Check out Phantasmagoria or Creations, or if you really want to have some dreams you’re scared to remember, the Altered States soundtrack.

words by Devoe Yates

In 1999 oddball actor and musician John Lurie discovered the work of bluesman Marvin Pontiac and released The Legendary Marvin Pontiac: Greatest Hits through his Strange & Beautiful label. The album was a posthumous collection of Pontiac’s work and aside from the quirky songwriting and song titles like “I’m a Doggy”, it contained a biography of the reclusive eccentric. According to the biography, Pontiac was born to an African father and Jewish-American mother, moved to Chicago in his teens, and began to play harmonica. When another harmonica player beat him in a fight, he became a plumber’s assistant and recorded music sporadically. After several incidents, including a bank robbery, an alien abduction, refusal to record for a label unless its owner mowed his lawn, and a nude bicycle ride through his town (resulting in arrest), Pontiac was committed to a mental hospital and later hit by a bus. Although Pontiac, as it turns out, existed only in Lurie’s mind, and the songs were actually written by Lurie and members of his avant-jazz group the Lounge Lizards, that doesn’t mean it still can’t be enjoyed. There’s a distinct African flavor, the vocals smack of Tom Waits, and the songs sound like something Captain Beefheart could have penned. -Bill Dvorak 

by Bill Dvorak

I hadn’t heard of Perez until recently, though I was familiar with his music, which has been sampled by the Avalanches and Lou Bega (Mambo #5 obviously), and used as the soundtrack for Jonathan Glazer’s Guinness commercials and Fellini’s La Dolce Vita. It even serves as the theme song for the newer editions of HBO’s Real Sex series. Raised in Cuba and later relocated to Mexico, Perez was the master of the mambo; he resembled a quirky bizarro Esquivel in many ways, his music a goldmine of happy oddness. If you ever hunt the man down on YouTube, you’ll be most amazed by his intense conductorship, frilly arm pieces, occasional yelps and cries, and ability to make the mambo worthy of afternoon chill-outs, wonderful daydreams, high-end art shows, and Venezuelan wedding parties.

Recently re-released as a deluxe edition complete with a second disc of raw live performance, this grunge classic was the godfather of things to come. Before Nirvana, there was Mudhoney, and though they never really gave a shit, sandblasting their audiences with differing levels of cacophony, this prize captures the revels of anarchic American youth back in the day. Not giving a shit never sounded so good or delightfully visceral. From the mosh favorite “Touch Me I’m Sick” to the moving grooves of “No One Has” to the downing drunk-lone-motorcycle-rider turns of “If I Think”, it’s time to put your flannel back on. Albeit, obviously, only in the privacy of your own home or with very, very close friends. Fuck this 80’s party bullshit, when’s there going to be a grunge party? Hasn’t the shame worn off at last? 

by Devoe Yates

If you’re not yet familiar with the British label, Soul Jazz, I suggest you buy a bong and a record player and make it happen. Nobody digs up funk soul reggae grooves like these chaps; they search deep in the lands of South America and elsewhere for the best lost morsels of ours and past times. You can’t really go wrong with anything spit out by this label, but this might be my favorite release of late. Here they’ve presented you with choice selects from the 1967-1970 recording days of reggae legends The Sound Dimension. Jams likes “Rockfort Rock” and “In Cold Blood” are cornerstones on the foundation level of reggae. This crew was the in-house band at Studio One for the aforementioned time span and these ditties have been re-versioned by masses of Reggae bands. But if you want to dip into the real deal and see where dancehall and Jamaican music got their sticky green roots, take this disc for a spin, preferably on vinyl. –Bill Dvorak

One of the great injustices of music journalism is the fact that the Modern Lovers rarely get mentioned in discussions of the 70’s U.S. punk scene. Sure, they were from Boston and not New York, but they were as fun as the Ramones, as quirky as the Talking Heads, and they packed enough punk edge and new wave sensibility to hold their own next to the Stooges and Blondie. The bands’ eponymous debut (1976) features the good-times car ride of “Roadrunner”, where Jonathan Richman sings that he’s going “faster miles an hour,” and the bizarre “Pablo Picasso”, where Richman observes, “Well, the girls would turn the color of an avocado/when he would drive down their street in his El Dorado/he could walk down your street/and girls could not resist his stare/Pablo Picasso never got called an asshole.” It also includes the pro-secretary track “Government Center” (“We gotta rock-a rock-a rock-a nonstop tonight/uh huh, at the government center/make the secretaries feel better/when they put the stamps on the letters”) and Richman’s endearing homage to his parents and grandparents, “Old World”. While there were a few other Modern Lovers releases, and Richman’s excellent solo career, this self-titled disc is the best place to start.

–Bill Dvorak