The Friday Five

It's a take on one of our favorite social networking games, where you do any variation of things to do with reporting the results of hitting shuffle on your iPod.  I see some of the people I follow on Twitter often do a Song of the Day, so this kind of blends the two together.  Hence:  The Friday Five.

I'll hit the shuffle for five songs and write a little blurb about each.  Today, I'm using my iPhone for the task which has a limited number of songs on it compared to my iPod at home.  So, we're only going to be able to sample from 2327 tracks today.....

1. Icky Thump (Live) - The White Stripes, Under Great White Northern Lights
This is a terrific live album, taken exclusively from their famed Canadian tour in which they played every province and territory.  I remember vividly how excited I was to see them play at the Shaw Conference Centre, which hosts a small crowd of maybe 2000 ppl. or so.  I was super pumped!  Then I got the news that I was obliged to go with my wife and in-laws on a trip to a wedding in Hudson Hope, B.C. for one of my sister-in-law's friends.  Are you frickin' kidding me?  Now I'm divorced and even more bitter that I had to miss the show!

2. The Righteous & The Wicked - Red Hot Chili Peppers, Blood Sugar Sex Magik

A couple of summers ago I went on one of the most fun little vacations of my life; my pal, Lorezo and I went for a boys trip to the Okanagan for 10 days.  We took his boat, pitched our tent in a campground across the street from the marina in Penticton and lived like kings.  We would drop the boat in the lake at 8am every day, dive in for our morning cleanse, then float, drift and drive our little yellow speedboat around the lake until about 6:30pm when we got out, got dressed and went for dinner at Salty's for some killer cuisine.  It was 30 degrees every day and we were just completely living "beached out" the whole time.  Whether boating around in Skaha Lake or just laying there in the sun, this Chili Peppers album was one of only about 5 CD's that we had in the boat and rotated through constantly. Whenever I hear this band, all I can think of is the summer I spent on the lake in the boat with Lar.

3. Wedge - Phish, Rift
Back in the mid 90's, a buddy was telling me about Phish and trying to get me into them.  Although I always thought they were okay, I never really sat down and gave them the good, hard listen they deserved until many years later.  Now, I list Phish as probably my favorite band.  Anyway, "Rift" is the album my friend had lent me back then, so the first album I've ever heard of theirs.  This particular song was the easiest one to recognize later in life when I became a fan and tried to remember what album it was I had heard before.  I remember that line being so catchy; Take the highway through the Great Divide.....

4. Seek Up - Dave Matthews Band, Live at Red Rocks 8.15.95
This album was actually the first live release from DMB...a trend that became their bread and butter.  To date, the band has released 15 live albums, compared to 7 studio albums.  But that's the appeal of this band, seeing them live.  As I mentioned in a previous posting, I'm going to see them in just a couple of weeks at the Gorge in Washington.  "Seek Up" is the first song on disc number one of this album and is one of my favorites.  This particular version is a smoker that clocks in at 13:29...the longest track on the album.

5. An Echo, A Stain - Bjork, Vespertine

I love Bjork!  God, everything about her; her musical artistry, her visual artistry...just the way she sees and interprets the world.  Not to mention she's definitely on my top list of gorgeous women!  We should all be so lucky as to open up and enjoy who is one of most rare kind of people amongst out current pop culture...just a true artist.  This album was defined by it's "microbeats".  She created soundscapes from an array of sampled objects and is considered an intimate album.  A quote from Bjork, "I was bored of big beats.  This is more electronic folk music, music for the home. It's corny to make a soundtrack for making a sandwich, but I quite like it. For so long I wanted to whisper. It was a watercolour as opposed to an oil."  An Echo, A Stain is a quiet song that builds to a strong finish.