Here’s my playlist of the best and most important in classic reggae music.  Reggae isn’t my main forte but I put a lot of work into it and I think it is a very respectable playlist. It sure makes for a fun listen. Please let me know if I missed anything that should be on here.  Enjoy!

SPOTIFY: Classic Reggae Playlist

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In honor of the 50th anniversary of the Apolo 11 moon mission, I put together a playlist of great songs in some way related to space travel or the heavens.  I included Brian Eno’s “Apollo” (soundtrack to “For All Mankind” documentary) and Public Service Broadcasting’s “The Race For Space” albums in their entirety.

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SPOTIFY:  Space, Stars & Moon
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Here is a playlist of what I think are the best and most significant punk songs of the 1970’s! These are songs that helped develop the punk aesthetic or delivered it fully formed.  Let me know in the comments which songs I might have missed.

Spotify: 1970’s Punk Playlist
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1. Blitzkrieg Bop – 2016 Remaster – Ramones
2. White Riot – Remastered – The Clash
3. Heart Of The City – Nick Lowe
4. (I’m) Stranded – The Saints
5. Neat Neat Neat – The Damned
6. In The City – The Jam
7. Final Solution – Pere Ubu
8. Roadrunner – The Modern Lovers
9. One Chord Wonders – Radio Edit – The Adverts
10. Born to Lose – Johnny Thunders & The Heartbreakers
11. Search and Destroy – Bowie Mix – The Stooges
12. Oh Bondage, Up Yours! – X-Ray Spex
13. 1 2 X U – 2006 Remastered Version – Wire
14. Blank Generation – 2017 Remaster Audio; Remastered – Richard Hell
15. Cherry Bomb – The Runaways
16. Personality Crisis – New York Dolls
17. Teenage Depression – Eddie & The Hot Rods
18. (Get A) Grip (On Yourself) – 1996 Remaster – The Stranglers
19. Your Generation – 2002 Remaster – Generation X
20. Lust For Life – Iggy Pop
21. Gary Gilmore’s Eyes – The Adverts
22. What Do I Get? – 2001 Remastered Version – Buzzcocks
23. X Offender – Remastered – Blondie
24. Someone’s Looking At You – The Boomtown Rats
25. Free Money – Patti Smith
26. The Modern World – The Jam
27. New Rose – The Damned
28. See No Evil – Television
29. Mannequin – 2006 Remastered Version – Wire
30. Suspect Device – Single Version – Stiff Little Fingers
31. Love Comes in Spurts – 2017 Remaster Audio; Remastered – Richard Hell
32. Sonic Reducer – Dead Boys
33. Shot by Both Sides – Magazine
34. Mystery Dance – Elvis Costello
35. Trash – New York Dolls
36. The Day the World Turned Day-Glo – X-Ray Spex
37. Do Anything You Wanna Do – Eddie & The Hot Rods
38. Teenage Kicks – The Undertones
39. Sex & Drugs & Rock & Roll – Ian Dury
40. Ever Fallen In Love (With Someone You Shouldn’t’ve) – Buzzcocks
41. Rocket USA – 1998 Remastered Version – Suicide
42. Mongoloid – 2009 Remaster – DEVO
43. Warsaw – 2010 Remaster – Joy Division
44. Lexicon Devil – Germs
45. (My Baby Does) Good Sculptures – The Rezillos
46. The Wait – 2006 Remaster – Pretenders
47. Pablo Picasso – The Modern Lovers
48. Wasted – Black Flag
49. Sheena Is a Punk Rocker – 2017 Remaster – Ramones
50. She’s So Modern – The Boomtown Rats
51. We’re Desperate – X
52. Hong Kong Garden – Siouxsie and the Banshees
53. Hanging On The Telephone – Blondie
54. Top of the Pops – The Rezillos
55. California Über Alles – Dead Kennedys
56. Another Girl, Another Planet – 2008 re-mastered version – The Only Ones
57. Typical Girls – The Slits
58. Human Fly – The Cramps
59. Radio, Radio – Elvis Costello & The Attractions
60. Psycho Killer – Talking Heads
61. Babylon’s Burning – The Ruts
62. Alternative Ulster – Stiff Little Fingers
63. Boys Don’t Cry – Single Version – The Cure
64. She Is Beyond Good And Evil – The Pop Group
65. Is She Really Going Out With Him? – Joe Jackson
66. Get Over You – The Undertones
67. Peaches – 1996 Remaster – The Stranglers
68. You Can’t Put Your Arms Round a Memory – Johnny Thunders
69. Little Johnny Jewel – Parts 1 & 2 – Television
70. Don’t Dictate – Demo – Penetration
71. Neutron Bomb – The Weirdos
72. Boredom – Buzzcocks
73. T.V. Eye – Remastered – The Stooges
74. No Fun – The Stooges
75. I Wanna Be Your Dog – Remastered – The Stooges
76. Sister Anne – MC5
77. No More Heroes – 1996 Remaster – The Stranglers
78. I Don’t Wanna – Sham 69
79. Let Me Dream If I Want To – Live – Mink DeVille
80. Borstal Breakout – Sham 69
81. Ambition – Subway Sect
82. Homicide – 999
83. Damaged Goods – Gang Of Four
84. Ask the Angels – Patti Smith
85. True Confessions – The Undertones
86. Lovers Of Today – The Only Ones
87. God Save the Queen – Sex Pistols
88. Anarchy in the U.K. – Sex Pistols
89. Whole Wide World – Wreckless Eric
90. Public Image – Public Image Ltd.
91. Ready Steady Go – 2002 Remaster – Generation X
92. Into The Valley – Skids
93. Dancing The Night Away – The Motors
94. The Sound Of The Suburbs – The Members
95. Bingo-Master’s Break-Out! – The Fall
96. Saturday Night In The City Of The Dead – Ultravox
97. London’s Burning – Remastered – The Clash
98. Complete Control – The Clash
99. Chinese Rocks – Johnny Thunders & The Heartbreakers
100. (White Man) in Hammersmith Palais – The Clash
101. Tommy Gun – Remastered – The Clash
102. Beat on the Brat – 2016 Remaster – Ramones
103. Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue – 2016 Remaster – Ramones
104. Two Tub Man – The Dictators
105. (I Live For) Cars and Girls – The Dictators
106. Aloha Steve & Danno – Radio Birdman
107. Murder City Nights – Radio Birdman
108. This Perfect Day – Single Version / 2004 Digital Remaster – The Saints
109. Judy Is a Punk – 2016 Remaster – Ramones
110. I Wanna Be Sedated – 2002 Remaster – Ramones
111. Holidays in the Sun – Sex Pistols
112. Pretty Vacant – Sex Pistols
113. We Are the One – The Avengers
114. Soul Twist – Mink DeVille
115. Got The Time – Joe Jackson
116. You – Eater
117. (I Don’t Want To Go To) Chelsea – Elvis Costello & The Attractions
118. Rip Her To Shreds – Remastered – Blondie
119. The Staircase (Mystery) – Siouxsie and the Banshees
120. All Around The World – Remastered 2017 – The Jam
121. Rockaway Beach – 2017 Remaster – Ramones
122. White Punks On Dope – The Tubes
123. Everybody’s Happy Nowadays – 2001 Remastered Version – Buzzcocks
124. Grinding Halt – Remastered – The Cure
125. Action Time Vision – Alternative TV
126. First Time – The Boys
127. Ghost Rider – 1998 Remastered Version – Suicide
128. Where Were You – Mekons
129. Fiction Romance – 1996 Remastered Version – Buzzcocks
130. I Can’t Stand My Baby – The Rezillos
131. Playground Twist – Siouxsie and the Banshees
132. Be Stiff – 2010 Remaster – DEVO
133. Science Friction – XTC
134. Right To Work – Chelsea
135. Rocket Reducer No. 62 – Talk – MC5
136. What Love Is – Dead Boys
137. Mighty Idy – DMZ
138. Heart of Darkness – Pere Ubu

Somebody asked me what I thought was the best R.E.M. album. They had several great albums so it took some deliberation to come up with a worthy and well considered response.  But I did know that R.E.M.’s three best albums are easily Murmur, Reckoning and Automatic For The People, so I could start there.

Murmur is amazing.  It is an album that is out of time.  It sounded like nothing else when it came out.  It sounded like nothing before it and, actually, like very little after it.  It is a masterful and enigmatic debut from a band with a new sound that was fully formed when they arrived.  Murmur’s influence on music then and contemporary popular music since is profound and inestimable.  For all the great albums out there, not all of them can claim that they changed music.  Murmur is definitely one of the albums that did.

A year after their auspicious debut, R.E.M. amazingly soars to new heights with their follow up, Reckoning.  Here they craft their sound into pop songs that are at once catchy like you’ve known them all along but that also sound like absolutely nothing that came before.  The songwriting is unique and memorable and the band plays with a propulsive drive that is unequaled on any of their other albums.  Reckoning’s influence on almost all alternative music since is as far-reaching as Murmur if not more.

Five albums and a switch to a major label later, R.E.M. deliver their most transcendent masterpiece, the haunting and elegiac Automatic For The People. It is a timeless album from a band at the height of their powers.  Moving away from the pop of their two previous albums, Green and Out of Time, Automatic harkens back to their roots but their ruminations on life and loss make it epic in scope. Automatic may not be as exciting as Murmur or Reckoning but it has the edge on them because of its emotional depth and what it lacks in importance it makes up for with greatness.

Here’s how R.E.M.’s top five albums shake out for me:

1.  Automatic For The People  (1992)

2.  Reckoning  (1983)

3.  Murmur  (1983)

4.  Life’s Rich Pageant  (1986)

5.  Document  (1987)

With a band like R.E.M. it is always good to revisit their albums in their entirety from time to time because it reminds us of how great their body of work actually is, where they were at the time and a little of how it felt when each was released.  They were truly a great band. They arguably had thirteen years or so of greatness – which were basically the years with Bill Berry – and then thirteen years that were good but, unfortunately, never attained the same level of greatness.  They definitely made some very good music in the second half of their recording career but Berry’s departure feels like something from which the band never quite recovered.  It was like there was always something missing and some of the magic was lost.  That drummer was more of an integral part of the band than anyone could have realized.

Here is my playlist of the best R.E.M. songs from when they were a quartet (1982-1996), presented chronologically.  In some instances, especially for the first couple of albums, I chose the best version of the song I could find when the version I would have preferred was not available.

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Lest we forget and before it becomes too much of a distant memory, here is my playlist of some of the best songs of 2012.  It was actually a pretty good year for music and there are a lot of good songs here.  I hope you enjoy.

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For this playlist, I concentrated on the period right after punk blew up, roughly 1978-1982. With less emphasis on the nihilism and anarchy of punk music, it gave way to an interesting, very creative and unique period in music. Many of the roots of New Wave, Goth, Industrial, 80’s dance music, some Alternative, etc. are found in this period.

Several of these bands continued to make post-punk music for many years.  Also, there have been lots of bands since who make music that is post-punk in style.  I focused on this time frame specifically because this is a snapshot of what took place right after punk had peaked and because there was such a concentration of great bands.  Some bands, like Pere Ubu, were already making music that belongs to the post-punk aesthetic even before punk music came to prominence in 1976 and 1977.  Other bands, like Television (who are great though not included here), were playing post-punk music while being closely connected to the punk scene itself as it was happening.

No Wave was in many ways a post-punk movement but is only represented here with James Chance and The Pop Group (I may do a separate No Wave playlist later). Joy Division is featured rather prominently because they are arguably the most influential of these bands.   Of course, some great bands got left out and there can always be discussion about what is and what isn’t Post-Punk but, overall, I tried to do justice to a great period of time in music.

Spotify: Post-Punk Playlist
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New song from Lloyd Cole. That’s his son in the video.

James King and the Lone Wolves are a somewhat forgotten Scottish band, circa mid-1980’s. Their sound is somewhere between Orange Juice and Aztec Camera. Great song.