Nick's Top 5 Greatest Bands You May Or May Not Have Heard Of

1. Pixies
(The) Pixies consisted of Frank Black, Joey Santiago, Kim Deal and Dave Lovering. There's no real way to describe their music without inventing genres like "proto-alt-punk." Many people love this band, and others just don't get it.

2. Morphine
Morphine's members included Mark Sandman, Dana Colley and either Jerome Deupree or Billy Conway, depending on which album you're listening to. Their music was a sort of blues-ish fever of sound, featuring two-string slide bass, bari sax and drums.

3. Booker T. & The M.G.'s
You really should be ashamed if you haven't heard of them, but some people I've talked to haven't, so I'm including them here. They consist of Booker T. Jones, Donald "Duck" Dunn, and Steve Cropper, with drummers switching out depending on their tour destinations and who's available. They play the best instrumental R&B/funk anyone has ever played, ever.


4. Eels
You've heard them, even if you don't know it. Basically consisting of a guy simply called "E" and whomever he drags around with him, they have a unique sound made up of rock instruments and toys. It's really quite cool.

5. Black Moth Super Rainbow
A band from the middle of nowhere that makes insane cosmic-sounding songs. Mellotron and synthesizers abound. They consist of (and this is what they actually go by) Tobacco, Power Pill Fist, The Seven Fields of Aphelion, Iffernaut and Father Hummingbird.