Doin' the Friday Shuffle

1. "Gloria - Jimi Hendrix - The Essential Jimi Hendrix
Jimi takes the sex inherent in the original and adds some swagger and funk.

2. "Cherry Bomb" - John Mellencamp - The Lonesome Jubilee
A plain-sung and cheery song about nostalgia that acknowledges the falseness in glorifying the past. Very sweet. Sidenote: For the longest time I though the line "That's when a sport was a sport" was "That's when a spook was a spook," and I would go through severe mental gyrations in trying to figure out a way to read the line that didn't make Mellencamp a racist.

3. "Tense" - Clint Mansell - Requiem from a Dream (Soundtrack)
37 second snippet of dissonant sound from the score.

4. "At the Beach (Mourning)" - Michael Giaccone - Lost (Score)
Ripped from the Season One DVD. The lack of a Lost score CD astounds me - with all of the marketing and ancillary books and magazines this show has spawned, why no CD? This track is my second-favorite musical moment in Season One; it's the music played as Claire returns to the beach with her baby and as Jack returns to the beach with news of Boone's death. The simplest of melodies, but so wonderfully developed and played.

5. "Scatterbrain (As Dead as He Leaves)" - Radiohead - Hail to the Thief
One of the album's more "traditional" songs, a pretty, mellow song with a cool drum line and lots of plaintive triplets.

6. "The Other Woman" - Nina Simone - The Best of Nina Simone
Gorgeous, and gorgeously sad. One of the true great singers.

7. "Afternoon on a Hill" - Ricky Ian Gordon - Bright Eyed Joy
Hopeful art song sung to just piano accompaniment.

8. "Don't Get Around Much Anymore" - Harry Connick, Jr. - When Harry Met Sally (Soundtrack)
Connick does a nice job with these songs, giving them a real playful, almost winking edge that never trips the line into camp.

9. "Electioneering" - Radiohead - OK Computer
Radiohead does (relatively) hard rock. Solid song.

10. "Illegal I Song" - Velvet Revolver - Contraband
Real hard rock. I got this hoping some of that Guns 'N Roses magic would have translated, but alas, was not to be. It's not bad, but nothing really special going on here.

Until Whenever