Decades

Arthur Russell was an extraordinarily gifted musician whose talent flowed unobstructed into myriad areas of musical culture. Born in Iowa in 1951, Russell rose to prominence in the ‘70s and ‘80s through New York’s downtown music scene, where he engaged with avant-garde, disco, experimental, classical, and more, working with artists such as Philip Glass, David Byrne, and Allen Ginsburg. His disco orchestrations were both profoundly complex and thoroughly hip, employing cello and horns in a radically vanguard way. He is perhaps most famous, though, for his use of amplified cello, the reverberated timbres of which provided an impeccably lush counterpoint to his angelic voice and candid words. His intimate solo recordings remain the nucleus of his genius, the extent of which may never even be fully known, as a tremendous amount of unreleased tapes and demos continue to be discovered since his untimely death in 1992.

This post is part of our Psych 101 program, an in-depth, 14-part series that looks at the impact of psychedelia on modern music. Want to sign up to receive the other installments in your inbox? Go here. Already signed up and enjoying it? Help us get the word out by sharing it on Facebook, Twitter or just sending your friends this link. Theyll thank you. We thank you.Be advised: You’re about to encounter a bumper crop of bad vibes. The CliffsNotes version of rock history would have you believe that the ‘60s was just a wall-to-wall Age of Aquarius packed to the gills with peace, love, and paisley. But a closer look reveals a darker side to the hippie dream. The same counterculture that made all those sunshine daydreams possible also encompassed some seriously shadowy elements. Psychosis, sexual perversion, misanthropy, morbidity, social decay, the downside of psychedelics—all of these were a potent part of the scene. Whether you’ve got a well known band like The Velvet Underground delivering an ode to sadomasochism on “Venus in Furs” or a more obscure outfit like St. John Green serving up a song for the “Goddess of Death,” take a tumble into the creepier side of the ‘60s.

Unpacked is a playlist analysis of new and classic albums where we highlight key tracks alongside their influences, collaborators, and sample sources to encourage a deeper understanding and appreciation of the record. After loading up 1989’s cult classic Paul’s Boutique with a dizzying array of samples, the Beastie Boys refocused on live instrumentation in the more litigious ‘90s, drafting keyboardist Money Mark as one of the group’s many honorary “fourth” Beastie Boys. But while Check Your Head, which turns 25 this week, contains fewer samples than Paul’s Boutique, it still features dozens of them, drawing on the crates full of punk, classic rock, funk, and comedy records that informed the bratty white rappers’ revolutionary fusion of styles. Check Your Head’s opening track “Jimmy James” sets the densely referential tone: It features no fewer than three Jimi Hendrix Experience samples from three different albums. (The title itself is a nod to Hendrix’s early stage name.) But first, you hear “this next one is the first song on our new album,” as spoken by Robin Zander on Cheap Trick’s 1978 live album At Budokan in his introduction to the future classic “Surrender.” And then, the beat that kicks in is taken primarily from The Turtles’ novelty track “I’m Chief Kamanawanalea.” More than perhaps any album in history, Check Your Head blurs the line between samples and original recordings. Some of the blasts of distorted guitar are played live by Ad-Rock, while others are taken from Thin Lizzy and Bad Brains. On “Finger Lickin’ Good,” MCA and Mike D begin a sentence in 1992 that is finished by Bob Dylan in 1965. One of the most straightforward punk songs on the album, “Time For Livin’,” is actually a revved up Sly & The Family Stone cover. And while “The Biz Vs. The Nuge” features Biz Markie riffing in the Beasties’ studio over a Ted Nugent sample, “So What’cha Want” samples Biz vocals from both his 1988 Big Daddy Kane collaboration “Just Rhymin’ With Biz” and the Check Your Head outtake “Drunken Praying Mantis Style.”

This post is part of our Psych 101 program, an in-depth, 14-part series that looks at the impact of psychedelia on modern music. Want to sign up to receive the other installments in your inbox? Go here. Already signed up and enjoying it? Help us get the word out by sharing it on Facebook, Twitter or just sending your friends this link. Theyll thank you. We thank you.Since its release on June 1, 1967, The Beatles Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band has been so overrated, its practically underrated. The albums reputation doesnt so much precede it as supersede it: Like the monoloth that periodically appears in 2001: A Space Odyssey to mark the crucial turning points in the evolution of human civilization, Sgt. Pepper has come to represent this massive, immovable talisman that looms untouchably over the course of modern pop history. Its emblematic of so many Big Events—the Summer of Love, the elevation of rock n roll into art, the embrace of the studio-as-instrument, Chris Martins more dubious wardrobe choices—that its easy to forget its a relatively compact, 39-minute record comprising 13 pop songs, only two of which go beyond four minutes, and some of which are pretty goofy.Sgt. Peppers oft-cited standing as rocks first concept album is somewhat overstated—its more like the blueprint for one, establishing the template (the opening vignettes, the scene-setting sound effects, the character role-play, the reprises, the grandest of finales) that contemporaries like The Pretty Things and The Who would later flesh out with proper narratives on S.F. Sorrow and Tommy, respectively. And for an album thats considered a watershed moment in psychedelic rock, Sgt. Pepper can be a stridently buttoned-up, old-fashioned record—for one, if its opening lyric is to be believed, its an album pining for the glory days of 1947. Many of its signature sounds—from the orchestral crescendos and harpsichord flourishes to the sitar drones and tabla grooves—were produced by instruments that have existed for hundreds of years. It’s an album full of loving odes to police officers, the eldery, and circus sideshows. Its most pointed examination of teenage rebellion—“She’s Leaving Home”—is sung from the perspective of the weeping parents who’ve suddenly turned into empty nesters.But Sgt. Peppers great achievement is how it made such quaint sources and subject matter sound utterly surreal. It’s a postcard portrait of a bygone England as rendered by Dali. And thanks to its cinematic 360-degree sound design, it was the closest you could get in 1967 to strapping on a VR headset. While Sgt. Pepper may have presented The Beatles as a surrogate band—granting successors like David Bowie and Elton John the license to create their ownalter-egos—the album didn’t so much teach other artists how to step into character as how to step outside their prescribed roles and processes. It showed rock bands they could still exist as rock bands even after they got bored of making rock music.And yet, for all the fundamental sea changes that Sgt. Pepper’s represents, it’s an album that has been perpetually plundered for simple musical ideas as much as grand philosophical ones. It’s actually the rare record that was already influential before it was even completed: While making their debut album, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, down the hall at Abbey Road, the members of Pink Floyd listened in as The Beatles recorded “Lovely Rita” and imported some of its sonic techniques to “Pow R. Toc H,” which plays like an abstract instrumental remix. Following Sgt. Peppers release, pretty much every ’60s rock band of note was hiring an orchestra, polishing off a trumpet, or learning the sitar to embellish their own magnum opus. Soul singers like Otis Redding and Stevie Wonder were inspired to leave traditional R&B behind to explore more musically expansive and emotionally introspective songwriting. And outsider acts like The United States of America were pushing Sgt. Pepper’s sound-collage ethos into more avant-garde terrain.By the early ‘70s, Sgt. Pepper’s ornamental essence could be felt in the theatrical prog of Genesis, the avant-glam of Brian Eno and Sparks, and the chamber-pop detours of iconoclasts like John Cale and Big Star’s Alex Chilton. And though punk momentarily put a moratorium on lavish rock records, Sgt. Pepper’s ideas would be imported into the alternative-rock arena through art-pop eccentrics like the Soft Boys and XTC. In the ’90s, Sgt. Pepper spawned the most bloated of Britpop anthems, gave lo-fi dreamers like The Olivia Tremor Control the confidence to go widescreen on a Super-8 budget, and led grunge stalwarts like Soundgarden and Stone Temple Pilots on a yellow-bricked path to the pop charts. And around the turn of the millennium, Sgt. Pepper’s heady textures and lockstep Ringo rhythms began seeping into the dance tent thanks to artists like the Chemical Brothers, The Avalanches, and Caribou.At this point, it’s hard to even think of Sgt. Pepper as a Beatles album. It’s a readymade toolkit for any band that’s attempting to go “serious,” whether it’s the New Kids on the Block hot-stepping around trilling trumpets on “Tonight” or Panic! At the Disco outfitting their arena-sized emo with bouncing-ball piano lines on “Nine in the Afternoon.” But Sgt. Pepper is so overflowing with ear candy that its tiniest details have been spun into songs by artists who aren’t even attempting to make their own Sgt. Pepper. While the lift-off section of Bowie’s “Space Oddity” is clearly modeled after the symphonic tornado of “A Day in the Life,” Elliott Smith’s “Colorbars” keyed in on the windswept, shuffling piano chords that The Beatles used to lure us into the storm. The clipped one-note guitar stabs of “Getting Better” power Sloan’s “Everything You’ve Done Wrong” and Ween’s “Even If You Don’t,” while the same song’s droning fuzz-chord finale reverberates through both the pristine power pop of Badfinger’s “No Matter What” and the mouldy-basement murk of Guided by Voices’ “2nd Moves to Twin.” Even songs coming from completely different worlds gradually reveal their debt—Nine Inch Nails’ “Disappointed” may begin as tense minimal techno, but it eventually opens up to accommodate wondrous string-section sweeps that harken back to George Harrison’s sitar-spun Sgt. Pepper centerpiece “Within You, Without You.”Fifty years on from Sgt. Peppers release, its nigh impossible to imagine another rock album ever being so central to the pop-cultural conversation again. And in the 21st century, the standard for masterpiece records has shifted away from Sgt. Peppers studio-sculpted perfection to sonically chaotic, emotionally fraught albums—be it Kid A or To Pimp a Butterfly—that grapple with the anxieties of modern life rather than provide a fantastical escape from them. But while the impact of Sgt. Peppers glorious collision of rock n roll, classical, psychedelia, Indian music, barnyard sounds, and proto-Pro Tools tape-splice construction is felt less acutely today, it nonetheless continues to reverberate out into distant realms. This playlist reveals at least 50 ways that Sgt. Pepper taught bands to play, riding the ebb and flow of its influence from the late-60s to today.

This playlists/post was originally supposed to highlight the Shoegaze Love Songs station from Pandora, as that’s a pretty great concept. Shoegaze, a genre of rock that sprang up from the UK in the late ‘80s and sought to negotiate the distance between Phil Spector’s wall of sound and the Velvet Underground’s columns of noise, may have ostensibly made love as its central lyrical focus, but it was a opaque, narcotic and disheveled take on the subject. Saying that shoegaze bands made love songs is like saying that Master P made rap songs about starting small businesses. It’s true, but it misses the point. Still, it’s interesting to look at it from that perspective, and it would’ve been the subject of this blog post if not for the fact that Pandora is a radio service and the user is unable to view tracklisting. For a high-concept, edutainment that seems like an achilles heel. But we love shoegaze, and we hope you do (or will) as well. Here’s a good beginners guide from Ella Fraser-Thoms at the Guardian.

Notice I included many songs written before 1965, years too often slighted by compilers.Visit our affiliate/partner site Humanizing the Vacuum for great lists, commentary, and more.

"Everybody hates a tourist," a wise, skinny man once sang. So lets leave "Wonderwall" at the karaoke bar and rediscover some quality overlooked choons from the Britpop era, which, in our unscientific opinion, begins with Suedes self-titled 1993 debut and stretches all the way to 2000, if only to remind you that Gay Dad and Elasticas The Menace werent all that bad. (Really!) Were also abiding by a fairly liberal definition of Britpop here, because tracks like Spiritualizeds "Lay Back in the Sun" and Shacks "Natalies Party" are as eternally splendorous as anything produced by their NME-mugging peers.After listening to this playlist, youll be left wondering why Oasis "Hey Now" wasnt as big as "Supersonic," why the Boo Radleys werent as big as Oasis, why Pulps "Sylvia" isnt considered Jarvis Cockers career-defining performance, and why the only way to experience Echobellys "Insomniac" on Spotify is through the Dumb and Dumber soundtrack. Youll also be reminded of that fleeting moment when Ride went mod-rock, The Stone Roses turned into Led Zeppelin, and Radiohead were just a bunch of alt-rock chancers who named their first album after a Jerky Boys sketch. And if 2018 brings us a Catatonia revival, then our work is done.

A hip-hop cannon was created in 1994. Nas, Notorious B.I.G., Outkast, Gang Starr, Beastie Boys and Scarface all released breakout albums that were epochal and genre-defining. Some of these tracks -- "One Love," "Juicy," "Mass Appeal" -- have been so rhapsodized and overplayed that its difficult to listen to them with fresh ears, or to even believe that there was a time in hip-hop when these tracks were new. Illmatic, Southernplayalisticadillacmuzik and Hard to Earn were all released within the span of a little more than a month. Hip-hops bench in 1994 was also deep, and Mosi makes a point in his write-up to state that these "were the years when hip-hop became universal." Classic tracks also came in from the West Coast ("Captain Save a Ho," "Playaz Club") and the South ("Front, Back and Side to Side"). As a note, Mosi uses singles released in 1994, even if their albums came out in the previous year, which explains the presence of tracks from Doggystyle and Enter the 36 Chambers .

Subscribe to the Spotify playlist right here.Within the ever-evolving world of Latin music, we’ve seen some sensational moments and headline-grabbing spectacles in 2016. Colombian urban powerhouse J Balvin solidified himself as the reigning king of the new reggaetón movement via the skyrocketing Energía; Marc Anthony and J.Lo stunned global audiences with their surprise reunion at this year’s Latin GRAMMYS with a tropical rendition of Pimpinela’s “Olvídame y pega la vuelta” (and their now-infamous kiss!); our beloved Mexican legend Juan Gabriel passed away too soon yet left behind a charming duets document, Los Dúo 2, starring everyone in Latin music and their mothers (well, not really, but you get the point). Because these buzzed-about folks and their 2016 material are doing so well without our help, having a spot secured in nearly every big publication out there, we’ve decided to spotlight some sparkly hidden gems, exciting artists worthy of your discovery, and killer songs you might have missed by respectable acts. And boy, do these 50 Best Tracks resonate loudly in our hearts.Spunky electro-pop wunderkinds Alex Anwandter, Cineplexx, and Selma Oxor kept things intriguingly hyperactive through iridescent synths and a dash of mystery. Hypnotic electro-tropical masterminds Systema Solar, Compass, and Orkesta Mendoza continued to bend the boundaries of cumbia and folkloric sounds via their dashing experimentalism and love of tradition. Alt-norteño took the throne in unconventionalism in the good hands of regional Mexican iconoclasts Juan Cirerol and Helen Ochoa while staying true to form. Debaucherous punk made waves across borders through the awesomely cacophonic powerchords of daredevils AJ Davila, Sexy Zebras, and Los Nastys. For our utter excitement, we also saw the return of alternative rock royalty Café Tacvba, Los Fabulosos Cadillacs, and Andrés Calamaro. Oh, and not to mention 2016 also brought us surprisingly killer renditions delivered by the likes of Mexrrissey and Vanessa Zamora. Here are the 50 most riveting tracks hailing from indie and non-conformist Latinx acts. Happy listening!

How fitting that James Murphy released his last album in 2010, for LCD Soundsystem lives in a climate-controlled space where college students and post grads, downloading songs onto their new smartphones, got excited about voting for Barack Obama. To say the music is “dated” is redundant—all music sounds like the time in which it was recorded. Also wrong. If anything, the collar-loosening white boy boogie of “Dance Yrself Clean” and “Daft Punk is Playing in My House” predated the ways in which the Silicon Valley ethos of app-ready affluence established itself in the last three to five years: dancing to “I Feel It Coming” after a few pints of the local microbrew. LCD’s 2010 show at the Fillmore presented the act at its best, with Murphy and Nancy Whang trading instruments and losing themselves to the music. He started losing me with the singer-songwriter material that won him praise a decade ago: all that “In My Life” stuff. I included a couple moments anyway because I won’t renounce my past.Visit our affiliate/partner site Humanizing the Vacuum for great lists, commentary, and more.