The Pity Party shares its recommendations for Youtube documentary learning. We’ve linked you to Part One of each of these educational rock and roll films full of essential knowledge. Putting grunge, krautrock, punk, reggae, and planetary politics on the same page offers a bit of insight on where this band gets its juice and hormone-free milk.

And we decided to put The Pity Party in a Can (see above).

The Pity Party’s Top 5:

1. Kurt and Courtney
(abut how Courtney killed Kurt)

2. CRASS: There Is No Authority But Yourself
(about true class-transcendent iconoclasm, communal farming, and punk rock)

3. Krautrock: The Rebirth of Germany
(NEU! Faust! Amon Duul! Kraftwerk! Can! And you thought YOU were experimental…)

4. The Story of Jamaican Music (BBC Four)
(about the cultural roots of ska, rocksteady, dub, dancehall, and reggae as told by the original players in their enviable dialects)

5. The Warning (Frontline)
(about this whistle-blower lady Brooksley Born who fought futilely in the 1990s for some kind of market regulation and vigilance in order to avoid—well—the situation we find ourselves in now…)

Catch The Pity Party at Spaceland on May 21.

Portishead – Third: Obviously the greatest.  What’s your problem?  Go listen to it again.

Radiohead – Hail to the Thief: It has “Wolf At The Door” on it.  What more can we say?

Nine Inch Nails – Year Zero:   How dare you judge with only your eyes and your knowledge of genres!  This is a concept record about the war in Iraq, really dealing head on with all sorts of situations, like finding yourself in combat, having PTSD, criticism of George W.  And on top of that, it has the meanest industrial beats ever constructed.  Fuck all y’all, you white pussy indie rockers!

 The Strokes – Is This It? or MGMT – Oracular Spectacular
These are great records made by hunky, young things.  We love them in spite of their inherent boy-band-ism.  This is an instance where our tastes align with 13 year-old girls’ (that, and NIN).

Beck – Sea Change

Quasi – Hot Shit

Sondre Lerche - Faces Down  

Emily Haines & the Soft Skeleton – Knives Don’t Have Your Back or Broadcast – The Noise Made by People

Iron & Wine – Creek Drank the Cradle

Coldplay – A Rush of Blood to the Head

It was way harder than we even expected to put this list together.  Hard in some ways.  Easy in other ways.  As important as the result of the list are, equally important is the process of coming to the result.  The following stuff didn’t quite make it on to this list:

M.I.A. — Arular

Thom Yorke — The Eraser

Blur — Think Tank

Be assured that the titles here in have been heavily listened to repeatedly by The Pity Party, with fervor and grace. 

-The Pity Party

Download: The Pity Party – Bottom of the Hole

(off Orgy Porgy EP self released by The Pity Party)

Download: The Pity Party “Chris My Ass”

Please send us your ORIGINAL holiday-themed songs (like the Pity Party’s excellently hostile example above) and we’ll pick out our favorites and re-gift them to the world! Send MP3s to fortherecord @ larecord.com by Mon., Dec. 21, and we’ll get this thing out as instantly as holiday circumstances permit!

All genres / holidays / concepts permitted and encouraged, though we do think pedal steel sounds really good this time of year…