Like most sane people, I organize my CDs and LPs alphabetically by artist, regardless of genre. This sometimes puts two very different artists right next to each other, and I sometimes wonder what the artists would say about each other if made aware of this phenomenon (and if they were, of course, still alive).
Some of my favorite pairings:
What are your favorite music collection pairings?
John Denver / (Eumir) Deodato
Probably the oddest combination is “Gunfighter Ballads and Trail Songs” by Marty Robbins, followed by “12 x 5” by the Rolling Stones. Right before Marty is an LP by Bonnie Raitt. She probably dug them both.
Been thinking of starting a thread on this for a while!
Canned Heat → Cat Stevens
Deep Purple → Devo
Donna Summer → The Doors
Iron Butterfly → Jackson Browne
The Kinks → Kraftwerk → Led Zeppelin
Pink Floyd → The Police
Radio Birdman → Randy Newman → Red Hot Chili Peppers
Van der Graaf Generator - Van Morrison → Wishbone Ash
By default iTunes organises solo artists by first name/last name, never bothered to make it last/first which I’d actually prefer.
I feel the same way about my first pair. Patsy Cline would only have been in her 40s when the Clash hit and I think she might have been feisty enough to embrace the punk movement. By the same token I’ll be shocked if Mick Jones isn’t a Cline fan.
I’m sure I have some funny pairings in my collection, but I’d have to skim my shelves to find them. A rather cool sequence is Beach Boys-Beastie Boys-Beatles.
I gave up on alphabetizing (originally, it was even thornier… organized by sub-genre: “Are the Buckinghams ‘British Invasion’ even though they were from Chicago?”) but even switching to A-Z, I had serious moral conundrums.
Like Jethro Tull is a person’s name, so goes under T, but it’s the name of a band, so J. But my friends all say ‘Got any Tull?’ and now I think of them that way…
So now my LPs are In Order of How Long Ago I Played Them. But I still get odd pairings, like Sinatra between Led Zeppelin and early Deep Purple.
I have all my stuff digitized for everyday use, and a bunch of it is digital only, so the alphabetized list I have readily available would be the result of Windows sorting artist folders, with first name first and everyone starting with “The” all grouped together. That said, I have these:
Bill Hicks > Bill Monroe and His Bluegrass Boys > Bill Nelson’s Red Noise
Duran Duran > Dweezil Zappa > Dylan and the Dead
Larkin Poe > Last Exit
Material > Maurice Ravel > Mavis Staples
Talking Heads > Tampa Red > Tangerine Dream
A few incongruous alphabetical neighbors in my iTunes library:
ABBA + AC/DC
Ace Frehley + Ace of Base
Clannad + (The) Clash
Dio + Dion
Electric Light Orchestra + Elmer Bernstein*
House of Pain + Howard Jones
INXS + Israel Kamakawiwo’ole
Judas Priest + Juice Newton
Partridge Family + Pat Benatar
Saga + Salt-N-Pepa + Sam Cooke
Scissor Sisters + Scorpions
Vince Guaraldi + Violent Femmes
*- He’s in there because I have the soundtrack to The Magnificent Seven
Alphabetizing by first names, while completely wrong*, does add a new dimension to this exercise. ELO and Elmer!
*I understand that platforms default to it, but it makes my brain hurt.
Massive Attack - Paul McCartney - Metallica
Marianne Faithfull - The Fall - Fatboy Slim
Bryan Ferry - Florence + The Machine - The Flying Burrito Brothers - Funkadelic - Peter Gabriel
Grant Hart - Hawkwind - Herman’s Hermits
Richard and Linda Thompson - Throbbing Gristle - The Timelords
I have pretty catholic tastes.
In the A’s
ABBA, AC/DC. Somebody already mentioned that one. It’s probably common.
Alanis Morissette, Alice Cooper
Andrea Bocelli, Andy Gibb, Andy Williams, Anita Baker.