Doin' the Friday Shuffle

Click. Bang!

1. "Under Your White Stars" - Mandy Patinkin - Mamaloshen
A delicate ballad from Patinkin's all-Yiddish album.

2. "The Gloria from the Mass of St. Bernard" - Chuck Mangione - Land of Make Believe
I get the feeling that Mangione's brand of melodic, big, full jazz sound is considered a bit cheesy, but I love it. This combination of swinging' jazz and choral odes to God is an odd mix, but one that works for me.

3. "Mad World" - Tears for Fears - Tears Roll Down (Greatest Hits)
The original, not the big UK X-Mas hit of a few years back.

4. "November 22, 1963" - John Weidman - Assassins (Original Cast Recording)
The original cast CD of Sondheim's Assassins featured this full-length scene from the play in its entirety. It's a riveting, theatrically imaginative scene, in which John Wilkes Booth magically appears in the Texas Book Depository and convinces Lee Harvey Oswald to assassinate Kennedy. Creepy, chilling stuff. I used an edited version of this for my standard audition monologue in college.

5. "Lucky Town" - Bruce Springsteen - The Essential Bruce Springsteen
Not one of my favorites, but in truth it's not a bad rock song.

6. "How Long Has this Been Going On?" - Elvis Costello - Kojak Variety
Elvis does standards better, and more often, than any other rock singer I can think of.

7. "Like Spinning Plates" - Radiohead - I Might Be Wrong (Live Recordings)
I love this live rendition of the Radiohead song, it's a somber, dark read on the song, with a lovely piano accompaniment running through.

8. "Love Is Everything" - K.D. Lang - Hymns of the 49th Parallel
Gorgeous cover of the Jane Siberry ballad (I've never heard the original).

9. "Swimming in Your Ocean" - Crash Test Dummies - God Shuffled His Feet
Whatever you think of this band, the album title is just great.

10. "So" - Tracy Chapman - Matters of the Heart
Chapman's most underrated album. This is an urgent song with some interesting percussion in the background giving it a real drive, making up for (mostly) the overstated lyrics ("So you made a little money/Off of someone else's sweat/Watching people starve/While you got fat, while you got fat")

Until Whenever