Best song on K-Tel's Gimme Indie Rock compilation

pink turns to blue

I like/love a good half of these. But if I can only pick one, I must go with the mighty Fall and Cruiser's Creek-ahh.

Pastels!

I haven't heard every one of these songs, but I'm still confident that it's "Cruiser's Creek".

What flappy said, pink turns to blue.

"Political Song For Michael Jackson To Sing"

"Little Furry Things" is a close 2nd place.

Tough call. Meat Puppets.

voted pink turns to blue

Someone at K-Tel knew what they were doing.

what the heck, this looks basically like a mixtape i would've made when i was 18, they even chose the one good wedding present song. that whole run of songs from the feelies through to spacemen 3 is choice.

6. Andelusia (Instrumental Version) - Savage Republic

weirdly, i was listening to that exact song on my way to work this morning.

My my Blue Thunder, singing out aloud

it's really hard to believe this was a real record (checking... ) oh it's from 2000, that's more believable but weird in its own way

one of these

1. Pink Turns To Blue - Husker Du
2. Little Furry Things - Dinosaur Jr
4. My Favourite Dress - The Wedding Present
6. Cruisers Creek - The Fall
8. Touch Me I'm Sick - Mudhoney
5. Political Song For Michael Jackson To Sing - The Minutemen

leaning towards mudhoney

Ghosts of American Astronauts.

"Slipping Into Something" or "Molly's Lips." A lot of songs I don't know.

Slipping Into Something

I would've guessed this comp was inspired by the Our Band Could Be Your Life book but that came out the following year. Must've been something in the air at the time making people like, "Ah, the glory days of indie rock!"

I like the Black Flag track.

Nice Ohio representation here, two Cleveland bands and one from Columbus.

ya'll know it's 'little fury things', right? although thinking about it as furries somehow improves an already amazing song

wow i never realized it was fury and not furry. is it possible i’ve never heard any one say the name of the track out loud for 20 years? or maybe most people think it is furry. j does like little furry stuffed animals.

yo WTF i always thought it was furry too

it's fury but i always assumed it was a mispelling, intentional or otherwise

the flavour of this comp really reminds me of homestead's 'human music' compilation + some sst classics thrown into the mix:

https://www.discogs.com/Various-Human-Music/master/55369

it's really hard to believe this was a real record (checking... ) oh it's from 2000, that's more believable but weird in its own way

I originally found out about this album from a write-up about the 'new look' K-Tel in Rolling Stone or Spin (or hell, maybe even Raygun). They were trying to branch out with other genre comps at the time (I seem to recall they had a Hip Hop set and a Techno collection in the pipeline). Their licensing rep was quoted as saying two of the biggest hurdles in putting the comps together were labels thinking they'd been cranked called when hearing it was K-Tel on the line and afterwards having to explain that, yes, K-Tel was genuinely interested in getting songs from them for a "Indie Rock" album.

There was an alt-country one around that time that was also very good & also included the Meat Puppets. The "K" in K-tel briefly stood for Kirkwood.

Ha, I wasn't going to comment re "fury". There is a rabbit in the song but he also seems furious. Rn, it's that one over "Pink Turns to Blue" but I might try to listen to all of it before voting.

Right, always figured “fury” was a deliberate misspelling or play on words and thought that if I had been in the wrong frame of mind upon first encountering this song I might have just misread the title and never thought about it again.

Btw, let me mini-spam the borad by linking this: rejected JBR screen names although it doesn’t work right on zing, too many posts after it

The "furry" interpretation seems to be based on mishearing the lyric as "a rabbit falls away from me"

well also the phrase "Little Fury Things," you're predisposed to misread it as furry

There was an alt-country one around that time that was also very good & also included the Meat Puppets. The "K" in K-tel briefly stood for Kirkwood.

Man, I forghot about that one! I have copies of it and the Indie Rock one lost in storage.

Exposed Roots - The Best Of Alt. Country

Lucinda Williams Passionate Kisses
Blue Mountain Blue Canoe
Gillian Welch My Morphine
Whiskeytown Nervous Breakdown
Golden Smog Looking Forward To Seeing You
Jimmie Dale Gilmore Dallas
Freakwater Picture In My Mind
Meat Puppets Lost
Gourds* I Like Drinking
BR5-49* Bettie Bettie
Tangletown See Right Through
Cheri Knight Black Eyed Susie
The Jayhawks Waiting For The Sun
Kelly Willis Talk Like That
Steve Earle Guitar Town
Southern Culture On The Skids Too Much Pork For Just One Fork
Johnny Cash Folsom Prison Blues
The Handsome Family Weightless Again
Vic Chesnutt Gravity Of The Situation
Honeydogs Your Blue Door
Alejandro Escovedo Baby's Got New Plans
Marlee MacLeod Mata Hari Dress
Lambchop The Saturday Option
Gram Parsons In My Hour Of Darkness

The "furry" interpretation seems to be based on mishearing the lyric as "a rabbit falls away from me"

I think this is the line? It's what turns up when I Google it, although Mascis was apparently a little cagey:

In a scene later deleted, perhaps with good reason, he put the head of a live school rabbit into his mouth, an operation that posed obvious logistical difficulties, and made it worth first asking: “Hey J, is it ‘rabbit’ or ‘grab it’?”

“I dunno,” responds J, “rabbit?”

And, yeah, a play on words had to be intended with "little fury things".

That alt country comp is choice.

Fuck I actually missed that the Dino Jr. song was on here and would definitely have voted for that over Hüskers. dang

GOLD: Blue Thunder - Galaxie 500

SILVER: Touch Me I'm Sick - Mudhoney

BRONZE: US Teens Are Spoiled Bums - Half Japanese
(tie)
BRONZE: Sweet Little Hi-Fi - Pussy Galore

That alt country comp is choice.

Uncut Magazine had a ton of comps from the late 90s just like that.

Yeah the alt-country comp looks great, funny to see Gram Parsons and Johnny Cash there though.

flipped a coin and took Dino over Mudhoney. Hopefully Touch Me I'm Sick gets a couple votes, or I'll be the sick one

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Voted Scrawl, though more rockin' songs here might get played a bit more in my house (Hüskers, DJr, Fall, YLT), this song is one of those that gets under your skin and lives there the rest of your life like a stuck piece of pencil lead or beloved scar.

This comp is trying to do several things at once, and it does ok, but it's kind of superfluous. Four rules: Released in the 80s, distributed on a true Indie, no hip-hop or industrial beats or avant garde stuff without a beat, anglophones. Mixture of artists that were pretty popular in the college charts and mostly later released major label albums, and a few more obscure bands that became hipper in the 90s by getting more popular (Yo La Tengo, Flaming Lips) or being namechecked/covered by nirvana; and a few ringers from essential label Homestead: Squirrel Bait, Death of Samantha and My Dad Is Dead. Perhaps more famous/appropriate/representative choices from that label would have been Big Black, Naked Raygun and Swans, but this comp omits some of the key 80s pre-major artists like REM, Replacements, and Sonic Youth; so it's clearly not trying to be a comprehensive overview.

If you were going to put more female artists on it - Throwing Muses, Cocteaus, Pylon, Opal.

If you were going to put some token non-anglo stuff on it - dunno, maybe "Boredoms vs. SDI", Sugarcubes "Ammæli" (Icelandic version of Birthday), Noir Désir "Où veux tu qu'je r'garde". Most 80s non-anglo rock wouldn't really fit the style of this comp, for example "Mala Vida" by Mano Negra is awesome but would stick out even more I think.

Stuff that isn't streaming yet - Homestead (beware the Death of Samantha comp If Memory Serves Us Well - it is re-recordings), Glass (Spacemen 3, Pastels), Caroline (Pussy Galore), Melvins, but all these songs are currently on Youtube (illegally) of course.

Big Dipper were also on Homestead btw (and Dinosaur too at one point for that matter). The album that song is off is pretty classic, jangly pop stuff with a bit of a Feelies and Television influence. I might have voted for them if they'd used this song instead:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rjzciYkke8M

Why did they pick such a meh Wipers track?

Voted Squirrel Bait.

Seem to remember a review of the album in some US fanzine (FE? Chemical Imbalance?) where they speculated that 'She's Fetching' was just a jolly ditty about the singer's dog xp

I quite like that Wipers song! But yeah, not even the best song off the respective album though, cos that would be 'Just A Dream Away' amirite?

> Big Dipper were also on Homestead btw

True enough, should have included them in that sentence. I think the Embarrassment would have sounded better on this comp but Death Travels West predates everything here so perhaps is too early 80s. Big Dipper may be included to satisfy the 'jangle pop' side of things along with Nikki Sudden / Pastels (and maybe Weddoes and the particular Mekons pick here).

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

I like almost everything on this that I've heard. There's about 5 songs I don't know. I didn't vote in this but I might've chucked Pussy Galore a vote since they got 0.

I was bit confused for a minute about the Scrawl song, cos I have all their albums and there's no song called I'm Ready, but it's just called Ready.

glad i wasn't the only squirrel bait voter

yeah these are pretty much all good

Add another vote for Dino Jr for me.

I would've voted for Swimming Ground

Went for Dino Jr. but I regret not giving Pussy Galore a vote now

I somehow missed Squirrel Bait--that would be right there with the Feelies and Vaselines for me.

And "Little Fury Things," I guess. I saw Dinosaur in a small club in 1987--and, a year later, in a bigger club with two rooms, with Schoolly-D playing the other.

Damn, I almost saw Dinosaur in '87 too - they played at the Clarendon Ballroom in Hammersmith with fellow SST band Angst supporting iirc but my mum wouldn't let me go up London by myself, awww diddums :(

Did see them four times in the next four years though at ever larger venues, especially after Freak Scene blew up. Best live song imo was Yeah We Know, that song used to crush me.