The Street-Legal Lists
by Josh Builder and Matt Krefting

We have an old practice of making mixes for each other by choosing a common closing track and working toward whatever that track is. During a conversation regarding the career of Bob Dylan, the notion arose that it would be possible (exciting, even) to craft a series of Dylan playlists using the songs from his 1978 album Street-Legal as endpoints. Thus the idea was born to create these lists, which we shared with one another as we went. The first list ended with “Changing of the Guards,” the second with “New Pony,” and so on. The mixes had to be approximately the length of an LP. Any track featuring Dylan performing was fair game for inclusion, but once a performance of a song was used by one of us, that recording was no longer admissible going forward. The rules were simple, the field of play vast, and the results, which we now present, were as surprising as their source.