2011: The Year in Old
So last week I did what seems to be the requisite track-sharing thing for 2011 and threw a bunch of stuff up on Spotify. (And then I learned that Spotify is kind of dicey when it comes to sharing things that aren’t in their database and people don’t already have in in their libraries. Welp.) But of course I’d be lying if I said that my 2011 listening was entirely steeped in 2011 music. And thanks to a personal as-yet-unfinished project that I won’t go too far into detail about because I have no idea if it’ll even exist past the planning stages — and also thanks to the usual old-stuff catchup critics often undergo in their downtime — I wound up gorging on a bunch of stuff from the late ’60s through early ’80s that I somehow hadn’t gotten around to yet. Some of this came to me via reissues, some via friends and acquaintances, some via good old-fashioned sample-sourcing, some via going back to “deep cuts” and finding something new. And a lot of it was the end result of just poring through the Rate Your Music top-1000-by-decade charts and picking up what looked interesting from, say, the 900s. So here’s a rough top 50 of old stuff I enjoyed that I could find YouTube links for.
Ahmad Jamal, “Misdemeanor”
Alphonse Mouzon, “Carbon Dioxide”
Arif Mardin, “Dark Alleys”
Bettye Swann, “When the Game Is Played on You”
Black Ivory, “No Ifs ands or No Buts”
Brenda Russell, “Way Back When”
The Byrds, “Lover of the Bayou”
Cheap Trick, “High Roller”
Crystal Haze, “Flame”
Dennis Wilson, “Friday Night”
Ennio Morricone, “Milano Odia- La Polizia Non Puo Sparare”
Stefano Torossi, “Fighting for Life”
Fleetwood Mac, “I’m So Afraid”
Frijid Pink, “House of the Rising Sun”
Funkadelic, “March to the Witch’s Castle”
George Tindley, “Ain’t That Peculiar”
Gianni Mazza, “Sospesi Nel Traffico”
Gil Scott-Heron & Brian Jackson, “Under the Hammer”
Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes, “Where Are All My Friends”
Harry Betts, “Theme from the Fantastic Plastic Machine”
The Ian Langley Group, “Chicano Chaser”
Iggy Pop, “Dum Dum Boys”
Isaac Hayes, “I Just Don’t Know What to Do With Myself”
Jeff Beck, “Diamond Dust”
Kandahar, “Eyes of Glass”
Klaus Weiss, “Survivor”
Marlena Shaw, “Where Can I Go”
Maxayn, “Cried My Last Tear”
Michel Legrand, “Un Homme Est Mort”
Mink DeVille, “Gunslinger”
Motörhead, “Dead Men Tell No Tales”
O.V. Wright, “Into Something (Can’t Shake Loose)”
The Originals, “California Sunset”
Patti Smith Group, “Godspeed”
Pink Floyd, “You’ve Gotta Be Crazy [Dogs] (Live in Los Angeles 4/26/75)”
The Pop Group, “Thief of Fire”
Remigio Ducros, “Contropiede”
Roy Budd, “M5 [From The Stone Killer OST]”
Sister Sledge, “Love Don’t You Go Through No Changes on Me”
Spirit of Atlanta, “Hunter Street”
Teddy Pendergrass, “You Can’t Hide from Yourself”
The Three Degrees, “Jump the Gun”
Tina Turner, “Under My Thumb”
Toshiaki Tsushima, “Theme from The Street Fighter”
Townes Van Zandt, “Mr. Gold and Mr. Mud”
The Undisputed Truth, “Down by the River”
Wah Wah Watson, “Goo Goo Wah Wah”
The Who, “I Don’t Even Know Myself”
Wire, “40 Versions”
Yellow Magic Orchestra, “Rydeen”
