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ShareThe Cut-Out Bin #4
[11 November 2005]
In the old days of LPs and profitable record stores, 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
Tulip Sweet and Her Trail of Tears, Tossed (2000)
by Lauren Bans
Drunk, raunchy country punk from a Minnesota woman who doesn’t seem to give a shit.
The Psychedelic Furs, Book of Days (1989)
by John Bergstrom
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.
Dexy’s Midnight Runners, Don’t Stand Me Down (1985)
by Roger Holland
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.
[Read Essay]
