Decades

Around the 2007 release of Wilco’s sixth studio album, Sky Blue Sky, Jeff Tweedy talked a lot about classic rock. Sky Blue Sky eschewed much of the experimentation that had characterized the album’s immediate predecessors (2001’s Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and 2004’s A Ghost Is Born), favoring a more straightforward musical and lyrical style. In several interviews, Tweedy insisted that he preferred not to give too much credence to the “alternative country” and “experimental” labels that had followed him since his earliest days as a founding member of Uncle Tupelo. Instead, Tweedy insisted, Wilco should be known as a rock ‘n’ roll band.For a piece in the Wall Street Journal, Tweedy acknowledged the influence that 1970s rock had on Sky Blue Sky, listing his five favorite albums from that era. The first five songs on this playlist are sourced from that article, wherein Tweedy confesses he “often tries to emulate” Nick Drake’s picking style and claims The Clash’s “Train In Vain” “was huge” for him growing up. Considering Wilco’s sound, those choices—as well as the inclusion of Dylan and Wings—make sense. The outlier in his list is Blondie’s “Heart of Glass,” which Tweedy calls “a great pop record.” However, despite all the talk of experimentation surrounding Wilco, Tweedy has always known how to make catchy music.The remaining tracks on the playlist were added based on covers Tweedy has done, both live and on record, with Wilco and Uncle Tupelo. A version of Doug Sahm’s “Give Back the Key to My Heart” appears on Uncle Tupelo’s swan song Anodyne*, and a cover of Waylon Jennings’ “Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way” appears on the 2003 reissue of that album. Wilco has frequently covered Bill Fay** and Big Star, including the latter’s “In The Street” (a.k.a. The theme song to That ‘70s Show). During an all-covers set at 2013’s Solid Sound Festival, Wilco played the classic songs by The Rolling Stones, Velvet Underground, and Television that are featured here.Sticklers may note that The Band’s “The Weight” was technically released in 1968. However, this version with The Staples Singers was recorded at the group’s 1976 farewell concert and released two years later as part of the Scorsese documentary The Last Waltz. Tweedy, who has collaborated with Mavis Staples throughout the years, joined an ensemble of musical greats—including Nick Lowe, whose “Peace, Love, and Understanding” Wilco covered for Spotify’s Singles Series—to perform a rendition of “The Weight” in 2014 in honor of Staples’ 75th birthday.Tweedy is gearing up for the June 2017 release of Together at Last, which features acoustic versions of songs by various bands throughout his illustrious career. By playing in a stripped down form, devoid of any attempts at musical experimentation, Tweedy will likely reinforce just how influential this decade of classic rock was on the formation of his own, unique sound.*This song isn’t on Spotify, and was replaced with Sahm’s “Don’t Turn Around,” from his 1973 album Doug Sahm and His Band.**Tweedy typically covers Bill Fay’s “Be Not So Fearful,” which isn’t on Spotify, so I’ve replaced it with Fay’s cover of Wilco’s “Jesus, etc.,” which, of course, was not released in the ‘70s.

Joe Gibbs was one of reggae’s great businessmen and ambassadors, and also one of the genre’s great producers. He was responsible for the highly influential African Dub series, introduced Dennis Brown to America, and worked extensively with the great Lee “Scratch” Perry. The write-up to this playlist on FACT provides an excellent detail to all of this, and the playlist itself is a monster. Though one wonders why they limited themselves to so few songs, the chronological order works to its advantage, as you can hear Gibbs’ sound (and, by extension, the sound of reggae in general) evolve from the late-60s throughout the 70s. As a note, some of these songs were not available on Spotify, but we did our best to recreate it.

Tribe Called Quest created universes by cobbling together post-bop saxophones, rolling bass lines, and hard boom bap beats, topping them off with Q-Tip’s fluid freeform rhymes that played an alto sax to the gruff, declarative blurts of Phife’s deceptively straightforward lyrics. As music nerds, we’d already digested the Velvet Underground and De La Soul, so we instantly got Tribe’s vibes and references, but blending these two opposing worlds—despondent, glamorous sleaze rock and idiosyncratic, jazz afrocentrism—was a revelation. Here’s a playlist of some of their best and most well-known samples, from RAMP to Lou Reed.

Subscribe to Bill Brewsters Spotify playlist of the best San Francisco disco tracks here. Or, better yet, check out the full YT playlists here, which includes tracks not available on Spotify.Bill Brewster ranks among the world’s most learned musical selectors. Having started his career in the ‘80s with UK football fanzine When Saturday Comes, Brewster moved to New York in the mid-‘90s to run DMC’s US office back when the DJ remix label published dance music’s reigning magazine Mixmag. Having realized most British DJs didn’t know their own history, Brewster and pal Frank Broughton wrote 1999’s key club culture tome Last Night a DJ Saved My Life and fathered the popular website DJHistory.com to share their outtakes. Since then, he’s compiled countless club collections while DJ-ing, co-authoring books like How to DJ (Properly), and writing scholarly liner notes to For Discos Only, a splendid 30-track collection that skims the disco cream from Berkeley’s Fantasy and New York’s Vanguard labels. We spoke to Bill in his Bedford home office 50 miles north of London via Skype’s free transatlantic magic.What did you learn while writing your notes? I got to dig into the careers of people who Ive never had the opportunity to write about before, like Bobby Orlando. For me, hes a kind of fascinating and iconic character and so archetypically New York as well. Theres something very hustler-y about him, but also talented. American musicians, they do have that hustle British musicians often dont, and I admire that. Theyd see a kind of gap in the market somewhere and they’d fill it; all these little Jewish mom and pop organizations out of New York and other big cities where theyve been working out of one little studio, and end up building a mini-empire.The downside of that hustle is that Orlando spread himself so thin that within a few years the quantity of his output dwarfed the quality of much of it. Youre absolutely right. I think it was [Vanguard engineer] Mark Berry who told me Bobby Os aim was to produce a song every day. Thats admirable, but also completely insane. He made some great things and kind of under-produced them, and made loads of other things that he shouldnt have bothered with.British disco tastes tend to favor small jazz-funk ensembles, like the Players Association, who even had a UK Top 10 hit, as opposed to huge symphonic things, like Boris Midney. I was amazed to read in your notes that Alphonse Mouzon looped a Boris Midney drum track forPoussez!It makes sense because Midneys kick drums are unbelievably huge. Our club scene revolved around the straight crowd; blacker-sounding records, jazz fusion. Roy Ayers was always much bigger in the UK than he was in the US, and the Players Association fit into that.Fantasy had a natural entry into disco with fusion acts like the Blackbyrds and Pleasure, which werent quite disco, but people danced to them. Once Sylvester hit, Fantasy ran with disco, even if many of their marquee signings failed – Martha Reeves, the post-Teddy Pendergrass Blue Notes, Ike Turner. Even jazz drummer Idris Muhammad bombed on Fantasy before he recorded something in the same league as "Could Heaven Ever Be Like This." Im so glad For Discos Only includes "For Your Love."I actually like that more. Its got that big orchestral swell and really works as a set opener. So many jazz guys were clearly doing disco for money and because some of them were great musicians they could probably get away with it.Youve been putting together compilations and writing liner notes for a couple decades now. How has that changed after a shift away from physical product? Ive always had a great deal of affection for compilations because they were so important when I was 11, 12, 13, and didnt have a lot of money. I put the maximum amount of effort and love into them because Im hoping there are kids who start investigating the artists on them they like the most. Plus there’s an age group who still wants to own something tangible. I love when youve got a compilation, and theres a half-hour’s reading on the sofa while youre listening. I cant get enough of it.We had TV-marketed labels like K-Tel and Ronco in the ‘70s, but compilations have never been as big in the US as they are in the UK. Do you think thats to do with the general nerdiness of British music collectors? There are just more slightly insane people in the UK who end up living in a shed just so they can put out compilations of music they love.I do think theres some truth in that. The UK had those obsessive Street Sounds compilations of funk, electro, and early hip-hop, which must’ve countered the expense of US import 12-inches in the ‘80s, when the pound was weak. Street Sounds was an incredibly important compilation label when I was in my early 20s. So many people who ended up being house music DJs got their start buying those compilations. [Founder Morgan Khan] put on concerts in London’s Wembley Arena where thered be like 7,000 kids all going mad to electro. We never had the disco crash that happened in the US. Disco in the UK was probably at its biggest in 80, 81, 82 when all of the weekenders were happening, where there were 2-3,000 people regularly.Living in New York, I never felt an anti-disco backlash because you would still hear it everywhere in the ‘80s, even blending in with new wave. The big dance stations KISS-FM and WBLS would pay things like [ex-Buzzcocks] Pete Shelleys "Witness the Change" or the Clash’s “The Magnificent Dance” and kids would breakdance to them.The UK held onto that black music snobbery for quite a long time, and that didnt break down until house music arrived. I preferred what was happening in New York, although I didnt realize it at the time – things like Kid Creole & the Coconuts, Ze Records, 99 Records; that mishmash of styles. How has this eclecticism shaped your DJ sets? I try to play one or two new tracks every week. Ive never felt there was one era that was so amazing that you couldnt pick from other eras to make your set better. Its exciting when theres a great new band Ive never heard of. You have to dig through a lot of stuff to find things you love, but they do come up, like an Australian band called Mildlife. Theyve got one album and its a bit like jazz-funk, but really good. British music fans were traditionally very tribal. Right back to the late 40s, you could absolutely tell what kind of music someone listened to by the clothes they were wearing. I look on the streets now in [London’s trendy] Shoreditch, where there are loads of young students, and Ive got no idea what they listen to. I think thats a bit of a shame, but the fact that theyre open-minded means you can play a lot of different music and theyll go with it. I played a very electronic festival last Sunday with "Coming Up" by Paul McCartney as the last record, and it went over well. And the great thing about For Discos Only is that the production and musicianship and remixing on many of these records is top-notch. Its music that can be current.

At the turn of the millennium, it seemed unlikely that an aging record nerd hollering about his favorite bands could possibly become the vessel for an entire angst-ridden generation—but that was before we had Sound of Silver. When James Murphy released his second full-length as LCD Soundsystem 10 years ago, he revealed the deeply sentimental roots behind all the dance-punk chic, the hopelessly melancholic critic who, no matter how many albums he might amass in his enormous collection, still can’t escape the simple truths of getting older and saying goodbye to all your friends. Though their short-lived retirement is now over, with the arrival of their first new album in seven years, it wouldn’t be LCD Soundsystem without gazing longingly towards the past. So we’ve taken the occasion to unpack James Murphy’s shining moment, the weepy behemoth of a dance record that is Sound of Silver.Murphy’s influences are as vast as they are easily traceable (all one has to do is look up the lyrics to the climactic band-listing outburst of “Losing My Edge”), yet the real magic of the album is how confidently it inhabits its own skin, effortlessly mixing the mechanic rhythms of Kraftwerk, the starry-eyed synth-punk of New Order, and the reckless rock worship of Lou Reed into something as comfortable in the club as it is at home on a turntable. Its endlessly looping electronics nod to the simple majesty of Detroit techno as well as the prickly brain-funk of the Talking Heads, yet what’s fascinating about Murphy is the way that he turns his love of these disparate artists into his own defining quality. LCD Soundsystem is a band of fanboys and fangirls playing for devotees of their own, celebrating the act of loving music and creating something entirely theirs in the process. Sound of Silver was the moment where Murphy’s band ceased to be a loving tribute to the many shapes of punk and New Wave, and became a fully-armed dance unit for the 21st century. Without further ado, we present our mix of the many sounds the fuelled one of our era’s most distinguishing voices.

In the 10 years since London’s enigmatic Burial released his boundary-breaking sophomore LP Untrue, the face of electronic music has changed dramatically. Not only have new arenas opened up for ambient-leaning producers to bring their experimental soundscapes into the spotlight, but the divisions between such typically at-home forms of listening and more club-oriented sounds have continued to blur. Though his releases seem to come less and less frequently, Burial’s thumbprint still courses through dance music today, whether in his haunting, intimate use of vocal samples, his brisk, tactile beats, or his free wandering into the kind of ethereal abstraction usually reserved for avant-garde composers.Part of what made Burial’s sound on Untrue so inspiring was his willingness to tackle original rhythms, without regard for what scenes he might be breaching. At turns reminiscent of house, garage, dubstep, and hardcore, Untrue is as bracingly pulsing as it is forlorn and relaxed, capturing the sounds of dance music at their most provocative, enveloping, romantic, and pain-ridden all at once. You can hear his influence in the dark nightclub ruminations of Dean Blunt, the grimy bass sculptures of Andy Stott, the ethereal beatmaking of Jamie xx, and even the minimal rhythms of latter-day Radiohead—all of whom have taken his blueprint for emotional, mysterious dance music and carried it valiantly forward into the future. Burial left an undeniable mark on music with Untrue, and with this playlist, we explore the many ways that his vision lives on today.

On January 4, famed technologist Anil Dash and playwright Lin-Manuel Miranda collaborated on a Spotify tribute to New Jack Swing, that much-beloved yet transitional period between classic funky soul and contemporary R&B.“Okay! For the young people who might not be familiar with New Jack Swing (or old people who were distracted by grunge at the time), Lin-Manuel & I made you a New Jack Swing 101 playlist to learn from,” wrote Dash on Twitter. He added, “Shout out to Bruno Mars for the inspiration,” nodding to Bruno Mars and Cardi B’s New Jack era-referencing video for “Finesse (Remix).”Music nerds will point out that New Jack Swing actually peaked in popularity around 1990——nearly two years before Nirvana’s Nevermind and Pearl Jam’s Ten blew up on the charts and made grunge mainstream. But this playlist is ultimately less of an authoritative history lesson than a very good fan mix. It collects major hits like Bobby Brown’s “Don’t Be Cruel,” and underrated gems like Chuckii Booker’s “Games.” Feel free to quibble about whether Alexander O’Neal’s Minneapolis funk track “Fake” truly qualifies, or whether Xscape’s 1994 debut “Just Kickin’ It” and Blackstreet’s “Before I Let You Go” stretch the timeline a bit too far. And it’s unclear why Dash and Miranda tacked on a re-recorded version of Father MC’s “I’ll Do For You” at the end of their mix. Copycat and fake recordings of popular songs are the bane of streaming music.Still, if you’re looking for some old-school grooves to do the Funky Charleston to, New Jack Swing 101 ain’t half bad. As Ice Cube once said, “You can New Jack Swing on my nuts!”

To be totally honest, I haven’t spent much time listening to Linkin Park lately, and I’m not familiar with their most recent albums. My Linkin Park phase was in high school—Hybrid Theory (2000), Reanimation (2002), Meteora (2003), and Collision Course (2004) came out during that time. At that point in my life, I was mostly a classical, jazz, and rap fan—I wasn’t into heavy rock or metal, so Linkin Park was the most intense thing I listened to in my teenage years. And as I think back on it, it seems bizarre that I liked the band so much, because they really didnt fit with anything else I was listening to. But it makes sense now, because the reach and scope of their music were powerful enough to grip people outside the typical realm of nu metal. There’s something almost transcendental about early Linkin Park. They were too anthemic to be fully nu metal (à la Korn, Limp Bizkit, or P.O.D.), too hip-hop to be rock, and too emo and mainstream to be “cool,” at least as far as what was considered cool among my peers. Theirs was a profoundly relatable music that flipped the script on what it was supposed to be. Their lyrics had a radically human core, one that embraced and tried to work through longing and alienation. These people were dealing with complex emotions like guilt and shame when the Dave Matthews Band—probably the most popular band in my community—was singing about getting high and ejaculating. And the actual music of Linkin Park was very intriguing, boasting intelligent percussion, authoritative washes of reverbed guitar, disciplined use of electronics, and methodical pacing. Listening to Meteora as an adult now, I’m still moved by its quality, its musicianship, and its acuity. Growing up before social media, in a fairly bland, conservative suburban community, I didn’t know a lot about the world of music. I don’t remember too much of what I listened to back then, but I do remember relating to the angst and hopelessness of Meteora in a powerful way. Linkin Park were basically my Smiths, and I’m fine with that. They were the therapeutic outlet that was available to me, and I’m glad they were. It’s sad that Chester Bennington is dead, because his music always pointed, more than anything, toward a desire for deliverance from pain. I don’t know whether he achieved that in the end, but I do know that his music was there for countless lost teenagers like myself.

As a self-conscious aesthetic, lo-fi didn’t come into its own until after punk’s pro-amateur, DIY attitude had already laid waste to popular notions of what constituted acceptable musicianship and recording techniques. Yet the idea of turning crappy sound into pure sonic gold reaches back to the classic rock era. The obvious precursors are The Velvet Underground and garage-psych bands like 13th Floor Elevators, who in the mid ’60s achieved sonic delirium through intentionally muddy primitivism. Around the same time, the post-Pet Sounds Beach Boys pretty much invented the concept of the warm and woozy bedroom recording, while The Beatles, during their “White Album” sessions, incorporated home demo-style graininess and feedback into their previously pristine pop. The Stones deserve a lot of credit, too. After all, there are entire stretches of 1972’s Exile on Main St. that sound like moldy-ass basement recordings.

While its understandable that some listeners would think that all the great soul music in Memphis came from the Stax/Volt stable, its simply not accurate. Not only were there other R&B imprints that challenged Stax’s standing in terms of their ability to score hits, there was no shortage of acts at other labels whose musical vision was the equal of the vaunted Stax roster. The Willie Mitchell-produced tracks Al Green cut for Memphis mainstay Hi Records in the ‘70s remain among the deepest, most transcendently sensual songs ever recorded in any genre, and they dominated both R&B and pop radio. The tunes James Carr laid down for the less celebrated Memphis label Goldwax Records were easily as intense as anything in the Otis Redding oeuvre. And that’s only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the searingly soulful sounds that emerged from the musical bounty of the Bluff City.