KEXP, a Seattle-based radio station I listen to every work day, will periodically do an entire day (or more) of “6 Degrees of Separation” programming, where every DJ comes up with their playlist on the fly, connecting each song by some thread – a shared band member/writer/producer/studio, one artist covering the other’s song, a previous/future collaboration, etc. Each DJ will often try to reach a particular artist by the end of their show, and the next DJ has to continue from where the previous DJ left off.
If you follow me on Mastodon, you may have seen that I was curious if we could play the 6 Degrees game with The List. My initial aim was to simply connect 6 albums from The List, starting with the last album we had a spotlight on (with no particular album as an end goal), but that was easy enough so I kept going. One of The List contributors also came up with a set, so I incorporated those into what I came up with and kept going some more. So far, we’ve connected 50ish albums from The List in a row.
I think each set provides a nice multi-day playlist (and, for a mega nerd like myself, following these trails is quite a bit of fun), so I wanted to share them here, one set at a time. And because (spoilers!) Prince features heavily in the last few sets, we’re going to time it so the last set is on the anniversary of him leaving us (April 21), and pick out some other fun Prince-connections along the way.
Okay, here we go…
6 Degrees of Separation: Yellow Magic Orchestra to Medicine Singers
Yellow Magic Orchestra – Solid State Survivor (list number 85)
>> One of the band members of YMO was…
Ryuichi Sakamoto – Async (901)
…Ryuichi Sakamoto, who acted in the film Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence alongside…
David Bowie – Low (537)
…David Bowie, who recruited Adrian Belew for the Isolar II (i.e., Low/Heroes) tour (and the live album Stage, then Lodger, and, later, the Sound+Vision tour). Following Lodger, Belew recorded guitar solos and played in the live band for…
Talking Heads – Remain In Light (946)
…this album by Talking Heads, whose David Byrne later collaborated with St. Vincent, who is on…
Swans – To Be Kind (646)
…this album by Swans, whose Thor Harris and Christopher Pravdica are on…
Medicine Singers – Medicine Singers (972)
…this album by Medicine Singers. <<
Prince 6
Though we don’t have a Prince album in today’s list, here are some fun connections the above artists have to The Purple One:
- Ryuichi Sakamoto’s “You Do Me” (Youtube), from the international release of his 1989 album Beauty, features Jill Jones, who performed/collaborated with Prince in many of his projects (including the 1999 album, Purple Rain and Graffiti Bridge films, and the Vanity 6 and Apollonia 6 side-projects) and was on his Paisley Park Records label.
- Ingrid Chavez, who was on Prince’s Lovesexy album, was originally on the Paisley Park label, and acted alongside Prince in Graffiti Bridge, also performed on Ryuichi Sakamoto’s 1991 album Heartbeat.
- According to the forums on prince.org, there’s a bootleg recording of a Prince rehearsal session called 1999 Revisited where Prince throws in some tweaked Talking Heads’ “Once in a Lifetime” lyrics into his “D.M.S.R.” song.
- In 2018, David Byrne showed up at a tiki-karaoke bar in Portland and sang “When Doves Cry” (Youtube).
- In Tom Hagler’s 2021 book We Could Be…Bowie and His Heroes, there’s a brief story about the only time Prince and David Bowie met. In 1987, after Bowie played a show in Minneapolis, Prince invited him back to Paisley Park for a party. Prince put on an album he had just recently written but not yet released, The Black Album, and everyone including Bowie and his band danced to and enjoyed the record. (Prince later said that one of the reasons why he decided to pull the album was because he didn’t like a comment that someone else who was also there that night said about the album, even though it was a compliment.)
- After Bowie died, while on his Piano & A Microphone Tour, Prince incorporated a cover of “Heroes” into a few of his shows.
Tune in on Thursday for Part 2, to see how we get from Medicine Singers to R.E.M.!
https://1001otheralbums.com/2024/04/09/6-degrees-of-separation-part-1/
#1001OtherAlbums #6DegreesOfSeparation #AdrianBelew #ChristopherPravdica #DavidBowie #DavidByrne #MedicineSingers #Prince #RyuichiSakamoto #StVincent #Swans #TalkingHeads #ThorHarris
Sim Barr
jon zellweger
Exposé Online
Pieter
1001 Other Albums
sebastian büttrich