Unicornio!

Nicolle Meyer - Nowhere bei Mir

Fred Banana Combo - The Captain

Greg Vandike - Animation

Mercedes Sosa - Unicornio Azul

Quilapayún - Chacarilla

Nicolle Meyer is recognizable to most who know her as a model for her work with photographer Guy Bourdin. She was also a member of the German post-punk group Fred Banana Combo, who recorded with Neu! & Kraftwerk producer Conny Plank in the early 80s.

Greg Vandike's Animation sounds like a blueprint for Destroyer's (still terrific) Yr Blues album (along with the MIDI trumpets of King's Quest.)

From Argentina, Mercedes Sosa's magic voice with a (possibly kitsch) ballad about a lost blue unicorn, and from Chile, Quilapayún, the leading group of the politically engaged Nueva canción movement.

Der Weltraum Space Oddities

Dusseldorf La Rheinita

Phil Lynott Yellow Pearl

Morgan Fisher Roll Away The Stone '78

Bruce Haack Super Nova

By my reckoning, no song in the kraut/kosmische rock genre has ever matched the sprawling jubilation of La Rheinita, an anthemic instrumental from 1978 propelled by the lumbering tom drum workout that would be lifted pretty much part & parcel by Thin Lizzy frontman Phil Lynott and songwriter Midge Ure (who was in Visage and would wind up fronting Ultravox) for Yellow Pearl. Hats off to the man for his great taste. Could a nation whose development as an industrial powerhouse depended entirely on steel fail to produce a genre of music that sounded like this? At about the 3:08 mark, the song rockets way into the stratosphere . I never tire of this song...

From the vaults of the fecklessly fey Cherry Red Records: Morgan Fisher, a tickler of ivories (synthetic & not), took it upon himself to pay tribute to Mott the Hoople's top 10 hit with an abrasive and charming lo-fi cover. File this somewhere between Bruce Haack and Ariel Pink, and for comparison I leave you with a raga-like synth-workout from the late Mr. Haack, long-time mp3 blog favourite.