Your (Almost) Daily Playlist: 7-28-23

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Devo’s “Whip It” was inspired by a magazine article about how to be a better wife. The song’s cowriter and bassist for the band, Gerald Casale, said he’d found that story in a 1962 issue of The Family Handyman and thought it was funny. He decided to write a song that parodied the idea of whipping your problems away. Casale also drew from communist propaganda posters and a 1973 novel by Thomas Pynchon called Gravity’s Rainbow, which mocks capitalist slogans with satirical limericks.He wrote lyrics that taken out of context sound like motivational clichés: When a good time turns around, you must whip it. Give the past a slip. Whip it into shape. Get straight. Go forward. Move ahead. And my personal favorite: Before the cream sits out too long, you must whip it.

Jerry Casale turns 75 today. A couple of Devo tracks, including their biggest hit, “Whip It,” are included on today’s playlist.

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Your (Almost) Daily Playlist: 12-29-22

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Today’s playlist celebrates the December 29 birthdays of The Band’s Rick Danko, The Jesus and Mary Chain’s Jim Reid, The Crystals’ Barbara Alston, Marianne Faithfull, The Offspring’s Dexter Holland, UGK’s Pimp C, Propellerheads’ Alex Gifford, Wild Cherry’s Robert Parissi, Brand Nubian’s Sadat X, GQ’s Emanuel Rahiem Leblanc, Augie March’s Glenn Richards, Yvonne Elliman, and Mary Tyler Moore; and the December 30 birthdays of Del Shannon, Patti Smith, Bo Diddley, Electric Light Orchestra’s Jeff Lynne, The Monkees’ Davy Jones, The Monkees’ Mike Nesmith, Peter Paul and Mary’s Noel Paul Stookey, Skeeter Davis, Jamiroquai’s Jay Kay, London Grammar’s Hannah Reid, BTS’s V, The Lumineers’ Wesley Schultz, Tracey Ullman, Dave Stewart, John Hartford, and Russ Tamblyn.

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Throwback Thursday: 1979

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Nineteen seventy-nine was a very good year in music. In compiling today’s Throwback Thursday playlist focusing on 1979 I had so many very good songs from which to choose. 208 songs, to be exact. That’s how many 1979 cuts bring me much joy. There are another 181 1979 tracks I also like. Somehow I was able to whittle it down to the 30 cuts below. Some years it’s a struggle to come up with 30!

Disco was at its commercial peak in 1979. So many of the disco songs that charted then remain popular today – “I Will Survive,” “We Are Family,” “Y.M.C.A.,” “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough,” “Hot Stuff,” “Good Times,” “Heart of Glass,” “Ring My Bell,” “Knock on Wood,” “Got To Be Real.” While the genre seemed omnipresent, there was more to 1979 music than clams on the half shell and roller skates roller skates. Hear what was going on below.

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A B-52’s Playlist

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“Rock Lobster” appears on The B-52’s debut album, released in 1979. It was the group’s first single to make the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at #56. One person who heard the track was a retired John Lennon. He heard the obvious influence of his wife’s music on the track, particularly in some of the vocal mannerisms employed by the B-52’s Cindy Wilson and Kate Pierson. This inspired him to come out of retirement and record a new album with Yoko Ono. Their Double Fantasy album was released in 1980.

Here are 30 songs from The B-52’s including some extracurricular activities.

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Throwback Thursday: 1988

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Nineteen eighty eight was, on the US pop music chart, one of those in-between years. The “New Wave” British invasion had greatly subsided and England wasn’t as much of a presence on the charts as it was a few years earlier. Rap was increasing in popularity and hitting the top 40 more frequently, though it was still a far cry from the dominant position it holds today. Of the hip hop song’s on today’s playlist, only two made it onto the Billboard Hot 100 – LL Cool J’s “Goin’ Back to Cali,” which peaked at #31, despite selling a million copies, and Rob Base & D.J. E-Z Rock’s “It Takes Two,” which peaked at #36, despite selling two million copies. Alternative music lived up to its genre name as an alternative to the music on the pop chart, so if you wanted to hear Sonic Youth or The Dead Milkmen or The Primitives, you had to tune into college radio or the stations on the left side of your FM dial. Those artists, alongside U2, R.E.M. and INXS, could be found on Billboard’s Modern Rock chart, which premiered in September of 1988. New Jack Swing tracks from artists such as Keith Sweat remained popular on Black radio and crossed over, while Black artists such as Tracy Chapman and Living Colour failed to make much of an impression on Black radio. So-called Hair Metal was a presence on the pop chart; grunge would help fix that in a few years. Configuration-wise, CDs outsold vinyl LPs for the first time in 1988, though cassettes outsold both.

Here are thirty of 1988’s finest:

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