Monterey road trip - a spotify playlist review

hampton.armani | June 27, 2021, 11:51 p.m.

welcome back to one of our fan favorite recurring segments, spotify playlist reviews, brought to you by queuesome dot com. For those of you who are new here, the concept of the segment is pretty simple so I'm not going to explain it.

The spoti playlist of interest (spoi) today is no other than monterey road trip, a 21 hr and 46 minutes, knock your shades off, musical cornucopia that has vibes for days (but technically less than a day). It has everything you need in a playlist and more.

Besides the title, the most important aspect of a playlist is the artwork. There are many avenues people can take choosing the artwork. Some upload their own cover artwork while others go the route of using spotify's default of having the first four track's album artwork (so not many, there's only two. Just 2 avenues). To each his own for whatever road they take but I always give props to those that go with the latter method (not to be confused with the ladder method, future blog on this is TBD). If done right, it's a great way up front to give onlookers a quick mount Rushmore of your playlist and what's to be expected if you do the shuffle (another playlist for another day).

With Monterey road trip, you know you're in for the good stuff. The Top left album on the artwork starts out strong with Tom Petty, greatest hits. And then the top right, you better believe it...it's more Tommy P, more petty, more heartbreakers, no problem. Can it be a bad move to go same artist back-to-back in the beginning? Does it weaken the sell when you're scrolling by, looking at the playlist artwork? The answer, yep. That is only unless its back to back Tom Petty and the mf Heartbreakers, then you my friend are extremely wrong, dead...wrong.

On to the bottom left...is it Petty again? Obviously not, because if that were the case, then the playlist would have over 100k followers on spotify and would be way too mainstream for this review. No, the bottom left goes to the Temptations. This playlist is already showing to have some range and isn’t just going to be the rock hits that you read about listening to on the radio back in the 60s 70s and 80s.

Following up the tail end of the graphic is no other then Weezer blue album, a smelling salt to the forehead, screaming that this playlist has no rules and that the only theme across the board is going to be good vibes, good times, and Petty. A homely chaotic home which everyone is invited to attend, especially the sounds of Tom Petty (RIP).

So, we covered the name (we didn't? Well, it's a good name. Obviously, it was going to have monterey in the title, because that was the word I used when searching for a random playlist to review) and we covered the cover (the art that is) so what about the crux of it, what about the meat, what about the medley of tracks making up this musical data structure? Just scrolling through, you’ll soon come to realize that the theme presupposed by the first four album covers you saw tracks, and it tracks hard.

From rock to classic rock to soft rock to pop rock to yacht rock to punk rock to let's rock, from the soul of joel to the man hands of jam bands, from crosby stills nash and young to crosby stills and nash, this playlist has the fuel to get the grill and morale of your entire cookout going, even if your brother in law notoriously hates the Cure. And sure you got your outliers, your evil yet necessary taste breakers that bring the chaos together. The chi peps and sublime are none the less an uber supplement to the talking heads backed with Phish’s Gotta Jiboo. And probably the most and least surprising fact of it all is the only Who song on the whole playlist is squeeze box.

Overall, you achieve the perfect kutosis of submitting to the hypnotic combination of the Doors, jackson browne and bachman-turner overdrive. Whether it be huey lewis, steve miller band or rusted root, the difference in the ointment is the mesh of the early aughties vibes contained by OAR and Slightly Stoopid that complement and resonate with the legend of Bob Marley and the Whalers.

It’s the tunes you want to hear at your local grill and chill that your dairy queen never had the balls to play. It’s a white tee on a Sunday that has no right to enjoy a beautiful and ancestral harmony of everything fluent and libatious (if not a word, it should be) of Jimmy buffet and Ween. It emulates the dissidence of a way too early thanksgiving dinner mood mixed with the joyful depression derived from the fireworks and pecan pie of a 4th of july barbeque.

And if we truly wanted to be that guy, we could get into the bottom of the playlist that involves the hits of 2Pac , Warren G and select tracks of Snoop Dogg and relegate sanctimonious cases that the recurring motifs of the playlists are broken and betrayed. But it wouldn’t be necessary, because those aforementioned tracks are necessary. The playlist is a terraformed microcosm that elevates the human soul and mitigates the human condition to a single principle that not only enlightens but deceives the homeosaepic (should also be a word) mentality to believe in much more than it ever could. The fact of the matter is that Tom Petty had bangers and really every playlist should be considered lesser if it does not start off back-to-back with two songs from Tom Petty and the Heart Breakers from two distinct albums.

If you wanna check out the playlist or just show the creator, Nolan W. Lamb, some love, you can check out and follow the playlist here

End of Blog Post 2