Print
Email
ShareThe Cut-Out Bin #5
[9 February 2006]
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
Check out the previous installments of the Cut-Out Bin:
#4: Raunchy Minnesota country punk from Tulip Sweet, the Psychedelic Furs late-career resurrection, and why Dexy’s Midnight Runners should not be seen as one-hit wonders. [go to feature]
#3: Fin-de-siècle paranoia from Archers of Loaf, Loverboy’s mall-friendly poodle rock and Roger Waters’s vision of how Live Aid may have prevented nuclear annihilation. [go to feature]
#2: Holly Beth Vincent, bluesy belter Genya Ravan, and the sublime idiocy of The Lost Boys soundtrack. [go to feature]
#1: Post-Bunnymen guitar pop by the Wild Swans, the quintessentially quirky Canadian songwriter Jane Siberry, and soft-rock sleaze from ex-Fleetwood Mac guitarist Bob Welch. [go to feature]
George Michael, Listen Without Prejudice, Vol. 1 (1990)
by Dennis Cook
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.
The Carpenters, The Carpenters (1971)
by Rob Horning
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)
by Charlotte Robinson
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.
[Read Essay]
