I Love Deep Cuts

xpost thanks, and yall are reminding me I need to check out that new legit Jimi round-up---- a deep comp never on legit re-reissue far as I know: The Great Lost Kinks Album, not always great but def worth looking for. Thinking it *might* could be re-assembled on youtube, ditto this, very appealingly described by xgau:

Shades of Ian Hunter: The Ballad of Ian Hunter and Mott the Hoople [Columbia, 1979]
Exemplary discophilia. The Mott 45s on side one are all the young stiffs--great album tracks edited down for an AM exposure that was rarely forthcoming, they race along with an almost punky punch on LP. The B sides and miscellaneous on side two are uneven, natch, but worth getting to know (as owners of Greatest Hits have already learned with two of them). Those circumspect enough to have passed up Ian's two solo albums are now rewarded with side three's best-of. And side four excerpts the solo Ian that was never released here to impressive effect. A genuinely obsessive compilation. A-

Many xps but lord, that Mott the Hoople track. The Journey, which sounds like Lift to Experience, might be even better.

For Dylan, not sure if it qualifies or not, but I'd say Copper Kettle from Self Portrait.

I love Copper Kettle. Bob has so many songs at this point, he could have a box set of deep cuts.

Here is a doozy, That's All You Need by the Faces. This is just about perfect.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzRpP0dFkNY

The Journey, which sounds like Lift to Experience, might be even better.

It's close. The Journey has the mother of all guitar riffs. Death May Be Your Santa Clause is another. That whole record is phenomenal. Right now my favorite is The Moon Upstairs but it always changes.

this is such a great thread. my pick is this cut from sade's love deluxe, bullet proof soul. it sounds exactly what breakups with people who don't get you sound like. it has the drum machine and the production they're famous song. there isn't a bad sade vocal but the 'too busy thinking love is a gun' refrain on this one just kills me, no pun intended.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smXsEcM4YGQ

lol while i'm at it, the last track on love deluxe, 'mermaid', which sounds like the centerpiece from roxy music's avalon and doesn't have a vocal at all. you'd be hard-pressed to place it anywhere at all but some kind of whiter artist's album.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Owm_gPU4nI

Bullet Proof Soul is fantastic! So minimal, letting the voice take center stage... beautiful.

I'll add "Wot's... Uh the Deal?" as a Pink Floyd deep cut, it's a very Floyd song in sound and songwriting and could have fit on DSotM too. Obscured by Clouds is a nice album like that.

I'll also add "Darkness" by Leonard Cohen which to me is such a cool blues ballad, making great use of Cohen's lowest register:

I caught the darkness
Drinking from your cup
I said is this contagious?
You said just drink it up

xp and yes Copper Kettle is great! Have to say I never really paid attention to it before (though I have listened to Self Portrait many many times) so I'm happy you mention it... so sentimental, it's interesting to hear Dylan experiment with his vocal style, trying to find a voice that will fit the subject matter and the genre...

My daddy he made whiskey, my granddaddy he did too
We ain't paid no whiskey tax since 1792

must be plenty of Neil Young deep cuts from the 90s, I'm the Ocean was mentioned upthread, I would go with "Safeway Cart" from Sleeps With Angels - a dark, lingering song, groovy, kinda scary... sounds to me like it could be informed by electronic music of the time

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xFc86tzFG4

When I think of deep cuts I think of early FM radio playing entire sides uninterrupted... and stuff like "no quarter"

xxxpost Reminds me, I've been intermittently listening to Another Self Portrait on Amazon Prime, and lots of good alternates and ones that never got released in any version (I think); fave so far is "Little Saro." (Also maybe the complete Isle of Wight set w The Band, but haven't gotten that far yet.)
Marvin Gaye's MPG is pretty much a Deep Cuts Album---deep catalogue at least; I've never seen mention of it anywhere. Opens with a couple of good ballads, his expected, sweet 'n' breezy Motown approach, per Berry Gordy's gentrification project during much of the 60s--but this was released in '69, and you can feel the pressure, MG pushing against the walls, especially on his version of the Bobby Blue Band-associated "That's The Way Love Is," and perhaps word to Gody with omfg "It's A Bitter Pill," also convinces w "I Gotta Get To California"---"right away"---and other urgent messages, yet despite a certain grab bag effect, of songs he chose and others that may have been pushed on him, from here and there, somehow it all *sounds* cohesive enough, kind of The Many Moods of Marvin, but mainly that's how good of an ear and voice he has.
Certainly not one of his masterpieces, but wtf, rock it Marvin:
https://www.discogs.com/Marvin-Gaye-MPG/master/234768

Berry Gordy's gentrification project Not the exciting radio classics, but like when he insisted on supper club, Broadway, elevator fare on albums, with hot hits as bait---not so much bait and switch, but his idea of balance (and some of it was okay, wouldn't mind hearing the Supremes' album of Rodgers & Hart songs, but not gonna go out of my way).

Cardigans - The Road (Long Gone Before Daylight b-side)
Bjork - Nature is Ancient
Broadcast - Misc/Stupido (itunes only Future Crayon)
Bryan Ferry - Which way to Turn
Chelsea Wolfe - I Love You All the Time (bataclan support single)
George Harrison - Simply Shady
iamamiwhoami - John (one off single)
The Invisible - So Well (with Jessie Ware)

and this

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IGaQy2mY8fU

Forgive me, I totally forgot about George Clinton's majestic Free Alterations. This is one of his very best songs (which is saying something) and you should all listen to it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SKA5B7ZHhvA

New Wave edition:
- Squeeze - Misadventure (off of Argybargy)
- INXS - Johnson's Aeroplane (off of The Swing)
- Elvis Costello - Big Sister's Clothes

mick jagger's "memo from turner" from the "performance" soundtrack. with ry cooder and synth bass. maybe it was well-known at the time but it's well obscure now.

and yeah there is a sort of relativity to "deep cuts", "fearless" topped out the rym pink floyd poll and i can't but think of it as a deep cut (i think roger waters played it live for the first time at oldchella last year...)

"Revenge" was a hidden track on Whiskeytown's Faithless Street and the only Ryan Adams song I couldn't live without

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uE9p0FIHAac

as the only big fan of this correctly despised group I'll say U2 is a band well served by their deep cuts, across all eras, with some songs more well-known than others:

An Cat Dubh/Into the Heart
Surrender
Wire
Heartland
Hawkmoon 269
Ultraviolet (Light My Way)
Dirty Day
Slug
Your Blue Room
Please
A Man and a Woman
Breathe
This Is Where You Can Reach Me Now
Summer of Love

if we're talking floyd deep cuts, i've always had an affinity for San Tropez, which sometimes gets maligned for whatever reason. i think it has a nifty chord progression and adorably goofy lyrics: https://youtu.be/Cv5uuhkS4j8

I don't know if Weightless by Thomas Dolby is a deep cut exactly, but it unaccountably got zero votes when The Golden Age Of Wireless was polled. something about it reminds me of some Tony Mansfield productions, a sense of space but also being hermetically sealed at the same time?

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

isn't there more to 'deep cuts' than just 'obscure cuts' or 'album cuts'? deep cuts are for late late nights smoking green.. or maybe im wrong

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otMz9hNEMzI

so, like, "planet caravan"?

or "take a stroll through your mind"?

How low do you go?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q65vGN_CnHQ

so, like, "planet caravan"?

Idk though, I'm probably just projecting my own chill 70s rock fantasies

the entire Beach Boys Love You album is a deep cut imo

the beach boys entire catalogue is stacked with deep cuts - they've got deep cut singles like "the little girl i once knew" and "breakaway", deep cut album tracks like "feel flows", and "country air", deep cut songs that didn't make albums like "barnyard blues" and "sailplane song"

I always thought a deep cut was by definition an album track overshadowed by the singles or better known tracks on a given album.

Like Memo From Turner is the single from the Performance soundtrack, it can't be a deep cut

Just yesterday I was talking about Elvis's amazing cover of Bob Dylan's "Tomorrow is a Long Time," which was not only not a single, but was stuck on Side Two of the soundtrack to Spinout.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VLpgttfEM0

Carly Rae Jepsen - I Know You Have a Girlfriend

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kz0pNLHFjPQ

Dylan has said that it's his favorite of his covered songs xp

imo The Who's "Tattoo" fits this criteria. one of their most beautiful album tracks and as one of their few acoustic guitars-and-vocal harmonies based songs it gets overlooked.

The Who's Disguises too - so much noise for '66, must be one of those tracks that put Cale are Reed on notice to get their own noise out.

The Who's Disguises too - so much noise for '66, must be one of those tracks that put Cale are Reed on notice to get their own noise out.

Me and my friends totally lost our shit when The Who did "Tattoo" at one of the Bridge School Benefit shows.

xp went with Please as the token U2 deep cut on the spotify playlist

isn't there more to 'deep cuts' than just 'obscure cuts' or 'album cuts'? deep cuts are for late late nights smoking green.. or maybe im wrong

I always thought a deep cut was by definition an album track overshadowed by the singles or better known tracks on a given album

I think this is probably the correct definition

don't want to limit the thread though, I'll do my own cherrypicking from what's posted

I will, for instance, pick that Elvis cover which is nothing short of fantastic!

I will, for instance, pick that Elvis cover which is nothing short of fantastic!

Yes yes yes! It is glorious. Here is another Elvis deep cut, one of my very favorite of his songs. With a great message, too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EsMj-0GfF8A

awesome^

my favorite all-time Elvis deep cut, from How Great Thou Art (1967)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q6nma5vM4Gk

johnny cash seemed to have liked it too

Yeah, and some Public Radio stations re-ran the 2007 music doc "He Touched Me: Elvis's Gospel" this Easter Sunday just past, with cogent commentary from his colleagues and well-chosen music (I noticed he had white Jordanaires singing along with the Sweet Inspirations while Civil Rights struggles continued elsewhere, prob not so far away, in some cities). When I worked at a Deep South CD store from the mid-90s through early 00s, his gospel outsold all his other stuff, no matter how much his overall catalog grew and how well it did (pretty well, just about holding its own with hip-hop and the Dead).
I heard a long, kind of studio pro jam with Elvis, on his cover of "Don't Think Twice, It's Alright," 12'20" or so: speedy, slick, repeating the same words and vocal effects ad infinitum---there's also a five-odd minute edit, both on youtube, and the shorter one has a nice fade, but both are quite a bringdown from his version of "Tomorrow Is A Long Time."
Greatly prefer Jerry Lee's version of Dylan's "Stepchild," which came out onRock & Roll Time, 2-3 years ago:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvVI53abJ1g

Also: his take of Dyl's "Rita May"---studio versionsounding kinda Tex Mex at times:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfsQIVgf3Yg

Live version much faster
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0TpC-OmgwEs

i don't know much about elvis deep cuts, but i do like those bootleg mixes of "dark moon" alright

Couple of random ones - Beatles “She Said She Said”, Eurythmics “The Walk”.

Oh and VU “Stephanie Says” which might actually be my favourite of theirs (and I love them all dearly).

at the moment Sun King is the ultimate Beatles deep cut for me

such a great song. i've had this years-long project of trying to find covers i like of every beatles original. i'm down to four, and one of them is "sun king". nobody plays "sun king"!

Yes! I think it should resonate with a lot of contemporary bands, but it's kiiinda hidden on the b-side of Abbey Road which is, probably, mostly thought of as "Here Comes the Sun" and "the medley" (maybe with "Golden Slumbers" as the standout song)

Isn't "Sun King" basically a direct rip of Fleetwood Mac's "Albatross"?

this LITA playlist has a deep cut feel, not sure what the common denominator is though: https://open.spotify.com/user/lightintheatticrecords/playlist/41BvltUdXIeBfkIe1FiLjY

"Days" is a beautiful Television song

https://open.spotify.com/track/6qK7CuehGu2DVwL8UgaEhV?si=SjzVwnu2T8Gd31zK-UOY7g

thought about posting "To Late to Turn Back Now" by Cornelius Brothers & Sister Rose, but that's probably more of a genre deep cut

however, "Emma" by Hot Chocolate is a bona fide deep cut, gorgeous too

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFYOHrwi-W8&pbjreload=10

very Bowie vocals

i also love deep cuts, but most of ya’ll probably figured that out by now.

what is it about that moody track in the middle of side two with the almost painfully resonating chorus, or that fierce rocker that had the unfortunate task of being placed after the hit single in the album’s sequence? are those songs not to be taken as seriously as the more promoted ones? even with some of them smashing fucking everything? oh, and that b-side remix that only ever appeared on that one import 12” single? that shit is essential, dude.

why am i drawn to these songs? these wonderful, sometimes ramshackle, sometimes ebullient, sometimes beautifully understated songs. like a lot of questions in my life, i can’t answer that. all i can do is explain where my concept of “the deep cut” comes from.

and unfortunately, like with a lot of things that shaped the way i think about music, my concept of “the deep cut” comes the source magazine. i probably haven’t read it in over 20 years and not regularly since the 90s. but wow, for a few years there, they had a complete hold on me in terms of taste and what i needed to check out. besides the reviews, my favorite part of every issue was a single page with lots going on: there was of course “rhyme of the month” (which then became “hiphop quotable”) in a column running down the side of the page, the ever-beloved unsigned hype feature at the top, and at the bottom in a highlighted box, the treasure trove of selected deep cuts from current favorites, labeled simply “FAT TAPE.”

(reminder that i am a person living with dissociative identity disorder and as soon as i finished typing that sentence, my inner dialogue immediately erupted in a cheerful resounding hurrah of, “OH FUCK YEAH——FAT TAPE!!!”)

fat tape was so reliable that they kept the name “FAT TAPE” even when nobody bought tapes anymore. fat tape was so reliable that they often put songs in there that would later end up as singles. fat tape was so reliable that they would put songs in there and then absolutely trash the album in the reviews section of the same issue (while also talking up that same song in said review lol). fat tape was so reliable that i began to be able to gauge what page of each issue it was on with one riffle. fat tape was so reliable that i started buying wackass down south bounce shit because they started having their songs show up in fat tape. and fat tape was right — god fucking dammit this shit is dope as fuck.

during my time reading the magazine, i’d say probably 80% of the songs that showed up in fat tape ever got issued on a single of some sort (but oftentimes, they did highlight what would become the second or third single or at least a b-side). a lot of them became very well-known album cut (and, back then mixtape) favorites. sometimes they got really obscure, too. i remember there was a group that got featured in the “alternatives” section (where they would briefly review other hiphop-adjacent genres, mostly r+b) and somehow they had a song end up in fat tape (the group name is lost to time, but i do remember going into my local wherehouse record store and trying to special order it to no avail).

so i guess that’s where i got it from? i was trying to stick out as a dj in the years to come and i became so obsessed with seeing people respond to awesome jams they didn’t know at all by people they knew really well. the hunt was on. should i play “ms. fat booty” or “know that”? or should i say fuck it, fuck the vinyl purists, i’m just gonna play the unreleased jam i downloaded from the internet and recorded to minidisc?

(and then i started to get into rare grooves and beat making —— don’t think i need to explain that one of the main ideas of that scene is kind of the glorification of the deep cut)

it got to a point where i just stopped playing well-known songs some nights. i wanted to bring that fat tape calibre curation to people in real time. of course i went too deep and i got lost. i didn’t dislike singles or more popular songs, i just wanted to hear something different. years later, i find myself less concerned with singles than ever (but i still really love them sometimes, slowdive’s “kisses” is a yearlong favorite by now). i still have that fat tape kind of mentality in my head though, maybe stronger than ever. these days, labels can put out whatever pre-release “singles” they want but the streaming numbers tell the full story. when the last carla morrisson album came out, “diamantes” was just an album cut. i called it a fucking jam immediately. it was in her top ten most played on spotify for a long time after the album came out. even now with the new mariah the scientist album, i was all about “from a woman” on first listen and that’s the one track from the album that’s consistently trending in her top five.

i don’t wanna say i’m some sort of all-knowing music shot-caller, but i can’t even begin to formulate what a life without a constant search of deep cuts would have been like. it’s too much fun not to dig. but what am i looking for? i guess to answer that would be to kind of answer the question “what is a deep cut?”

and i’m looking for a song that contains a definitive characteristic —maybe even a few of them— for that artist. like something that you can only get from them or the people they’re working with. to me, the most definitive deep cut of alltime is “push.” it’s a song that hardly ever got played even when it was new. i wasn’t there to hear the album when it was contemporary, but by the time i got to it, that was my favorite song on the album right away. it’s everything i love about the cure. it went on all cure mixtapes and compilations of feel good jams and is still a reliable companion for long car rides and big sunsets. and it wasn’t just me that knew the song was awesome: it had such a cult following, they started to play it live again in the 2010s and it’s a common setlist staple by now. f`kn rad.

anyway, i don’t have any really new insights here. it’s been a fun journey through music, as cockeyed and askew a path as i’ve carved out for myself. like i say, can’t imagine any other route. i guess i’ll leave with one last thought: i love deep cuts, but i really love when the album takes its title from the deep cut. ooohhh that gives me chills.

blazing post Austin

Yeah, thanks for that.

Thirded

<3 Austin

thanks for reading, all. love you.💙

postscript-
after writing that post, i really started thinking about how quote "S E R I O U S" en quote music discourse* is more widespread than ever thanks to social media and that leads to a genuine question i have: is the deep cut now a phenomenon of the past? even with multiple versions of taylor swift's latest, the fans are making sure everyone gets to hear all of the material - there's not really a chance of anything getting lost in the shuffle. i was also thinking of kendrick lamar in this context: the discourse around him has been so thorough that even his most critiqued songs have their known audiences. as a lifelong deep cut digger, this is a very melancholy thought. what say you?

*genuine apologies if this comes across as sarcastic. it isn't. it's meant to indicate that, as online music discourse has evolved, so has the standard. cliche example, but just look at pfork's shenanigans in their scrubbed archives. they know that shit don't fly anymore. and even my beloved source magazine pulled some of the most journalistically heinous shit of alltime but they got away with it because... sigh things were just different then, i guess. anyway, didn't mean it in a bad way. i know i talk a lotta yak ee dak about critics, but that's only _because_ things were so different for so long and i am a cynical fucker. again: no harm intended. if anything, thanks for leveling the playing field.

Secret Friend is unironically one of my favorite Paul McCartney songs ever and it got relegated to a b-side.

Also yeah great post Austin!

I have also been constantly obsessed about the “deep cuts” since early age. I remember back then I didn’t have much to choose from as my parent’s vinyl and cd collection wasn’t that extense but I remember hearing songs like idk Cat Stevens’ “was dog a doughnut” and thinking whoa this is the “moonshadow” guy? This song rocks!

A deep cut ending up my favorite song of the artist happens a lot.

Another example top of my mind:

My father had several “silvio rodriguez” albums - an artist which I always found a tad corny - honestly find the trova genre in general pretty corny - but one evening with nothing to do I ended up playing the full albums to see what I missed since he has so many fans and I ended up with “sueño con serpientes” which is by far my favorite thing of his. Turns out the whole album is quite good - still not my cup of coffee.

A couple of years ago Jose Gonzalez made a cover of it - and I think even named it one of his top 10 fave songs of all time - which helped a little for other people to discover it but it’s still pretty much a deep cut.

yes great post - there is another really cool thing about deep cuts and that's the fact that every so often you see a band live and they dig something awesome out you never expected them to play. in fact I try to never look at setlists for that reason because it's so cool when it happens out of the blue. it almost feels like a secret handshake with the band. one of the coolest live moments I can think of is seeing Sparks and having them pull out "The Toughest Girl in Town" - a deep cut off a deep cut album. and it happens to be one of my favorite songs of theirs. but I never hear anyone mention it.

trying to think of similar moments...maybe Animal Collective doing "Wide Eyed" last year.

...speaking of trova, what _genres_ could be considered deep cuts? ...or does that even make sense...

isn't that kind of what northern soul is?

(i think i sorta get what you mean...)

every so often you see a band live and they dig something awesome out you never expected them to play.

i remember being really active on a cure fan forum about a decade ago and there were some band insiders that lurked and sometimes posted. the band was doing a charity gig at some tiny pub or something and some posters had gained entry. they just happened to play "push" for the first time since the 80s that night. an audience recording eventually surfaced; there were audible gasps when folks realized what song it was.

(wonder if that recording is still floating around. it was the barfly show.)

I may have dreamed this because it seems so unlikely, but I think I saw Fleetwood Mac play "Never Make Me Cry" off Tusk

Many thoughts about this topic. Too many to make coherent. Anyway. I love deep cuts. A lot.

I almost exclusively listen to full albums, so yeah, deep cuts for the win.

Keep thinking when I read the thread title "I love deep cuts and I cannot lie."

love this out-of-character let's-try-to-be-accessible Amon Duul II track. Won't you come to my heartbeat party?

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

is the deep cut now a phenomenon of the past?

Surely it's more prevalent than ever, since supposedly most current listeners don't care about albums or even artists anymore, just playlists presumably consisting of hits?

Wes Anderson etc movies killed “deep cuts”

it's not really a deep cut anymore if it becomes a massive hit imo, like if it goes viral because of a system glitch

corrs that's what i was thinking about...
deep cuts might be fan favorites, but when folks who don't normally listen to the artist know the song —whether it was a promoted single or not— it's no longer a deep cut. and again: if streaming numbers are accurate, it really has leveled the playing field. was "cranes in the sky" a promoted single or didn't it just take off as a fan favorite? anyway, i think the next step for deep cuts has actually already been around for a while and that's: catalogue music where the catalogue is in licensing purgatory — obvious example here is the sst catalogue. and just the other day, ya'll reminded me that the best throwing muses album (limbo) isn't on streaming. so, i mean... who knows, maybe "ruthie's knocking" will become a deep cut in time.