tenessential
Cut-Out Bin Classics
Alternative Press - Editorial Intern on 7/27/09 @ 1:58 PM - altpress.comSelected by Scott Heisel
Sure, acquiring music via your broadband connection may be a lot easier than driving to the local record store, but there's something far more rewarding about digging through the dollar bin at your local shop and stumbling across some true gems-or at least gems for their price. We're not saying rush out and drop $13.99 on a brand-new copy of any of these, but if you see a battered copy looking up at you from the cut-out bin, take it home. We promise it's house-trained.
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The Cure Staring At The Sea: The Singles (Elektra,1986)
Originally titled Standing On A Beach when first released on vinyl, Staring At The Sea is a perfect primer for those looking to get into Robert Smith but have no idea where to start. This is a perfect example of how something can be both cheap and essential; you get “The Lovecats,” “Boys Don’t Cry,” “In Between Days” and 14 more tracks, all for the price of one MP3 on iTunes. You tell us what’s a better deal.
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Dig Life Like (Radio Universe/Universal,1998)
First off, if you see any other album by Dig in the dollar bin, avoid it at all costs. Their three previous records were alt-grunge washouts, heavy on distortion and light on substance. However, Life Like found this Los Angeles band reinventing themselves as post-Oasis rockers, just like other faux-British cut-out bin regulars (Spacehog, Plastiscene, et al.). We can overlook the bad accents for solid rock jams like “Bumpkin” and “Coming Down” however.
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Fireside Do Not Tailgate (American,1996)
Once post-hardcore band Quicksand saw a smidgen of mainstream success in the mid-’90s, labels jumped on anything similar and flooded the market, which is how promo copies of this title (as well as Seaweed’s excellent Spanaway) ended up in just about every record store in America. Yeah, it basically sounds like a Swedish version of Quicksand, but this is in no way a bad thing. Fireside went on to release a number of albums after this, but Do Not Tailgate is still their best.
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Harvey Danger Where Have All The Merrymakers Gone? (Slash/ London,1998)
The problem with one-hit wonders is that usually the song in question is the only good track on the band’s album. Not so with Harvey Danger’s debut, which was packed start-to-finish with energetic, creative and thoughtful indie rock that truly rocked. You thought “Flagpole Sitta” was good? Give a listen to “Jack The Lion,” “Private Helicopter” and “Carlotta Valdez.” Few “one-hit wonder” discs are more consistently great than this.
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Lit A Place In The Sun (RCA,1999)
Unabashedly poppy and hook-laden, Lit’s A Place In The Sun is the perfect summer album-it’s completely disposable, extremely catchy modern rock played by dudes with tattoos and facial piercings. However, the karaoke potential of their smash hit “My Own Worst Enemy,” with the still enjoyable “Zip-Lock” and “Miserable” (the video for which featured Pamela Anderson when she was still attractive and Hep C-free), easily make this worth a buck.
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The Refreshments Fizzy Fuzzy Big & Buzzy (Mercury,1996)
There are one-hit wonders, and then there are no-hit wonders, a category into which Arizona’s the Refreshments would fall. Their major-label debut’s lead single, “Banditos,” had a great Tex-Mex vibe that made you want to slide on some shitkickers and throw back some Shiner Bock. It never caught on beyond late-night MTV rotation, though, which is a shame because the album is chock full of Southwestern-flavored rock both aggressive (“European Swallow”) and sugary sweet (“Down Together”).
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R.E.M. Monster (Warner Bros.,1994)
This is nowhere near R.E.M.’s best album (that would be 1996’s The New Adventures In Hi-Fi), but it is their best-selling at more than 4 million copies sold domestically-and once frat dudes who loved moshing to “Star 69” and “Bang And Blame” got tired of it, into the cut-out bin it went. Still, R.E.M.’s fabled “rock” album holds up surprisingly well 15 years later, specifically “Strange Currencies” and “I Don’t Sleep, I Dream.” Thanks for the cheap tunes, fratties.
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Smash Mouth Fush Yu Mang (Interscope,1997)
Before they whored themselves out to every movie soundtrack known to man (The Jungle Book 2? Seriously?), Smash Mouth used to be a pretty fun ska-punk band who stumbled into a major-label record deal and, even more incredibly, wrote the clever, surf-rock slacker anthem “Walkin’ On The Sun.” The rest of the record sounds nothing like that track, however, incorporating more Warped Tour-friendly musical styles (“Heave-Ho”). Just pretend this unfairly maligned disc is by a different band and rescue it from the cut-out bin already.
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Sugar File Under: Easy Listening (Rykodisc,1994)
Sugar’s entire catalog should be on this list-it’s all solid mid-’90s power-pop that somehow never really found an audience, causing used-CD stores to become swamped with their albums. Seriously, you can most likely buy this band’s entire recorded works for under $5 at your local record shop. It’s truly a shame, because frontman Bob Mould (formerly of Hüsker Dü) really knows how to write a rock song. Just listen to “Gee Angel” and “Gift” for proof.
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Various Artists DGC Rarities Vol. 1 (DGC,1994)
B-sides, outtakes and otherwise unreleased tracks from Nirvana, Beck, Weezer, Hole, Sonic Youth and more? It’s amazing this compilation didn’t score a gold record considering it was released before the internet took the fun out of tracking down rarities. Hell, the Counting Crows song, “Einstein On The Beach (For An Eggman),” even made it to No. 1 on the Billboard modern rock chart. (Don’t hold that against it, though.) DGC, if you’re reading: Give us volume two already!
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