Read on Twitter
Because I cannot stop thinking about @othermusic and the @OtherMusicDoc, I thought I'd put some music in a thread that I first heard browsing that store.
Start happy: Leroy Sibbles covering "Groove Me" on the incredible Studio One Soul compilation.
Start happy: Leroy Sibbles covering "Groove Me" on the incredible Studio One Soul compilation.
Next: Le Tigre's Deceptacon ... both the propulsive original and the DFA remix
OK, hear me out here. The Strokes first album was really good. But first Strokes EP was rougher and muddier and more fun. As I recall it, Other Music was where you could get it, and a friend who was working in New York got it there and lorded it over us.
But Other Music was also a place that took you to strange places. Like to the Langley Schools Music Project, which was a recording of some kids in British Columbia covering David Bowie and other big rock hits of the 70s.
Still sends shivers up my spine.
Still sends shivers up my spine.
Or man, this takes me back: Yeah Yeah Yeahs "Art Star"
This is some good ass screaming. https://open.spotify.com/track/5a56PTbJ5VFd2bOry3mqpL?si=gFrkTopWQHC4ZBq8prDSjw
This is some good ass screaming. https://open.spotify.com/track/5a56PTbJ5VFd2bOry3mqpL?si=gFrkTopWQHC4ZBq8prDSjw
I remember watching the Walkmen in a basement show somewhere near Tufts. The lead singers was impossibly drunk and screaming into a mic on a stand that kept falling over.
2002. What a strange year.
2002. What a strange year.
Then you get into the Def Jux hip hop world ... Like, in a world where Peaches and Cream by 112 (no hate!) is topping the charts ... Cannibal Ox is coming out like this:
RJD2 was so good, too.
But then, to bring it back to Other Music, you'd go from that stuff right to someone like Karen Dalton. This wounded bird warbling.
Oh man and the Euro vibes!!!
Serge Gainsbourg whispering in one ear:
Serge Gainsbourg whispering in one ear:
Can and the Krautrock people singing in your other ear:
And we can't forget their finds in Latin America like Os Mutantes
And then when you got dumped, you could walk in the cold to Mogwai.
Or sit on a bench with The Magnetic Fields on your iPod (which I always ended up singing to get my kids to go to sleep):
I don't know what holds all of these songs together.
Or why, now, all these years later — when I listen to the current Other Music staff picks, it feels like a continuation of this project they started long ago.
Or why, now, all these years later — when I listen to the current Other Music staff picks, it feels like a continuation of this project they started long ago.
But now my ears are alive again... So, if you have a song that seems to fit somewhere in this strange matrix, please send it to me and I will put it in my ears immediately.
(Thank you for indulging me. I am not someone prone to revisiting the past, but then you discover these musical wormholes and are powerless to stop the teleportation.)
I also cannot believe that I made it through this whole thread without @-ing @simeonzahl — the theologian with the best musical taste in the world — and @Marjon_Carlos, who was as cool at 19 as she is now (unlike some of us 
).
).
