I went to my local for a late brunch and ran into some friends of mine who are also music junkies. Halfway through the pivotal third drink I started talking too much shit. I pride myself on my playlists, to a silly degree.

The homie Steve offered a challenge. I had to build him a playlist, but as his demands got heavier and heavier, I realized I was maybe in over my head. My ego ran amok. Dammit.

The criteria:

All top 40 hits from the 1960s.

C’mon bro. I can do that standing on my head.

Three hours long.

Okay, difficult but clearly possible.

No repeat artists.

Oooohhhh… now we’re talking. This is standard for my playlists, but this was still going to be a fantastic exercise for sure. Then I popped off and started strutting like an asshole, and he added the last criterion.

No members of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Sonofabitch! The Rock Hall is running short of acts because rock and roll is a dying currency, so they’ve taken to inducting all measures of also-rans and would-be acts that shouldn’t be there. They’ve also ignored plenty of artists with rock-solid credentials, pun firmly intended, who should be in. This was going to make my task wildly difficult, but that difficulty was going to be my in. I had to find that very narrow corridor and mine that vein for everything it’s worth.

I got home to finish some house chores - laundry, dishes, vacuuming - the mundane tasks that pack adulthood, and I spent that time listening to various playlists and carefully considering.

My rules for a playlist are myriad, and they depend on the concept. If I’m building a playlist about a particular city - San Francisco, for example - I have plenty of tracks from which to choose, but they vary in style, genre, and flow, so I have to pick carefully. If I’m working in a specific area - mid-80s punk, say - that somewhat simplifies things. I like diversity in my playlists, and that sometimes complicates matters. For example, there are PLENTY of women in the R&B and soul world, but a shamefully scant number in the post-rock community. I want the spectrum on display, but not at the expense of continuity and flow. I also want my jam sessions to feel the ebb and flow of tempo. I can’t start with an absolute monster because it gives me few places to go, and I can’t start in a deep niche because I have few outs and avenues on which to continue the voyage.

I have many other rules, but those mostly surround ideas about flow, subject matter, and style. Here’s a great example: I was DJing a ‘70s funk party once, and a guest who arrived late started exclaiming the virtues of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon to me. To be clear, I don’t need the virtues of that album explained to me. Secondly, great as it may be, it’s got no place in a setlist between Cameo and Ohio Players tracks. Metallica is pretty cool, but Master of Puppets doesn’t belong sandwiched between Lionel Richie and Whitney Houston bangers, even though they’re all responsible for monster albums in the ‘80s.

With Rob in mind and my own incomplete but oddly comprehensive set of rules, I got to work.

For my satisfaction, I decided against using the Internet, but that proved too difficult once I got deep into hour two. There are just too many small acts in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame to do it from memory. What’s more, I can’t recall with 100% accuracy if Gerry and the Pacemakers cracked the Top 40 in 1965 with Ferry Cross the Mersey, or not. My gut said yes, and I was wrong. It clocked in at number 43, but the Beach Boys’ California Girls peaked at 49. Not that I was allowed to consider the Beach Boys based on that damned criterion. Life is weird, and tastes are even weirder. What’s a poor boy to do (‘cept to sing in a rock and roll band)?

I was raised by the radio. The radio was my closest friend, my most staunch ally, my cloak of protection. I wrote about it here back when this was still under a paywall. This playlist construct owes as much to my sheer delight in 1960s popular music as it does the DJs out of East Lansing, Michigan and Erie, Pennsylvania who directly informed my taste. That would be 94.1 WIBM and Froggy 94.7 WFGO, for those of you interested in such matters.

So, yeah, I cheated a little bit in breaking my own rules. Steve never established I COULDN’T use the Internet, and given the severity of the test, I didn’t mention it. There was another problem I hadn’t considered until I got back to the house. Most of the songs from that era were less than three minutes a crack.

So here it is. Sixty-nine songs at three hours and one minute. That’s an average of 2:37 per track, perfect for the short-attention span crowd. It carries the weight of the era and different points of view, styles, and approaches. This one is for Steve, but more than that, it’s for you oldies lovers with a backbone you’re aching to let slip.

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