This is not an easy post to write. I am going to talk about some­thing per­son­al. Yes, it’s time to dis­cuss under­rat­ed albums, a term that can mean so many things to so many peo­ple that we might as well talk about under­rat­ed dreams. But dreams can be shared, at least in pop cul­ture and the sub­cul­tur­al cav­erns beneath it. And peo­ple can share opin­ions about an under­rat­ed album, espe­cial­ly in the dis­parate com­mu­ni­ties of the inter­net, where devo­tees can find each oth­er eas­i­ly.

When I was younger this was not so easy. One might dis­cov­er an album at a local indie record shop and buy it just for the cov­er, hav­ing no idea what lay with­in. There were no songs on YouTube, Spo­ti­fy, or iTunes. (My generation’s walk­ing to school in the snow, uphill both ways.) One made chance dis­cov­er­ies at live shows and in the pages of print mag­a­zines. In such prim­i­tive con­di­tions, it was easy to find records that you and only you loved, from start to fin­ish, some­times believ­ing you must be the only per­son who had ever heard them.

As Richard Met­zger puts it at Dan­ger­ous Minds, in writ­ing about an under­rat­ed EP from a high­ly under­rat­ed band, “In the pre-Inter­net days, record col­lec­tion was more than mere­ly a hob­by. It was almost like… a way of life.”

I take this lit­tle nos­tal­gic trip to say that for me, under­rat­ed albums tend to fold into the cat­e­go­ry of under­rat­ed artists. Dis­cov­er­ing them wasn’t a mat­ter of cred—not at first. It was a secre­tive and pri­vate act, a tiny ado­les­cent rebel­lion against the bad taste of friends and fam­i­ly. Giv­en such musi­cal solip­sism, I find it hard to gauge what makes an album under­rat­ed. You’ll find lists aplen­ty, and they are odysseys of dis­cov­ery for the adven­tur­ous. Lists filled with less­er-known records from very well-known artists. Lists made of pic­ture gal­leries. Lists quot­ing such high-cred stars as Kurt Cobain, Björk, and Arcade Fire.

As for myself, I could go on for days, but humbly offer here a few eclec­tic albums that—start to finish—have cap­ti­vat­ed me over the years for var­i­ous rea­sons. At the top, hear “Which Witch,” from TK Webb’s crim­i­nal­ly under­rat­ed 2006 Phan­tom Parade, an album of plain­tive laments that sounds like a truck stop ashtray—hypnotic road­house coun­try blues played by the Vel­vet Under­ground with vocals parked some­where between Tom Waits and Cap­tain Beef­heart.

Below it, hear a short excerpt from what is very like­ly the strangest live album ever record­ed: Wire’s 1981 Doc­u­ment & Eye­wit­ness. It’s hard to imag­ine lis­ten­ing to it with­out the lin­er notes in hand, but the over­dubbed con­ver­sa­tion on “Everything’s Going to Be Nice” will give you a taste of what the con­cert was like. The band, writes Pitch­fork, “had pushed their art-stu­dent ten­den­cies to the break­ing point, turn­ing what was expect­ed to be a pogo-fueled punk show into a Dadaist, per­for­mance-art spec­ta­cle com­plete with Mor­ris-danc­ing bells and a live goose.”

This track rep­re­sents a brief inter­lude in the midst of record­ings that cap­ture the sound of a band tak­ing itself apart onstage before a bewil­dered audi­ence clam­or­ing for the hits (or, rather, the hit, “I2XU” from their clas­sic debut Pink Flag.)

In the Spo­ti­fy playlist above, in addi­tion to these two albums, hear for­mer Scream­ing Trees singer Mark Lanegan’s Bub­ble Gum, Eng­lish rock­a­bil­ly revival­ist Hol­ly Golight­ly & Dan Melchoir’s Des­per­ate Lit­tle Town, Afro-Turk­ish singer Esmeray’s 2013 col­lec­tion of hits En lyi­leriyle Esmer­ay (hits in her native land, maybe, but sad­ly not well known in the Eng­lish-speak­ing world), post-rock pio­neers Bark Psy­chosis’s 1994 Hex; the alter­na­tive­ly hyp­not­ic and hys­ter­i­cal Cana­di­an indie rock­ers Frog Eyes’ 2002 debut The Bloody Hand; Pissed Jeans’ most­ly ter­ri­fy­ing Hope for Men; Gillian Welch’s trad folk/country Soul Jour­ney (don’t miss clos­er “Wreck­ing Ball”); and the Sta­ple Singers under­rat­ed ear­ly albums Uncloudy Day & Will the Cir­cle Be Unbro­ken.

Depend­ing on my mood, these are albums I lis­ten to straight through—and think, while doing so, every­one should hear this. But of course the list is biased. Like telling peo­ple about your dreams, telling peo­ple about your favorite, under­rat­ed albums can nev­er approach the expe­ri­ence of lis­ten­ing to them your­self. Nonethe­less, read­er, a per­son­al ques­tion: what would you put on your list? What albums do you want fel­low OC read­ers to put on their radar? Tell us in the com­ments below. And if we get enough good replies, who knows, maybe we’ll pull togeth­er a big meta playlist we all could share.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear the 50 Best Post-Punk Albums of All Time: A Nos­tal­gia-Induc­ing Playlist Curat­ed by Paste Mag­a­zine

The His­to­ry of Punk Rock in 200 Tracks: An 11-Hour Playlist Takes You From 1965 to 2016

Lis­ten to Rolling Stone’s “500 Great­est Songs of All Time” in One Stream­able Playlist

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Joan Baez was already her­ald­ed as the “Queen of Folk” by the time Robert Zim­mer­man aka Bob Dylan arrived in New York City. Many things brought him to the bur­geon­ing folk scene there, but Baez was the siren who called to a young Dylan through his tele­vi­sion set long before he met her. He was smit­ten. He would write much lat­er in Chron­i­cles, Vol. 1, that she had “A voice that drove out bad spir­its… she sang in a voice straight to God… Noth­ing she did didn’t work.”

And for a cou­ple of years they became col­lab­o­ra­tors, part­ners, lovers, and folk roy­al­ty. It was Baez who intro­duced a then-unknown Dylan to the crowds at the 1963 New­port Folk Fes­ti­val. But soon, for­tunes changed: Dylan became an unstop­pable cul­tur­al force and Baez would be on the receiv­ing end of sev­er­al betray­als, artis­tic and oth­er­wise.

An excerpt from an Earl Scrug­gs doc­u­men­tary, the cute video above, shot by David Hoff­man and post­ed on his YouTube chan­nel, shows Baez imi­tat­ing Dylan after she sings a verse of “It Ain’t Me Babe”. (She does this while hold­ing her baby and try­ing to get it to drink from a pitch­er, too.) A 16-year-old Ricky Skaggs—not look­ing any­thing like a teenager—accompanies her on gui­tar.

For one thing she does a crackin’ good Dylan impres­sion. The oth­er is watch­ing the emo­tion behind that impression—there’s a lot of his­to­ry there, a bit of sad­ness, a bit of nos­tal­gia, noth­ing bit­ter or mean, but evi­dence of a shared life togeth­er that once exist­ed.

By this time in 1972, Dylan’s voice had matured. The croon­er on Nashville Sky­line was a dif­fer­ent per­son from the man on Blonde on Blonde, all those rough cor­ners sand­ed off and the reg­is­ter deep­ened. Yet when any­one imi­tates Dylan, they head on back to those mid-‘60s albums, the “bray­ing beat­nik” as writer Rob Jones calls him. (Jones posits that Dylan has had eight par­tic­u­lar voic­es dur­ing his career.)

Remem­ber, as Slate’s Carl Wil­son points out, when Dylan first start­ed out, he was com­mend­ed for his voice, and was con­sid­ered  “one of the most com­pelling white blues singers ever record­ed,” by Robert Shel­ton, who wrote the copy on the back cov­er of Dylan’s 1962 debut album. He came from a tra­di­tion of both Woody Guthrie and Howl­in’ Wolf, and sev­er­al oth­er idio­syn­crat­ic singers who didn’t sound like Frank Sina­tra. (Although Dylan’s last few projects have been cov­ers from the Great Amer­i­can Song­book.)

Dylan him­self, in a 2015 award accep­tance speech, turned his ire towards crit­ics of his voice:

Crit­ics have been giv­ing me a hard time since Day One. Crit­ics say I can’t sing. I croak. Sound like a frog. Why don’t crit­ics say that same thing about Tom Waits? Crit­ics say my voice is shot. That I have no voice. [Why] don’t they say those things about Leonard Cohen? Why do I get spe­cial treat­ment? Crit­ics say I can’t car­ry a tune and I talk my way through a song. Real­ly? I’ve nev­er heard that said about Lou Reed. Why does he get to go scot-free? … Slur my words, got no dic­tion. Have you peo­ple ever lis­tened to Charley Pat­ton or Robert John­son, Mud­dy Waters? … “Why me, Lord?” I would say that to myself.

Fast for­ward to the present and Dylan’s voice shows the wear of years of per­form­ing and years of indul­gence. It’s grav­el­ly and phleg­mat­ic, smoky and whiskey-soaked, but Wil­son points out: “Even the rasp and burr of his late voice, sev­er­al keen lis­ten­ers have noticed, is very much like a more gen­uine copy of the old-blues­man tim­bre he pre­ten­tious­ly affect­ed as a young man. It’s almost like this is what he’s been aim­ing toward.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Mas­sive 55-Hour Chrono­log­i­cal Playlist of Bob Dylan Songs: Stream 763 Tracks

Hear Bob Dylan’s New­ly-Released Nobel Lec­ture: A Med­i­ta­tion on Music, Lit­er­a­ture & Lyrics

Hear a 4 Hour Playlist of Great Protest Songs: Bob Dylan, Nina Simone, Bob Mar­ley, Pub­lic Ene­my, Bil­ly Bragg & More

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

Drum­mer Kei­th Moon was sure­ly the most kinet­ic mem­ber of The Who—which is real­ly say­ing a lot—but he was not the band’s best musi­cian, even if he is rou­tine­ly named one of the best drum­mers of all time. Moon knew the appeal of his play­ing often lay in the fact that it was like no one else’s: he described him­self as the “great­est Kei­th Moon-type drum­mer in the world.” Noth­ing in rock approached his untamed excess, mod­eled after the far more dis­ci­plined flights of his hero, Gene Kru­pa.

But if the band “can be said to have an instru­men­tal vir­tu­oso,” writes Chris Jisi at Drum! mag­a­zine, “it is John Alec Entwistle,” their true sol­id cen­ter (they called him “The Ox”) and the per­fect rhyth­mic foil to Moon, who “could sound like a drum kit falling down­stairs,” Entwistle says. The bass play­er not only kept time, he tells Jisi, since Moon didn’t, and fol­lowed Moon’s “mess of cym­bals” and “all over the place” snare drum, but he also filled in for a rhythm gui­tarist as Pete Town­shend slashed away.

He kept his bass riffs rel­a­tive­ly sim­ple, he had to, and he “added top end or tre­ble… to cut through the rest of the noise.” It works, for sure. He is right­ful­ly sin­gled out as one of the great­est rock bass play­ers ever for his phe­nom­e­nal skill and poise.

A less­er play­er try­ing to com­pete with Moon’s wall of drums and Townshend’s mas­sive pow­er chords might dis­ap­pear entire­ly. Entwistle always stands out. His com­ments about Moon’s play­ing might sound dis­parag­ing, but they come off in con­text as hon­est and accu­rate, as do his descrip­tions of his own play­ing.

Entwistle sug­gests he wouldn’t be the play­er he became with­out Moon and the rest of the band. “We con­struct­ed our music to fit ‘round each oth­er,” he says. “It was some­thing very pecu­liar that none of us played the same way as oth­er peo­ple.” In their best moments, some parts “slid togeth­er by mag­ic and were gone for­ev­er.” This is the essence, real­ly, of rock and roll, the serendip­i­tous tran­scen­dence that aris­es from wild­ly col­lid­ing waves of sound.

But such con­trolled chaos can require, espe­cial­ly in a band like The Who, one cool, well-trained vir­tu­oso who can­not be ruf­fled, no mat­ter what, whose per­fec­tion looks effort­less and who nev­er breaks a sweat. The eter­nal arche­type of that play­er is John Entwistle. At the top, hear Entwistle’s iso­lat­ed bass in a live take of “Won’t Get Fooled Again.” (He comes in at 1:45, after a much-extend­ed intro). Below it, you’ll eas­i­ly pick out his every note in the stu­dio ver­sion. And fur­ther up, after anoth­er extend­ed syn­the­siz­er intro, hear him solo at 1:25 on “Baba O’Ri­ley,” also live at Shep­per­ton Stu­dios in 1978. (The stu­dio record­ing is above).

And just above, in one of his most ener­getic per­for­mances, hear him play a live ver­sion of “Pin­ball Wiz­ard” (start­ing at 0:36). And then catch one more jaw-drop­ping solo, just for good mea­sure, record­ed live at Roy­al Albert Hall.

Entwistle is some­times com­pared to Jimi Hen­drix, but in some ways, The Ox came first with his fuzzed-out sound. The mild-man­nered play­er “pio­neered the use of feed­back in music and smash­ing his instru­ment,” writes Ulti­mate Clas­sic Rock, “with Jimi Hen­drix fol­low­ing suit after see­ing Entwistle do it.” For all his reserved Eng­lish cool­ness, Entwistle first pushed the bound­aries of loud­ness, “using 200 watts of pow­er when most bands used 50,” just one of the rea­sons, as you’ll hear in these tracks, for his oth­er nick­name: “Thun­derfin­gers.”

via Laugh­ing Squid

Relat­ed Con­tent:

What Makes Flea Such an Amaz­ing Bass Play­er? A Video Essay Breaks Down His Style

The Genius of Paul McCartney’s Bass Play­ing in 7 Iso­lat­ed Tracks

The Jimi Hen­drix of the Bass: Watch a Busker Shred the Bass on the Streets of New­cas­tle

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness