Vegas Playlist.
Have had a really good Vegas playlist that I've been honing over the last few trips and I've been really loving to listen to while I'm in my room there, mostly while getting up and getting ready to go out in the mornings or after a nap and re-shower at night. My taste in Vegas music is a little unconventional I would think, it's bereft of almost all the traditional "whooo parrrrrty!" tunes most people probably would put on a Vegas playlist. You will find no Motley Crue or fucking Pitbull on this list. Nope, I go the other way and try to load up atmospheric tunes that put me into a relaxed, calm state...although there is an uptempo track or two in here.
Below is the list by artist (there aren't very many) and song (only around 35 now, I try to keep it around 40 or less so I will more than likely hear every song on shuffle during a 4-day trip). I have a few core artists that I crush on, and those artists dominate the list. It's certainly no "Party Mix" but the playlist is just for me as I travel alone; if by some wacky confluence of miracles I end up getting a girl back to my room I have other playlists loaded onto the iPad for that eventuality. So here goes...
Bryan Ferry
-"The Name of the Game". Great, atmospheric tune that has a lot of space between notes which I love, beautiful syncopation between the guitar and piano on those notes and sort of an exotic percussion in the background. Just dripping with sensuality.
Cocteau Twins
-"Blood Bitch"," But I'm Not", "Hearsay Please", "Shallow Then Halo". All from CT's first album Garlands, which may very well be my favorite album of all time. This is not the dreamy, billowing CT stuff of the later era, this is simple, brutal post-punk with driving drum machine beats, Will Heggie's amazing bass play and the piercing, massive tone that Robin Guthrie had on his guitar in the early days. Liz's voice is all staccato and brevity here and it fits well with the crunch of the backing tracks. Some other tracks on this album are pure goth, but these keep to a sort of vicious, "get out of my fucking way" sort of vibe that fit well with my personality.
Coldplay
-"A Rush of Blood to the Head", "Daylight (Inst)", "A Whisper (Inst)". Coldplay releases some cringe-worthy singles and they somewhat deserve the derision they get from critics, but there's no denying that they can write some brilliant album tracks and they know their way around their instruments. AROBTTH is hands-down my favorite song of all time (dat chorus), Daylight has a great interplay again between the driving drums and the guitar/bass/piano and A Whisper was an album throw away song but in the instrumental form it creates a beautiful atmosphere that sucks you in and keeps you there as the repeating outro is about 2 minutes long.
The Cure
-"The Same Deep Water As You". Pure atmosphere, again sucks you in with a long intro/outro and great lyrics about a couple's suicide pact. Keeps you there for 7 minutes and fades out as do the lovers. Good stuff.
David Gray
-"Dead in the Water", "The Other Side". Gray is also know for some sappy singles but these two tracks from A New Day At Midnight are pure gold. Dead in the Water is all over the place with beautiful minor chord changes and a dim view of the future while The Other Side is a melancholy piano mea culpa for a relationship scuppered. The heartfelt last line "Honey now if I'm honest, I still don't know what love is" still makes me tear up after hearing it hundreds of times.
Dead Can Dance
-"I Can See Now". Live two guitar ballad, very simple but Brendan Perry's vocal performance (recorded live) blows me away every time. "If you were a huntress, I'd be your bow". Obtuse but beautiful.
Depeche Mode
-"Never Let Me Down Again", "Only When I Lose Myself", "Wrong", "Blue Dress". Have grown up with this band for 30 years from the mid 80's listening to them on Live 105 in the Bay Area through uniformly great albums up to the 00's. Have a little something here from every era. Never Let Me Down is an epic dirge with amazing electronic instrumentation, Only When is a slinky, down-tempo ambient masterpiece, Wrong is all driving beats about unfortunate timing in life (a theme in mine) and Blue Dress is pure sex; straight up the best song ever written to fuck to.
The Fixx
-"Lose Face", "Woman on a Train". The Fixx had two great albums, Reach the Beach and Phantoms, both of these are from Phantoms, and it is almost all about one thing; at that time they seemed to be (rightly) writing songs around Jamie West-Oram's guitar. Jangly, ambient, it fills dead spaces in the songs with a bell-like clarity. Again, more atmosphere here.
Harold Budd/Robin Guthrie
-"The Memories Returning". A reunion of the principals of the genius Moon and the Melodies album, this one is pure piano/keyboard ambient. Ringing, echoing, bell-like gorgeousness.
HSAS
-"Animation", "Valley of the Kings". Lot of history and nostalgia here. HSAS was a weird one off supergroup from the 80's with Sammy Hagar (!) and Neal Schon of Journey. These two songs are all just bare-assed, testicle-jangling power chords and screamy vocals. I owned this album on cassette tape (yep) in high school, a very long time ago. A lot of the shit I listened to back then sounds silly now, but when I found this album again on MP3 it still sounded great. Animation happened to be playing when I had just checked into my room and was getting ready to hit the Strip on my first Vegas trip, and it sounded amazing and appropriate somehow with the sense of anticipation I was feeling. It'll be on every Vegas playlist I put together until I drop.
Jakkata
-"The Other World". This group took an old John Barry James Bond soundtrack snippet from Diamonds Are Forever and built a trippy, loungy down-tempo song that is so appropriate for the low key joints I hang out in in Vegas. If I were a DJ in Vegas I would play this as my warm up song every night.
Nine Inch Nails
-"Help Me I Am In Hell", "17 Ghosts II", "Copy of A", "Lights in the Sky", "Demon Seed". My favorite band has to be rep'd here, right? The first two songs are short, menacing yet beautiful guitar instrumentals that give you a "let's get it on" kind of vibe. Copy of A is from the new album which I think is pretty great, so different from "classic" NIN but if you have the musical ear to follow along it rewards the fuck out of you. Lights and Demon Seed are from the criminally underrated The Slip album, one quiet as wind the other brash and in your face. Trent is a master of the science of mood, and I'm all about mood in music.
A Perfect Circle
-"The Package". A creepy little song about the machinations inside a junkie's head when he's scheming to get his fix. "Time to feed the monster, I don't need another friend". Typical slow buildup as per usual with APC songs, and the power chords toward the end of the song will burn your eyelids off. Speaks to me about my own little habits and the party favors I typically bring with me on a trip. If you can't be a little bad in Vegas what's the point?
Phil Collins
-"Inside Out". Simple, space-filled song with little more than amazing piano/guitar power chords stretching out for 5 seconds each. Phil could also play the fuck out of the drums back in the day.
Radiohead
-"Everything In Its Right Place", "In Limbo". This album (Kid A) gob-smacked me when I first heard it in 2000. I haven't been amazed by an album like that since. It absolutely blew me away. I was a huge fan of OK Computer, which was so different, but I "got" this album after a couple listens and listened to almost nothing else for the following year. It may not be the intent of the song, but when Thom sings "Everything, in its right...PLACE", I feel like everything is in its right place and I'm ready to take on anything, including The Strip. In Limbo is all unbelievable time signature and wafting guitar and old-school organ and Thom's dream-like vocals. "Trap doors that open, I spiral down". Ambient beauty. Sensing a theme here?
Silverchair
-"Those Thieving Birds (Edited Merged)". Lucked out on YouTube and found this version of the already amazing song that takes just the gorgeous arpeggio guitar intro and outro and fuses them together almost seamlessly. Silverchair really grew up since the Frogstomp days, this is adult, challenging shit. Not sure what the fuck the lyrics are all about but when it sounds this pretty who gives a fuck.
Steely Dan
-"Peg". I mean, it's the Dan, man. Nothing more needs be said. If there's any more appropriate music for a Vegas trip I haven't heard it.
Tears For Fears
-"Pale Shelter (Long Version)". The Hurting album was another early 80's gothic masterpiece, this one is driven by the bass line and the angsty, long "You don't give me love" repeated outro on the Long Version speaks to me, somehow. These guys were underrated songwriters, too.
And that's it, for now. May add/subtract a couple in the next week but this is the core and it's what'll be on the headphones/iPad in Vegas. Great tunes for great experiences.
UPDATE 7/14:
This list is now pretty much obsolete, before my last trip I chucked the entire list that I had carefully curated for years and started fresh. Just wanted the music to be more spontaneous. This time coming up I've thrown a lot of NIN/Soundgarden tracks on the list (be seeing them live) and have about 30 other things that run the gamut, Sinatra to Wu Tang Clan.
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