A Roots CD-R sampler

Mostly chronological, with some front-loading.

1. "The Seed (2.0)": Some people need to cheat to be aroused. Some need to procreate.
2. "Don't Say Nuthin'": Misheard lyric: "Give him head, and don't say nuthin'." More evidence that vocalists shouldn't enunciate.
3. "You Got Me": It's Badu's song, though Eve nearly steals it. Eve knows her real competition is the mic (or turntables/keyb etc.), so she has to tease that a baller's interested, just to keep her man on his toes.
4, 5, 6. "Mellow My Man", "Respond/React", "Clones": To make smoothness compelling requires mad skills, which the early Roots had some of the time.
7. "Act Too (Love of My Life)"
8. "Proceed" (live): Never having seen them, I'm suspicious of how the common description of them as the best live crew in hip hop usually occurs near "they play their own instruments", but parts of their live album make it seem tenable that they deserve their rep.
9. "Quills": On Phrenology, probably their best album, on they shared their discovery of sex and rock & roll, soon dropping the latter for drug funk.
10. "Break You Off" (dub): From Home Grown 2, a beginner's guide to understanding the Roots less.
11. "Star"
12, 13, 14. "False Media", "Don't Feel Right", "Long Time": Retro as postmodernism is so 1981. Still processing Game Theory, which at this early stage is up there with Phrenology, but for now I'm happy to steal Jeff Chang's picks*.
15. "Why (What's Going On)/In Love with the Mic/Din Da Da"

*Are Blender's recommended downloads chosen by the credited writers or by the editors? The former would make more sense, but the picks sometimes seem inconsistent with the main review.

OK, I like this game

A Tom Waits sampler CD-R (revised 16 Dec ought-six)

Seventies
1. Ol' 55
2. Tom Traubert's Blues

Eighties
3. 16 Shells from a 30-6
4. Gin Soaked Boy
5. Union Square
6. Downtown Train
7. Innocent When You Dream (78)

Nineties
8. All Stripped Down
9. Goin' Out West
10. I Don't Wanna Grow Up
11. Russian Dance
12. I'll Shoot the Moon
13. Crossroads
14. Big in Japan
15. Come On Up to the House

Twenty-Ohs
16. Lullaby
17. Alice
18. Hoist That Rag
19. Bottom of the World
20. Road to Peace

Yes, I'm the only person who thinks Waits did his strongest work in the Nineties.

A David Bowie sampler CD-R that's better than Changesbowie because it stops at 1980
1969-72: "If you stay with us you're gonna be pretty kooky too"
1. Space Oddity
2. Changes
3. Life on Mars
4. Kooks
5. Starman
6. Ziggy Stardust
7. Suffragette City

1973-76: "He's quadraphonic, he's a, he's got more channels"
8. Let's Spend the Night Together
9. Young Americans
10. Station to Station
11. Golden Years
12. TVC 15

1977-80: "I will be king, and you, you will be queen"
13. Sound and Vision
14. Be My Wife
15. Beauty and the Beast
16. Heroes
17. Boys Keep Swinging
18. Ashes to Ashes

A Bob Dylan sampler

The game: Compile as much of Dylan's talent as can fit on a CD-R.

The Sixties: "I'll know my song well before I start singing"
1. Love Minus Zero/No Limit: His most beautiful straight love song is really that straight, as his loaded double rhymes rise and fall twice a verse. Dig the way he vibratoes "broken".
2. I Want You: If you still doubt he's a great vocalist, how many singers could make such a simple statement so seductive?
3. Positively 4th Street: When the rolling stone stops, watch out.
4. Mr. Tambourine Man: Remember when drug songs were pretty? More proof they banned the wrong shit.
5. Like a Rolling Stone: Because schadenfreude is OK when it's class war. You know it's really about the organ, but how about that piano?
6. Bob Dylan's 115th Dream: If only all Great American Novels were this funny.
7. A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall: More than any other song, this opened up pop music to pretentious lyrics. Bobby had been reading the Symbolists, and decided the best way to capture this in song was to pile on image after image.
8. Visions of Johanna: What do you mean best lyrics ever? "Fish truck", jeez.

The Seventies: "Still on the road, headin' for another joint"
9. Knockin' on Heaven's Door: Concise.
10. If You See Her, Say Hello: After the end of the road.
11. Shelter from the Storm: It's rare for him to be understated, but it makes his refuge alluring.
12. Tangled Up in Blue: Fully-formed short short stories, each with a kick to them. The compression is skilled; the slight fluctuations in tone as they're stitched together is Dylan.
13. Idiot Wind: To some his great confessional (just because he starts off the tonic), this is where he admits he's been playing crooked all this time. Or maybe he really can't help it if he's lucky.
14. Hurricane: His best really long song, partly because it's not really really long. Just about his last attempt at immediacy and his last moment of relevance, though he started making good records again in the Nineties.