1961
Radio Roundup
As I type this blog (or rather, this paragraph, and most of the next few), I've got my baby daughter in view. She's in the same sleeper rocker her brothers used, but they never took to it like she has. Yesterday was supposed to be her delivery date; the actual due date was in January, but since we paid this year's deductible, we scheduled it for the week before.
It was moot! Sylvia arrived before December even got here. Her first two weeks were spent in the NICU. Lotta hospital trips, all of which soundtracked by SiriusXM's new channel The 10s Spot. The imaging is too frequent: the "Shake It Off" intro fooled me about two dozen times. Plus it's goofy as hell: one bumper says the decade started "OMG" (in comes the Black Eyed Peas hit from 2010) and ended "WTF" (cue Rebecca Black's "Friday," from... 2011). And maybe there's too much Selena Gomez. Still: quibbles. Because the 2010s was the last decade I had a commute, it's the last time I listened intently to terrestrial radio. Any pop I hear now is incidental, not as a function of airplay. At least three times an hour, The 10s Spot plays a song I rated incorrectly on the Singles Jukebox. (This includes MKTO's "Classic", a Dumb Guy all-timer. It's a [10].)
I never met a girl like you ever 'til we met. A 10!
Once we got her back home we switched to the Holiday Soul channel, which hasn't heard a version of "The Christmas Song" it didn't like. They played it so often that I finally learned it's not titled "Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire".
We're all thrilled to have her. The reflex smiles are starting to appear. She's gaining weight. Her brothers don't yet begrudge her for boosting the difficulty score of our collective bedtime routine. And now I get to preface all my dogshit opinions with "as the father of a daughter..." I'm over the moon.
Constructor's Notes: 1961
Themes
After posting 1971 last month, I'd hoped to squeeze one more mix into this year. Everything was going smoothly: I'd picked all the songs and was assigning tags to everything before the sequencing. Then Syl arrived and I had neither time nor energy for a playlist. The last two weeks, in every respect, have been bonkers.
Almost got to an even 61 hours, but it turns out I had the same Anestis Logothetis composition twice. There's a nice little arty vocalization/plunderphonic stretch here: the academic works are some of my favorite things from the '50s and '60s. I was hoping to add something from the wonderful Raymond Scott Three Willow Park collection, but the recording dates don't get more specific than the subtitle.
In early November, Ben Ratliff used the release of A Love Supreme: Live in Seattle to write about a different John Coltrane live event for the Washinton Post: his late-'61 residency at the Village Vanguard. The Vanguard output, in turn, gave him the cork to pin up a map of 1961. The possibilities Coltrane considered that year—the rangy interiority of spiritual jazz, modal's autumnal pop, the freeing (if not necessarily "free") indulgence within "Chasin' the Trane"—were just some of the directions on offer:
From my standpoint — I wasn’t born until seven years later — the culture of that period seems marked by tension, diffusion, doubt, repetition, foreboding, lengthiness, savviness, taut aggression, wary knowledge, inspired dread, disciplined joy. The music sounds post-heroic and pre-cynical; interestingly free from grandiosity; full of room for the listener to find a place within it and make up their own mind.
I wasn't born until three times seven years later, and 1961 was just a pre-Beatles year to me. (They lurk in the playlist, unplayable in America, backing Tony Sheridan as The Beat Brothers.) I I'm not alone in that: a standard white critical line treated pre-Fab rock 'n' roll as, at best, a sudden anarchic flame that spontaneously snuffed when Elvis, of all people, joined the army. Even in giving consideration to jazz and pachanga, Ratliff nods at this line:
Elvis Presley, out of the Army, turned to corny prefabs. Little Richard was making unconvincing gospel records. Eddie Cochran and Buddy Holly had expired in tour crashes.
But jazz didn't pause when Sonny Rollins decamped for the bridge. I found upwards of 150 tracks that I classified, in whole or in part, as "rock n roll". (I drop the apostrophes in the spreadsheet. Saves time.) There's the bluesy, paradoxically languid chug of Doctor Ross & The Orbits' "Cat Squirrel"; the Bo-knowing of Freddy Cannon's "Buzz Buzz A-Diddle-It"; the pipeline strut of Lula Reed's "You Gotta Have That Green". Rockabilly was dying with drama; surf rock tumbled onto the dunes, fully formed. In a sense, the King and the Architect were now post-heroic themselves: Richard checking his abandon for Christ's sake—"Ride On King Jesus" was my pick here, in which he sounds uncannily like Jackie Wilson—and Presley striking Europop poses. There's better gospel and continental pop here, but I don't fault either man for running in lower gears.
In any event, I loved Ratliff's survey. Maybe he'll have one in place for 1992. Maybe I will!
Sequencing
We start with Colombia and close with Cuba - I don't think I'd avoided English-language cuts for the bookends before.
The title comes from the Johnny Adams track.
Transitions I loved:
The Jimmy Cobb-Charli Persip handoff from "Easy Does It" to "Batista's Groove".
The nerve-racking pep of Adam Faith's "Don't You Know It" spilt well into the Marvelettes' "Please Mr. Postman", the kind of hit that now exists on its own conceptual plane.
Two rollicking cheerbearers bashing away at the line between rhythm & blues and rock 'n' roll: Sammy Cotton's "Nobody" into Walter Vaughn's "Down On My Knees".
25 to Note
The Five Chavis Brothers, "Baby, Don't Leave Me"
João Gilberto, "Bolinha de Papel"
Loretta Lynn, "The Darkest Day"
Georg Kreisler, "Das Grammophon"
Champion Jack Dupree, "Death of Big Bill"
Gene Pitney, "Every Breath I Take"
Peter Scott Peters, "Fallout Shelter"
The Flares, "Foot Stomping Pt. 1"
Harry Belafonte, "Goin' Down Jordan"
Robert Morse & How to Succeed in Business cast, "I Believe in You"
Kale, Rochereau, Roger, "Kamulanga"
Rupert Clemendore & John Buddy Williams, "Last Night the Landlord Nearly Killed Me"
Brian Hyland, "Let Me Belong to You"
Leo Parker, "Let Me Tell You 'Bout It"
Lucho Azcárraga, "Que Viva Panamá"
Roosevelt Sykes, "Satellite Baby"
June Christy, "Seven Shades of Snow"
Betty O'Brien, "She'll Be Gone [alternate take]"
The Gospel Clefs, "So Good"
The Mormon Tabernacle Choir, "Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child"
Mary Wells, "Strange Love [single version]"
Young Jessie, "Teacher Gimme Back"
Forrest J. Ackerman, "Tone Tales from Tomorrow"
Commonwealth Jones, "Who's Been Here?"
Joyce Heath, "You're Mine All Mine"
Balloting
I submitted the following to Pitchfork at the end of October. In 2021 I listened to less current music than ever, which I hate for me. The past few Januaries, I think I'm going to inhale new music alongside my archival diet, and it never pans out. Still, I'm eying a couple new-release aggregators focused on streaming sites, but if anyone has a deep feed that serves them well, I'd love to see it.
Top three albums, everything else alphabetical by artist name:
1. Lucy Dacus, Home Video
2. Magdalena Bay, Mercurial World
3. Chris Corsano & Bill Orcutt, Made Out of Sound
Arooj Aftab, Vulture Prince
Baby Keem, The Melodic Blue
Black Country, New Road, For the First Time
Bruiser Wolf, Dope Game Stupid
Cakes Da Killa, Muvaland Vol. 2 EP
Circuit des Yeux, -io
dltzk, Teen Week
Ethel Cain, Inbred EP
Fatima Al Qadiri, Medieval Femme
Faye Webster, I Know I'm Funny haha
Grouper, Shade
Iceage, Seek Shelter
Illuminati Hotties, Let Me Do One More
Japanese Breakfast, Jubilee
Kacey Musgraves, star-crossed
Lingua Ignota, Sinner Get Ready
Little Simz, Sometimes I Might Be Introvert
Lorde, Solar Power
Lost Girls, Menneskekollektivet
Low, Hey What
LSDXOXO, Dedicated 2 Disrespect EP
Mach-Hommy, Pray for Haiti
Mdou Moctar, Afrique Victime
Mega Bog, Life, and Another
MIKE, Disco!
Moor Mother, Black Encyclopedia of the Air
Navy Blue, Navy's Reprise
Parannoul, To See the Next Part of the Dream
Perila, How Much Time It Is Between You and Me?
Pink Siifu, GUMBO'!
Playboi Carti, Whole Lotta Red
Polo G, Hall of Fame
quickly, quickly, The Long and Short of It
RP Boo, Established!
serpentwithfeet, Deacon
Spirit of the Beehive, ENTERTAINMENT, DEATH
Tems, If Orange Was a Place EP
The Armed, ULTRAPOP
The Avalanches, We Will Always Love You
Tinashe, 333
Tirzah, Colourgrade
Turnstile, Glow On
Tyler, The Creator, Call Me If You Get Lost
Water From Your Eyes, Structure
Wiki, Half God
Wild Pink, A Billion Little Lights
Yasmin Williams, Urban Driftwood
Top 50 tracks, in ballot order, here. Ranking them involved triangulating each song based on my enthusiasm for it and the likelihood that I would be asked to blurb it. In the end, I got to write a little something about "VBS".
Currently & Upcoming
1960
Got about 40 other tracks to add, but "What Are You Doing New Year's Eve" by Dante & The Evergreens is the timely choice for the penultimate slot. He comes in on a weird beat, there's a striking chord in the back half of the verses, and it's got that classic slow dance patter. No idea what that awful compilation artwork is on about.
Power Pop 2009-2016
Added Me in Capris thanks to Ryan in the power pop chat, which I haven't left yet. I might be the only non-musician remaining. As a token of my appreciation I put together a survey of soul and soul-related music I love, from early James Brown to later Johnnie Taylor. Good shopclosing music, I think.
1971
I had the wrong Lord Tanamo! It was some redo from 2000. Thanks to Matt for spotting that. I used to think that an error like this would destroy me, psychologically.
1992
A little shy of 400 tracks, so I've got miles to go. I'll take any recommendations you have; I'm not precious about this. Especially looking for good remixes and artists whose names start with digits from 5 to 0. (So far I've got 10,000 Maniacs, 2 Unlimited, 3Ds, and 4 Non Blondes.)
As the father of a daughter, I think it's reasonable to post a new playlist every three months max. Stay safe, keep living. I think she's about to wake up.