Late Fall 2018 New Music Playlist

Listen on Spotify or as a YouTube Playlist (except Jmmy & Ocean Cat). Enjoy!

1. "Freelance" – Toro y Moi
2. "This Time Of Year" –  Ra Ra Riot
3. "Sixteen Days" –  Pond
4. "Death In Midsummer" –  Deerhunter
5. "Gallipoli" –  Beirut
6. "Dreamt I Was Gonna Be Your Man" –  Oberhofer
7. "Lover Chanting" –  Little Dragon
8. "Not the Same" –  Jmmy & Ocean Cat, Nile Rabb
9. "Alien" –  Beach House
10. "Sinking Ship" –  CAKE
11. "Swimming at Night" –  Django Django
12. "Merrie Land" –  The Good, the Bad & the Queen
13. "Panic Blooms" – Black Moth Super Rainbow
14. "Problems III" – The Growlers
15. "Adored" – Hatchie
16. "Hanoi 4" – Unknown Mortal Orchestra
17. "Open Again"  Thom Yorke
18. "Universalis" –  Hammock

My Essential Music - More Fave Band Playlists (Talking Heads, Arcade Fire, Spoon, Moby, Beck, Flaming Lips, Cake, Franz Ferdinand, New Order, Gorillaz, The National & Band of Horses)

Visit wfuv.org for more info 

Last week during the pledge drive for public radio station WFUV, listeners were asked to submit their "essential music," a list of five bands/artists, along with their donation. This is clearly a clever way to survey the audience, but it also got me thinking of sharing more of my personal faves in playlist form. In prior posts, I have linked to my LCD Soundsystem Faves playlist with the news the band will be releasing another album after breaking up in 2011 (and an update: the band has signed with the behemoth Columbia Records!) Plus I posted my David Bowie Faves playlist after this legend's untimely death.

So here are links to some more playlists of "essential music" found on my Spotify account @NewMusicMatters, dig in!

Radiohead Faves

Talking Heads Faves

Arcade Fire Faves

Spoon Faves

Moby Faves

Beck Faves

Flaming Lips Faves

Cake Faves

Franz Ferdinand Faves

New Order Faves

Gorillaz Faves

The National Faves

Band of Horses Faves

A New Music Playlist with a Bit of Country Twang to Honor My Father

A recent favorite photo with my dad, Wallace B. Jansen

I've taken a month-long publishing break as my father's health declined and his final days were spent in a hospice facility, after being under the organization's care since his hospitalization last fall right after my mother died. (At the time, I put together my own funeral songs playlist as I loaded my laptop with her favorite Broadway shows and classical masterpieces.)  I brought a few of his CDs along with me, listening to the country music he loved so much as I sat by his bedside. My dad discovered this genre during his time in the U.S. Army at the Aberdeen Proving Grounds, quite a culture shock for the private school boy from suburban Connecticut. How strange it was to listen to George Jones, Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard without him chiming in at full volume, emphasizing the twang in the vocals.

There's a joke that if you play a country record backwards you get your wife back, your job back, your truck etc. Of course the fact that we can all relate to loss and heartbreak is part of the appeal. As I returned home with files of paperwork and boxes from my parents' house, I thought about creating a new music playlist with a big of country twang in his honor. Digging in my own archives since 2009, I pulled seventeen songs that had some down home flavor, or at least attitude. Here's the result at the link here or listen below, proving that everybody is just a little bit country when you look hard enough.

A Playlist of Songs In Honor of Mother's Day (Bands Heard In the Background Over the Years as a Family)

With fond memories of homemade gifts...

Here's a rather personal playlist honoring the Mother's Day holiday - 22 songs encountered along the way during my own days fulfilling a maternal role in the family.  It's a nurturing list of fave bands over the years, musical accompaniment to household activities or even sing alongs, providing that collective pull of related spirits with mouths wide open.  I've especially enjoyed sharing so much new music discovery, as band names were passed about until it became not mine or yours, but simply ours. 

I've never wanted anything festooned with the "World's Best Mom" on it, but I am extremely proud of the simple fact that both of my kids value the arts as something necessary and ever evolving in their lives. You can argue the nature vs. nurture possibilities, but I'd rather think this is also the result of my own mother continuing her role as cultural ambassador. She gladly squired the grandkids to concerts, museums and plays, while having a house with a piano and other instruments at the ready, along with a personal collection of music and books everywhere (plus passing down a wonderful habit of listening to music at full volume.) These are all things I was exposed to growing up as well and continued in my own life as an adult -- taking it all for granted until I found out this was not always the case in other families. 

Link to listen here and remember you can always listen to my new music playlists here!

1. "Stay Up Late" – Talking Heads

2. "Kid"– The Pretenders

3. "Modern Art" – Art Brut

4. "The Youth" – MGMT

5. "Loser" – Beck

6. "Song 2" – Blur

7. "Dirty Harry" – Gorillaz

8. "Home" – Brian Eno & David Byrne

9. "Home" – Dan Croll

10. "The Man Who Love the World" – Nirvana (From MTV Unplugged)

11. "Life On Mars?" – Arcade Fire & David Bowie (From Fashion Rocks)

12. "The Dark of the Matineé" – Franz Ferdinand

13. "What would I want? Sky" – Animal Collective

14. "Stickshifts and Safetybealts" – CAKE

15. "Roam" – The B-52s

16. "Beautiful World" – Devo

17. "Sticks & Stone" – Jónsi

18. " The Perfect Life" (featuring Wayne Coyne) – Moby
19. "Undone (The Sweater Song)" – Weezer

20. "No Surprises"  – Radiohead

21. "Louise Louisa"  – Mew

22. "On Your Way" – The Album Leaf

My Picks For Older Bands To Round Out the Music Collection (80s, 90s, 2000s) & Bands I Wish Were Still Here From Each Decade

Our CD collection after recent purge

The list of bands in the last post may have been mostly made up of current faves, but I did pad it with some extras outside my personal playlist.  For those looking to dig into the past, I offer three decades of bands with full catalogues worth a listen below.  I actually created this list for a friend's son, who wasn't exactly exposed to any of this rich history in what was new music in the 80s, 90s and 2000s.  After mentioning The Beatles and David Bowie as a foundation, I offered the following bands to provide some basic knowledge of exalted  past bands (at least to my ears!) Hopefully, it provided some inspiration as well.

I've included some videos for the bands I'd most like to resurrect from each decade, thankful for the musicians still active on the scene.  It seems fitting to start with the iconic 80s band Talking Heads, probably my most beloved band ever. Their show in Forest Hills during the 1983 tour, captured so brilliantly by Jonathan Demme in Stop Making Sense, will most likely remain as my top concert experience for all time. I was also able to walk over to the Ritz (now Webster Hall) to see the band introduce the film at the premiere and dance along to the music for a second time. Through the years I've run into David Byrne and seen almost every solo tour, as he continued on a personal music journey after eight albums with the group. "Life During Wartime" perfectly captures the mood of the day with references to Mudd Club and CBGB, along with the layered dance rhythms and a frazzled state of emotional confusion as conveyed by Byrne's song-speak. As he asks at the end of the video, "Does anyone have any questions?" Yes lots -- and thanks for bringing them up.

80s

Talking Heads

Pretenders

Roxy Music/Brian Ferry

Blondie

The Clash

The Replacements

The Police
The Smiths
The Jam
Gang of Four
Psychedelic Furs
The Cure
New Order

If there was a band I could bring back from the 90s, it would be Phantom Planet.  The group are best known for the theme song for television's O.C., "California," but they have a four albums worth of solid pop rock anthems and cooing sing along tunes.  Indie movie regular Jason Schwartzman was a member for the first decade, with songwriting credits for this hit and a similarly memorable "Lonely Day" in the video here. Alex Greenwald's vocals effortlessly bridge that gap between loud and soft, pulling the listener along that mystical musical space between power chords and passionate percussion.

90s

Phantom Planet
Weezer
Smashing Pumpkins

Everclear
Nirvana

Radiohead

CAKE

Blur
Beck
Breeders
Luscious Jackson

Soup Dragons
Stereo MCs
Jesus Jones

Since the sting of losing one of my all time faves LCD Soundsystem is still fresh in the early stages of grief, I'll dig a little deeper here. The Doves are officially "on hiatus" but I'd love to change that status.  This English indie rock band has that ever purposeful ingredient of brothers, Jez and Andy Williams, along with frontman Jimi Goodwin and a willingness to add lush string arrangements to make the heart soar.  I listened to all four albums countless times -- thankfully in a digital format that didn't wear out.  The promotional video here for 2010 best of compilation shows the band creating a fave song "Some Cities," that never ceases to send me into a visceral musical spiral.

2000s+
The Doves

Modest Mouse

Franz Ferdinand

Moby

The Dandy Warhols

Vampire Weekend

Hot Chip

Art Brut
Mew
Gorillaz

Arcade Fire

Spoon

LCD Soundsystem

The Flaming Lips