Every Friday night, RVA Mag brings you a truly fantabulous playlist curated by Virginia’s most influential artists, musicians, and institutions.
This time around, it’s a follow-up to last week’s 100th playlist, in which we celebrated with 100 currently active Richmond bands. We’d originally planned to combine that playlist with the idea behind this one — a history of Richmond’s music scene over the past 60 or so years — but we got so far beyond the 100-song idea that we just split them into two.
So here’s the other half, which starts in the mid-60s with some garage rock, moves up through jazz, funk, early punk, the coming of hardcore, the postpunk 80s, the pop-punk early 90s, Richmond hardcore’s move toward world domination, the post-Y2K indie revolution, the city’s huge doom phase of about a decade ago, and a lot more that doesn’t neatly fit into a linear narrative.
This playlist is arranged more by chronology than sound, so if it jumps all over the place with lightning speed, please understand. Also, don’t get too upset if your favorite Richmond band of all time isn’t here — a lot of local music, especially stuff that was recorded in the pre-internet era, has never made it to Spotify at all. We’re just as bummed by this playlist’s lack of White Cross, Death Piggy, Superfriends, Fudge, and Single Bullet Theory (among many others) as you are. But there are still over 75 songs here for you to delve into, and you’re guaranteed to find an excellent bit of local music history that you never knew existed — if not several.
Study well, Virginia.
Open this playlist from mobile in your Spotify app HERE.
Top Photo: E. Broad St. at 7th, July 1960. By Adolph B. Rice, via Library of Virginia/Flickr
