyn Hitchcock albums find the surrealist singer-songwriter in prime form.
 

Karen Dalton: In My Own Time

[25.Jul.07] :. Just as the ambiguous details surrounding Nick Drake's death led people to exhaustively make his sorrow sacred, Karen Dalton was soul country's undiscovered Ophelia.
 

Hall & Oates, Abandoned Luncheonette (1973)

[22.Jun.07] :. Before their string of ubiquitous 1980s hits, this songwriting duo wrote surprisingly strange and pleasantly unpretentious soft rock.
 

The Only Ones, Special View (1979)

[15.Jun.07] :. The Only Ones' Peter Perrett was power pop's Baudelaire, assailing city life with delirious, love-struck curses.
 

Boz Scaggs, Silk Degrees (1976)

[8.Jun.07] :. The former Steve Miller Band sideman teams up with the musicians who would become Toto to enact the birth of the smooth.
 

The Gravel Pit, Silver Gorilla (1999)

[13.Oct.06] :. Though professedly inspired by polysemy and pretentiousness, this neglected Boston band makes guitar pop that doesn’t require a second thought to enjoy.
 

The Beach Boys, Love You (1977)

[13.Oct.06] :. Essentially a Brian Wilson solo effort, on which the ravaged, troubled genius takes a few more painful steps toward a purifying simplicity.
 

Iggy Pop and James Williamson,  Kill City (1977)

[13.Oct.06] :. This cinematic album, which captures the drugged myopia of the denizens of mid-1970s Los Angeles, nevertheless furthered Iggy’s own convalescence after years of addiction.
 

The Carpenters, The Carpenters (1971)

[9.Feb.06] :. Forget horror-core and death metal, the most terrifying and emotionally exhausting album ever made may be this soft-pop classic.
 

Genevieve Waite, Romance Is on the Rise (1974)

[9.Feb.06] :. After the Mamas and the Papas, John Phillips found his muse in this South African model-actress and indulged her wish to become a singer. The result? This rarely heard record of campy cabaret.
 

George Michael, Listen Without Prejudice, Vol. 1 (1990)

[9.Feb.06] :. After "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go", maybe this record's title asked too much. Still, this song cycle has the ambition of Stevie Wonder's 1970s work and Michael nearly had the talent to pull it off.
 

Tulip Sweet and Her Trail of Tears, Tossed (2000)

[11.Nov.05] :. Drunk, raunchy country punk from a Minnesota woman who doesn't seem to give a shit.
 

Dexy’s Midnight Runners, Don’t Stand Me Down (1985)

[11.Nov.05] :. His lone American hit "Come on Eileen" made chief Dexy Kevin Rowland seem a one-note, barefoot-ragamuffin cliché. But his most brilliant work would come after he ditched the rags and the better portion of his fans.
 

The Psychedelic Furs, Book of Days (1989)

[11.Nov.05] :. Conventional wisdom has it that the Furs failed to recapture the glory of their early sound on this late-career effort. That's true -- they succeeded in creating a different kind of magic altogether.