02-02-2020 > FAVTRAX:MiX ~ 33 FAVOURiTE tracks 1971-1966

02-02-2020 > FAVTRAX:MiX ~ 33 FAVOURiTE tracks 1971-1966  >>Leonard Cohen, Ten Years After, THE BEATLES, Rare Bird, The Rolling Stones, Grand Funk Railroad, Pink Floyd, The Freeborne, THE BEATLES, John Mayall And The Bluesbreakers, The Kinks<<

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1971-1966

Cerebral yet sensual Canadian poet, novelist, and singer/songwriter who is acknowledged as one of the greatest lyricists of all time. One of the most fascinating and enigmatic -- if not the most successful -- singer/songwriters of the late '60s, Leonard Cohen retained an audience across six decades of music-making, interrupted by various digressions into personal and creative exploration, all of which have only added to the mystique surrounding him. Second only to Bob Dylan (and perhaps Paul Simon), he commanded the attention of critics and younger musicians more firmly than any other musical figure from the '60s who continued to work in the 21st century, which is all the more remarkable an achievement for someone who didn't even aspire to a musical career until he was in his thirties.
Leonard Cohen
Diamonds in the Mine (Leonard Cohen) 3:50
Avalanche (Leonard Cohen)5:02
Dress Rehearsal Rag (Leonard Cohen) 6:06
from Songs of Love and Hate 1971
Songs of Love and Hate is one of Leonard Cohen's most emotionally intense albums -- which, given the nature of Cohen's body of work, is no small statement... If Songs of Love and Hate isn't Cohen's best album, it comes close enough to be essential to anyone interested in his work.

A storming blues and boogie band from the U.K., Ten Years After rocketed from modest success to worldwide fame in the wake of their performance at the Woodstock Rock Festival in 1969, where their nine-minute rendition of "I'm Going Home" showed off the lightning-fast guitar work and howling vocals of Alvin Lee, the unrelenting stomp of bassist Leo Lyons and drummer Ric Lee, and the soulful support of keyboard man Chick Churchill. While the group was also capable of moody pop and acoustic-based material, it was the group's raw blues-based music that remained their trademark, powered by Lee's high-speed guitar figures.
Ten Years After
One of These Days (Alvin Lee) 5:58
Here They Come (Alvin Lee) 4:35
Baby Won't You Let Me Rock 'N' Roll You (Alvin Lee) 2:14
Let the Sky Fall (Alvin Lee) 4:20
from A Space in Time 1971
A Space in Time was Ten Years After's best-selling album... TYA's first album for Columbia, A Space in Time has more of a pop-oriented feel than any of their previous releases had. The individual cuts are shorter, and Alvin Lee displays a broader instrumental palette than before... However, there are still a couple of barn-burning jams. The leadoff track, "One of These Days," is a particularly scorching workout, featuring extended harmonica and guitar solos. After the opener, however, the album settles back into a more relaxed mood than one would have expected from Ten Years After. Many of the cuts make effective use of dynamic shifts, and the guitar solos are generally more understated than on previous outings. The production on A Space in Time is crisp and clean, a sound quite different from the denseness of its predecessors. Though not as consistent as Cricklewood Green, A Space in Time has its share of sparkling moments.

The most popular and influential rock act of all time, a band that blazed several new trails for popular music. So much has been said and written about the Beatles -- and their story is so mythic in its sweep -- that it's difficult to summarize their career without restating clichés that have already been digested by tens of millions of rock fans. To start with the obvious, they were the greatest and most influential act of the rock era, and introduced more innovations into popular music than any other rock band of the 20th century.
The Beatles
Two of Us (John Lennon / Paul McCartney) 3:36
Dig a Pony (John Lennon / Paul McCartney) 3:55
Across the Universe (John Lennon / Paul McCartney) 3:48
I Me Mine (George Harrison) 2:25
from Let It Be 1970
The only Beatles album to occasion negative, even hostile reviews, there are few other rock records as controversial as Let It Be. First off, several facts need to be explained: although released in May 1970, this was not their final album, but largely recorded in early 1969, way before Abbey Road. Phil Spector was enlisted in early 1970 to do some post-production work, but did not work with the band as a unit, as George Martin and Glyn Johns had on the sessions themselves; Spector's work was limited to mixing and some overdubs... As flawed and bumpy as it is, it's an album well worth having, as when the Beatles were in top form here, they were as good as ever.

Rare Bird came together in October 1969 when organist Graham Field, keyboardist Dave Kaffinetti, drummer Mark Ashton, and vocalist Steve Gould envisioned a two-keyboard rock sound without guitars.
Rare Bird
What You Want to Know (Mark Ashton / Rare Bird / Graham Field / Steve Gould / Dave Kaffinett) 5:59
Hammerhead (Mark Ashton / Rare Bird / Graham Field / Steve Gould / Dave Kaffinetti) 3:31
Flight: I. As Your Mind Flies By/II. Vacuum/III. New Yorker/IV. Central (Rare Bird) 19:38
from As Your Mind Flies By 1970
The legendary Charisma label's first signing was a Rare Bird indeed, a prog rock band without a guitarist in sight. The quartet's 1970 debut eponymous album launched the label, while "Sympathy" gave it its first hit. As Your Mind Flies By soared into the shops later that year, sadly the original lineup's swan song. Boasting the rhythm section of lead singer/bassist Steve Gould and drummer Mark Ashton, and keyboardists Dave Kaffinetti and Graham Field on electric piano and organ, the group was far removed from the showboating likes of Yes and ELP... it was the epic, side-length "Flight" that really sent Rare Bird soaring. Here the band showcased its distinctiveness, as the almost-20-minute song courses along Gould and Ashton's driving rhythm. Divided into four sections, the piece takes to the sky on a series of stunning arpeggios, quickens, then darkens. Organs burst out of the shadows, a church choir sails in, a phenomenal dual takes place between the surf guitar-ing electric piano and the psych-mad organ, before the Bird flitters into experimental avant-garde territory, then brings it all home with a flourish of vocals and organ...

04-12-2019 FAVTRAX:MiX ~ 33 FAVOURiTE tracks 1975-1970

Tom Waits Live At The Main Point 1975

04-12-2019 FAVTRAX:MiX ~ 33 FAVOURiTE tracks 1975-1970  >>Tom Waits, Bill Withers, Pink Floyd, Betty Davis, Grand Funk Railroad, Amon Düül II, Leonard Cohen, Ten Years After, THE BEATLES, Rare Bird<<

M U S I C

if you want excitement PRESS SHUFFLE!

favtraxmix label The player always plays the latest playlist tracks. / A lejátszó mindig a legújabb playlist számait játssza.   

LISTEN THE PLAYLIST ON DEEZER.COM

1975-1970

A neo-beatnik songwriter who grew weirder and wilder in the '80s, earning a cult following that only grew larger as the years passed.
Tom Waits
Warm Beer & Cold Women  (Tom Waits) 5:47
Eggs & Sausage (Tom Waits) 3:04
Semi Suite (Tom Waits) 6:27
from 'Round Midnight: The Minneapolis Broadcast 1975
...In December, Tom entered the studios of KQRS Minneapolis for his first ever FM broadcast, floated across the airwaves by that very station and syndicated by many others nationwide. Now considered the holy grail of Waits broadcasts amongst serious collectors of the great mans work, this performance featuring Tom Waits alone at his piano with just his magnificent voice as accompaniment, the way he should be heard, is nothing short of staggering. This CD contains the full KQRS broadcast in perfect FM stereo quality, during which Tom performs a range of songs taken from his first three records Closing Time , The Heart Of Saturday Night and the aforementioned Nighthawks...

Songwriter/singer/guitarist Bill Withers is best remembered for the classic "Lean on Me" and his other million-selling singles "Ain't No Sunshine" and "Use Me," but he has a sizable cache of great songs to his credit.
Bill Withers
You (Bill Withers) 5:23
Heartbreak Road (Bill Withers) 3:09
from +'Justments 1974
Back in March 2004 music magazine Mojo included Withers' fourth album on a list of "67 Lost Albums You Must Own." Whether 'Justments is indeed the stuff of legend remains debatable. Surely no holy grail like the similarly mentioned Cold Fact by Sussex labelmate Sixto Rodriguez, it seems at least unfairly ignored. Nothing here might be as compelling as "Grandma's Hands" or "I Can't Write Left-Handed," but there are plenty of melancholy reflections from a genuine soulman who came across more as a West coast singer/songwriter. Replacing the hired hands of his debut with former employees of Charles Wright & the Watts 103rd Street Rhythm Band proved equally important in shaping Withers' identity...

One of the most predominant and celebrated rock bands of all time, prog- and space-rock legends, known for superlative musicianship.
Pink Floyd
Breathe (In the Air) (David Gilmour / Roger Waters / Richard Wright) 2:49
On the Run (David Gilmour / Roger Waters) 3:45
Time  (David Gilmour / Nick Mason / Roger Waters / Richard Wright) 6:53
The Great Gig in the Sky  (Clare Torry / Richard Wright) 4:43
from Dark Side of the Moon 1973
By condensing the sonic explorations of Meddle to actual songs and adding a lush, immaculate production to their trippiest instrumental sections, Pink Floyd inadvertently designed their commercial breakthrough with Dark Side of the Moon. The primary revelation of Dark Side of the Moon is what a little focus does for the band. Roger Waters wrote a series of songs about mundane, everyday details which aren't that impressive by themselves, but when given the sonic backdrop of Floyd's slow, atmospheric soundscapes and carefully placed sound effects, they achieve an emotional resonance...

PnM.mix 1st: 33 from stereogum / the 200 best songs of 2010s

PnM.mix 1st: 33 from stereogum / the 200 best songs of 2010s

(82) David Bowie – “I Can’t Give Everything Away”
The final song on David Bowie’s final album, “I Can’t Give Everything Away” is one more winking, wistful transmission from one of the most iconic and important songwriters we’ve ever known. Spacious and somehow at peace, quoting the classic Low instrumental “A New Career In A New Town,” it was a goodbye that nodded to history and what Bowie had left us while also alluding to the new adventurous future that could have been. –Ryan Leas

(168) Charlotte Gainsbourg – “Deadly Valentine”
Not to play into stereotypes, but there is something so incredibly French about “Deadly Valentine” and its ability to be sexy, cool, and heartbroken all at once. A swirling synth-pop song from the matured perspective of a middle-aged Gainsbourg, it fights back against the world-weariness of age and all its accumulative struggles by seizing onto a dream newly lush and newly invigorated, abandoning mourning for the thump of a nightclub’s never-ending pulse. –Ryan Leas

(131) Leonard Cohen – “You Want It Darker”
By the end of his career, Leonard Cohen’s ever-wizened voice sounded beyond our reach — an aged poet who had seemingly gained the ability to see through the fabric of time. On You Want It Darker, he was writing his goodbye, and as funereal as its title track might be, it’s also a strikingly beautiful final message. The song sounds ancient, pulled from the ether; the singer, like he’s trying to grasp a lost wisdom one last time. –Ryan Leas

(130) Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds – “Jubilee Street”
Nick Cave has built one of the truly rare late-career passages in pop music. Already a cult icon 10 years ago, he ascended to a new level this decade with three albums that rank amongst his very best. Amidst it all is “Jubilee Street,” a career peak that also functioned like a mission statement for his elder-statesman years — a surreal, haunted myth, eventually shaking loose the gravity of time to roar into the night, “I’m transforming! Look at me now!” –Ryan Leas

(78) Radiohead – “True Love Waits”
Once a giddy romantic paean from Radiohead’s 2001 live album, “True Love Waits” emerged on a studio release 15 years later, its warm acoustic strums replaced by frigid piano chasms. In the interim, Thom Yorke split from his longtime partner, who later died of cancer. All this completely recontextualized Yorke’s central plea: “Don’t leave.” Even without details, it’s devastating — the sound of first a romance and then a life dissolving into nothingness. –Chris DeVille

(85) St. Vincent – “Strange Mercy”
Amidst all of St. Vincent’s self-conscious performance-art posturing, it can be hard to get a handle on Annie Clark the human being. But the title track of her 2011 album Strange Mercy is St. Vincent at her best and her most personal, an emotional, perspective-shifting response to her father’s imprisonment for financial crimes. It’s strange and merciful, yes, and powerful. –Peter Helman

(73) Sufjan Stevens – “Death With Dignity”
A multidimensional treatment of the residuals of love and grief and their interlocking frayed edges, framed within a series of immaculately-realized arrangements that still strike with the raw immediacy of peak Elliott Smith, Carrie & Lowell is the clear classic in a career strewn with masterpieces. The album’s stirring overture tracks Sufjan Stevens’ journey from fear to acceptance of what follows immutable loss. –Pranav Trewn

(181) Mac DeMarco – “Chamber Of Reflection”
Mac DeMarco has cooked up some great songs on guitar, but his greatest achievement may be a synth hallucination that demarcates the blurry line between chillwave and avant-garde hip-hop instrumentals. The further you retreat from consciousness, the better it sounds. –Chris DeVille

(140) Chromatics – “Cherry”
Chromatics, and Italians Do It Better at large, are architects of a particular ’10s sub-trend: a hazy echo of an ’80s that never quite existed, a cinematic and strung-out romanticism. “Cherry” was the perfect distillation of this, that “Drive soundtrack sound,” all yearning night drives through cityscapes drenched in lush, imagined neon glow. –Ryan Leas

(179) Cloud Nothings – “Wasted Days”
Dylan Baldi has written lots of great songs at the intersection of pop, punk, and indie rock, but his crowning achievement remains these nine minutes of body-clenching tension, carried along by a mantra that will resonate with anyone who’s ever disappointed themselves: “I thought I would be more than this!” –Chris DeVille

(136) Caribou – “Odessa”
That bassline, though. Dan Snaith has managed to successfully reinvent himself with every new album, shifting from IDM to krautrock to neo-psychedelic pop. But in terms of pure bangers, he’s never done better than “Odessa,” the off-kilter nocturnal dance song that kicked off the Swim era with verve and style to burn. –Peter Helman

(161) Gotye – “Somebody That I Used To Know” (Feat. Kimbra)
A Belgian-Australian songwriter coos post-breakup bitterness over a sample from an old Brazilian instrumental from the ’60s. A New Zealand singer howls them right back at him. In the video, the two of them paint themselves up in abstract time-lapse. The result: a global smash that Prince copped to loving when he handed Gotye the Record Of The Year Grammy. These days, Gotye is just somebody that we used to know. But his one hit established how, in an internet economy, a catchy viral jam could conquer the world. –Tom Breihan

(77) Beach House – “Myth”
Beach House excel at putting a melody to incomprehensible feelings. They paint the atmosphere with cascading guitar riffs that overlap into a blur of twilight. Being conscious, being human, lends itself to a sometimes paralyzing temporality and life’s unknowable meaning. “What comes after this momentary bliss?” Victoria Legrand asks, her voice glowing. –Margaret

(182) Colleen Green – “TV”
“TV is my friend,” Colleen Green sings. “And it has been/ Always there for me/ In times of need.” Her noise-pop ode to prioritizing television over actual human connection, “TV” is both tongue-in-cheek and deadly serious, a painfully relatable modern sentiment for loners and pop-culture addicts alike. –Peter Helman

(155) Waxahatchee – “Never Been Wrong”
Out In The Storm is a tremendous breakup album, detailing pain, resentment, and, ultimately, growth. “Never Been Wrong” is its moment of interim murk — bitterness, unresolved conflict, being aware that you’re acting out and only doubling down. Katie Crutchfield is biting amidst major-chord rock, finding triumph in the unraveling. –NM Mashurov

(159) EMA – “California”
“Fuck California. You made me boring.” That’s a hell of a way to introduce yourself to the world. Erika M. Anderson, former howler for the great and unheralded blues-drone trio Gowns, made a dizzy leap into the unknown with “California,” her solo statement of intent. It’s a bruised, confused, half-rapped statement of rootless, reduced personal darkness, an itinerant millennial’s unmoored plea, a Bo Diddley quotation transformed into a damaged noise-folk lament. It’s really something. –Tom Breihan

(144) Phoebe Bridgers – “Motion Sickness”
Phoebe Bridgers renders the nauseating mindfuck of humiliation and heartache that follows a toxic relationship using details both morbidly funny (fake orgasms, a fake British accent) and deeply unsettling (“You said when you met me you were bored”). As the song’s sinister edge has become clearer, it plays less like a “breakup anthem” and more like a survivor’s testimony. But revelations about her inspiration only prove how effective Bridgers is at turning emotional paradoxes into stunning music. –Jael Goldfine

(143) Black Midi – “953”
What could easily be mistaken for a machine going haywire and melting down is actually four warm-blooded human beings achieving superhuman levels of bizarro synchronicity. Nonetheless, you should probably still wear protective gear while listening. –Chris DeVille

(149) Fontaines D.C. – “Too Real”
Fontaines D.C. are beginning as the decade is ending, with one of the more implausible rock success stories in recent memory. “Too Real” represents why. Brainy but brawny, arty yet raw, the band’s best moments are like this, barely-controlled engines of chaos that force you to pay attention. –Ryan Leas

(89) Parquet Courts – “Stoned And Starving”
“Stoned And Starving” is the signature song from Parquet Courts’ 2012 sophomore album Light Up Gold, the track that laid the framework for the New York band’s brand of brainy post-punk catharsis. It’s loose, but fidgety and restless — bothered, but ultimately apathetic. –Julia

(132) Kurt Vile – “Pretty Pimpin”
Kurt Vile is a modern-day troubadour who soundtracks his yarns of the troubled — himself included — with such beguilingly breezy guitars you almost forget to ask: “You okay, man?” Dissociation is the theme on “Pretty Pimpin,” and losing your sense of self has never sounded so easy. –Harley Brown

(93) Courtney Barnett – “Avant Gardener”
Courtney Barnett is a winded wordsmith, a playful poet, and “Avant Gardener” is ceaselessly clever. Her deadened delivery hammers the song home, approaching the end of the world with a sardonic casualness. It’s about trying to sink into the pleasure of something methodical, like gardening, making new life in a world that feels like it’s dying every day. But the apocalypse is a constant reminder, a shadow that makes those tomatoes on the front steps wither and die. Seems like enough of a reason to have trouble breathing in. –James Rettig

(133) Big Thief – “Cattails”
Big Thief can find the magnetic and beautiful world of a speck of dust and hide it in a song. “Cattails” captures Adrianne Lenker’s natural mysticism as she remembers the beauty of her Minnesota home. Big Thief conjure the easy sway of the wetland plants with fingerpicking fuzz and sunlight trickling in as piano keys sputter at the track’s closing. It’s as gentle and mindful as a deep breath. –Margaret Farrell

(115) Ought – “Beautiful Blue Sky”
The rare post-punk epic, wracked by the rote, deadening rhythms of our lives — “How’s the church? How’s the job? How’s the family? Beautiful weather today” — but refusing to accept suffocation under our late-capitalism lives. Instead, Ought earnestly relocate some sense of wonder, some sense of peace. What begins in anxiety blooms into a catharsis that arcs, well, skyward. –Ryan Leas

(91) Sharon Van Etten – “Every Time The Sun Comes Up”
Sharon Van Etten has built a career out of mining commonplace failures. “I washed your dishes/ But I shit in your bathroom,” she sings on “Every Time The Sun Comes Up,” elongating the vowels like she’s at least trying to dodge the blows. After the song’s fadeout, you hear her headphones fall off. It’s an endearing trip-up, the kind that results in a dorky laugh. Sharon Van Etten is flawed, but she’s still fighting, and that’s more than most of us fuck-ups can say. –Nina Corcoran

(108) Lana Del Rey – “Venice Bitch”
When you’re a pop star operating at the top of her game, and when you’re fresh out of fucks forever, you write a luxuriant and pillowy 10-minute psychedelic elegy for peace, love, truth, justice, the American way, and human life on planet Earth. Nothing gold can stay. Signing off — bang bang, kiss kiss. –Tom Breihan

(70) The National – “Bloodbuzz Ohio”
The National’s post-recession anthem nails their signature balance between stately grandeur and raw vulnerability. Bryan Devendorf’s drums pound steadily, a brass section wafts upward into a swirl of melancholy guitar, and Matt Berninger toggles between surreal personal reflections and a more dispiritingly universal refrain: “I still owe money to the money to the money I owe/ The floors are falling out from everybody I know.” –Chris DeVille

(42) Father John Misty – “Pure Comedy”
Gifted with a natural instinct for classic songwriting but an eye and mind born for modern times, Josh Tillman was already running circles around many of his peers in the indie world. Then, on Pure Comedy, he really tried to say it all. Its title track might not encapsulate the full spectrum of FJM — it’s all big-picture mode, with none of the self-reflexive examinations that make his narrative so rich — but it’s the quintessential FJM song. In just a few minutes, Tillman grapples with the grand farce of our existence, and injects profundity back into a time-worn hope — in the end, we can only find meaning by showing each other a little bit of kindness. –Ryan Leas

(61) Tame Impala – “Let It Happen”
Kevin Parker reforged psych rock into a contemporary frontier, then set his sights on fashioning EDM as high art. “Let It Happen” is the intersection of acid house raves, Sgt. Pepper’s, and Diplo — a bold prototype for what the monogenre might have looked like if anyone else knew how to make music like this. –Pranav Trewn

(58) The War On Drugs – “Red Eyes”
In 2011, with Slave Ambient, the War On Drugs had already located an entrancing strain of classicism equally cosmic and world-weary. Back then, nobody could’ve imagined they’d become one of the biggest rock breakouts of the decade. But a couple years later, “Red Eyes” arrived — the band now barreling down the highway of generations of classic rock tropes, lighting the past up with new psychedelic colors born from our bottomless, hazy digital-era memory. And as soon as Adam Granduciel let loose that raucous, sublime “Woo!” you knew this band had found something else. You knew they were going to be way bigger than anyone thought. –Ryan Leas

(48) Boygenius – “Me & My Dog”
There are Boygenius songs that better display the talents of all three musicians involved, but none of them hit as hard as Phoebe Bridgers does on “Me & My Dog.” It’s a love song that’s highly specific, one that’s embarrassingly pure, one that makes you redden up with the sheer weight of it. “I wanna be emaciated/ I wanna hear one song without thinking of you,” Bridgers sings, wishing that love didn’t have to be so total, so immense, so devastating and yet something that we constantly crave, a connection we cannot live without. –James Rettig

(26) Lana Del Rey – “Video Games”
Though the work of Lana Del Rey has grown richer and more expansive over time, the project was already fully-formed when Lizzy Grant first made her proper introduction under the persona. Her doomed recontextualization of Americana tropes, her ability to communicate contemporary isolation in classical language — it was all right there from the start in “Video Games.” It’s a tragic song that sounded as if it could’ve been released 50 years earlier, and yet it spoke to the eternal aspects of the human condition in such a way that LDR immediately won a lot of people’s fervent devotion. –Ryan Leas

(18) Perfume Genius – “Queen”
“Don’t you know your queen?” Mike Hadreas crooned, a coronation worthy of a god. Up until “Queen,” Hadreas had been making affecting and beautifully still piano ballads, but this was a definitive level-up and Hadreas knew it. He was swooning straight into being one of our best experimental underground pop stars, with a statement of purpose bent on world domination: “No family is safe when I sashay.” –James Rettig

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