Friday Five on BillyBlog

Last week, The Best Week Ever blog skipped their "Friday Five" post in which they play iPod shuffle games. They link The Onion's A.V. Club which features a semi-celebrity shuffler.

Last week, I improvised and shuffled in 58 songs with a presidential interview. The results here seemed to be a bust. Too much of a good thing, perhaps.

Anyway, let's play the simple Friday Five again. Here's my five:

1. "Sloppy Drunk" by Jimmy Page & The Black Crowes from Live at the Greek. What can you say? This concert cd, recorded Live at the Greek Theater in Los Angeles in the fall of 1999, combines a powerhouse from the 90's with a living legend. "Sloppy Drunk" is an old blues standard by Sonny Boy Williamson.

2. "The Air-Conditioned Nightmare" by Mr. Bungle, from their album California. A former co-worker turned me on to Mr. Bungle, who are described on wikipedia as "an avant-garde, experimental musical group that cycled through several musical genres oftentimes within the course of a single song, fusing radically different styles together."
California was their third and most accessible album. Some sample lyrics:

"Get me out of this air-conditioned nightmare
Rots your brain just like a catchy tune
You will hate life more than life hates you

Happiness is your illness in an air-conditioned nightmare"

3. "Courage (Asymmetric Aria)" by Joshua Redman, from the album Beyond. Redman, an amazing saxophonist, is a true talent. Smart too, he graduated summa cum laude from Harvard in 1991. So, young too, by jazz standards. His website is here.

4. "Now's the Time" by Charlie Parker, from The Ken Burns Jazz Collection. Two saxmen in a row? Nice. One of Parker's great tunes.

And last but not least:

5. "Little Wing," not by Jim Hendrix, but the cover by the Irish folk band The Corrs. Hendrix purists may protest, but this is refreshing version that is truly haunting. It's from their 1999 MTV Unplugged album.

Hope you don't mind my sharing. It could be worse. Earlier in the week, I had done a similar project to the Bush interview, but replacing it with Matt Lauer of NBC and his interview with Tom "You don't know the history of psychiatry. I do." Cruise. Good sense spared me from publishing it.