Arise, oh dead thread.
This thing that used to be a web-only thing became a book in 2011. I re-stumbled on my copy a month or two ago, and fell back in love with it. I think it might be my favorite book of music criticism ever, mostly because it’s so unafraid to be funny and self-deprecating and willing to take the pretension and piss out of most music critics.
I even recommended it for a Patreon review for Tom, since I see a lot of similarities in the way both guys review things as a subjective art: “Here’s one guy’s opinion…”
At any rate, I also need music playlists at work to keep me focused when I have to spend 5 hours on an afternoon crunching big spreadsheets of data or scripting work sessions. And I discovered that on Spotify, someone had tried to make a full playlist of every song in Music: What Happened from 1957 through 2011. Unfortunately, because of licensing issues and out of print problems, each year is missing a couple of songs. Or, there are cover versions (which suck) or live versions (hit or miss).
So…I decided to make my own version, only complete.
Here’s why I think it’s worth doing, and why something I made for me might be of interest to others.
Here’s the first set of mp3s, for 1957-1959
And 1960 - 1962…