Last month, I learned that I would be spending around 10 minutes, 5 days a week, on a radiation table. What I didn’t know until later was that the technicians can play music for you while you’re alone in the room. As per usual, my brain wanted to gamify this opportunity a bit, so I decided to compose a list of the musicians that I love — 35 of them, one to listen to during each day of treatment.
Every Monday, I go into treatment with an index card that has the five artists I want to hear that week, each assigned to a day. My favorite tech Shavonna (who has colluded with me in logging my Spotify account into the treatment room’s computer so that I don’t have to listen to any ads) has music queued up when I come into the room, and I get to enjoy something nice for 10-15 mins while I experience something that isn’t that nice.
I’m not burdening myself with a high stakes, “High Fidelity”-style, “Top 35 Best MusicalActs of All Time” task. I’m just choosing artists who are meaningful to me right now: some who have been important across my entire life, and some that are new to me.
The staples, like the forever, desert-island, can’t-live-withouts will be showing up in there: The Clash, Nina Simone, A Tribe Called Quest, Talking Heads, Bob Marley and the Wailers, and Tracy Chapman, and John Coltrane.
But I’m always wanting to learn and know what’s new. It would be really disappointing to me to end up the kind of music fan who has been listening to the same stuff for two decades. I get that some of us feel comfortable in that space, and you should embrace it for sure. But, for me, music and film are these constantly evolving experiments in creativity, and I like to be surprised, embraced, even shocked by something new.
To that end you’ll see my new favorites whom I’ve picked up over the last several years: Jean Dawson, Royel Otis, Bad Nerves, Kota the Friend, Pup, and Black Pistol Fire.
Here’s my treatment playlist, that I’ll be updating once a week, with two songs (not necessarily their “best”, but ones that are speaking to me right now) from each artist. I hope you enjoy! Clicking on it should open it and let you listen to it whether you’re a Spotify member or not (but let me know if it doesn’t).
Remarkably, as I was drafting this post, the bandlist for Shaky Knees 2025, Atlanta’s biggest music festival, dropped on the web. I’ve been going to this three day festival for ten years, and I appreciate its ability to introduce me to new artists (I usually skip the headliners). So, now I’ve got another collection of playlists to make of all of those bands to prepare for September!
