Beach Playlist: First Break

Michael Zwiebach on June 20, 2013

Beach days are here, even in Northern California. And with it arrives the first of our beach playlists. Imagine you get to the beach, set up, maybe have a swim. Now you head back to the blanket and put on the headphones, and gradually you start to feel … mellow and relaxed. This playlist follows that progression.

  1. Allegro vivace (movement 1) from Symphony No. 4 (“Italian,” Mendelssohn); Vienna Philharmonic, Sir John Eliot Gardiner conductor.
  2. “Perpetuum Mobile,” Penguin Club Orchestra.
    It’s been featured in an ad campaign, but it’s still great beach listening.
  3. “Song for a Young Queen” (from the album Not All Who Wander Are Lost); Chris Thile.
    One of the great instrumentalists of our day.
  4. Bolero (Maurice Ravel); Pink Martini
    Ever wish that Ravel’s Bolero was eight minutes shorter? Thank you, Pink Martini, this is just enough.
  5. “Promenade (Walking the Dog)” (Gershwin); Los Angeles Philharmonic.
    Great short instrumental from the Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers movie musical Shall We Dance.
  6. “Hello, My Baby” (Joseph E. Howard/ Ida Emerson), Phish.
    On their concert album, The Clifford Ball, the band Phish does a credible barbershop rendition of this 1899 Tin Pan Alley classic.
  7. “Bouncing Around the Room” (from the album Lawn Boy), Phish.
    And on to one of Phish’s own classics.
  8. “Magdalena” (from the album O’o), John Zorn.
    And we end with a track from the unclassifiable John Zorn.