Instrumentals: Not Just For Musicians Who Can't Sing Good!

Koen posted a collection of instrumentals last month.  Readers made some great suggestions in the comments section.  I combined many of those recommendations with a few of my own favorites (inspired by Koen's compilation).  Some well-known instrumentals appear here in cover versions, such as Jeff Beck's take on "Sleepwalk" and Johnny Thunders' version of "Pipeline".  Typing the Blue Cheer song title "Magnolia Caboose Babyfinger" into an AI image generator produced the cover image at left.

Magnolia Caboose Metal Fingers

Richard sent in his own compilation of instrumentals, which I've really enjoyed. He agreed to share it here so that you can enjoy it too. Most of the songs Richard chose were from independent label releases of the late 70's and early 80's.  Following Richard's example, I assembled a second set of instrumentals from the same period of underground music, and titled it Nova Feedback after Helios Creed's composition from the Chrome album Alien Soundtracks.   

I also got to thinking about bands from the 80's that primarily or exclusively played instrumentals, like The Raybeats, Love Tractor, Pell Mell, and Shadowy Men On A Shadowy Planet.  There were also instrumental solo albums, like Colin Newman's Singing Fish and Will Sergeant's Themes For Grind.

Nova Feedback

The late Bruce Anderson appears here twice: first with MX-80 Sound's "Theme From Sisters" and later with O-Type's take on the theme from The Searchers.  Soundtrack buffs may also enjoy Snakefinger's version of Ennio Morricone's "Magic And Ecstasy" and John Carpenter's "Halloween" theme as performed by Milwaukee punk legends Die Kreuzen.  I also included a piece from Howard Shore's soundtrack to David Cronenberg's film Crash, which was influenced by the electric guitar compositions of Rhys Chatham and Glenn Branca. 

Vocaless (by Richard)

Samples have been on my mind lately, and some of the most sampled songs in hip hop are instrumentals.  One of them is "UFO" by the Bronx trio ESG.  Holger Czukay's 1979 album Movies predated My Life In A Bush Of Ghosts in its use of shortwave radio samples, and the 1993 debut by Little Axe predated Moby's album Play in using samples from blues and gospel records.

Thanks again to everyone who commented on Koen's "Awesome Sounds From The 1970-80's".  It was a great period for musical creativity, and I enjoyed exploring more of the era's instrumental music.