Category: playlist

Close readers here may remember my initial journey into PowerPopLand, via my Power Pop, Vol. 1 playlist. The very name, of course, implied that there would have to be a sequel, and at long last the thing takes flight.

Check out the previous post for some of the underlying philosophical musings, which this unique not-exactly-a-genre genre seems effortlessly to prompt, at least in me. This time around, the list veers even further from the generally acknowledged power pop standards, in part because I mixed in a good number of 21st-century examples, and in part because I sought to include a larger spectrum of power pop’s musical coverage, which ranges from the impeccable melodic gloss of songs like “Slackjawed” to the Byrds-ian jangle of “When Things Go Wrong” to the peppy pseudo-reggae of “Second Choice” to the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it crunch of “All-Nighter.” While I may take some extra liberties here and there—some people might consider the Ramones beyond the genre’s boundaries, even as quite a few of their songs are spot-on power pop, if you really just listen; and Sarah Harmer has probably never before shown up on anyone’s power pop playlist, but from the itchy, new-wave-y bass line to the subtly glorious chorus, I’m on board here, and encourage you to join me. I do manage to bring things home with “Shake Some Action,” which is on just about everyone’s top 10 list. And if you listen to only one song, make it the one right at the top, as Translator’s “Un-Alone” is surely one of the great lost power pop gems of the 20th century. Everything that band ever did was overshadowed by its first-album college-rock classic “Everywhere That I’m Not,” a fine tune itself but nothing like power pop. And as at least some of us are convinced, there is nothing like power pop.

direct Spotify link:

One of my ongoing beefs with the futurist contention that music is destined to move entirely into the cloud, that access will obliterate ownership, is the inevitability of gaps in the libraries of music streaming services. I love that streaming is available but I will mourn the day it becomes the only thing available, because no streaming service will ever offer everything. The vagaries of music licensing are just too, well, vague. Do we want high-quality, deep-value songs to disappear simply because the Acme Streaming Service can’t license them for streaming?

This is a roundabout way of introducing you to the fact that two songs I have included in the original version of Volume 5 in the Fingertips Eclectic Playlist Series are not available on Spotify. I did my best to replace the absent songs with reasonable fits, but anyone who has ever spent time aiming for a tightly conceived mix will know that there is no precise replacement. And, so, here: “Afternoon in Kanda,” from Jesse Harris, should actually be Oscar Isaac’s affecting cover of “The Death of Queen Jane,” from the soundtrack to the film Inside Llewyn Davis; and where the true version of the playlist has the song “Stoned Out of My Mind,” by the Chi-Lites, I have substituted “Drowning in the Sea of Love,” by Joe Simon. Spotify only carries three songs from the Inside Llewyn Davis soundtrack, for unknown reasons, and, as many times that “Stoned Out of My Mind” by the Chi-Lites is available on Spotify, it appears always to be a re-recorded version, not the original 1973 studio version, which I prefer without hesitation.

The good news is the playlist will eventually appear as originally intended when I get around to making a Mixcloud version. [Ed. note: Mixcloud version now available.] The less good news is I still haven’t gotten a Mixcloud version of Vol. 4 online yet, so Vol. 5 is no doubt a good few weeks from being Mixclouded. The bastardized Spotify iteration will have to do in the meantime. And there are of course plenty of fine tunes on board, as always. I am happy to include the overlooked Elvis Costello treasure “No Hiding Place,” from his rapidly created 2008 album Momofuku; the whole album isn’t operating at quite the same level, but that would be difficult, as this song stands up with the best of anything he’s written, in my mind. The Boz Scaggs song that follows is from his landmark Silk Degrees album, but it is a song I had entirely forgotten about until I heard Bruce Warren play it recently on one of his casually masterful weekend radio shows on WXPN here in Philadelphia. The St. Vincent song, from her new-ish self-titled album, is a formidable keeper, a song which I feel will emerge in future decades as powerfully evocative of whatever it is we are going through right now. The Grays’ song “Both Belong,” meanwhile, from the first half of the’90s, strikes me as powerfully evocative of a time period that until recently seemed not very long ago but now seems nearly as remote as the one other rock’n’roll decade that rivals it for its breadth and quality of music (which to me would be the ’70s). By the time we get to “Dime a Dozen Guy,” an overlooked Marshall Crenshaw treasure from 1999, things seem back in the realm of the more recent past, somehow. What went on from 1994 to 1999 that makes those five years seem like almost 15 in retrospect I will leave to historians to fathom.

And for those who are interested but are not Spotify members, here is the Mixcloud widget:

And for one and all, here are the songs featured, along with year of release and album of origin, if any:

“Här Är Det (Here It Is)” – Ebba Forsberg (Ta Min Vals/Sjunger Leonard Cohen, 2009)
“The Rainy Season” – Howard Devoto (Jerky Versions of the Dream, 1983)
“A Shot in the Arm” – Wilco (Summerteeth, 1999)
“One in a Million” – Maxine Brown (single, 1966)
“No Hiding Place” – Elvis Costello and the Imposters (Momofuku, 2008)
“Love Me Tomorrow” – Boz Scaggs (Silk Degrees, 1976)
“Love and Anger” – Kate Bush (The Sensual World, 1989)
“Digital Witness” – St. Vincent (St. Vincent, 2014)
“Sick of Myself” – Matthew Sweet (100% Fun, 1995)
“Lost” – Dusty Springfield (A Brand New Me, 1970)
“Talking” – Annuals (Such Fun, 2008)
“Myself to Myself” – Romeo Void (It’s a Condition, 1981)
“Both Belong” – The Grays (Ro Sham Bo, 1994)
“Down to Zero” – Joan Armatrading (Joan Armatrading, 1976)
“The Death of Queen Anne” – Oscar Isaac (Inside Llewyn Davis: Original Soundtrack Recording, 2013) *
“The Execution of All Things” – Rilo Kiley (The Execution of All Things, 2002)
“Stoned Out of My Mind” – The Chi-Lites (Chi-Lites, 1973) **
“Dime a Dozen Guy” – Marshall Crenshaw (#447, 1999)
“The Fox” – Niki & The Dove (The Fox, 2011)
“We Belong Together” – Rickie Lee Jones (Pirates, 1981)

* replaced on Spotify by “Afternoon in Kanda” – Jesse Harris (Sub Rosa, 2012)
** replaced on Spotify by “Drowning in the Sea of Love” – Joe Simon (Drowning in the Sea of Love, 1971)

If you are just tuning in to the Eclectic Playlist Series, I suggest likewise going back and seeing what you missed in the first four installments, as follows:

– Volume 1 (featuring Brian Eno, Ben Folds Five, Laura Veirs, New Order, et al.)
– Volume 2 (featuring The Stone Roses, Arcade Fire, Björk, Randy Newman, et al.)
– Volume 3 (featuring Liz Phair, Vampire Weekend, Connie Francis, Stevie Wonder, et al.)
– Volume 4 (featuring Courtney Barnett, the Grateful Dead, the Cars, Portishead, et al.)

As one corner of the world embarks upon a week of relentlessly promoted new music, how about a playlist filled with almost entirely unpromoted music from every rock’n’roll decade that yet exists?

So, yes, Volume 4 of the Eclectic Playlist Series is upon us. I am starting to think the playlists should have titles, if only to give them more immediate personality. Will think about this for future reference.

In the meantime, here are 20 more songs placed thoughtfully together despite notable differences in year of origin and genre. We open up with a Jules Shear track that is not I don’t think in the standard pantheon of widely-admired Jules Shear gems but not for lack of brilliance. The Smiths song has always been a favorite in part because of how it manages to break out of the band’s signature sound even while still being very Smiths-y. Willie Colón I quite literally just stumbled upon recently via some Songza exploration. New York salsa is not an expertise, needless to say, but this song had an extra oomph to it that called to me. I especially like juxtaposing the cutely blasé Australian singer/songwriter Courtney Barnett, just now breaking out, with the declarative strangeness of New Wave princess Lene Lovich. It just seemed to work. As for OMD into the Grateful Dead, that initiated as a music library shuffle accident that was too good to forget. Meanwhile, the Auteurs, anyone? I never really knew what they were about, but ended up with a cassette version of New Wave a few years after its release. I never heard them on the radio, and have never had reason to discuss them with anyone, so I feel as if they have previously existed in my own private sub-universe. We’ll see how they do exposed to the light of day.

If this seems like a reasonable idea, be sure to check out the previous playlists in the series, helpfully titled Volume 1, Volume 2, and Volume 3.

This playlist was originally created via Spotify but I’ve since converted all playlists to Mixcloud. Here’s the widget:

Full playlist:
“Hard Enough” – Jules Shear (Allow Me, 2000)
“Le vent nous portera” – Sophie Hunger (1983, 2010)
“A Rush and a Push and the Land is Ours” – The Smiths (Strangeways, Here We Come, 1987)
“I Just Got Back” – Parliament (Up for the Down Stroke, 1974)
“Listen to Me” – Buddy Holly (Buddy Holly, 1958)
“Heart” – Nick Lowe (Nick the Knife, 1982)
“El Dia de Suerte” – Willie Colón (Lo Mato, 1973)
“Avant Gardener” – Courtney Barnett (The Double EP: A Sea of Split Peas, 2013)
“Home” – Lene Lovich (Stateless, 1978)
“I Got a Line on You” – Spirit (The Family That Plays Together, 1968)
“Kill to Know” – Amy Miles (Dirty Stay-Out, 2002)
“Helen of Troy” – Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark (English Electric, 2013)
“Box of Rain” – Grateful Dead (American Beauty, 1970)
“Leave Me Alone” – Baby Washington (I’ve Got a Feeling, 1963)
“He Keeps Me Alive” – Sally Shapiro (Disco Romance, 2004)
“Gimme Some Slack” – the Cars (Panorama, 1980)
“Show Girl” – The Auteurs (New Wave, 1993)
“10538 Overture” – Electric Light Orchestra (The Electric Light Orchestra, 1972)
“Bodyguard” – Dawn Landes (Fireproof, 2006)
“It’s a Fire” – Portishead (Dummy, 1994)

Regular visitors may have noticed that I’ve begun posting playlists on Spotify. At the same time, I haven’t been completely happy there. While it’s all but effortless to make playlists on that popular streaming service, there are in my view three consistent downsides to how things work in Spotifyland. First, you have to register before you can listen; second, playlist songs are inelegantly stacked together (rather than artful segues you typically get an awkward amount of dead air between songs); and third, all playlists are marred by random commercials which intrude if you are using the free versus paid-for service. An additional problem occasionally encountered is the absence of a song one might otherwise want to use. Spotify has lots of stuff but they don’t have everything, because basically no one can.

The British streaming service Mixcloud deftly sidesteps each of these problems, for the relatively minor cost of it involving more effort to create playlists in the first place. Rather than dragging and dropping songs, Mixcloud requires the playlist maker to fully construct his or her playlist as one long file, which is then uploaded. Further effort is then necessary to upload song titles and “time-stamp” the playlist, so the Mixcloud player can identify what song is playing at any given time.

The end result is brilliant, however. You get a playlist anyone can listen to, without joining anything, you get a playlist with purposefully designed segues, you get a playlist without commercials, and you get to include any song you have in your own library. On top of all this, Mixcloud is legal; they pay all the appropriate licensing fees required in the U.K. And while it’s true that Mixcloud is a very DJ-oriented environment, there does seem room for eclectic playlists of all kinds, so I’m definitely hopeful to gain a foothold there.

Which I most certainly have not done yet, as you’ll see if you visit my profile page. But hey it’s a brand-new enterprise for me, and the beginning is always today, as the saying goes.

Note that right now I’m a bit out of sync with myself—Volume 4 in the Eclectic Playlist Series will be out in a few days on Spotify, but on Mixcloud only the first two playlists in the series are available. You can access those below. I am hoping that within another month or so I will be able to beginning publishing the playlists on Spotify and Mixcloud at the same time. In the meantime, it’s a good opportunity to check out these earlier playlists if you haven’t quite found the time yet. Not that I can give you more time in the day (if only), but here at least is the easiest access yet to the music.

Fingertips Eclectic Playlist Series, Vol. 1 by Fingertipsmusic on Mixcloud

Fingertips Eclectic Playlist Series, Vol. 2 by Fingertipsmusic on Mixcloud

The Eclectic Playlist Series rolls on, with a brand-new mix of wide-ranging songs for your listening pleasure. I hope.

For those just tuning in, you can find a bit of philosophical rationale for this kind of eclectic playlist in a short essay I wrote in November for the Linn Products music blog. The basic idea is: I find music much more interesting to listen to in a context in which genres and eras are mixed mindfully together, rather than segregated into narrowly-focused lists. I am pretty sure I am not alone in feeling this way, but you wouldn’t know it based on the types of playlists which tend to be available via the popular streaming services.

If this seems like a reasonable idea, be sure to check out the previous playlists in the series, helpfully titled Volume 1 and Volume 2.

This playlist was originally created via Spotify; all have since been migrated to Mixcloud. Here’s the widget:

“Money” – Annie Gallup (Swerve, 2001)
“Yr Own World” – The Blue Aeroplanes (Beatsongs, 1991)
“Pinky” – Elton John (Caribou, 1974)
“El Rito” – Destroyer (Five Spanish Songs, 2013)
“Big Tall Man” – Liz Phair (Whitechocolatespaceegg, 1998)
“Now That You’re Here” – Altered Images (Bite, 1983)
“Can I Change My Mind?” – Tyrone Davis (single, 1968)
“Expensive Shoes” – Christina Rosenvinge (Frozen Pool, 2001)
“Any Major Dude Will Tell You” – Steely Dan (Pretzel Logic, 1974)
“Seal My Fate” – Belly (King, 1995)
“Hannah Hunt” – Vampire Weekend (Modern Vampires of the City, 2013)
“Until You Come Back to Me” – Aretha Franklin (single, 1973)
“Beauty Trip” – Television (Television, 1991)
“The Wild Truth” – T Bone Burnett (The Talking Animals, 1988)
“Don’t Ever Leave Me” – Connie Francis (single, 1964)
“I Don’t Want to Lose You Yet” – Steve Earle (Transcendental Blues, 2000)
“Love’s In Need of Love Today” – Stevie Wonder (Songs in the Key of Life, 1976)
“Pendulum” – Pure Bathing Culture (Moon Tides, 2013)
“Hang Onto Your Ego” – Beach Boys (Pet Sounds, 1967)
“Je T’Aime Tant” – Julie Delpy (Julie Delpy, 2003)

The Fingertips Eclectic Playlist Series continues here in 2014 with its second offering, creatively labeled Volume 2. For this playlist’s philosophical underpinning (what? shouldn’t playlists have philosophical underpinnings?), I refer you back to my Linn music blog essay, which argued, among other things, that we human beings are more interesting, musically, than the internet seems to want to believe. (And yes, I know, the internet can’t really “want” anything; I speak metaphorically, or metonymically, or something.)

The general point is: listening to an assortment of songs that share neither decade of origin nor sub-genre is fun. And maybe even enlightening. That’s the goal with the Eclectic Playlist Series, in any case. Check out Volume 2, below. (And for those who missed Volume 1, here you are.)

As will always be the case with these playlists, the goal was a mix of radio-like spontaneity and a well-pondered series of segues. I did my best to keep moving through the years, without any particular formula for going from one decade to another, or one genre or sub-genre to another. See what you think. And speak out in favor of eclectic listening, when and where you can. It will displease our new robot overlords, but that seems to be humanity’s remaining job—to be actually, messily, eclectically human. What else do we have going for us?

This playlist was originally created via Spotify; all mixes have since been migrated to Mixcloud. Listen via this widget:

“Warning Sign” – Talking Heads (More Songs About Buildings and Foods, 1978)
“It’s the Beat” – Major Lance (single, 1966)
“For Love” – Lush (Spooky, 1992)
“Eras” – Juana Molina (Wed 21, 2013)
“Illuminated” – Múm (Sing Along to Songs You Don’t Know, 2009)
“Southern Boys” – Kate & Anna McGarrigle (Dancer With Bruised Knees, 1977)
“Made of Stone” – The Stone Roses (The Stone Roses, 1989)
“Reflections” – The Supremes (Reflections, 1967)
“Tomorrow Never Comes” – Dot Allison (Afterglow, 1999)
“Joan of Arc” – Arcade Fire (Reflektor, 2013)
“The Day I Get Home” – Squeeze (Play, 1991)
“Quarry Hymns” – Land of Talk (Cloak and Cipher, 2010)
“No Tears” – Psychedelic Furs (Talk Talk Talk, 1981)
“Together” – The Intruders (The Intruders are Together, 1967)
“Don’t Blame it on Love” – Daryl Hall & John Oates (Along the Red Ledge, 1978)
“Bessie Smith” – The Band (The Basement Tapes, 1975; recorded 1968?)
“Kid A” – Punch Brothers (Who’s Feeling Young Now?, 2012)
“Isobel” – Björk (Post, 1995)
“Real Emotional Girl” – Randy Newman (Trouble in Paradise, 1983)
“(Untitled)” – R.E.M. (Green, 1988)

As recently affirmed in an essay posted elsewhere, I do believe we human beings are rather more interesting, musically, than the internet gives us credit for. Enough with the genre-specific playlists and customized “radio stations” that serve up a steady flow of songs that sound as much as possible like the song previously played. I mean, really? That’s the best we can do?

I for one am tired of it, if only because I grew up musically on playlists—we called them radio shows back then—that thoughtfully mixed music together from different rock’n’roll eras, creating an intriguing and enjoyable flow of songs, whether or not they were all the exact same kind of music. Indeed, the point was that they were not the exact same kind of music. And the larger point, now, many years later, is that we remain just as interesting and unpredictable as human beings as we ever were, and therefore, in theory, just as capable of being entertained and enlightened by eclectic playlists as at least some of us used to be.

This, then, is the kind of playlist I make an effort to construct here.

It’s an elusive art, putting something like this together. I aimed for a bit of live-radio-like spontaneity (“Ooh, after this, I’ll play this!”), while taking obvious advantage of this not happening in real time after all. Some of the songs work next to each other with purposeful effectiveness, others became neighbors serendipitously, but in all cases the list was constructed with the idea of linking decades together rather than segregating them in playlist ghettoes. I also like the idea of mixing together the perhaps less well-known with the probably more familiar—but this can itself be something of a slippery aim when offering a playlist to such a wide-ranging coterie of music fans as those of you who might in fact be reading and listening.

No eclectic mix, in any case, is perfect; while I did my best to keep the music bounding across musical sounds and time periods, I can see after the fact that I have (obviously) left out any number of genres and/or eras, even as I pushed the total number of songs to 20, after originally shooting for something more like 15. But hey, we all learn by doing. This is Volume One. More to follow in the months ahead, in and around the usual free and legal MP3 downloads and reviews.

This playlist was originally created via Spotify but has since been migrated to Mixcloud. Listen via the widget:

“Steady With the Maestro” – The Roches (Keep On Doing, 1982)
“Antiphon” – Midlake (Antiphon, 2013)
“Baby’s On Fire” – Brian Eno (Here Come the Warm Jets, 1974)
“Berimbau” – Nara Leão (Nara Leão, 1968)
“On Being Frank” – Ben Folds Five (The Sound of the Life of the Mind, 2012)
“It Won’t Be Long” – Alison Moyet (Hoodoo, 1991)
“Dance on a Volcano” – Genesis (Trick of the Tail, 1976)
“Run Baby Run” – Garbage (Bleed Like Me, 2005)
“Iceblink Luck” – Cocteau Twins (Heaven or Las Vegas, 1990)
“As You Said” – Cream (Wheels of Fire, 1968)
“The Man Who Sailed Around His Soul” – XTC (Skylarking, 1986)
“Love Has Left the Room” – A Camp (Colonia, 2009)
“Make Me Your Baby” – Barbara Lewis (single, 1965)
“America” – Laura Veirs (Warp and Weft, 2013)
“Come and Get Your Love” – Redbone (Wovoka, 1974)
“Motions” – King of Spain (All I Did Was Tell Them the Truth and They Thought It Was Hell, 2012)
“Leave Me Alone” – New Order (Power, Corruption & Lies, 1983)
“Route” – Son Volt (Trace, 1995)
“Man, It’s So Loud In Here” – They Might Be Giants (Mink Car, 2001)
“One Day” – Sharon Van Etten (Epic EP, 2010)

So here I am presenting a nice little power pop playlist, even as I am finishing as we speak a post for the Linn Products blog about how tiresome genre-related playlists are, and how playlists online should really be much more eclectic. Potentially a contradiction, but what can I say? I contain multitudes.

Besides which, as I was attempting to articulate last week, when reviewing the fine new Blurry Lines song “The Hunted,” power pop is an elusive genre at best. Which got me thinking what’s up with power pop anyway, which quickly became an excuse for me to attempt to tell by showing. Here is what power pop sounds like to me. I don’t think I have too many genre-based playlists in me, but this one is a necessity.

In the interest, always, of relative conciseness, I make no effort here to be exhaustive. I include enough of the all-time, critic-approved power pop and proto-power pop must-haves (“Go All The Way,” “September Gurls,” “Starry Eyes,” et al.) to ground it in consensus, while skipping over a number of others (“Girl of My Dreams,” “Surrender” “Cruel To Be Kind,” et al.), just because that’s how this list played out for me. We start effortlessly, with the impeccable Shoes classic “Too Late,” veer unexpectedly into late-era Matthew Sweet, and move on idiosyncratically from there, ranging in time frame from the proto-power-pop years of the early-ish ’70s all the way through to 2012, but in no order except that dictated to me by the sound and flow of the music. Two Fingertips selections are mixed in (“Anime Eyes,” “Wildlife Control”), and some other left-field choices spice things up (the Ass Ponys song is a particular oddball gem, says me). My only regret is that there are not nearly enough women in here, but power pop has historically been a male pastime—although I obviously could have included another Blondie song or two had I chosen. And no doubt I left out some obvious others I have either forgotten or have yet to discover. I am delighted in any case to present the late great Kirsty MacColl, who can never be praised enough, and whose untimely demise 13 years ago (!) still brings tears to my eyes. That the only version Spotify has of “He’s on the Beach” is the long version is a bit of a shame; power pop doesn’t need to go much longer than four minutes and is ideal between 3:20 and 3:40, but there are plenty of exceptions. Hell, “Starry Eyes” is four and a half minutes, and it has long been considered by many the greatest power pop song of them all (and I would not disagree—notwithstanding production that sounds a little dead to my 2013 ears).

While each and every entry here strikes me as a power pop gem, note that I don’t believe so much in “power pop artists” as “power pop songs”; a wide variety of bands are here shown achieving some semblance of power pop bliss, even if few of them line up regularly in lists of notable purveyors of power pop. In my mind, few worthy artists hew that tightly to this idiosyncratic musical style to be filed entirely under power pop, and that’s all for the best. It’s a crazy-brilliant-slippery genre for intermittent songs, but to aim for this sound as a career move might simply be crazy-making.

That said, there are enough great songs past and present omitted or otherwise overlooked on this playlist that I leave at least the possibility for sequels. Thus, here is Power Pop, Vol. 1…..

So the Ray Davies contest is over, but any time I start spending any amount of time thinking about Ray Davies, I always end up falling into a Kinks jag. The material is just too good, too rich, too deep. This time I’ve emerged from the depths with a playlist.

A few notes about the playlist:

– Yes, it’s on Spotify again. For better or worse, that is where I am going to be creating playlists, at least in the near term future. There are all sorts of issues with Spotify, but at least it’s legal.

– While I include a couple of their more widely-known songs, I have more or less steered away from the most obvious choices, aiming this more for discovery than nostalgia. (Besides which, neither “Sunny Afternoon” nor “Waterloo Sunset”—which I would have included; they’re too great—are on Spotify. Neither is the original version “Lola.” See next note.)

– Because we’re dealing with Spotify, and because we’re dealing with what some would call a “heritage” artists like the Kinks, not all the necessary albums are available, for whatever arcane reasons of rights and distribution and such. I used songs from alternative sources when the song itself is still the original version of the song. But I did not include things like a live version of “Victoria” when the original version of “Victoria” is not available. (Sadly, the great Arthur album is not on Spotify, and neither are a number of other essential albums from the back catalog, such as The Kinks Are The Village Green Preservation Society and Lola Versus Powerman and the Moneygoround.

– For the excessively curious, here are the songs I had included on my original playlist that are not available on Spotify:

* “Victoria”
* “Shangri-La”
* “Apeman”
* “God’s Children”
* “Sunny Afternoon”
* “Waterloo Sunset”

They were replaced with:

* “Where Have All the Good Times Gone?”
* “Death of a Clown”
* “This Time Tomorrow”
* “Living on a Thin Line”
* “Tired of Waiting For You”
* “Sitting in the Midday Sun”

All in all, great stuff. If I can entice even one person not otherwise too familiar with the Kinks to give this a listen, my work is done.

I’ve been meaning to do this for a while. If you have Spotify, this should work for you. If not, then probably not, and sorry about that, for now. (Plans are in the works to get around that; see note below.)

Okay, so, a few things to understand about this playlist. First, these songs are not in a definitive order—that was too difficult to do, and rather too pointless. What comes out here as the “number one song” is not necessarily my number-one favorite song. Ever out of step with the times, I don’t tend easily towards ranking and list-making. My concern is more a decent flow of music. The best I can say is that the ones nearer the top tend to among my most favorite favorites, but they are all terrific songs, as are hundreds I could not put on the list.

Second, note that the list originally contained 40 songs, but Spotify didn’t have four of the songs, so they are vanished (for now; again, see note below).

The cool thing about this list is that it allows me to revisit any number of songs I originally featured as free and legal downloads (or else they would not have been here), but have not been available free-and-legally, as MP3s, for quite some time. Going to a legal streaming service allows me to present them to you again with a clear conscience. (Or, at least, semi-clear; I know that Spotify has its own issues, but at least it’s legal.)

But because I ideally want all 40 songs to be part of the list and because my long-ago background as a free-form radio DJ compels me in that direction, I may yet attempt to make more of a podcast-like presentation out of this, including all 40 songs, complete with (one hopes) informative commentary. I will surely let you know if that happens and where to find it, which won’t be on Spotify.