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Matt Welch

18 Jan, 9 tweets, 13 min read

Let’s put more things in the world, says I. So without further ado, here’s the best first-draft playlist I could rummage from music that was first revealed in December 1989. Two mega-hits, followed by weird instrumentals, alt-stuff, topped by epic metal.
open.spotify.com/playlist/67BIx…

Thus ends Phase 1 of this collaborative Twitter exercise, in which you, the big people, helped me go month by month through that revolutionary political and musical year, making playlists, and learning a bunch of stuff. Thank you! Raw material for great editorial content to come.

https://twitter.com/MattWelch/status/1348021082700316676

Past lists can be found working backward through the thread announcing the November 1989 list.

https://twitter.com/MattWelch/status/1348021082700316676

What to say about the December 1989 collection? The Sun Ra record “Blue Delight” is terrific. The Peter Murphy song is growing on me. Couldn’t not include the rap hits. And there’s some Gen X genetic-destiny thing that makes Grant Hart just hook his way into my nethers.

From here I will go through a lot of stranded 1989 records whose dates are hard to ascertain, see if I’ve missed a noteworthy song or three. The most important additions—please help!—will be international, non-English-speaking-country releases, especially from commie-land.

@wethefifth

Those I’ll sprinkle into the existing lists. After which I’ll carve out some new ’89 collection based on theme/genre. By then we’ll be ready to cook up a dynamite, limited-run podcast series for @wethefifth subscribers. Watch this space for announcements.

@AdrianOHara

In the meantime, and with your patience, final thank-yous:
@AdrianOHara
@JoshuaBresnahan
@BryanBowling10
@RichSklar
@CultGoesPop
@GenWillJ
@kphpe
@LibertyMask
@mchastain81
@bfmva7xsp
@T_ocean16
@ShadeGrown78
@jtropey
@chainsawbabytif
@KeithMcLachlan2
@vin_jc
@GlennWiens
@busblog

@iambradk

(cont.)
@iambradk
@HefferonJoe
@BalkansBohemia
@E_flat_Minor
@ian_pudding
@damosuzuki1
@wildthangjim
@mbstra
@Poliscisamurai
@skr00013
@JohnnyOldfield5
@mpp75214
@cneallacroix
@OldStyleChiTown
@m0unds
@GuytheGypsy
@TheRealRedEd
@harbage6179
@cgeary44
@mdrache
@DarnFloor

@NHL_Mencken

more:
@NHL_Mencken
@T_francis_yeah
@mottethebailey
@DarthCarolina
@fjs_ig
@HFPeroni
@mrfarden
@justgeorgeaz
@JolieJambes
@kaline
@phroggggggg
@MikeHylandMusic
@iStackWisecrack
@TarakNL
@ajwink
@bluskabucknut
@xoundmind
/fin

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More from @MattWelch

Matt Welch

@MattWelch

9 Jan

OK, we could all use a pointless distraction, so:

Here’s my playlist composed of notable musicks that were first released in November 1989. From Morrissey to Crispin Glover, Robert Earl Keen to Queen Latifah, and just so, so much punk rock. [1/x]
open.spotify.com/playlist/1BjVM…

@dougiegyro

To recap, I’ve been marching through each month of that revolutionary and musically interesting year. Will become a podcast series soon.

You can hear me talking about it while spinning discs w/ my old pal @dougiegyro on Prague’s legendary Radio 1:
mixcloud.com/douglasa/radio…

Short samling from the stuff I’ve written about 1989, and about its musical connections:
* reason.com/2009/10/12/the…
* reason.com/2011/12/18/kee…
* reason.com/2013/10/27/how…

Read 11 tweets

Matt Welch

@MattWelch

8 Jan

@RepMeijer

Some quotes from my interview yesterday with @RepMeijer, the young anti-war vet and Republican who succeeded @justinamash in Congress. reason.com/2021/01/08/ama…

"Some of my colleagues in Congress, they share responsibility for that. Many of them were fundraising off of this Stop the Steal grift. I don't understand how you can look in the mirror and go to sleep at night without that weighing on your conscience, I fundamentally do not.”

“I'm just at a loss for words about how some of them have acted in ways that are just knowingly, provably false. And they *know* they're lying, too."

Read 6 tweets

Matt Welch

@MattWelch

8 Jan

@wethefifth

Almost tried to tell this whimsical dream/music/childrearing story on the last @wethefifth Patreon episode, but it was too boring and I was too, ah, sleepy. But! That’s why we have Twitter. So, here’s how @KenLayne unknowingly turned my 5-year-old into a @JasonIsbell fan.

Do you know how your dream-brain has weird augmented/invented geographies that you keep coming back to? And also, how you keep some musical acts at bay that you just KNOW you will eventually like once you actually listen to them? So these intersected for me a few nights back.

@KenLayne

Through no fault of his own, one of the places my dream-brain keeps returning me to is this very nice, Sunset-magazine style 2-story, Sedona-looking flagstone-and-big-windows place in a flat empty desert that @KenLayne supposedly lives in. (He has never lived in any such house.)

Read 14 tweets

Matt Welch

@MattWelch

18 Nov 20

@KennedyNation

"We’re in the Viking Funeral phase of the Trump presidency right now," I said on @KennedyNation's program Nov. 5. "You have his sons out there trying to...enforce message discipline on wayward Nikki Haleys of the world for being insufficiently insane.." 1/ finance.yahoo.com/video/trumps-c…

@wethefifth

I usually don't talk like this, least not sober and in non-@wethefifth venues. But the self-beclowning of the GOP in the face of a conspiracy theorist president talking and acting nonsense these past weeks has been spectacular, and worth saddling onto the enablers.

More from Nov. 5: "And we tend to look away, because it gets tiresome, but the president today in his speech; that is not the speech of an adult. And he’s going to be doing this the next several weeks as they challenge—and I think increasingly, like today, lose—in court."

Read 8 tweets

Matt Welch

@MattWelch

17 Nov 20

Stuck on this sentence:

"Publishers and media scholars said that while these gifts provide a measure of financial stability, they can also cost an outlet its editorial independence — or the perception of independence."

nytimes.com/2020/11/17/us/…

Like, the history of organizing political opinion publications as nonprofits, or money-losing playthings of the rich, is not some odd or newfangled phenomenon, requiring a team of outside forensic scientists to decipher (and cast aspersions on).

reason.com/2012/03/12/fac…

Cultural/political/media nonprofits are hatched every day, and have been with us for many scores of years. The key is how they are organized--the Mission, the governance structure of the Board, the funding streams & diversity thereof. These aren't secrets.
reason.com/2014/12/05/don…

Read 4 tweets

Matt Welch

@MattWelch

29 Aug 20

In July 1989, the best new movie, album, and song all hailed from, and took as subject matter, the great, tumultuous, fascinating, and super-violent (in 2020 standards) city of New York. Come with me on a journey of rambunctious music released that month. open.spotify.com/playlist/1mzGM…

There’s cop violence, black consciousness, hypocritical preachers, rising anti-Semitism, radical Islam, CIA plots, some occasional hippie counter-programming, and civilizational collapse. In other words, July 1989 is pretty interesting to listen to in August 2020.