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ShareThe Cut-Out Bin #3
[7 October 2005]
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 slag-pile searches of your own.
— Rob Horning
Roger Waters, Radio K.A.O.S. (1987)
by Adam Besenyodi
Waters’s most ambitious post-Pink Floyd project, this apocalyptic polemic about media technology, belligerent foreign policy and energy crises sounds all too prescient.
Archers of Loaf, White Trash Heroes (1998)
by Zeth Lundy
This burst of fin-de-siècle exhaustion, paranoia and malaise anticipated 21st century angst with uncanny accuracy. Unfortunately for these post-grunge indie stalwarts, OK Computer did it first.
Loverboy, Loverboy (1980)
by David Kootnikoff
On their debut, these Canadian poodle-rock maestros perfected the music of pseudo-rebellion, ideal for the spate of teenage mallrats flush with their first spending money.
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