I made a playlist for the day before the election, just to stop the chatter and feel the mood. Some people liked it, a lot. It went to my head. I made some more. Then someone texted me “Sam you are a talented DJ..."
He shouldn’t have said it, as I’m now self-indulgently writing about it…more timepass 😜
I’ve always loved listening to music, often as an escape. When the walkman came out, I remember riding my bike listening to Elton John’s Goodbye, Yellow Brick Road and The Beatles’ White Album. One of my favorite cassettes had Best of Leonard Cohen on one side and Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours on the other.
My sister used to make me mixtapes from the radio, including a sampling of Casey Kasem’s top 40. I remember making mixtapes using a dual-deck cassette player. One time a woman I met at a party called the next day, demanding, “where’s the mixtape I was promised.” So of course I made one. But in general it was time-consuming and limited to the albums one had.
Then Napster came along and for a brief moment in time it was the most exciting thing ever. More people in 1999 searched for an mp3 than they did for porn. My girlfriend then was obsessed with what you could find on peoples’ hard disks around the world. An immediacy and an intimacy. She made all kinds of playlists. One was all songs with 'Ruby' in the title, for our friends' newborn with that name. Another had 100 variations of the same song. I was working with music companies back then on the future of digital music. I was involved in getting Napster to be seen as an ally of the industry (a separate story to be told). I used my gf as an example of how people wanted to dj their lives.
On my first project with a music company, I got to interview Mel Ilberman, a legend from the glory days of the recording industry. He drilled into me why music is fundamentally different from other entertainment businesses (which he ascribed as fulfilling a more transactional need). Movies, he said, you can enjoy for the evening, discuss with friends afterwards, or even intellectualize and get a doctoral thesis. But music, he emphasized, is the soundtrack of your life, it is your emotional identity.
When playlists first came around on iTunes, I made one for our Brooklyn brownstone backyard party. It wasn’t a hit, and adding insult to injury a "cool" friend critiqued it as campy. Luckily, that playlist died with iTunes.
This past Nov 2nd, after enduring the draining, seemingly unending, election process, I was in the mood for a full-throated soundtrack as I went to my building's roofdeck with a glass of Japanese whisky. This is what came with me...
It starts off with Willie Nelson’s Vote ‘Em Out. It is simple and straightforward. Has some commentary from Childish Gambino (This is America) and Marvin Gaye (What's Going On). Includes Woody Guthrie and friends as anti-racists and antifa of their time (All You Fascists, Tear The Fascists Down, This Land Is Your Land). A powerful and raw protest by Janelle Monáe that I saw performed by David Byrne on Broadway (Hell You Talmbout). More revolutionary spirit by Tracy Chapman and Gil Scott-Heron (Talking about a Revolution That Will Not Be Televised). Threw in some Neil Young, Buffalo Springfield, Leonard Cohen, The Clash and Radiohead for good measure. Toward the end is Jimi Hendrix' singular interpretation of Star Spangled Banner performed at Woodstock. But the finale had to be Lennon’s radical exhortation, Imagine.
I hope you like it. Stay tuned for more of my playlists.
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