Hugo Schwyzer

It’s a busy day of grading, book proposals, meetings, and exercise. No time for blogging. I’ll be back on Monday…

Several songs on today’s FRT are oldies recorded before I graduated college. #1 is from my hair band days; #2 just showed up a short time ago on an FRT, my favorite song from my favorite new group; #3 a classic from an old junior year favorite; #4 is Emmylou doing bluegrass at its most transcendent; #8 is Patty Griffin’s song, and she and Burke both turn this tribute to MLK’s final speech into a three-hankie number; #9 is one I played a lot when I was single again, thinking my last chance had passed me by; #10 is a song of which I have at least three downloaded versions, and with Kottke and DeMent, you can’t go wrong. For all of his periodically faux sentimentality, I have a soft spot for Randy Travis, and the bonus track today is off my favorite of his albums.

1. “Breaking the Chains”, Dokken
2. “Things that You Know”, Wailin’ Jennys
3. “Mandela Day”, Simple Minds
4. “Darkest Hour is Just Before Dawn”, Emmylou Harris and Ricky Skaggs
5. “When You Awake”, The Band
6. “Windfall”, Son Volt
7. “Your Embrace”, Shakira
8. “Up to the Mountain”, Solomon Burke
9. “Table for Two”, Caedmon’s Call
10. “Banks of Marble”, Leo Kottke and Iris Dement

Bonus Track: “What’ll You Do About Me?”, Randy Travis

I said I wouldn’t blog again until Monday. I promise good blogging next week, mind you, but am briefly near a computer, in between trips to South Florida and Northern California and the parking lot on campus. Lots of good things percolatin’ in my head, and on this Maundy Thursday (I’m home with the chinnies, missing out on foot-washing at church), I offer this FRT.

As usual, I’m heavy on female singers. #2 is from an artist who’s the rage-du-jour; I’ve heard a lot of her stuff the past ten days, and she’s the real deal. #6 is one of those folk standards from my childhood that remind me why I became a card-carrying socialist in junior high school. #4 is as good a feminist country anthem from the early ’90s as you could want, and the bonus track is one I really, really like singing in the car.

1. “Echo Park”, Joseph Arthur
2. “Cannonball”, Brandi Carlile
3. “Heavenly Day”, Patty Griffin
4. “He Thinks He’ll Keep Her”, Mary Chapin Carpenter
5. “Only Tongue Can Tell”, Trashcan Sinatras
6. “The Banks are Made of Marble”, The Weavers
7. “Lay My Head Down”, Indigo Girls
8. “Ol’ 55″, Tom Waits
9. “Take ‘em All”, Ultima Thule
10. “These Thousand Hills”, Third Day

Bonus Track: “Better than You”, Terri Clark

Happy Easter!

You can configure your Itunes party shuffle to display both recently and not-so-recently played songs. But sometimes, the results of the FRT shuffle leave me wondering if another hand is at work. I sense a theme.

I think more people should annotate, however briefly, their FRTs.

#1 is an oft-recorded classic from a stalwart of the kind of authentic country rock I love so much. #2 is a new track from a favorite Christian band, and #3 is by the former leader of the Christian band Caedmon’s Call. #4 is my favorite track, oddly, off the sublime “Appetite for Destruction” (has it really been twenty years?) #5 is from a third Christian artist who is growing on me, #6 from my beloved Emmylou, and #7 a wicked good cover of the Prince track by a great trio. I remember driving a group of teenagers up to Big Bear two years ago, all of us singing #8 aloud, me wondering if I was going to get in trouble for doing so. #9, as popular and widely played as it was seven or eight years ago, still gives me chills. And #10 is off, well, my favorite album from the whole dang ’70s, the breathtakingly good “Late for the Sky.” Bonus track from my favorite Welsh band of the ’90s.

1. “Paradise”, John Prine
2. “Mirrors and Smoke”, Jars of Clay
3. “Wedding Dress”, Derek Webb
4. “Rocket Queen”, Guns n’ Roses
5. “Closer to Myself”, Kendall Payne
6. “Orphan Girl”, Emmylou Harris
7. “When Doves Cry”, Be Good Tanyas
8. “I Touch Myself”, Divinyls
9. “Cowboy, Take Me Away”, Dixie Chicks
10. “Before the Deluge”, Jackson Browne

Bonus Track: “Bulimic Beats”, Catatonia

This FRT is heavy on the alt.country stuff.

The Wailin’ Jennys are my happiest discovery of the past year, and this week sees the inexplicably delayed FRT debut of a track from another of my favorite folkie “girl groups”, the Be Good Tanyas. (I have no idea why they haven’t shown up before; bad Party Shuffle.) Call me a groupie for both trios.

#9 is my favorite Springsteen song ever, which is sayin’ something. #5 and #10 reflect two different aspects of my fascination with all things Welsh. And the bonus track makes me think of my wife, and it still gives me chills.

1. “Up On Cripple Creek”, The Band
2. “Almost Home”, Mary-Chapin Carpenter
3. “One Voice”, Wailin’ Jennys
4. “The Swimming Song”, Loudon Wainwright III
5. “If You Tolerate This, Your Children Will Be Next”, Manic Street Preachers
6. “Fire and Rain”, Michelle Bloom
7. “Mercy Street”, Peter Gabriel
8. “In Spite of all the Damage”, Be Good Tanyas
9. “Reason to Believe”, Bruce Springsteen
10. “Men of Harlech”, Bryn Terfel

Bonus Track: “The Back of Your Hand”, Dwight Yoakam

I’m off ’till Monday; I’m fasting from noon today until 6:00PM tomorrow, part of the All Saints version of the Thirty Hour Famine fundraiser. I’ll spend 6 tonight until 6 tomorrow night with a couple dozen hungry teenagers; lots of games and community service projects and grumbling bellies.

And tomorrow, at the worst moment of hunger, I get to walk a labyrinth. Sweet.

Lots of goodness here on today’s FRT; #4, 6, and 10 have long had special meaning for me. (The titles of the Mellencamp and Welch songs more or less explain why.)

1. “Harmony”, Elton John
2. “Ease your Feet in the Sea”, Belle and Sebastian
3. “The Letter”, Macy Gray
4. “Your Life is Now”, John Mellencamp
5. “Love is the Only House”, Martina McBride
6. “I’m Not Afraid to Die”, Gillian Welch
7. “Free”, Train
8. “Satan, your Kingdom Must Come Down”, Uncle Tupelo
9. “Awful”, Hole
10. “One Time, One Night”, Los Lobos

Bonus Track: “Heart of Gold”, The Kinks

It’s been ages since there’s been a Friday Random Ten. No one missed them, I’m sure.

Still, #1 was one of my favorite songs from one of my favorite bands of the early to mid-’90s; #7 has broken my heart for nigh on twenty years now, and #2 remains one of my favorite break-up tracks. (Actually, there’s a break-up theme at work here in many of these).

In any event, I have no excuse for #9.

1. “Bittersweet”, Big Head Todd and the Monsters
2. “Sail On”, The Commodores
3. “I Bid You Goodnight”, Aaron Neville
4. “Good Intentions”, Toad the Wet Sprocket
5. “I Loved the Summer of Hate”, The Men they Couldn’t Hang
6. “These Thousand Hills”, Third Day
7. “When Ye Go Away”, The Waterboys
8. “Fool”, Shakira
9. “Dream Warriors”, Dokken
10. “Down in a Hole”, Alice in Chains

Bonus Track: “Halos and Horns”, Dolly Parton

Mostly my tunes again; Raul Malo has one of the sexiest voices in music and I’m surprised he hasn’t come up on an FRT before.  And I get two of my favorite Christian artists (Norman and Knapp); I get Ani DiFranco; I get Shakira.  Hard to beat all that.

1. "Chasing Cars", Snow Patrol (yeah, me and everyone else)
2. "Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground", Raul Malo
3. "Fadeaway", BoDeans
4. "Sorry I Am", Ani DiFranco
5. "The Hammer Holds", Bebo Norman
6. "Sorrow", Bad Religion
7. "Only Tongue Can Tell", Trashcan Sinatras
8. "Underneath Your Clothes", Shakira
9. "Breathe on Me", Jennifer Knapp
10. "A Change is Gonna Come", Sam Cooke

Bonus Track: "Let the Sun Shine In", Hair Soundtrack

Do I have a song I love more than the first on this list?  I can’t think of one.  I’ve heard Emmylou do it live twice, and cried both times.  #3 is one of my favorite "running songs."  I don’t run with music, but I "play songs in my head", and that U2 track is an apt one when by myself in the mountains.  #4 I love even though I shouldn’t; #9 is an anthem from my undergrad days, and #7 has to be one of the most covered vallenato songs of the past decade.

1.  "Boulder to Birmingham", Emmylou Harris
2. "Romeo", Donna Summer
3.  "In God’s Country", U2
4.  "One in a Million", Guns n’ Roses
5.  "Holy Diver", Dio
6.  "Heart of Stone", Erasure
7.  "Los Caminos de la Vida", Sabor Vallenata
8.  "Rosewood Casket", Trio (Dolly Parton, Emmylou, Linda Ronstadt)
9.  "A Question of Lust", Depeche Mode
10.  "Alleluia", Dar Williams

Bonus Track: "Hot Child in the City", Nick Gilder and Time Machine  (Believe it or not, this was the late Matilde the chinchilla’s theme song.)