Deep Cuts

[Freypower]

Hearing one of the greatest 'deep cuts' of all time, Bad News From Home from Randy Newman's wonderful Land Of Dreams album, and discussion about this elsewhere has led me to start this topic where you can list your favourite non-Eagles deep cuts.

As Mr Newman has come up I will start with him. Apart from Bad News From Home, which I love with a passion, some others are:

You Can't Fool The Fat Man
Kathleen (Catholicism Made Easier)
Christmas In Cape Town
The Blues (with Paul Simon)
Four Eyes
New Orleans Wins The War
My Country
Big Hat, No Cattle
A Few Words In Defence Of Our Country
A Piece Of The Pie

I haven't included anything from his Songbooks Vols 1 & 2 because these all seem to be well known. At least they are well known to his fans. I haven't actually got his early albums before Little Criminals.

[chaim]

Seems to me that Little Criminals is considered a lesser record, by even Randy himself, I think. I guess it has more to do with lyrics than music. There are some "lazy" lyrics on he album I guess, but musically it's great. You Can't Fool The Fat Man doesn't do much for me lyrically, but musically I love it. And the lyric kind of works too, because the music's so great. In Christmas In Cape Town I love the line "they love our music" when the guy in the song has mentioned "Dancing queen". I think this might be a joke, meaning that the guy doesn't seem to know that ABBA is from Sweden - or in his mind all white people are the same? The Blues is hilarious, but I think it's the only song Randy ever regretted doing. He feels it's unnecessary, because if songwriters get solace out of writing about their own life, they should be allowed to do that. Four Eyes is fantastic. New Orleans Wins The War is hilarous ("They're gonna pickle him in brandy and tell him he's saved" ). A Piece Of The Pie is fantastic ("The rich are getting richer - I should know." ). Some people, probably myself included, initially thought that the Jackson Browne reference was a shot at him, but it was the opposite. Randy respects the fact that out of the songwriters from that era Jackson still seems to stand behind stuff he stood behind then.

One of my favorite Randy Newman songs is I Want You To Hurt Like I Do.

Some amazing deep cuts by other bands....

Genesis: Mad Man Moon, Evidence Of Autumn, Me And Sarah Jane, Silver Rainbow, The Brazilian
The Move: What?
Queen: Tenement Funster, plus a few dozen other songs
Procol Harum: Too Much Between Us, About To Die, For Liquorice John, This World Is Rich, The Thin End Of The Wedge
YES: South Of Side Of The Sky (which fortunately isn't as deep a cut anymore as it used to be), Astral Traveller
Moody Blues: Out And In, Eternity Road, Candle Of Life, Twilight Time, Sunset, Veteran Cosmic Rocker, Running Water, Want To Be With You (to name a few)
KISS: Strange Ways, Coming Home, Anything For My Baby, Baby Driver, Mr. Speed, Almost Human, Larger Than Life, Charisma, Dirty Livin', Naked City, Just A Boy, A World Without Heroes, Under The Rose, Partners In Crime, Saint And Sinner, Killer, Not for The Innocent, Young And Wasted, While The City Sleeps, Secretly Cruel, Good Girl Gone Bad, Hell Or High Water, Betrayed, Somewhere Between Heaven And Hell, The street Giveth And The Street Taketh Away, Seduction Of The Innocent, I Confess, Childhood's End...
Pink Floyd: Let There Be More Light, Sysyphus (the Ummagumma version), The Narrow Way (especially the song part), Green Is The Colour, Cymbaline, Crying Song, A Pillow Of Winds, Burning Bridges, The Final Cut, The Gunner's Dream...
David Bowie: After All, Wild-Eyed Boy From Freecloud, Cygnet Committee, Sweet Thing, Lady Grinning Soul, Win, She'll Drive the Big Car, Always Crashing In The Same Car, Scream Like A Baby...oh there are SO many......
Beatles: Glass Onion, Hey Bulldog, Dig A Pony, Blue Jay Way, I Need You, She's Leaving Home, Because

I won't even start on Neil Young!
(I'll probably add more...)

[UndertheWire]

Pink Floyd - Grantchester Meadows (Ummagumma)
It conjures up that hot, lazy afternoon even down to the swatting of a fly.

[NightMistBlue]

"Awaken" by Yes, a multi-climactic epic to end all epics. Most prog music leaves me kinda cold, but not Yes. I think it's because, while they're technically brilliant musicians, they don't neglect the emotional and melodic aspects of the songs.

[Freypower]

Only one per artist?

Then I should mention my favourite Mark Knopfler deep track, Silvertown Blues, which is from Sailing To Philadephia & has never been played live. I love it so much I regard it as my 3rd favourite of his songs after Why Aye Man & Sailing To Philadelphia itself.

If you want to hear Phil Collins still In The Air Tonight, i.e. dark & cynical & more like Gabriel, I recommend Thru These Walls from Hello I Must Be Going!

I would nominate That Voice Again from So for Gabriel himself, along with Washing Of The Water from Us.

[WalshFan88]

How about one per top 10 favorite artists!

Rolling Stones: Monkey Man

AC/DC: Have A Drink On Me

Aerosmith: Lord Of The Thighs

Lynyrd Skynyrd: On The Hunt

Led Zeppelin: Houses Of The Holy (arguable, but to me it's underrated)

Fleetwood Mac: Second Hand News

Guns N' Roses: Mr. Brownstone

Heart: Heartless

Journey: Anytime

Def Leppard: Animal

[Jonny Come Lately]

I'll try and cover a few of my main favourites first as I feel I have quite a lot to say about them, I might do some others later.

Dire Straits - The debut album has some great deep cuts, the pick of the bunch to my mind being In The Gallery and Six Blade Knife. Communique has Where Do You Think You're Going? and Single Handed Sailor, while I've always though that Angel Of Mercy should have been released as the album's single rather than Lady Writer (excellent song, just a bit too similar to Sultans Of Swing, I don't mind but I think it was seen that way at the time). Four of the tracks on Making Movies seven tracks made it onto the Alchemy live album plus Skateaway was a single so that really leaves only Hand In Hand as a strong album cut. On Love Over Gold I love It Never Rains while Brothers In Arms has Ride Across The River and Man's Too Strong. On Every Street I feel is not that strong away from the singles although it does have How Long. As for Sailing To Philadelphia I agree that Silvertown Blues is a great track and would also add Baloney Again, Prairie Wedding, Speedway At Nazareth and One More Matinee.

Fleetwood Mac - When it comes to Fleetwood Mac I must admit I find it quite difficult to think of any of the songs on Rumours as 'deep cuts' - even non-singles like Never Going Back Again and Songbird get a fair bit of airplay in my experience. The only two which I could consider to be deep cuts are I Don't Wanna Know and Oh Daddy - I love all the songs on Rumours though so I'll take those two. I love Second Hand News but it just doesn't feel like a deep cut to me. On The self-titled/White Album the best deep songs are Monday Morning, Warm Ways and Crystal, while on Tusk I will highlight What Makes You Think You're The One, Storms and Beautiful Child. Wish You Were Here on Mirage is a song I like quite a lot and I think it is stronger than some of the singles (in the UK Oh Diane was released as a single, a poor choice in my view) The only strong songs on Tango In The Night are the radio tracks, it doesn't have much depth beyond that IMO.

Led Zeppelin - I have some difficulty in defining deep cuts as they didn't release singles in the UK. I'm not sure there are any true deep cuts on Led Zeppelin II or Houses of the Holy. The two albums where I think I can make the clearest distinction - one Led Zeppelin III, where I think there is a case for considering all of the songs other than Immigrant Song or Since I've Been Loving You to be deep. Tangerine, Friends/Celebration Day, Gallows Pole and That's The Way are all pretty great in my book. The other is Physical Graffiti where the pre-1974 tracks like The Rover, Houses of the Holy and Bron-Yr-Aur (to name my three favourites) seem deeper and less widely recognised than the all new songs (Trampled Under Foot, Kashmir etc). Other songs which I would suggest might be considered as quality deep tracks include Your Time Is Gonna Come/Black Mountain Side (LZ I), The Battle Of Evermore (LZ IV) and For Your Life (Presence).

Neil Young - Also mainly orientated towards albums rather than singles and therefore I tend to think of his biggest songs as being the ones that appear most frequently on live releases (the likes of Cortez The Killer, Powderfinger or The Needle And The Damage Done) although he did some hits like Heart Of Gold. Round And Round and Running Dry from Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere are quite powerful. The most underrated song on After The Gold Rush to my mind is Don't Let It Bring You Down, a song that is just the right length and has a great melody, while on Harvest I love Out On The Weekend. Pardon My Heart from Zuma is a great little song, it has a narrative which progresses well and the contrast between the electric and acoustic guitars adds a lot. From Freedom I really like El Dorado, Wrecking Ball and Too Far Gone, while on Harvest Moon I rate War Of Man very highly. I haven't mentioned all the albums I own as an record like On The Beach I consider to be made up of 'equals' with no songs hogging attention especially.

Pink Floyd - Have some great overlooked songs but mainly in the 1969-72 era. I agree with UndertheWire's pick of Grantchester Meadows, an excellent acoustic song on an album otherwise consisting of largely unstructured experiments. The three shorter songs on Atom Heart Mother are all strong with David Gilmour's Fat Old Sun being my favourite (I love the feel of Roger Waters' If though) while Alan's Psychedelic Breakfast is IMO very enjoyable and is far more musical than its title suggests - the middle section features some gorgeous steel guitar. On Meddle I absolutely love Fearless which I cannot recommend highly enough (especially to fans of Liverpool FC), A Pillow Of Winds is also excellent. Their soundtrack albums More and Obscured By Clouds are poorly known outside the Pink Floyd fanbase. In the case of the latter, with the possible exception of the single Free Four, it can be argued that the album is made up entirely of deep cuts. My favourites are Burning Bridges and its instrumental counterpart Mudmen, Wot's... Uh the Deal and Childhood's End. From the former, Cymbaline is a great song and I also like Green Is The Colour and Crying Song.

As for the early days, the best overlooked song on Piper At The Gates Of Dawn is to my mind The Gnome while Let There Be More Light and Remember A Day from A Saucerful Of Secrets are also excellent and worthy of more attention than they get. In their early years Pink Floyd tended to release their singles like Arnold Layne or See Emily Play separately and these did not appear on their studio albums so deep cuts become more theoretical (effectively I consider these two album's best known songs Astronomy Domine and Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun to be the 'singles').

Conversely, Wish You Were Here is an album devoid of deep cuts, with all four songs being well known and widely recognised. The same holds true for Animals except that the lack of an obvious single meant that none of the songs have become widely recognised. The Dark Side Of The Moon does have the underrated instrumental Any Colour You Like, but that's it. On The Run is more of a sound collage than a song, and all the others are quite famous. On The Wall however I think there are a number of songs which are great but are clearly deeper than the radio tracks, with the standouts including In The Flesh (both versions), Goodbye Blue Sky, One Of My Turns and Nobody Home. I will overlook the 1980s albums (The Final Cut is with a few exceptions close to being a Roger Waters solo album, A Momentary Lapse of Reason is a David Gilmour album in all bar name) and skip to The Division Bell where I love Poles Apart, Marooned and Coming Back To Life and regard them as superior to the singles Keep Talking and Take It Back which are actually two of the weaker tracks.


I considered including Bob Dylan in this section however I only really have his most famous and highly rated albums and when you look at a record like Highway 61 Revisited almost all of these songs have considerable cultural significance (see, for example, Steely Dan naming their first album 'Can't Buy A Thrill' after a lyric from It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train To Cry). I might give this some more thought as there are probably a few overlooked tracks I can name even from the five albums I own.

[Freypower]

OK, I will try Austin's suggestion of one deep track per favourite artist. Then I might try a deep track from my 20 favourite albums.

Beatles

This would appear impossible. My favourite, however, is One After 909 from Let It Be. This was written in the early 60s but not recorded until Let It Be. Thank God it was because it's one of the most joyful things they ever did.

Dire Straits

I considered One World, but I went with News from the first album. This little gem about a man who doesn't listen to his wife & ends up as 'a line in the news' is never talked about.

Mark Knopfler

I will cheat here, having already mentioned Silvertown Blues. It's The Trawlerman's Song from Shangri-La. It's just beautiful.

Rolling Stones

I will go with my first instinct which is Worried About You from Tattoo You. I agree that Monkey Man is a perfect deep cut, but it's not a particular favourite.

Led Zeppelin

Oh, I don't know. The temptation is to say The Battle Of Evermore but I won't. I will say Night Flight from Physical Graffiti.

Bob Dylan

Black Diamond Bay from Desire.

Elton John

I want to say Grimsby from Caribou. I will settle for (Gotta Get A) Meal Ticket from Captain Fantastic.

Van Morrison

Alan Watts Blues from Poetic Champions Compose.

Genesis

Driving The Last Spike from We Can't Dance.

Neil Young

I don't listen to him as much as I used to, but for me it's Wrecking Ball from Freedom.

[chaim]

Guns N' Roses: Mr. Brownstone

Although I don't consider it a deep cut. Seems to me they always played it, at least during the "Slash era".

[WalshFan88]

You'll notice that most of my choices are mildly deep cuts. Mostly because I'm a performer and a hits guy. I like the stuff I grew up hearing on radio and in the house and for whatever reason never burn out on them.