The Friday Shuffle

Ahhhhh-- Friday night. A glass of Barefoot Zinfandel. My son Adam's here-- I gave up a weekend so he could go to my ex's mother's birthday party last weekend, so I've been missing him a lot this week. We had a great talk during our interminable ride across the North Side to get from his mother's house to our favorite Chinese Buffet (the China Palace, at the Ashland-Wellington Plaza). We talked about the election, about school, and about things he remembered from when he was little (see left).


At the moment, he's busy using the cheat codes he just got off the net to play Playstation Star Wars Lego. For my part, I can't get past seeing the bar scene from the first Star Wars movie not only erupt into an all-out light saber and light pistol battle, but all with little Lego versions of all the Star Wars characters.

Here's my Friday random ten.

Elvis Costello and T-Bone Burnette—People’s Limosine
Department S—Is Vic There?
Tom Petty—Night Watchman
Moody Blues—Tuesday Afternoon
Billy Preston—Nothing From Nothing
Bob Dylan with Mick Taylor—It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue (live)
They Might Be Giants—Istanbul
Beastie Boys-- Fight For Your Right
Million Dollar Marxists—Do the Emotion
The dB’s—Spitting Into the Wind

The last one is from great eighties album the dB's, Like This, which was finally reissued a few months ago-- it was out of print for years. One of the albums from around 1984 like The Blasters' Hard Line, Prince's Purple Rain, Los Lobos' Will the Wolf Survive and REM's Reckoning that really bring me back to a time and place in my life.

Bonus Friday track: She Came to Me, from Mermaid Avenue, the album Billy Bragg and Wilco did of a bunch of song lyrics Woody Guthrie wrote, but never recorded. It's got the line "and maybe we'll have all the fascists out of the way by then." Seems appropriate at the moment.