Whatever you think of Paul Morley, there’s no question he has listened to a lot of music and loves a list. I’m currently rereading his 2003ish history of pop, Words and Music, which spins out many a theory from Can’t Get You Out of My Head and the seminal electronic track I’m Sitting In A Room by Alvin Lucier. The latter is truly amazing, just go listen. Luckily some kind soul called Gary James on Spotify has put all 2000 tracks referenced in the book into one playlist (just search for Paul Morley Words and Music). I’m 200 tracks in and have already discovered as well as Lucier great tracks by Tweet, Roy Harper, Autechre and Laurie Spiegel. It’s so long and varied that you can put it on just like…radio. There’s tracks you know, tracks you don’t but no between song chat. So… (continued in comments)
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Your long and varied playlists you’ve found that we can play like radio please. Not genre specific – the ‘100 greatest hyperdub tracks’ is a different beast. At least 500 tracks (arbitrary limit) and as far as possible like the Words and Music going from Osmonds to DAF to Robert Johnson… extra points for interesting compilers.
I know many people don’t, but I like Morley. However I found that book so unreadable that I gave up after 50 pages or so. The fact that you aren’t just reading it, but re-reading it, suggests that I’m missing something….
It’s in the downstairs toilet, so reading 5 pages a day. Not sure I could cope with it as my bedtime read.
My two go-to Spotify playlists probably both based on his radio show are Mark Lamarr’s Gods Jukebox and Gods Eternal Jukebox. Thousands of tracks on each, great variety and full of stuff I’d never have encountered otherwise. These are the soundtrack to my weekends and, if I owned a pub or a shop, I’d happily just hit the random button first thing in the morning and leave it playing all day.
Yes – I have played those playlists too. Very good.
Here’s the link. I couldn’t post this yesterday as my kids had control of the Spotify at the time…
…and the other one.
And finally a Sixties one, also very good…
That’s quite possibly the best playlist I’ve seen.
….even if he can’t spell Fred Frith’s name correctly.
Points in my book for Cyndi Lauper, Pussy Galore, Ornette Coleman, Pastry Cline (oops typo).
Not quite 500 but I’m liking the look of this.
Sorry, it’s in the thousands so definitely one to bookmark. The embedded player only shows you the first 100 in a playlist.
I am a little bit OCD/loop de loop/particular* (*delete as applicable) so spend a fair bit of time organising my playlists.
When they introduced playlist folders on Spotify I may have done a little dance.
I have an ongoing monthly likes playlist where I add in tracks i’ve heard or have popped into my head for whatever reason. I then add all of these songs to one big playlist (see below) on the 1st of each month & empty it to start again. This has resulted in me having two huge playlists that I can just put on random and listen to as a radio. Always quite varied so throws up some good stuff.
On top of this I have my Starred playlist which are tracks I love. This is currently 1804 songs long & if I ever skip a song twice then it gets removed. This is for those days I fancy a mix of varied songs/styles but that I know I love. Some links below
Starred (1804 songs)
Playlist 1st June 2016 – …. (6,863 songs)
Playlist 1st June 2009 – 31st May 2016 (9,784 songs)
I’ll certainly be giving those a try @seanioio They look great. Thanks.
@seanioio how do you know you’ve skipped a song twice in a spotify playlist? Is it a feat of memory or is there some function to alert you.
I have e-mailed Spotify suggesting this as a feature (I am that guy!) but no joy!
I do have to go off memory re skipping songs, but usually after i’ve skipped it once I question why I have. Sometimes I’m just not in the mood but if it’s grated on me or not felt right then it goes!
I also have a ‘Flawless’ playlist & if I ever go to hit fast forward then it goes. These are the tracks that I would class as my absolute favourites & it gets updated pretty rarely.
I am not a fan of this phrase, but there are a few ‘guilty pleasures’ in these playlists.
Nothing more embarrassing than having some mates over with music on random & Roger Whittaker comes on…….
You can of course just tune in to a decent radio station and benefit from the fact that you have no way of knowing what’s coming next. My internet radio spends almost all of its time ‘tuned’ to FIP thanks to a suggestion from @Twang many moons ago.
This one is a bit of a lightweight. A mere 333 tracks. It consists of compositions mentioned in the Norton History of Classical Music.
I found it on this page.
Audio and Video Resources – Introduction to Early Music: Middle Ages – Baroque Period – LibGuides at Simmons College Library and Information Sciences
Here’s a beaut!
All the songs that appear in Charlie Gillett’s Book, The Sound of the City. In order.
Compiled by the Vallcarca i els penitens Library in Barcelona.
It’s library after my own heart!
https://www.facebook.com/bibpenitents/
Here’s my Road Songs playlist. Nothing too revolutionary – just great rock and pop that I find is great for long journeys.
Ooh, lovely double there, Tina Arena followed by England Dan & John Ford Coley 👏
Just a thought, but what constitutes a good car playlist probably deserves a thread of its own.
Thanks JazzJet. We’ve got a 7-8 hour drive down to Öland on Sunday, That will be perfect.
I suspect we’ll be dipping into a few more of the mega-lists that people are posting here.
Big thumbs up @jazzjet. Your list was the perfect soundtrack to our journey. Even Mrs KFD was very impressed.
The mixture of a broad range of decades plus the inclusion of great songs we’d never heard and firm favourites worked excellently. I’d forgotten what a great song You can call me Al is.
Big thumbs up @jazzjet. Your list was the perfect soundtrack to our journey. Even Mrs KFD was very impressed.
The mixture of a broad range of decades plus the inclusion of great songs we’d never heard and firm favourites worked excellently. I’d forgotten what a great song You can call me Al is.
There’s lots for for the rest of our holiday too!
Glad you enjoyed it @Kaisfatdad. We played it too on a journey this weekend. Nice to come across songs we’d forgotten about.
No idea who Ross Wilson is, but this definitely kicks bottom.
If you have a spare 52hrs and 18 minutes…I put this together from somebody’s list.
And here’s a jolly one what I put together.
All the songs from The Beastie Boys Book—which I somehow seem to have three copies of—roughly in order. Some seriously funky deep cuts, the sources for multiple samples and overall great fun.