11. The Esquires, “Get On Up”
This is lovable Midwestern 45-RPM pop-soul, from 1967, before Norman Whitfield’s Motown work and the popularity of Stax/Volt drew everyone into an extended grit-off. This single has nothing to prove. It was released on Bunky Records, for Pete’s sake. When these guys tell me to get on up, I get on up and I stay up.
12. Talking Heads, “Love –> Building On Fire”
That’s pronounced “Love Goes to a Building On Fire,” but the part of this song that everyone remembers is “And they go tweet-tweet-tweet-tweet-tweet like little birds.” My nephews and I danced to a Talking Heads record. That’s all you can ask from life, really.
13. Spoon, “Anything You Want”
True fact: Just as Ashley and I were getting back in touch, having not really spoken since I was nineteen, this song came into my life (via groomsman Ben Barnhart) with its meter-wrecking last line “‘Cause you know you’re the one/And that that hasn’t changed/Since you were nineteen, still in school/WaitingonthecornerbytheSoundEx-change.” I totally would’ve stood on the corner by the Sound Exchange if I’d know what it was! It fit.
14. Orchestra Super Mazembie, “Samba”
It was kind of a cheap trick, but whenever I wasn’t sure where the playlist should go next I threw in something non-English or North American. A different musical vocabulary acts as a palate-cleanser. But it also reinforces the idea that these songs are “exotic” and best used as a supplemental spice between bits of the main business (which is rock and R&B from first-world countries). This legendary East African group is at least as valid a center to one’s mental map of the musical world as is Captain Beefheart or Otis Redding. ORIENTALISM EPIC FAIL.
15. The Velvet Underground, “Sweet Jane”
Always, to me, this record has sounded like Lou Reed made it just after recovering, somewhat inexplicably, maybe not permanently, from a punishing depression. His little Otis Reddingisms (huh! mmmm!) manage to be absent, ironic, and delirious all at once. There is no other version of this song that I can even hear all the way through, and that includes the better-known Cowboy Junkies version.
16. Abba, “Dancing Queen”
Pandering.
17. Otis Redding, “Ton of Joy”
An underrated entry from the Dictionary of Soul. I like how it turns almost sinister toward the end.
18. The Clash, “Complete Control”
Only Otis, of all the artists on the playlist, is weighty enough to lead into “Complete Control,” which Greil Marcus once called the greatest rock song of all time.
19. Franco et le TPOK Jazz, “Bolingo ya bougie”
Danceable stuff from a giant of Congo music.
20. Orange Juice, “Lovesick”
I love the tightness of this song’s intro, the way it seems to wind itself up too far and then spins itself out too fast. Orange Juice was the figurehead of the early ’80s Glasgow post-punk-pop scene, wherein a bunch of young men with buzzed hair discovered that melodies still sounded good.
