Friday Random Ten, 6/2

Yes indeed. it's friday again. Where did my week go?

1. Phish, "My Friend, My Friend". I actually really like certain jam bands. Phish is often quite good. This is one of my favorites of their studio tracks. (And, if you look at the cover of the album, and you draw a line through the arm of the guy on the bed, you can make a 23.5 degree angle! Phish is in on the secret!)
2. Deanta, "The Rocky Reels". Deanta is a wonderful traditional Irish band, which prominently features one of my favorite Irish flutists, Deirdre Havlin. Beautiful music, arranged in a wonderfully sparse way. Bouzouki, flute, fiddle, piano, and harp. Just stunning.
3. Porcupine Tree, "Prodigal". Pretty much what you expect from PT: somewhat odd dark chords, an unexpectedly smooth voice, kinda catchy melody. Cool stuff. Not their best, but still awfully good.
4. Sonic Youth, "Disappearer". Sonic Youth often do things with interesting tonalities, microtones, and strange extended jams involving playing distorted guitars with all sorts of peculiar implements. This is a perfect example of that.
5. King Crimson, "The Power to Believe 1: a Capella". I love the stuff that Fripp and company have been up to in the last couple of years. They've been getting even stranger with time. After the ProjeKCts work, they did this album, and it really shows the way that all that free-improv work affected them.
6. Miles Davis, "Deception". It's Miles, what more do you need to say?
7. Nightingale, "The Discharged Drummer". Nightingale is a wonderful French-Canadian acoustic folk trio, and one of the best contradance bands in the world. Beautiful little track, this one.
8. Pain of Salvation, "Rope Ends". Neo-progressive spin-off of the Flower Kings. Very cool band.
   
9. Broadside Electric, "With her head tucked underneath her arm". Broadside is a Philadelphia based electric folk band which plays a lot of stuff based on ballads from Childe's compilation. They also mix in traditional irish, klezmer, and progressive rock influences. The usual lineup is lead singer/guitarist/dulcimer, electric violin, chapman stick, tinwhistle/oboe, and drum. This is one of their humorous songs, about the ghost of Ann Boleyn haunting the tower of London. (Who doesn't love lyrics like " Along the draughty corridors for miles and miles she goes/She often catches cold, poor thing, it's cold there when it blows/And it's awfully awkward for the Queen to have to blow her nose/With her head tucked underneath her arm!") It's not one of their originals, but who else has recorded it with a klezmer violin solo?
10. Pat Donohue, "The Other End of the Mississippi River Blues". Pat is the guitarist from the Guys All-Star Shoe Band on Prairie Home Companion. He's the best finger-style guitarist that I've ever seen in person. He's also quite a goof: Pat's own description of what he does is "go out and find perfectly good songs, and then ruin them". This one is one of his originals. Silly, but fun. ("They've got magnolia trees, sweet southern breeze; I've got ice and snow, 26 degrees below".)