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A Primo Playlist for the Upcoming Apocalypse
Charge up your batteries
Look, we all know it’s coming. Might be ten, twenty years from now, might be next Tuesday. It’s a topsy-turvy self-inflicted fatal wound we clever clogs have laid out unless something amazing happens, like aliens or, ya know, common sense oligarchy dictator toppling in a western civilization that ate itself.
Tech is ever-evolving, but it also will be the first thing to go when the lights go out, proverbially and literally.
I want to think that bartering and passing mixtapes around might become a small source of joy in amongst the wild west hellscape that awaits. People always seek out pleasure, even when the chips are down.
Head down to your local record shop. Bypass the records unless you have a victrola. Head straight to the CDs and cassettes. Yes, cassettes are back, quasi-ironically, but it is better than nothing.
Get over to your local thrift store, uncle’s basement, or yard sale. Hoard all that pesky physical media, and stock up on those batteries, too.
Not many doomsday film portraits focus on music, so we need to make this stuff up as we go? I suppose Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome had Tina Turner, but no sane person would listen to “We Don’t Need Another Hero” over “Proud Mary” or “River Deep”. Not that many of us will be sane, so who knows.
Here are some tunes that would be appropriate and a good time. Speaking of which:
What’s the point of life without dance, and yes, disco. The best to ever do it, Nile Rogers and Chic. I would be inclined to add in (Rogers produced) Diana Ross’s “I’m Coming Out” as well. But “Good Times” out of context makes roller skates sound like a very important part of said good times, and it would be fun to see the future people take that literally.
On a similar note, I am including this timeless classic: