Au Moroc
Yancey found himself with some extra time and suggested we take a weekend trip. Neither of us had ever been to Morocco, or the African contintent for that matter, so it was decided Morocco would be our destination.
Yancey set the plan: Thursday and Sunday in Marrakech, Friday and Saturday at the coast. With a rental car drive and many hours in a hotel together in our future my thoughts turned to the soundtrack. You may know Yancey via mutiple profiles in the FT but I know Yancey as a music fan and former music writer, so I knew this would be a sonically gratifying weekend regardless the location or weather.
In 1993 Mark Thompson and I drove through five midwestern states in three days. We fell in Lake Michigan and bowled in our underwear while our clothes were drying at the laundromat, were escorted out of the state of Wisconsin by the police, had our photo taken on a couch in Davenport, Iowa, and threw snowballs at Chicago city buses after the Girls Against Boys show at The Metro. We also stuck to a strict rule set by Mark: “Hey do you want to go on a road trip this weekend? OK, no need to bring a change of clothes and we each bring only one album on one cassette tape.” Roughly fifty hours in a car over three days and TWO albums. Mark brought Rocket From The Crypt’s “Circa Now”. I contributed Souls of Mischief’s “93 to Infinity”. Good choices, even with the benefit of hindsight. I still listen to both of those albums and when I do I always think of that fun weekend with Mark.
So I set a similar rule for our four days together in Morocco: We can each make one playlist 60 minutes in length. That’s the only thing we can listen to all weekend.
So I’m typing this to you from a hotel room in Marrakech while on the 20th or so listen to the same 30 songs. And it still sounds good. What playlist could do that?! This one:
From my Apple Music account (complete): https://itunes.apple.com/fr/playlist/en-moroc/idpl.u-vxy6WGXTzBevWp7?l=en
From Yancey’s Spotify account (missing Mos Def and Torche — wtf?): https://open.spotify.com/user/yancey/playlist/65ALjvYDyCf6iBvy7EfFpA
Big ups to the one and only Yancey Strickler for making this weekend happen. Thanks to Jamie Kim for lending him to me for the weekend. Let’s do it again, but with Hogarth and three hours of music.
