Leftovers: Daniel Johnston/Yo La Tengo - "Speeding Motorcycle" live over the phone

Leftovers is an ongoing feature of Universal Sandwich which unearths buried treasures of the music world. In each episode of Leftovers, I dig out the choicest of the moldy gems from the back of the Universal Sandwich fridge and explain why I think they are undeserving of the trash heap.

On today's plate of Leftovers is a bit of live music obscurity from February 4th 1990. Daniel Johnston is unfortunately more known for his mental instability than his remarkable songwriting talents.  But if you look beyond his lifelong battles with mental instability you will find one of the rawest, most gut-wrenchingly honest songwriters ever. 

This recording comes from an hour long variety show that Daniel did on WFMU.  Daniel had pre-recorded advertisements, jingles, and fake interviews with Daniel voicing all of the parts and then playing them over the phone to be broadcast over the radio.  But the shining moment in all of this was when he sang his song "Speeding Motorcycle" over the phone with the help of the band Yo La Tengo who had been booked for an in-studio performance.

What results nothing short of a lo-fi masterpiece.  This performance is oozing with a sort of naive charm that any other artists would die to have.  The innocence and child-like exuberance is apparent in Daniel's voice.  And the way that Yo La Tengo are able to tenuously hang on to the performance using what they could hear over the phone is nothing short of incredible.  The sound quality, is of course sub-par, and Daniel's voice may take some getting used to, but this is all overshadowed by the goofy boyishness of Daniel's voice which perfectly match lyrics like this:

speeding motorcycle
of my heart
speeding motorcycle
lets be smart
because we dont want a wreck
we can do alot of tricks
we dont have to break our legs
to get our kicks

They're silly, of course, but underneath that there is a kind of sophistication, an ability to explain something as complicated as love with a child's sense of simplicity.


Listen to the track below, and you can also find the entire broadcast of which it is a part here.

Leftovers: Black Moth Super Rainbow - "Sun Lips"

Editorial Note: This is the inaugural edition of a new periodic feature within the Universal Sandwich blog project that I'm calling Leftovers. Leftovers seeks to unearth buried treasures of the music world. Each episode of Leftovers will feature a song or album lost to time and/or obscurity. It's my job to dig out the choicest of these moldy gems from the back of the Universal Sandwich fridge and explain why I think they are undeserving of the trash heap.

Today's leftovers is the track "Sun Lips" by Black Moth Super Rainbow. BMSR are a band I stumbled across completely by accident. I was first introduced to them in 2007 when they served as the out-of-left-field opening act for indie-rap phenom Aesop Rock. Not only were BMSR a refreshing change of pace from the typical no-name rapper that most hip-hop artists pick as their opening act, they also put on one of the most surprising and compelling live shows I've seen.

What drew my attention to BMSR was their unique sound coupled with a strong (if somewhat unnerving) stage presence. In terms of sound, BMSR have firm roots in both psychedelic rock and electronica. Hearing them out of context, one could easily be forgiven for thinking BMSR was the work of a DJ and not a full band. There is something distinctly otherworldly and machine-like about the way that BMSR blend vintage keyboards with rock instrumentation that makes it seem as if it were made by pasting together samples. The reality is that this sound is created by an extremely tight ensemble of fairly traditional instruments (with the possible exception of their persistent use of the vocoder). The performance I saw consisted of a vocalist/keyboardist who sat cross-legged on the floor in the corner of the stage and sang all his vocals through a vocoder, a sweat-band wearing bassist who danced around the stage like something out of a jazzercise tape, and a female drummer who absolutely brutalized her drumkit and whose intesnity left me picking my jaw off the floor (seriously, she killed it). During all of this, a video collage consisting of seemingly ad hoc and at times disturbing clips (I distinctly remember several minutes of a Richard Simmons exercise routine from the 1980s) which added to the surreal ambiance of this band. The whole experience felt like something out of Andy Warhol/The Velvet Underground's Exploding Plastic Inevitable.

"Sun Lips" is probably the strongest track off of BMSR's third LP Dandelion Gum from 2007. What is most surprising about "Sun Lips" is that it proves that despite BMSR's strong experimental and surrealist tendencies, they are capable of writing astoundingly hummable pop melodies. The vocals have an anthemic quality that makes the entire song seem like one giant chorus without any verses. There is a colorful tone to the music, accented by the swirling flute sounds and summery lyrics. But if this song depicts a Summer day, it's obviously one which includes large quantities of psychotropic drugs, something which gives the slightest hint that ominous things are afoot. There is poetic irony in the fact that a song about something as natural and organic as a summer sunrise would sound so mechanical and robotic. What results is something of a machinistic love song, evocative of the clash between the natural world and the world of machines. "Sun Lips" may not be BMSR's newest material, but it is every bit as compelling to listen to now as it was when I first heard it performed live.

Listen to the song, and see the rather unsettling music video here: