Free Secret History of Rock. The Most Influential Bands You've Never Heard by Roni Sarig

Cycle (Warner Bros., 1968) ; his best known record, a classic ‘60s album encompassing entire traditions of both pop and art music.
    Discover America (Warner Bros., 1972) ; further cultural explorations, including the sounds of the Caribbean.
    Clang of the Yankee Reaper (Warner Bros., 1975) ; featuring mostly covers reworked in Parks’ unique orchestration style.
    Jump! (Warner Bros., 1984) ; a show-tuney collection based on the Brer Rabbit folk tales.
    Tokyo Rose (Warner Bros., 1989) ; a pop operetta on U.S.-Japan trade relations.
    Idiosyncratic Path: The Best of Van Dyke Parks (Diablo, 1994) ; a compilation spanning Parks’ work up until then.
    Orange Crate Art (Warner Bros., 1995) ; a rumination on California’s pastoral dream, featuring the vocals of Brian Wilson.
    Moonlighting: Live at the Ash Grove (Warner Bros., 1998) ; a recently recorded live album.

    SCOTT WALKER
    Eric Matthews:
    Scott Walker is awesome. He’s just got one of the biggest voices, and such a musical touch. I always think about Scott 3 as being the accelerated, futuristic version of what Sinatra and Nat King Cole were doing. It’s the music of tomorrow in the old style. And if I put it on today, it’s still the music of the future.
    If only for his seemingly backward career path – from ‘60s teen idol and cabaret crooner to his more recent underground experiments – Scott Walker would qualify as a unique and worthy cult hero. His reputation, though, can also proudly rest on his brilliant late ‘60s recordings, through which he carved his niche as a Sinatra-styled pop singer who could also handle – both as composer and performer – thoroughly contemporary, thoughtful, and engaging material. His unique style and abilities made him one of the few acts in post-Beatles rock to earn commercial and critical success in a “song interpreter” role that had essentially become outdated.
    Walker’s enigmatic reclusiveness and artistic eccentricities have only added to his myth. As his cult grows, his influence on modern music becomes more and more apparent: In the deep, showy vocals of David Bowie (who once tried to work with Walker), the eccentric pop of Julian Cope (who compiled a Walker retrospective), the dark swoon of Nick Cave (who included Walker in his recent soundtrack work), the pop fetishism of Marshall Crenshaw (who co-wrote liner notes for a Walker compilation), the mopey meanderings of Mark Eitzel (who had Walker Brothers songs played before shows), or the lush orchestral pop of acts such as Divine Comedy, Pulp, Eric Matthews, and Space.
    Chris Connelly, the Belts / Ministry / Revolting Cocks:
    He had a huge impact on David Bowie. When Bowie was first starting, the Walker Brothers were having hits and with all credit to Bowie, he recognized the darker and more experimental side of the band. What Bowie did with Scott Walker’s music was drag out this sense of theater... The way Scott Walker used the orchestra to play dissonance really appealed to me, because you don’t find that in pop music, back then it was unlistenable. He was shamefully ignored at the time, but you can’t really blame the public. He was Scott Walker, a pop figure, not someone you’d expect to experiment. It’s like if somebody left the Spice Girls and went on to do a really radical, experimental record.
    Born in Ohio as Noel Scott Engel, the future Scott Walker moved around as a child before settling in Los Angeles in the early ‘50s. In his teens, he briefly fell under the tutelage of popular singer Eddie Fisher, who was interested in crafting young Scott into the latest teen sensation. When that failed to materialize, he began working as a bassist-for-hire for acts such as Ike and Tina Turner and lesser-knowns in the L.A. music scene. There, he met guitarist John Maus, who was performing under the name John Walker. They decided to team up, and with the addition of drummer Gary Leeds in 1964, the Walker Brothers were born. Originally styled after the