Friday Five : |ˈfrÄ«dÄ – fÄ«v| : On the sixth day of every week, I hit the shuffle button in iTunes and share the first five tracks and thought for each track. Sometimes there is a playlist involved, occasionally we’ll have a guest, but most of the time it’s just me. The rest is up to you, our friends and readers! Fire up the media player of your choice and share the first five random track of your shuffle in the comments.
The Five:
“The Creeper” by Pelican (from What We All Come to Need, 2009)
What better way to kick off a Friday Five than some atmospheric, instrumental, post-metal!(?) Featuring none other than a true pioneer of the genre, Greg Anderson of Sunn O))); seriously, your shuffle could start on a worse note. I usually pop this record on when I have to power through a long stretch of work.
“Elm Street Loverboy” by The Prize Fighter Inferno (from Half Measures, 2012)
The Prize Fighter Inferno is Coheed and Cambria mastermind, Claudio Sanchez’s side project (along with his wife, Chondra Echert.) Sanchez doesn’t really go to great lengths to hide his pop leanings in the contest of Coheed and Cambria’s music, but The Prize Fighter Inferno takes those tendencies and turns them up to eleven. “Elm Street Loverboy” is pretty much what you think; that is if you were thinking it was a love song penned from the perspective of Freddy Krueger dedicated to the object of his affection, Nancy Thompson. Come on, everybody, sing along! Oh, hey… it’s Friday the 13th! Double whammy!
“Light Is All That Matters” by Frank Zappa (from Trance-Fusion, 2006)
Trance-Fusion is a bit of an odd record, culled from live outtakes from various ’80s tours, and apparently one of the last things Frank worked on before his untimely death in 1993. This particular outtake is sourced from “Let’s Move To Cleveland,” circa 1984. I suppose the benefit of recording every single second of music you played over the years is that when you want to pull up that once-in-a-lifetime guitar solo that you played at a soundcheck in Spokane in 1982, you can. Given the amount of material that the Zappa family has released (and continues to release) I doubt we’ll ever be at a loss for more inspired moments from one of the last century’s greatest composers.
“I’ve Seen All Good People” by Yes (from Highlights: The Very Best of Yes, 1993)
Holy crap, could this Friday Five get any more odd? (Or, longer, for that matter? I mean, this is the third song clocking in over the six-minute mark!) Di-up, di-up, di-up, di-up … all we are saying, is give peace a chance … Ready? Set? Rock!
Here’s a bit of a fun fact: Robert Downey Jr. actually covered this tune on his 2004 record, The Futurist.
“I Just Want You” by Ozzy Osbourne (from The Essential Ozzy Osbourne (disc 2), 2003)
Again, I question Legacy Records’ definition of the word “essential.” This track has Jim Vallance written all over it. Ooh, a key change after the guitar solo! I wonder if he had to pay David Foster for that egregious use of The David Foster Key Changeâ„¢. At least this clocked in under five minutes.
That’s it. Stick a fork in me, I’m done.
What’s on your shuffle today?
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