DIY / Outsider

Recordings made by non-professionals, usually on their own dime. Also know as “real people music” this stuff can range from charming & naive, to downright twisted.

Carol Kleyn: Love Has Made Me Stronger

Elven harp lady who, according to the back cover of this LP, was given “a harp and the courage to make her music her way” by Bobby Brown (the hippie of private press fame, not the crackhead of Whitney Houston fame). I suppose a woman of lesser stuff might not take advice from a one-man-band […]

Chris Korzen – Nirvana For Home Use

Total homemade one here. Chris put this out in the mid eighties on the Playfull label. The track that gets me everytime is “Nirvana”. Sounds like The Beach Boys with a total real person vibe to it, it’s really catchy. This is definitely one of those records that straddles the line between being cheesy with […]

Emmett Frisbee – Sound Paintings

“Emmett Frisbee used to travel the country entering Hoagy Carmichael look-alike contests. He was never a winner, though once he was one of the ten finalists. Discouraged, penniless and having turned vegetarian, Emmett decided one Thanksgiving over his bowl of cold oatmeal to make music his career. Life took an immediate upward swing. Today, Emmett […]

Gary Kail – Zurich 1916 (Creative Nihilism)

A very personal musique concrete tour-de-force subtitled “Creative Nihilism – Studies in musique concrete 1979-1983” (Iridescence 1984), Gary Kail’s magnum opus brings to mind the recordings of the LAFMS and other bedroom tape-splicers of the pre-digital era. The first record consists of Gary’s solo explorations, while the second one contains collaborations of his with other […]

Larry T and the Family: I’m Moving On

I like this record more every time I listen to it, and I listen to it a lot. And I really, really liked it the first time I heard it! Bay area soul/funk with a “real people” edge that really takes it one step beyond. When I first heard about this record I remember thinking, […]

Dane Sturgeon: Wild ‘n’ Tender

Yet another record that Will Louviere’s Show And Tell site put me up on. This is a hard one to classify. It’s definitely raw enough to appeal to garage or rockabilly enthusiasts, yet it lacks the naive quality of most records of that genre. The mix of crooner vocals with charging overdrive at times reminds […]