Five Songs (and now you can listen)

My friend Shane is blogging his top 200 songs of all time. The thought of doing it myself makes me bonkers. I just can't. Instead, I will post now and again about songs I really like that people may not have heard of. This here is the first such post. (Click on the song title to download the song, listen to it, and then delete it from your hard drive because such file sharing is bad. The song links are good for a week or 25 downloads, whichever comes first. Click on the artist [if such a link exists] to purchase the CD.)

16 Horsepower, "American Wheeze" (from Sackcloth 'n' Ashes, 1996). 16 Horsepower is a weird alt-country band from Denver that uses accordions, jaw harps, fiddles, and various other instruments along with traditional bass, guitar, and drums. Their songs deal with Southern Gothic themes, like if Flannery O'Connor had started a rock band. Sometimes their lyrics are a tad opaque: "American Wheeze" seems to deal with pedophilia before segueing into an old-fashioned challenge to a duel. "Yeah you may be the only one/Come on son/Bring your blade and your gun/And if I die by your hand/I've got a home in glory land." Their lead singer's braying voice, along with the jangly music and florid lyrics, makes paranoid romps of all of the songs.

Wipers, "Return of the Rat" (from Is This Real?, 1980). The Wipers were a major influence on Kurt Cobain, and nobody's ever heard of them. You'll recognize the structure of the song, which sounds a lot like Nirvana's faster songs. If you google this song, you'll get Nirvana first, because they covered it—they even asked Greg Sage (who basically was Wipers) to open for them on tour. He turned them down, so I guess I can't complain about him being unknown. Anyway, the song has a hard-driving beat, fuzzy guitars, a heavy bassline, and plenty of paranoia.

Desperate Bicycles, "(I Make the) Product" (from Desperate Bicycles Anthology, date unknown). The Desperate Bicycles formed in NYC London in the late 1970s. They started their own label and released some songs; each single included an exhortation to other bands to start their own labels. They released one album and a handful of singles, then broke up. Their songs are really lo-fi: I have to crank up the volume to hear them very clearly. This one has a driving beat provided by a frantically played bass and guitar, along with lyrics that seem to be about the drudgery of working in a factory. "I make the product/I use the product/I hate the product" or something like that.

The Dinning Sisters, "Buttons and Bows" (from the soundtrack to The Paleface, 1948). Why do I love this song? It's goofy. "My bones denounce the buckboard bounce and the cactus hurts my toes/Let's vamoose where gals keep usin' those silks and satins and linen that shows/And I'm all yours in buttons and bows." It's one of those silly 1940s songs, sung in this case by one of those sister vocal groups. But it's catchy, the singing is beautiful—with a really cute semi-southern diction—and I'm not ashamed to have it on my iPod.

Charlie Feathers, "Nobody's Woman" (from one of his many albums, probably late 1950s). Charlie Feathers is called the father of rockabilly by some (including himself). I haven't listened to him much—I just got a compilation CD a few weeks ago. This simple song, praising his current love, combines everything I like about him: the distinctive delivery, the sometimes chirping voice, the wit. "I gave her all my money and let her make me blue/But I am hardly fool enough to give her up to you/She ain't nobody's woman, nobody's woman but mine." He sounds a bit like the early Sun Records stuff, but he sounds more country.