Uncle Wiggly - “Crow (As In Eat)” from 1992’s There Was An Elk.

Shimmy Disc, the New York based indie label in the 80s and beyond, were most known for their flagship band Bongwater as well as groups like Galaxie 500, Ween, and King Missile who would go on to greater fame after leaving the label.

However, the labels best acts were the least visible ones, such as The Mabuses, Jellyfish Kiss, The Tinklers, and best of all, Uncle Wiggly.

While The Mabuses’ self titled album is the label’s best album, Uncle Wiggly has the greatest run of releases on Shimmy Disc than any other band. Granted, that makes only two full lengths, but each one is incredibly solid — 1991’s Across The Room And Into Your Lap and 1992’s double-LP There Was An Elk.

Saying Uncle Wiggly were underrated would be itself an understatement. Figuring they were WFMU’s ambassadors to the birth of Indie Rock, for all intents and purposes, they should have been the most prominent. However, perhaps due to their experimental nature, they were ignored even in the underground. Even their fellow weird cohorts in California, Thinking Fellers Union Local 282, were more known.

And speaking as a Stan for both the Fellers and Uncle Wiggly, I have to say that There Was An Elk was a better 2-LP than the Fellers’ 1992 2-LP Mother Of All Saints. Both records are fantastic, but Elk is on its own level. There’s less noise and more Meat Puppets versus Mother Of All Saints, but this doesn’t stop Uncle Wiggly from filling the sprawl with edge first to final track.

“Crow (As In Eat)” is a good example of the marriage of both of these fine records.

UPDATE: I didn’t double-check, and it turns out the long-form There Was An Elk was only on CD format. The vinyl is trimmed down to single LP length. Assuming the CD format, I stand by the above still.

The Ex - “Mother” from 1998’s Starters Alternators.

Katrin, the drummer, sings lead vocals on this. Very lovely song, and amongst my favorite songs by The Ex ever. It’s a very open-ended song about “Mother”.  Mother Nature, Mother country, one’s mother…

Scott Jacobson - “Emily” from 2002’s Seldom Is Heard A Discouraging Word EP

Since this EP’s release on Tape Mountain (and available for download), New York’s Scott Jacobson has:

• been a writer on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
• been a writer on the TV Funhouse segments featured on Saturday Night Live
• co-authored the sex guide parody bookbuster Our Bodies, Our Junk
• directed the acclaimed music videos for Superchunk’s “Digging For Something” and The National’s “Conversation 16”

Naturally, and unfortunately, Seldom Is Heard A Discouraging Word is overlooked in Jacobson’s oeuvre. The EP doesn’t fit into his career trajectory of humor as easily as the rest of his work. Still, in this relatively short amount of music, Scott Jacobson traverses a number of styles of indie-pop.

“Emily”, featured here, is the Club Hit. The airy homemade percussion/breakbeat serves the highly catchy song well, as do the odd lyrics and fuzzed out guitars. Most importantly, the song is extremely fun, making it reminiscent of New Zealand greats Chris Knox and Alec Bathgate i.e. Tall Dwarfs.

Another choice cut and proper epic ending is the mostly solo “Angie It’s Okay”, with self harmonies and guitar layers The Byrds would pine for, post Notorious Byrd Brothers.

Overall, if you have any affection for the classic early 90s era Indie Pop 7-inch Single, you should have this. If Pitchfork magazine didn’t have a restraining order against me, I would give this an solid 8.3!

Once again, thanks to the fine folk(s?) at Tape Mountain in Portland, this EP can be yours in digital file format.

rRope - “OK Nic” from rRope. Released in the late 90s. An amazing Bay Area band that should have been worshipped by all by now.

An almost full rRope discography is coming out on Deathbomb Arc, I believe.

3Ds “Outer Space” from 1992’s Hellzapoppin. Very stoic in its extreme absurdity, like many videos from groups on the Flying Nun label. Pirates vs. Masonics.

Wire “Eardrum Buzz (single version)” from 1989. Wire’s biggest hit. Tons of cameos! Wire at their wackiest!  Colin almost Stooge-esque! (As in The Three Stooges, not the, um, Stooges.) Graham with a military cut, sans mullet! Bruce with a hat, wig, makeup, shades, and tambourine!  Robert Gotobed being very Gotobed.  And one of the best prototypes of modern indie pop ever recorded.

Q4U “Creeps”. Female-led Icelandic punk group circa 1981. “Creeps”, their relative hit, does sound a lot like Kraftwerk’s “The Model”. However, the lyrics are quite different. And Kraftwerk never had a teabagging drawing in the back of their video for “The Model”.

Þeyr’s “Blood” (from 1982’s The Fourth Reich EP)

The 1982 Icelandic live rockumentary Rokk í Reykjavík is still one of the best geographically cathartic rock compilations ever made. One of many great bands that were featured were the band Þeyr (pronounced “thair”.) Much like its geographic opposite New Zealand, Iceland had a punk scene inspired mainly by early 80s bands such as Joy Division, Killing Joke, and Siouxsie & The Banshees.

However, looking at the video, this band looks like a prototype of Sun City Girls fronted by Dave Vanian!

Unnatural Helpers “She Was Your Girlfriend” — BEST VIDEO OF 2010 SO FAR!  Slightly NSFW (one quick fake-puke scene, lots of middle fingers, nothing too awful though.)

The song is from the band’s recently released album Cracked Love & Other Drugs. The short attention span cuts in this video make it quite psychedelic, and obviously quite tense given the what the song is about. However — with many thanks to appearances by Seattle icon Jackie Hell — the video has a great comic sheen throughout.

Stump’s “Chaos” (from 1988’s A Fierce Pancake)

Take Captain Beefheart worship, add highly intensely campy frontman, manage to get both Hugh Jones and Holger Hiller to produce your one and only album, and.. well, the results are strange, but highly inventive and unique.

I can’t blame anyone for not being able to deal with the front man in this video, or even his singing. You either love him or hate him, I guess.

Has there ever been a greater band from Cork, Ireland?

Some Velvet Sidewalk’s “Avalanche” (from 1992’s Avalanche)

I’ve spoken in length about Unwound being one of the greatest bands in rock history, and could continue on that trajectory for the rest of my life. To be fair, I wanted to highlight an album that might have played a small part in getting Unwound that momentum — and I stress “might.” While Steve Fisk was recording what was supposed to be Unwound’s first studio album, the sessions instead were scattered amongst Unwound’s first ever singles and only later were collected on a self titled collection released in 1995.

At the same time, the Fisk-recorded Avalanche by Olympia(?)-via-Eugene band Some Velvet Sidewalk was released on K records.  As fun and playful as Some Velvet Sidewalk’s debut Appetite For Extinction was, Avalanche was a quantum leap forward in the rock and punk direction — only being beat by Nation Of Ulysses’s debut album a year prior, as far as seminal indie punk goes. (Burp, apologies for the buzz term gas.)

I’ve always wondered if part of the reason Slim Moon decided to make Unwound’s 1993 debut album Fake Train his label Kill Rock Stars’s first full music album release was because he heard Avalanche and went “Oh shit.”  I still kinda do that to this day, all the way to the never-too-long-although-it’s-long “Ice Cream Overdrive.”

Prolapse “Slash/Oblique” (from 1997’s The Italian Flag)

With all the fuss about M.I.A.’s “Born Free” (which is worth it, IMHO), by all means an obvious homage to the New York duo Suicide musically, the track is also inadvertently reminiscent of this track by the more recent band, Prolapse, who were biting at Suicide in their own unique layered way.

Prolapse are the only band I can remember that not only had two confrontational vocalists, but were most often confrontational toward each other, and still managed to go all over place, melodically, sonically. If Damian Abraham from Fucked Up had a female counterpart up front, this could give you a small idea what Prolapse were once like.

There’s no doubt that Alan Vega, M.I.A., Mick Derrick, and Linda Steelyard (the latter two being the primary vocalists in Prolapse) all have widely varying singing styles. Still, this track and “Born Free” remind that some bands become anthemic legends via their sonic blueprint much more so any particular hit songs: Suicide, Pussy Galore, The Stooges, The Jesus And Mary Chain (while they were making their blueprint anyway) and many others.

Mercury Rev “Something For Joey” (from 1993’s BOCES)

1.NSFW! Sure, naughty bits are covered in swirling patriotic stars, and there’s no foul language. But still… NSFW.

2.Ron Jeremy is in the video.  Yes, that Ron Jeremy.

3.Ron Jeremy is one of the best things in the video. No, not for that.

4.Hawkwind spent over a decade trying reach the nexus of supersonic space sleaze, and got close many times. Mercury Rev reached it in one video.

5.”Something For Joey” is Mercury Rev’s best song.  BOCES is their best album.

6.I don’t mind the mature fantasy/faerie rock phase of current Mercury Rev. But I really miss the initial “Planet Tharg” phase of Mercury Rev.  A lot.

rRope’s “Nr 23” live at Aron’s Records in L.A., March 1996.

rRope were another great Bay Area rock band that helped expand the “weirdo rock” thing that had a spotlight in the 90’s but has somewhat been put aside.  While bands like Thinking Fellers Union Local 282 (also from the Bay Area), Trumans Water (Portland via San Diego), and Polvo (Chapel Hill) had a relatively higher profile under that moniker, there were far more just as deserving who barely got the accolades they deserved. rRope are on the top of that list. One of the band mmebers has thankfully uploaded a dozen live rRope YouTube clips… This is the clearest and best one of the bunch.

“Which Way To Go” by Austin, TX punk group Big Boys from their final album from 1984, No Matter How Long The Line At The Cafeteria Is There Is Always A Seat.

No major thoughts aside from how little people talk about Big Boys these days, especially when Austin TX has become the yearly music conference hotspot.  Not that bands of past always have to be brought up at these events — quite the opposite. Still, rumination is always an element whenever hordes of music fans get together, so the silence regarding Big Boys is mystifying to me. They were like Minutemen good.  I consider the two bands spiritual brothers in many ways.

The death of Alex Chilton last week would have understandably muted many musings of any past bands, for obvious reasons.