As many of you know, over the three-plus year life of B&V, I occasionally like to put together “themed” playlists of songs that address similar subject matter. Most recently I did a playlist around the theme of Telephones, Thoughts From The Traveling Salesman And A B&V Playlist: Hanging On The Telephone. I tend to think waaaay too much about music, especially when I’m traveling. While sitting in bars out on the road, mulling over a tumbler of something strong, my mind will often light upon a theme, and suddenly songs start to attach themselves to that theme… it’s a sickness, I know. Recently my friend Doug pointed out that I wasn’t putting those playlists out anywhere that people can go out and listen to them…

Well, that was only half true. I actually put about a third of my playlists out on Spotify. I’ll be the first to admit, I’ve been lazy about getting those posted. Over the last several weekends, I’ve culled through the archives of my B&V posts and wherever I put together a playlist, whether it be about Las Vegas/Gambling, Tax Day or my Eclectic Summer/Sun Playlist, I went ahead and posted those out on Spotify. If you subscribe to Spotify you can go out and search Spotify using the keywords “BourbonAndVinyl” or “BourbonAndVinyl.net” under Playlists, the B&V playlists should pop up. My naming convention is probably a little wacky, I start off each playlist name with “BourbonAndVinyl.net” Playlist of xyz (for example, one playlist is called “BourbonAndVinyl.net David Bowie 20 Best Deep Tracks” and another is named, “BourbonAndVinyl.net Drinking Songs (For Nancy).”

In addition, I realized that I can create a link from Spotify, that I went back and posted into the original blog post. My wife found out I wasn’t even doing that and the accusations of laziness, general sloth and drunkenness got out of hand. She’s right, I should have been doing that all along. So if there is an old playlist you were curious about, there is now a link in the post to the songs on Spotify. Being a bit of a caveman when it comes to all this technology, I think it all works, but I could be wrong. If I screwed that up, please tell me in the comments and I’ll try and get my technical support to help me… and by technical support I mean my daughter. These kids and their gadgets. It should look something like this:

And remember everyone – I am on record on this – The Rock Chick has always been better at putting together playlists than I have. Her songs always fit together seamlessly. I tend to get caught up in the theme of the playlist and I can go through wild tempo/style changes in one playlist and it doesn’t bother me. I can go from early acoustic Dylan to Metallica in one set. Yeah, I’m weird that way. My hope on these are that a) you enjoy the playlist, and b) even if the songs don’t always fit stylistically you’ll hear a song that might be so obscure you hadn’t heard it before. It’s all about expanding the palette.

And to that point, I consider these BourbonAndVinyl Playlists to be a communal thing. I’ve had recommendations on some of those playlists for songs I should add from various readers – I’ve tried to incorporate those into the playlists out on Spotify. As these are communal playlists, I consider them living documents. So even if someone suggests an update from something I did a couple of years ago, I’ll go out and add it. Just yesterday, after a long car ride, I went out and added Steely Dan’s “Show Biz Kids” to my Vegas/Gambling Playlist and Dire Straits’ “Twisting By the Pool” to my Eclectic Summer/Sun Playlist… both of those were egregious oversights on my part in the first place.

I hope I have overcome my hopeless laziness when it comes to tying all this technology together… I blame the bourbon. Enjoy the playlists and again, thanks to everybody for reading and making suggestions on additional songs to add. Cheers and Happy Labor Day!