#banjo has a lot of motown love songs and a lot of classic old soul music .

[cupiidzbow]

ok somewhat official playlists of the main f/os ( minus tom i need to make that one soon ) 🌼🤎

with honey and flowers 💕

riding the waves!! ☀️

[someinstant]

What Spotify playlists do you recommend?

OH MY GOODNESS, WHERE TO START.

Well, Nonnie, since I don’t know what type of music you personally like, I will pretend that you have the same bizarre music tastes I do. And I’m... not very pop-y, and like roots Americana stuff, and lots of blues, and the Clash, and angry girls with guitars, and alt-country, and also old classic country, and enough indie rock from the early 2000s to open my own gastropub and brewery, and acoustic Cuban hip-hop, and 1980s New Wave, and basically everything that came out of David Bowie’s brain and mouth, and every note Etta James ever sang.

So! Spotify playlists you should maybe listen to, if you share my brain:

1. Southern Gothic

Okay, look, I grew up in Georgia, and-- even though neither of my parents were born here, and even though I don’t have a southern accent unless it’s useful (and let me tell y’all, it is sometimes so damn useful, because bein’ super sweet and southern in one’s delivery makes being a stone bitch EVEN MORE FUN), and even though I cannot stand grits OR sweet tea-- there is something about this place that just gets down into your marrow.  Can’t explain it.  There’s so much I hate about where I live, so many original sins and continuing transgressions, and so much ugliness.  But.  I dunno.  I’ve read so much Flannery O’Connor and Faulkner and Rick Bragg and Cormac McCarthy and Melissa Fay Greene that it’s just part of the fabric?  Like, you’ve got to be able to take the bitter with the sweet.  And there’s a hell of a lot of both down here.

Anyways.

 This playlist sounds like how the late, gasping summer feels: so thick and humid you can feel it slipping down your throat when you breathe, the persistent drone of cicadas singing in the rasp of guitar strings.  And everyone loves a good ghost story, right?  Just think about live oaks hung with Spanish moss, blood-soaked soil, good bourbon, and a Tennessee Williams play, and that’s what this playlist is.  I love it so.

2. Roadtripping Across Americana

So the summer after I graduated high school, I went on a summer program with my university in which I spent two months camping out across the United States-- mostly out west-- studying anthropology, ecology, and geology.  And we spent that summer hiking with rock hammers attached to our backpacks, trying not to get on each other’s nerves on fifteen hour drive days, listening to Bob Marley at the campsite while on KP duty, learning to take kickass long-exposure photographs, avoiding coyotes at four in the morning in New Mexico, and forming an impromptu bluegrass band (we had a fiddle player, a guitarist, and a banjo, and a number of us were willing to give Gillian Welch’s oeuvre a go on vocals).  This playlist sounds like every day of that summer to me.

Although it perhaps needs more “No Woman, No Cry” to be truly accurate.

3. ‘90s Pop Rock Essentials

Shut up, it makes me happy.  Basically, this is the entirety of my high school career in playlist form, and I can sing pretty much every damn song on this list from start to finish.  It might be slightly embarrassing, but I think I own at least one CD by (counts) at least twenty of the artists on this list?  Damn.  I still own them, too, even though I no longer have a CD player anywhere other than my car.

Oh, man, I forgot Marcy’s Playground was on this.  Welp.  Guess I’m listening to “Sex and Candy” now, huh.

The other bonus to this playlist is that I can play it in the classroom, and (a) mostly my students don’t complain, and (b) I know the music well enough to know if I’m going to need to skip something for language or whatever.

4. The Black Power Mixtape, 1967-1975

Um, this fucking blows my socks off every time I listen to it.  It’s full of this deep, groovy, soulful funk-- Al Green and Stevie Wonder and Smokey Robinson, Marvin Gaye, James Brown, Otis Redding, Gladys Knight-- I mean, it’s just KILLER.  I like to put it on when I’m cooking, or doing work that doesn’t require me to think too deeply, because I’m inevitably going to be singing along with this.  Honestly, it makes me think about growing up and listening to the soundtrack to “The Big Chill” with my mom while cleaning.  Motown and soul music and R&B make me think of the good kind of work, where you’re exhausted at the end of it, but everything’s better for it.

5. Feel Good Indie Rock

Look, my undergrad was in a little college town known for having a kickass music scene.  This, therefore, meant that we were all kinda expected to have the sort of Musical Opinions that are appropriate to devotees of “High Fidelity,” and to have a vinyl collection before it was super hipster to be into vinyl.  Like, I legit used to go to my favorite record store (I HAD A FAVORITE RECORD STORE, WHAT THE HELL, ALSO PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS INDICATES THAT THERE WERE MULTIPLE RECORD STORES IN A TINY COLLEGE TOWN AND THEY DID GOOD BUSINESS) between classes and flip through the new EPs and judge the cover art.  One wall of the living room in my first ever apartment was covered in LPs and album covers my roommate and I bought at a flea market, because it looked super cool and was a cheap way to cover the shitty paint job.  I read endless music blogs.  I had a dedicated tag on my personal blog wherein I reviewed new music.  I read alt-weeklies and had go-to music reviewers who I trusted enough to buy concert tickets to a band without having ever heard them, on the strength of a review.  I was THAT PERSON.

I still AM that person, a little.  And sometimes it’s good for me to remember that, beyond the drawer full of concert ticket stubs and the tattoo on my back.  So, yeah: indie rock.  I have opinions about the Elephant 6 Collective and of Montreal; hit me up about it.

And... there are a bunch of other ones?  I’ll be honest, I mostly listen to playlists I make myself, and I’ve got a shit ton of those.  I’d link to them here, but they’re attached to my personal account which has my real name on it, so.  Maybe if I transfer the playlists over to the account I made for the Scott Moir vs. Himself playlist, I’ll link them over here.

The ones I made myself that I listen to a lot are called things like, “This Playlist Kills Fascists,” (which is obvs deeply political and is what I play when I’m having another What The Hell Did My Fucking Idiot of a President Do NOW day), “Don’t Panic,” (which is basically full of music I personally find makes me smile 100% of the time), and “This is Water” (which is a graduation playlist I made for my seniors last year, and is still pretty kickass).  

Anyway, I hope that’s enough music to get you started, Nonnie!