You may recall my unexpected gift of 50 bonus downloads from eMusic a couple of weeks ago. I was 9 selections into my bonus downloads when I realized that I couldn't figure out what to download next.

I'm constantly unimpressed with the indie rock selections eMusic suggests that I try, like all those bands with album covers featuring a folk-art painting of a sparrow perched on a branch. Man, that thumb-sucking, hushed-tones crap really needs to be banished to the same eternal $1 bins alongside discarded copies of Asylum Choir II.

Thanks for your suggestions. A couple of Townsmen suggested I add to my scant Sun Ra collection. Geo, I believe, recommended "Disco 3000," a long, swirling track that he thought would satisfy my late-blooming enjoyment of Krautrock. I downloaded it, and it's pretty good, but it started to lose me when it got into a '60s jazz trick that really turns me off: the "A Love Supreme"-style jazz chant! Some of the more concise tracks suggested by Geo and BigSteve, however, are very cool. Here's a cool Sun Ra track from Jazz In Silhouette. It reminds me of the fully arranged yet loose qualities I like in the music of Charles Mingus.

Sun Ra, "Enlightenment"

More goodies...after the jump!

Follow up:

Speaking of Krautrock, I didn't think there was much more of that Cluster-related stuff for me to download, but there was! Thanks to their work with Brian Eno, Cluster is the only German band I've liked a lot since my college days, but I'd never heard of another album Eno did with a related supergroup called Harmonia. Rather than post this suggestion in response to the initial request for recommendations, a Townsman actually called me to testify on the album's behalf. There's some sketchy history to this album - it may not have been released until years after it was recorded, or something like that, but most of Tracks and Traces is in a mellow vein. As a big fan of Cluster & Eno's "Broken Head" I naturally gravitated toward this grating number.

Harmonia & Eno, "Vamos Companeros"

It was also recommended that I download the one old Monochrome Set album available through eMusic, Eligible Bachelors. This may or may not be the album that an old friend and coworker played me during a highly memorable (and memorably high) lunch break a lifetime ago. The sensory impressions I have of that lunchtime break are much stronger than any specific memories of actual tunes. This stuff is still interesting to me, although the delivery of the singer is a little too "British," in an early '80s way, for me to fully embrace. The guitars are cool, though, and it gets me wondering whatever happened to the Jazz Butcher album I used to own.

The Monochrome Set, "I'll Scry Instead"

Anyhow, that's just a smattering of what you recommended, AND I THANK YOU. I've still got about a dozen bonus downloads left, if you still want to recommend anything. Meanwhile here are a couple other songs that I mentioned having downloaded and that are wearing well on my iPod.

Generationals, "Nobody Could Change Your Mind"

Seth Kauffman, "Now's Not the Time"

Laura Nyro & LaBelle, "Jimmy Mack"

This version of "Jimmy Mack" has especially lingered with me. As much as I believe in a firm surrendering to the rhythm, the goosestepping collective rhythm of the hit Martha Reeves & the Vandellas version is too much for even this storm trooping Motown afficionado. Nyro and LaBelle let the song breathe in their arrangement, and for me the song is much sexier as a result.