Rock + Alternative

We here at The Dowsers adapted this playlist from Marshall Bowden’s “10 Great Forgotten Bob Dylan Tracks,” a listicle the writer put together for Paste magazine. Admittedly, the word “forgotten” is overstatement. Seeing as how Dylan is one the most analyzed artists in the history of recorded music, there simply isn’t a whole lot in his catalog that hasn’t been obsessively chronicled. Headline hyperbole notwithstanding, Bowden proves a knowledgeable fan with a sharp ear for minor gems. There are no missteps here. Each and every cut succeeds in helping paint a fuller picture of the icon’s vision. If you’re a Dylan fan looking to move beyond his classic albums and songs, this playlist will make a great guide into the deep end.

Sometimes music is a solitary endeavor. After recording technology advanced to the point of making it possible for one person to construct an entire album all by themselves, hermetic whiz kids started turning out solo albums in the truest sense of the word, in which they played and sang all or nearly all of the parts. Some of them may have been control freaks eschewing additional musicians out of monomania, but others were studio geniuses who crafted entire worlds all on their own, and thats what were looking into here.A few are former band members who ran with the chance to operate unencumbered, such as Paul McCartney and John Fogerty, who had some of their most memorable songs sans helpmates, like "Maybe Im Amazed," from the ex-Beatles 1970 solo debut, McCartney, and "Centerfield," from the CCR frontmans 1985 comeback album of the same name. Some became famous as youthful mavens of multitracking, as Prince did with his first hit, "I Wanna Be Your Lover," as well as Mike Oldfield with his first album, Tubular Bells, known forevermore as the spooky soundtrack music of The Exorcist.More and more artists are going it alone as digital technology has drastically increased the ease and options in creating one-person projects. Sometimes theyve obscured their solitary stances by adopting aliases that could be taken for band names, such as Glasser (Cameron Mesirow), Grimes (Claire Boucher), and Japanese Breakfast (Michelle Zauner). Whether they tip their hands or not, the next Todd Rundgren or Stevie Wonder could be out there right now, just waiting for the right time to pop up with a new, strictly solo masterpiece.

Right in the wake of Kurt Cobains tragic death in 1994, Billie Joe Armstrongs rascally sneer became a regular fixture on MTV. Green Days stoner punk was ripe to flourish in such a bummed-out climate—they channeled the angst and malaise of grunge through scrappy, jittery old-school punk, threw in a little sardonic silliness, and knitted it all together with some undeniably delicious pop hooks. Throughout the 90s, the Bay Area trio embraced the idea of being rebels without a cause (and with nothing to do: see "Longview"), but by American Idiot—released just prior to the 2004 presidential election—they again captured the cultures growing unease, this time in a nation that looked and felt vastly different than it did a decade prior. "American Idiot" may be their greatest rebel anthem ever, but it certainly hasnt stopped them from unleashing more seething, politically-charged pop-punk that has been just as timely. -- Stephanie Garr

It is said that all contemporary American music derives from Black music. Folk, rock ‘n’ roll, blues, jazz, and country music have roots in African American spirituals, and the early guitar music of slaves and poor Black musicians who created songs that addressed their work, their love lives, and their community.Black folk music can be traced back to the early 1900s through the guitar-based music of Elizabeth Cotten, whose self-taught finger-picking style provided an equally complex and tender backdrop for her soft vocals. It’s since become so steeped in the American artistic lexicon that you many not even notice how prevalent it is in modern music.Today, Black folk music is commonly associated with the artists who broke into the mainstream in the ’80s and ’90s, like Tracy Chapman and Ben Harper. But there is so much music that came before and after. A folksinger since the ‘50s, Alabama native Odetta was a huge influence on artists like Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash. (In fact, Odetta was a guest on Cash’s variety show in 1969, and one of his final singles, “God’s Gonna Cut You Down,” was a cover of a song Odetta recorded back in 1956.) Now, artists like Valerie June and Rhiannon Giddens are continuing the tradition of Black folk music, incorporating acoustic guitar, banjo, and mandolin on their recent albums. This mixtape spans 1910 to 2017—it was a pleasure to make and I hope you’ll find it’s a pleasure to listen to.

The band has always displayed such an appetite for its own self-destruction, it’s incredible that Guns N’ Roses ever made it in the first place. Even the question of what to put on the cover of Appetite for Destruction—the debut album that turns 30 this summer—threatened to put them outta the race before they’d even gotten out of the gate. Axl Rose initially wanted a picture of the Challenger explosion on the cover, but Geffen 86’d that as fast as possible. Then the band wanted (and got) a lurid cartoon image—based on the same 1979 painting by cult comix and hot-rod art great Robert Williams that was the source for the album’s name—of a robot rapist menaced by a multi-armed contraption as a female victim lies slumped against a fence. When retailers said there was no effing way they’d rack that, Geffen hastily revised it, shifting the image to the inner sleeve, where it would mess with the minds of impressionable teens forever more. They replaced it with a cross-and-skulls image by Billy White Jr. representing each of the band members (hence the black top hat for the Slash skull on the bottom).Despite the label’s efforts and the band’s sweat and toil in the two years since its membership had coalesced out of some of L.A.’s scrappiest hard-rock acts, Appetite for Destruction debuted at No. 182 in its first week on the Billboard charts in August 29, 1987. A year later, however, the story was very different. Driven by the band’s relentless touring and the ubiquitous radio and video airplay for “Welcome to the Jungle,” “Paradise City,” and “Sweet Child o’ Mine,” Appetite for Destruction would eventually rack up over 18 million in sales and become the all-time best-selling debut album.Thirty years later, it’s easy to hear how the music was more than just what they needed to surf past their troubles and penchant for self-sabotage (at least for a while). Part of what made GNR so thrilling was how they took a disc sander to all the glam and pop elements that prevailed in the hair-metal era of the ‘80s. Their sound was so much gnarlier, drawing from hardcore punk heroes like the Misfits, the primo biker metal of Motörhead, and—first and foremost—the bluesy, boozy rock of Thin Lizzy, AC/DC, Aerosmith and The Rolling Stones. Just as crucial was the ability of producer Mike Clink to present it all with a minimum of clutter and maximum force.Yet at the same time, GNR were unafraid to provide some hooks or show off a more vulnerable side. Indeed, Rose had way more ballads ready to go after “Sweet Child o’ Mine,” but they decided to stick with only one for the debut. “November Rain,” the singer’s first full-bore expression of his love for Elton John-sized grandeur, was one of several early songs that had to wait for release on Use Your Illusion I and II, the 1991 double set whose bloat was a far cry from GNR’s ruthlessly action-packed debut.The live tracks that would surface on the stop-gap album Lies—which was the first time most folks heard Live… ?!*Q Like a Suicide, the demi-legendary self-released EP that came out the year before Appetite—and the unabashedly ragged ’87-’93 compilation served as further proof of just how exhilarating GNR were in their late-‘80s prime. The best of them are here along with early tracks by the proto-GNR band Hollywood Rose and songs by other bands whose impact on Rose and Slash was obvious even without the regrettable existence of The Spaghetti Incident? And at the heart of this playlist is Appetite for Destruction, still one of the most ferocious, most bad-ass, and most unabashedly rock ‘n’ roll rock ‘n’ roll albums ever made. So wake up, sleepyheads… it’s time to diiiieeeeee.

Let’s make one thing glaringly plain right at the start: This is not a Halloween playlist. So if you’re expecting “Monster Mash” or “Ghostbusters” or any of that sort of business, you’re trick-or-treating at the wrong door. The songs assembled here are meant instead for ushering in Samhain, a holiday that occurs at the same time as—and is a predecessor to—Halloween, but has different, decidedly older origins. But make no mistake, things surrounding Samhain can still get plenty creepy.

It’s essentially an end-of-harvest commemoration that is Gaelic in origin and goes back at least to the 10th century if not farther. It’s generally reckoned to be connected to paganism, and some of the spooky rites and rituals connected to it (which have also been an inspiration on Halloween) bear that out. But there’s also an organic and naturalistic, almost folksy side to it. Check out the classic ’70s movie thriller The Wicker Man (represented here) some time and you’ll get an idea of that intersection, albeit slanted distinctly toward the dark side.

Then again, positioned as it is to herald the oncoming winter, Samhain is known as the harbinger of the “dark half” of the calendar year. So that darkness manifests itself in more ways than one. And the Samhain-friendly songs here fall all across the spectrum. On one end, you’ve got the gentle folky stuff, be it Led Zeppelin’s “Battle of Evermore,” Jethro Tull’s “Songs from the Wood,” or Loreena McKennitt’s “All Souls Night.” Then there’s the moodier, more intense, dancing-naked-in-the-moonlight vibe represented by the likes of Dead Can Dance, Kate Bush, and Faith and The Muse. And on the most unsettling side, you’ve got Black Sabbath, Bruce Dickinson, and Electric Wizard conjuring classic metallic, black-magic imagery.

Some of these tunes have an explicitly subject-specific spin, and some may simply fit the feel, but brought together they provide a soundtrack for the full range of Samhain moods.

Photo by chuttersnap on Unsplash

Santa Claus is a proudly blue-collar, salt-of-the-earth kind of guy who never leaves the house without his black leather boots and who never fails to get the job done in the toughest of circumstances. So when he’s hurtling from house to house with a bunch of amped-up reindeer on a sled full of Hatchimals and Marvel action figures — all traveling at a velocity that would be dangerously reckless on any other night of the year — you can most definitely believe he needs to hear something harder than Michael Bublé to get through his shift.Thankfully, there’s a legion of metal dudes and hard rockers who know that no season is complete without a very different kind of holiday music. They’re responsible for a valuable counter-tradition of Christmas songs, the kind that combines long-loved tidings of joy and fellowship with the sounds of wicked guitar solos, monster riffs, and blast-beats. Twisted Sister, those legends of Long Island-style mayhem, have arguably been the most enthusiastic purveyors of hard-rock holiday action. After all, the band’s reliably frank frontman, Dee Snider, was always quick to fess up that their biggest hit — 1984’s “We’re Not Gonna Take It” — was partly inspired by the tune for “O Come, All Ye Faithful.”Snider and his bandmates made the somewhat unlikely connection between the two songs perfectly clear when they opened 2006’s A Twisted Christmas with a rowdier version of the 18th-century carol than you’ll ever hear at midnight mass. Just as much fun are Twisted Sister’s gnarly takes on “White Christmas” and “The Twelve Days of Christmas,” which Snider and Co. revamped to include such rocker-appropriate gifts as skull earrings, quarts of Jack, cans of hairspray and, of course, “a tattoo of Ozzy” in place of the lame-ass partridge. As sacrilegious as they may seem to those who believe the holidays can only be shiny, bright, and holy, Twisted Sister’s assaults on the holiday-music canon actually do something very worthy. They bring the sounds and sentiments of the season into lives and households that may not fit any cookie-cutter conception of seasonal good times.As such, Dee Snider’s tidings get pride of place in this playlist of songs that range from exuberant (Skid Row’s “Jingle Bells,” Cheap Trick’s “Christmas Christmas”) to sinister (Venom’s “Black Christmas,” Apocalyptica’s “Little Drummer Boy”) to irresistibly crashing (Trans-Siberian Orchestra’s “Wizards in Winter,” Kamelot’s “We Three Kings”). All get the job done on a cold winter’s eve lit only by cheap strands of electric lights.

Jim James’ angelic falsetto floats above his soulful jams like that of a mezzo-soprano in an operatic aria, flowing to and fro through the grooves and harmonies. A heavy sense of chill exudes from nearly every track, from the hard-hitting bangers to the tender ballads. It isn’t just his voice, but his whole attitude that makes his songs great. He rides the slow build of My Morning Jacket’s “Smokin’ from Shootin’” like a focused surfer, while “Golden” sees him glide over its percussive shuffle like a leaf in the wind. Singing and guitar are far from his only strengths—the Monsters of Folk album featured his work on guitar, bass, keyboard, drums, percussion, and electronics. All these talents come together cohesively and effectively in his solo work, such as 2013’s celestial Regions of Light and Sound of God, whose tracks saw him moving into more vulnerable thematic territory (“A New Life”) while still maintaining his trademark chill vibes and occasional funkiness (“Know Til Now”). Eternally Even’s “Here in Spirit” continues the trajectory, acting as a masterclass in James’ eternally solid vibes. Whether shredding on guitar, vocals, or other, the man is in a class of his own when it comes to contemporary jam theory.

Unless you’re the prom queen or the captain of the football team, high school is generally filled with way more embarrassing moments than it is triumphant ones. Hell, even my triumphs — winning a couple debate conferences, being elected to the school senate — are pretty embarrassing. It’s fitting, then, that this playlist of 3rd wave ska and loser punk served as my soundtrack for those years. I got into ska for the same reason you get into all kinds of stupid crap in high school: because of a girl. I’d had a crush on her since freshman year, and when she started singing lead vocals for our high school’s ska band, I gleefully hopped on the bandwagon. My first real show, i.e. not Starship at the county fair, was a ska show: The Goodwin Club (my crush’s band), Nuckle Brothers, Skankin Pickle, Voodoo Glow Skulls. I stage dove for the first time at that show, which resulted in my pair of thrift-store-purchased corduroy pants being ripped from crotch to cuff. Because this was a ska show, however, there was an abundance of safety pins holding various patches to various kids’ backpacks, and a very kind random girl helped me pin my pants back together. In hindsight, I probably should have asked her out instead. Oh well. Not surprisingly, I was far from alone in obsessing over my crush. Half the guys in the ska scene wanted to date her and/or write a song about her. There are two such songs on this mix, “Martian Girl” by The Aquabats and “I Want Your Girlfriend to Be My Girlfriend” by Reel Big Fish, both written specifically about the girl in question. Said girl’s band played shows with many of the bands included here. I saw them open for No Doubt, Sublime, and Dance Hall Crashers (all favorites of mine), and I have vivid memories of driving around in the passenger seat of my crush object’s Jeep — her parents spoiled her rotten — listening to tapes by Propoghandi, The Descendents, The Skatalites, etc. Indeed, we became close friends, a situation that delighted her (who doesn’t want an obsequious fanboy at their beck and call), but destroyed me. I’ll spare you the details, which quickly reach Lifetime-movie levels of maudlin and depressing. Suffice it to say: I made it out alive. Once we got to college, my friends, my crush, and I all bailed on ska, swapping it out for various strains of trip-hop, indie rock, and, uh, jungle. There are plenty of songs from those genres that are near and dear to my heart, but nothing brings the memories back quite like a silly horn line and some offbeat guitar chords. I mean, listen to Skankin Pickle’s “I Missed the Bus.” That song is completely stupid and totally embarrassing, and I love it.

Few filmmakers ever displayed as much savvy about music—or were so eager to show off their sheer love of it—than Jonathan Demme. The director, who passed away on April 26 at the age of 73 after a battle with cancer, established his impeccable and impressively diverse tastes long before indie-movie hotshots like Quentin Tarantino and Wes Anderson followed suit in the 1990s. Of course, he did that most prominently in his many music docs, a rich bounty that ranged from his epochal Talking Heads film Stop Making Sense (1984) through the sorely underrated Robyn Hitchcock curio Storefront Hitchcock (1998), his three lovely films on Neil Young, to one of his final projects, the JT Netflix spectacular Justin Timberlake + The Tennessee Kids (2016).That’s just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Demme’s music mania. The soundtracks of his early efforts were the handiwork of a deep fan—who else would’ve loaded up a road comedy like Melvin & Howard (1980) with Crazy Horse, Faron Young, Eddy Arnold, and the Sir Douglas Quintet? For Something Wild (1986), he lived up to the film’s title with a brilliant hodgepodge of killer salsa and dub reggae tracks along with the Fine Young Cannibals and the Feelies. Appearing on screen as a cover band playing a high school reunion, the latter group were one of many faves Demme actually used as actors, a tradition he’d continue with Chris Isaak in Married to the Mob (1988), his pal Hitchcock in The Manchurian Candidate (2004), and TV on the Radio’s Tunde Adebimpe in Rachel Getting Married (2008). Don’t forget the many music videos that bear Demme’s imprimatur, too, including “Streets of Philadelphia” by Bruce Springsteen—originally commissioned for his 1993 AIDS drama Philadelphia—and New Order’s haunting “The Perfect Kiss.”It’s no surprise that music often a played a major part in his characters’ lives, too. One such signature moment comes in Demme’s biggest hit, The Silence of the Lambs (1991), when actress Brooke Smith’s ill-fated character drives down the highway hollering along to Tom Petty’s “American Girl,” happily unaware of the nastiness that awaits when she stops to help ol’ Buffalo Bill. (Demme used songs by The Fall, Gang of Four, and Wires Colin Newman to enhance the horrors to come.) Demme evidently loved the Petty classic so much, he put it in the repertoire of Meryl Streep’s Chrissie Hynde-like rocker character in the 2015 comedy Ricki and the Flash. That’s why both versions deserve pride of place in this tribute to a man who may have loved music even more than he did movies.