1000 Recordings Sampler Episode 1

1000 albums (give or take a few) is a lot of music to get through. I've been working my way through the book for 3 years and I'm just past halfway - if you're a casual listener, it could be overwhelming. So today I am doing the first of a new installment: the Recording the Recordings Sampler. This is a way for me to feature some entries I enjoy without everyone having to sit through a whole album. If you don't like a track, you can skip to the next one; if you do enjoy it, you can pull up the full album on Spotify.

In the past month we've lost an astonishing amount of world-class musicians, many who are household names. This week's playlist is a tribute to those we lost. Stream the playlist here.

1. Isaac Hayes - "Theme from Shaft"
Charles Pitts, 65, guitarist for Hayes. The intro with the "wah" is played by Pitts on this track

2. Chuck Brown - "Midnight Sun"
Chuck Brown, 75, the "Godfather of Go-Go." If you want to hear more about Brown, the 1000 Recordings Podcast guys just reviewed his work last week

3. The Beastie Boys - "The Sounds of Science"
Adam Yauch, 47, aka MCA of the Beastie Boys. This is one of my favorite Beasties songs and I never noticed before that MCA says "Yeah, that's right, my name's Yauch."

4. Booker T. & the M.G.'s - "Melting Pot"
Donald "Duck" Dunn, 70, bassist for Booker T, and a member of the Blues Brothers.

5. The Band - "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down"
Levon Helm, 71, drummer/singer for the Band, who also put out two great comeback albums after temporarily losing the ability to sing due to throat cancer.

6. Gram Parsons - "She"
Chris Ethridge, 65, bassist, co-wrote the above track with Gram Parsons

7. Donna Summer - "I Feel Love"
Donna Summer, 63, known for her disco-era hits, this is the only track that made it into the 1000 Recordings.

*Update*
8. Bee Gees - "You Should be Dancing"
After I wrote this last night Robin Gibb, founder of the Bee Gees, died of cancer at age 62. It's been a rough month for music.

If you like the music, buy the tracks on Amazon: Shaft, Brown, Beastie Boys, Booker T, the Band, GP, Summer, Bee Gees

Related Posts

• NEWS: Beastie Boys' MCA aka Adam Yauch Dead at 47
• NEWS: Levon Helm, Drummer for the Band, Dies at 71
• COVER: Counting Crows Rock Out on Gram Parsons

COVER: Counting Crows Rock Out on Gram Parsons

I am actually still alive, despite my two week absence from the blog. I'll cover some of the reasons for the delay in my next feature post, which I am working on, but in the interim, I wanted to drop a cover on here and mention that my "Stream Recordings" list just hit 500 albums linked (halfway for all you non-math types).

Counting Crows (my favorite band) released a new album of covers this week. Part of me was disappointed that it was a covers album because they hadn't released a studio album since 2008, but I still couldn't help but be excited. Lead singer Adam Duritz and his band sure know how to do a great cover. Based on their tracklist and the songs they have been playing live forever, the band loves to listen to music. In fact, in the liner notes, Duritz says "As much as I love our band, and I DO love our band, we were just one of a thousand bands, in one city among a thousand cities, and a lot of those bands were great or amazing in one way or another... I've never stopped being a fan." Really, one of their best skills is song selection, and they picked one of the 1000 Recordings to Hear Before You Die on the tracklist for this one.

"Return of the Grievous Angel" by Gram Parsons is one I discovered through Moon's book, and I can't claim that it really left much of an impression. I am way more into Parsons' work with the Byrds than his solo stuff. The Crows version was much more memorable to me, as they pick up the pace and get pretty rowdy on this one. The great lyrics are highlighted by the immediacy of the arrangement, the live energy of the band, and a couple kickass solos (one mandolin and one guitar).

Listen to the song here, then buy the whole album here.
Buy Gram Parson's GP/Grievous Angel here.