Any Major Dude With Half A Heart

HAPPY NEW YEAR! May this new year see the end of this damn pandemic — it was good only for my Any Major Pandemic mix — and may your 2022 be filled with undiluted happiness and uncompromisingly good health!

As every year, the mixes of the past year (excluding the In Memoriams and Christmas mixes) are revisited by the choice of one favourite song from them — like an annual Greatest Hits of Any Major Dude. I hope it is useful to provide a link to the relevant mix in the playlist, so that you might discover a compilation here or there which you might have missed. If you still need to catch up with the mixes of 2020, they are reviewed in Vol. 1 and Vol. 2 (this series goes back to 2015).

I haven’t bothered to measure which mixes were the most popular, but the two Beatles in French mixes (Vol. 1 and Vol. 2) attracted great feedback. Maurice Chevalier doing Yellow Submarine was something of a revelation. There will be more Beatles in foreign languages collections coming up.

The one series I had hoped would get some feedback was the countdown of the Top 75 pop acts, according to myself and Rolling Stone. Did everybody just think, “Yeah, Any Major Dude got all placings spot on”? Surely not.

I had the biggest fun with this year’s Not Feeling Guilty mix, the 11th in the series of soft-rock and AOR numbers from the 1970s and early ’80s. All featured artists had names you might find in a teachers’ register, so I had some fun making a “Our Teachers” gallery for the Any Major Dude High yearbook 1979/80, with Mr D. O’Day as the principal (see it here).

And which mixes have I personally played the most? Well, I had Any Major Hits from 1971 from May on frequent rotation (as I still had the Hits from 1970 installment from 2020). Don’t be surprised if there are not one but two follow-ups covering 1972. The 1961 version on this theme was really enjoyable as well. The Jimmy Webb, Neil Diamond and Barry Gibb Songbooks also had plenty of spins (as is currently the set of Carole King songs, which will drop in February). And for a while I played little else but the mix of tracks from Blaxploitation movies.

Part 2 of this collection follows later. So, which mixes did you enjoy last year?For your convenience and future reference, these CD-R length mixes include the text above and links below in an illustrated PDF.

1. Lemonheads – It’s A Shame About Ray (1992)
Any Major ABC of the 1990s

2. Manic Street Preachers – If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next (1998)
Any Major Dude Kills Fascism

3. The Jesus and Mary Chain – Darklands (1987)
Life In Vinyl 1987 Vol. 2

4. Turley Richards – You Might Need Somebody (1979)
Any Major Originals – Soul Edition Vol. 2

5. Alan O’Day – Undercover Angel (1977)
Not Feeling Guilty Mix Vol. 11

6. Hamilton, Joe Frank & Reynolds – Don’t Pull Your Love (1971)
Any Major Hits from 1971

7. Dusty Springfield – Magic Garden (1968)
Jimmy Webb Songbook Vol. 3

8. Joy – Paradise Road (1980)
Any Major ABC of South Africa

9. Earth, Wind & Fire – Devotion (1975)
Any Major Live Festival – Soul Vol. 1

10. Richard ‘Dimples’ Fields feat. Betty Wright – She’s Got Papers On Me (1981)
Any Major Soul 1981

11. Prince – A Case Of You (2007)
Joni Mitchell’s Blue Recovered

12. Marlena Shaw – So Far Away (1972)
Carole King’s Tapestry Recovered

13. P.P. Arnold – Bury Me Down By The River (1969)
Barry Gibb Songbook Vol. 1

14. Grateful Dead – Ripple (1970)
Any Major Top 75 Acts (57-75)

15. Judee Sill – The Lamb Ran Away With The Crown (1971)
Any Major Albums of 1971 – Vol. 1

16. Simon & Garfunkel – America (1968)
Any Major Top 75 Acts (1-17)

17. Cisco Houston – The Killers (1968)
Any Major Murder Songs Vol. 3

18. Michèle Torr – Et le l’aime (1965)
Any Major Beatles in French Vol. 1

19. Mocedades – Eres Tu (1973)
Any Major Eurovision

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