taped together

We (@melex & @brainpicker) love music. And we believe crowdsourcing and content curation are two of today's most powerful cultural propellers – seeming opposites with an even more powerful intersection. To prove the point, last winter we asked 31 interesting people we knew to each curate one season-inspired song for every day of December, then released the crowdsourced seasonal playlist as a holiday mixtape on December 31.

Thanks to a terrific response, we've decided to come back with Volume 2, crowdsourcing a summer playlist for 2010. For each day between June 1 and June 22, the Summer Solstice, we're once again asking a different interesting person we know to curate a summer-inspired song. On June 22, we'll release the playlist as a free download.

It's been another great season of collaborative playlist-making – thank you for joining us in it. As promised, here's the mixtape for you to download – enjoy by the beach or on a hot summer party night. Mojito optional but highly recommended.

Posted on Thursday, 24 December 2009

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december 24

Rotary Connection – Peace At Least

Today’s track is curated by @malbonnington / Ben Malbon, co-founder of BBH Labs

“Peace at Least” is an extraordinary, uplifting and just plain funny Christmas track.

It’s one of thirteen tracks on the Christmas concept LP ‘Peace’, by Rotary Connection, the psychedelic soul band formed in Chicago in 1966, with the dazzling Minnie Riperton at the centre. I could wax on until next Christmas as to why Rotary Connection are one of the best bands of all time, about how unearthly Minnie Riperton’s five octave vocal range was, how flawlessly tight and complete Charles Stepney’s arrangements were, and how they influenced everyone from Earth, Wind & Fire to The Orb to hip hop. But I’ll stick to “Peace at Least” for now.

‘Peace’ was released at the height of the Vietnam War in 1968. This is tangible throughout the LP (never more than on “Christmas Love”), but you sense it clearly on “Peace at Least”. It mixes classic Rotary Connection big band sounds and swirling arrangements, with a story about Santa smoking ‘mistletoe’.

Why does Santa come down the chimney?

If he were cool he would come through the door

But I know why, the kid is high

Look at him

He’s stoned, he’s stoned out of his mind

Oh he smokes mistletoe

… and so on. “Peace at Least” (often mistakenly labeled as “Peace at Last”) is unrestrained and full of mischief, but I also think it captures the idealism and love that was bubbling through parts of American culture in the late-60s as many Americans struggled to come to terms with what was happening in South East Asia. The LP was hugely controversial at the time, with many record stores refusing to stock it. And in fact the cover art became the basis for a famous issue of Billboard magazine in which a bloodied Santa was superimposed upon a Vietnam battlefield. It’s one of those LPs that works sensationally well as an LP listened to in its entirety, capturing the spirit of a very different America of 40 years ago.

For anyone interested in experimenting with Rotary Connection more fully, try the double LP (originally two separate LPs), Songs / Hey Love.

Peace.

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