Spinning Out Gracefully - Songs 2011

The second mix of Songs 2011. Some favorite songs from some favorite albums of 2011. Another 60 minutes or so. It was a very good year for music.









1.   My Morning Jacket - Circuital (Circuital)
2.   Yellowbirds - Beneath The Reach Of Light (The Color)
3.   The War On Drugs - Come To The City (Slave Ambient)
4.   Over The Rhine - Rave On (The Long Surrender)
5.   Beck - Stormbringer (Johnny Boy Would Love This... A Tribute To John Martyn)
6.   Kurt Vile - Baby's Arms (Smoke Ring For My Halo)
7.   James Blake - The Wilhelm Scream (James Blake)
8.   Charles Bradley - I Believe In Your Love (No Time For Dreaming)
9.   Adele - Rumor Has It (21)
10. The Black Keys - Gold On The Ceiling (El Camino)
11. The Kills - Satellite (Blood Pressures)
12. EMA - California (Past Life Martyred Saints)
13. The Antlers - French Exit (Burst Apart)
14. Cass McCombs - Love Thine Enemy (Humor Risk)
15. Wilco - I Might (The Whole Love)
16.  The Decemberists - Down By The Water (The King Is Dead)

You Know What I Mean - Songs 2011

This is my fist mix featuring songs from my favorite albums of 2011. The 60 song mix didn't last very long and I changed this up to be multiple part mixes of about 60 minutes each so it's still 60@60.

This has been a good year and I have many songs and albums to highlight. Of course I started this off with a song from one of the great releases of the year... The Beach Boys' The Smile Sessions. It sets the tone for everything that follows but especially the first few songs.

This is the first 60 minutes of my Songs 2011 series. The songs are not ranked but are arranged to sound good together.

All albums released in 2011.


1.  The Beach Boys - Our Prayer (The Smile Sessions)
2.  Bon Iver - Holocene  (Bon Iver)
3.  Fleet Foxes - Lorelai (Helplessness Blues)
4.  Jesse Sykes & The Sweet Hereafter Here Comes Mary (Marble Son)
5.  Dawes - If I Wanted Someone (Nothing Is Wrong)
6.  The Civil Wars - I've Got This Friend (Barton Hollow)
7.  Middle Brother - Million Dollar Bill (Middle Brother)
8.  Atlas Sound - Angel is Broken (Parallax)
9.  Cults - You Know What I Mean (Cults)
10. Smith Westerns - Still New (Dye It Blond)
11. Girls - Honey Bunny (Father, Son, Holy Ghost)
12. Dum Dum Girls - Bedroom Eyes (Only In Dreams)
13. St. Vincent - Year Of The Tiger (Strange Mercy)
14. M83 - Midnight City (Hurry Up, We're Dreaming)
15. CANT - Too Late, Too Far (Dreams Come True)
16. Radiohead - Louts Flower (The King of Limbs)

Some videos from some favorite albums of 2011

60 Artist on High Rotation

I looked at my Last.fm listing of artists that is based on my iTunes play and here is a listing of my most popular artists as determined by Last.fm and iTunes. I set this up in early 2008 and it only counts plays on selected devices like my iPod and computers. It doesn't count CDs played anywhere and of course I still play lots of CDs but it is something of a snapshot of this recently tuned 60 guy.

So here is my Top Artist list from the last 4 years as determined by the number of times I played a song from these artists. David Bowie wins this contest by a landslide.

1. David Bowie
   
2. Tom Waits
3. The Brian Jonestown Massacre
4. Yo La Tengo
5. Bob Dylan
6. Neil Young
7. Jimi Hendrix
8. The Kinks
9. Robyn Hitchcock
10. XTC
11. Radiohead
12. The Byrds
13. Grizzly Bear
14. The Beach Boys
15. The Green Pajamas
16. The Rolling Stones
17. Julian Cope
18. Tunng
19. The Kingsbury Manx
20. Miles Davis
21. Fleet Foxes
22. Wilco
23. Blur
24. My Morning Jacket
25. Vic Chesnutt
26. Big Star
27. Eels
28. The Jam
29. The Clash
30. T. Rex
31. Damien Jurado
32. Over the Rhine
33. Alejandro Escovedo
34. The Kills
35. Otis Redding
36. Richard Thompson
37. Cream
38. Akron/Family
39. John Prine
40. Field Music
41. The Jesus and Mary Chain
42. Los Lobos
43. Brian Eno
44. The Cure
45. R.E.M.
46. Elysian Fields
47. The Besnard Lakes
48. Robert Plant
49. Six Organs of Admittance
50. Charlotte Gainsbourg
51. James Brown
52. The Stone Roses
53. Echo & The Bunnymen
54. Holly Golightly
55. Mavis Staples
56. M. Ward
57. The Detroit Cobras
58. Talking Heads
59. Joe Henry
60. Leonard Cohen
    

60 Albums 1982

My favorite 60 albums from 1982. In general I have not agreed with the common perception expressed by some people that the 80's was a bad decade for music. Like every other decade there was plenty of great music and lots of trash. This list of 60 albums released in 1982 was a little more difficult putting together. There a plenty of great albums to make a short list but 60 was a challenge within my criteria for inclusion.

I was very much involved in the music in 1982. I worked as a DJ, booked local bands in a club, hung out in record stores and bought lots of albums. This is also the year that MTV and music videos in general started making a big impact on the music scene. It would be a few more years before we started getting cable and the only place we saw the new videos was in some bars. It's hard now to imagine that there were some bars that had TVs showing MTV over the bar.

I picked Marshall Crenshaw for the top spot because this first album of his has stood the test of time in my world. I saw him touring with this album and I have seen him touring recently. This album led me to be a lifelong fan and I have over a dozen of his albums. This particular album is timeless with a great collection of pop songs. I still listen to it.

I also often still listen to my number 2 which is another timeless album full of great songs as is the number 3.

1. Marshall Crenshaw - Marshall Crenshaw
2. Roxy Music - Avalon
3. Richard & Linda Thompson - Shoot Out the Lights
4. XTC - English Settlement
5. Elvis Costello - Imperial Bedroom
6. The Clash - Combat Rock
7. X - Under the Big Black Sun
8. The English Beat - Special Beat Service
9. Talking Heads - The Name of This Band is Talking Heads
10. Prince - 1999
11. Dexys Midnight Runners - Too-Rye-Ay
12. The Cure - Pornography
13. The Dream Syndicate - The Days of Wine and Roses
14. Midnight Oil - 10,9,8,7,6,5,4,3,2,1
15. Bruce Springsteen - Nebraska
16. Lou Reed - The Blue Mask
17. Marvin Gaye - Midnight Love
18. The Church - The Blurred Crusade
19. The Jam - The Gift
20. ABC - The Lexicon of Love
21. Rank & File - Sundown
22. Wall of Voodoo - Call of the West
23. Peter Gabriel - Peter Gabriel
24. Laurie Anderson - Big Science
25. Squeeze - Singles: 45's and Under
26. The Gun Club - Miami
27. The Psychedelic Furs - Forever Now
28. Gang of Four - Songs of the Free
29. Tom Verlaine - Words From the Front
30. Squeeze - Sweets From a Stranger
31. Robyn Hitchcock - Groovy Decay
32. Grace Jones - Living My Life
33. Defunkt - Thermonuclear Sweat
34. Siouxsie & The Banshees - A Kiss in the Dreamhouse
35. Material - One Down
36. Yaz - Upstairs at Eric's
37. Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers - Long After Dark
38. James Blood Ulmer - Black Rock
39. Pigbag - Dr. Heckle and Mr. Jive
40. Split Enz - Time and Tide
41. Kate Bush - The Dreaming
42. King Crimson - Beat
43. Roseanne Cash - Somewhere in the Stars
44. Mission of Burma - Vs.
45. Robert Wyatt - Nothing Can Stop Us
46. King Sunny Ade - Juju Music
47. Thomas Dolby - The Golden Age of Wireless
48. Van Morrison - Beautiful Vision
49. Donald Fagen - The Nightfly
50. The Bongos - Drums Along the Hudson
51. Ronald Shannon Jackson - Mandance
52. Hunters & Collectors - Hunters & Collectors
53. James White & The Blacks - Sax Maniac
54. Various Artists - Eraserhead
55. Hall & Oates - H2O
56. Gregory Isaacs - Night Nurse
57. Warren Zevon - The Envoy
58. Grandmaster Flash & The Furious Five - The Message
59. David Lindley - Win This Record
60. A Flock of Seagulls - A Flock of Seagulls
61. The Time - What Time Is It?
62. Michael Jackson - Thriller
63. The dB's - Repercussion
64. The Stray Cats - Built For Speed
65. Fun Boy Three - Fun Boy Three
66. Depeche Mode - A Broken Frame
67. INXS - Shabooh Shoobah
68. Simple Minds - New Gold Dream (81-82-83-84)
69. The Associates - Sulk
70. Bauhaus - The Sky's Gone Out
71. Haircut 100 - Pelican West
72. Kim Wilde - Select
    

The Blog Has Moved

This blog has evolved into something new...
60@60 Sounding Booth

See you there.

60 what?

I said I was going to do mixes with 60 songs as part of my 60@60 theme and I just posted one. So now I'm having second thoughts. I still like the theme of 60@60 but the 60 songs thing is a little unwieldy. I really need to do something efficiently to make it work in my time restraints. Heck, I'm not retired yet.

Putting 60 songs together in a quality mix is very time consuming. I have several of them in various stages right now and I need to get them posted.

Here is the process. I choose the songs and place them in a carefully selected sequence. I move them to a different directory and run them through a program that equalizes the sound volume of the songs which are coming from a wide variety of sources with sometimes drastically different sound quality. I put each song into a sound editor program, blend the songs together and then save the results as an MP3 file. The file is then uploaded to Mixcloud and I fill out an online form with the song titles and artists. It includes a graphic and tags. I also post the mix to Zero to the mixing community and also to this blog. Maybe Facebook too.

So I'm looking for ways to streamline the process and I decided to go back to my standard approximately hour long mixes that I've been doing for years... decades. It's what I've been used to doing and it will still fit into my 60@60 theme. It will be 60 minutes of songs instead of 60 songs. Yeah. That works.

I can still make the larger collections but they will be broken down to parts like I just did with the House Party 1968 mix. Recently I had created these very large playlist on various themes that go on for hours. I can break them up and get them here soon. I will also continue to put together my 60 albums by year lists and I will be doing some single artists mixes too.

I will also be going back to my old blog and grabbing some lists and ramblings to post here. It's the end of the year with lots of those end of the year lists that I love and I'll be making my own and commenting on others. It's also an election year coming up and I'll have a lot to day about that mess. This is going to be fun.

House Party 1968

This is my first posting of an actual mix of 60 songs to this blog. This is a throwback mix to my very early days spinning records as a high school kid in Philadelphia. I was an obsessive collector starting in the mid 60s. I visited record stores and read everything I could find on new music. I had my first job in 1968 making decent money back then working in a machine shop shoveling the hot chips flying off the lathes. Most of my pay went for buying records and going to shows. During that summer I was checking out the West Coast bands playing at the original Electric Factory down on Arch Street, hanging out downtown at the head shops on Samson Street and groovin' at the Be-Ins in Fairmount Park. There were also many house parties in the neighborhood and I was the guy with the music so I got invited along with my box of 45s.


I had playlist of stuff that worked good at these parties but this was not some DJ setup that would evolve later on. There would just be a record player with a changer that would play a stack of singles in the order they were placed on the spindle.

So long before mixes were created on mp3 playlist, burned CDs and cassettes there was the carefully selected stack of 7" 45 rpm singles sitting on a record changer. The mix listed here is taken from my collection of 45s from 1968 which I still have. In fact I probably still have every single, album, tape and CD that I have be accumulating for about 46 years now. I've never sold or gotten rid of anything from my collection much to my wife's chagrin.

This mix here is a sample of our neighborhood party music. Lots of soul music and especially Motown. We also played lots of what would later be called Nuggets. People loved to dance so everything here had the house shaking. Not all the parties were non stop dancing and more and more albums of head music were getting played but that is another post and another mix.

So here it is. House party music from my stack of 45s in 1968.

1. Sweet Soul Music - Arthur Conley
2. Ain't Too Proud To Beg - The Temptations
3. You Can't Hurry Love - The Supremes
4. Too Many Fish In The Sea - The Marvelettes
5. I Heard It Through The Grapevine - Gladys Knight & The Pips
6. I'll Be Doggone - Marvin Gaye
7. This Old Heart Of Mine - The Isley Brothers
8. There Is - The Dells
9. Knock On Wood - Eddie Floyd
10. I Thank You - Sam & Dave
11. Land Of A Thousand Dances - Wilson Pickett
12. Funky Broadway Pt. 1 - Dyke & The Blazers
13. Boogaloo Down Broadway - The Fantastic Johnny C
14. Ain't Nothin' But A House Party - The Showstoppers
15. Mickey's Monkey - Smokey Robinson & The Miracles
16. (Love Is Like A) Heat Wave - Martha & The Vandallas
17. Jenny Take A Ride - Mitch Ryder & The Detroit Wheels
18. I Saw Her Standing There - The Beatles
19. Twist and Shout - The Beatles
20. Peppermint Twist - Joey Dee & The Starlighters
21. You Can't Sit Down - The Dovells
22. South Street - The Orlons
23. Keep On Dancing - The Gentrys
24. Dance Dance Dance - The Beach Boys
25. Barbara Ann - The Beach Boys
26. Shake A Tail Feather - Five Du-Tones
27. The 81 - Candy & The Kisses
28. Get On Up - The Esquires
29. Cool Jerk - The Capitols
30. Some Kind Of Wonderful - Soul Brothers Six
31. Gimme Some Lovin' - The Spencer Davis Group
32. Satisfaction - The Rolling Stones
33. Fire - The Jimi Hendrix Experience
34. I Got The Feelin' - James Brown
35. Think - Aretha Franklin
36. Reach Out I'll Be There - The Four Tops
37. Needle In A Haystack - The Velvelettes
38. Just A Little Misunderstanding - The Contours
39. Ain't No Mountain High Enough - Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell
40. Uptight (Everything's Alright) - Stevie Wonder
41. Shake and Fingerpop - Jr. Walker & The All Stars
42. Expressway To Your Heart - The Soul Survivors
43. I'm A Man - The Spencer Davis Group
44. (We Ain't Got) Nothin' Yet - The Blues Magoos
45. Mony Mony - Tommy James & The Shondells
46. Nobody But Me - The Human Beinz
47. Over Under Sideways Down - The Yardbirds
48. Little Girl - Syndicate of Sound
49. 96 Tears - ? & The Mysterians
50. Suzie Q - Creedence Clearwater Revival
51. Little Bit O' Soul - The Music Explosion
52. Going To A Go-Go - Smokey Robinson & The Miracles
53. Dance To The Music - Sly & The Family Stone
54. Devil With The Blue Dress On/Good Golly Miss Molly - Mitch Ryder & The Detroit Wheels
55. Louie Louie - The Kingsmen
56. Gloria - The Shadows of Knight
57. I Can't Help Myself - The Four Tops
58. Nowhere To Run - Martha & The Vandallas
59. I Heard It Through The Grapevine - Marvin Gaye
60. Ooo Baby Baby - Smokey Robinson & The Miracles

Turned 60

Well, I've turned 60. Several people had been asking me what I was doing for my birthday since it was such a milestone. I had big parties at 30, 40 and 50 but I really didn't feel like a party. This birthday is different. Yes, it's a milestone but it is also the start of a new experience which is the approaching years of retirement and declining health. Best not to think about that. My health is pretty good right now and my accounts indicate that retirement is probably still a long way off. Oh well.

After a lot of thought and consideration I decided to mark my birthday and entrance into the decade of my 60's with this blog. I've had several previous blogs, personal websites and assorted online social media sites. I shut most everything down and I'm concentrating on this one blog which I'm calling 60@60. I added the Sounding Booth part because that was part of my last blog's title. The 60@60 came about because I decided to put together mixes and various other lists with 60 items. I've always been a great maker of lists and I have lots of resource material to draw from. I've also been a long time maker of mix tapes going back a few decades. I have literally hundreds of mix tapes stored in boxes and many more CD mixes shelved in my third floor music man cave.

So I thought I'd spend the year of 60 putting together various 60@60 lists. Most will be music oriented but there will also be lists of books, movies, etc. I'm also going to be continuing to make my rants and ramblings about politics. I started up this blog several weeks ago and began putting up some lists of 60 favorite albums from various years. This will continue for awhile. I will also be putting up playlists of 60 songs from a particular artist and theme mixes of 60 songs. There will be links to players that will allow you to listen to the mixes. I will also be creating more links and tweaking this site. This is where I'm going to document my experiencing the 60s's again.

I talked about the lists and the rankings in an earlier post here and I posted an intro to this blog here.

60 Albums 1971

1971 was another Navy year and much of it was spent at sea. I didn't have the opportunity to keep and collect many new albums except when we occasionally arrived back in Norfolk and I got some leave time.

Most of what I have listed here I acquired later in the '70s but there are a few scattered throughout the list that accompanied me on my voyages. Most of my time at sea was in the Caribbean sailing on the USS Portland. We spend time in Panama, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, Virgin Islands, Aruba, Martinique, Curacao, Colombia, Venezuela and of course Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. We made several cruises back and forth and also took a quick trip to the Mediterranean Sea for my first of several crossings of the Atlantic. During this time I got to appreciate the cassette player.

So I did have a few of these albums on the ship in 1971. We could actually buy some albums from the ship store but of course they sold out very quickly. Cigarettes were .25 cents a pack.

Several great albums top this list starting with the Stones' first album using their tongue & lips logo and the controversial Andy Warhol crotch cover which wasn't Mick Jagger. My second pick could very easily be first. It is one of the greatest soul albums of all time.

1. The Rolling Stones - Sticky Fingers
2. Marvin Gaye - What's Going On
3. T. Rex - Electric Warrior
4. Sly & The Family Stone - There's a Riot Goin' On
5. Cat Stevens - Teaser and the Firecat
6. Van Morrison - Tupelo Honey
7. The Who - Who's Next
8. The Allman Brothers Band - At Fillmore East
9. America - America
10. Yes - Fragile
11. Rod Stewart - Every Picture Tells a Story
12. Mahavishnu Orchestra - The Inner Mounting Flame
13. John Lennon - Imagine
14. David Bowie - Hunky Dory
15. Elton John - Madmen Across the Water
16. Jimi Hendrix - The Cry of Love
17. The Beach Boys - Surf's Up
18. Flamin' Groovies - Teenage Head
19. Funkadelic - Maggot Brain
20. Joni Mitchell - Blue
21. Santana - Santana III
22. Isaac Hayes - Shaft
23. Carole King - Tapestry
24. Led Zeppelin - Led Zeppelin IV
25. War - All Day Music
26. Traffic - The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys
27. Laura Nyro & Labelle - Gonna Take a Miracle
28. The Kinks - Muswell Hillbillies
29. Janis Joplin - Pearl
30. Jimi Hendrix - Rainbow Bridge
31. Faces - A Nod Is as Good as a Wink... to a Blind Horse
32. Jethro Tull - Aqualung
33. The Doors - L.A. Woman
34. Badfinger - Straight Up
35. Can - Tago Mago
36. Miles Davis - A Tribute to Jack Johnson
37. John Prine - John Prine
38. Leonard Cohen - Songs of Love and Hate
39. Frank Zappa - Fillmore East - June 1971
40. Roy Harper - Stormcock
41. Traffic - Welcome to the Canteen
42. Pink Floyd - Meddle
43. John Martyn - Bless the Weather
44. Miles Davis - Live-Evil
45. Harry Nilsson - Nilsson Schmilsson
46. Elton John - 17-11-70
47. Bill Withers - Just as I Am
48. David Crosby - If I Could Only Remember My Name
49. Gene Clark - White Light
50. Curtis Mayfield - Roots
51. Mott the Hoople - Brain Capers
52. Townes Van Zandt - Delta Momma Blues
53. Hawkwind - In Search of Space
54. Gong - Camembert Electrique
55. The Moody Blues - Every Good Boy Deserves Favour
56. Alice Cooper - Love It To Death
57. Groundhogs - Split
58. Howlin' Wolf - The London Howlin' Wolf Sessions
59. Judee Sill - Judee Sill
60. Chicago - Chicago III