From the Salmon

Friday’s here. You know the drill: (1) load up your full collection of music in your mp3 player, computer, or whathaveyou, (2) shuffle, (3) report the first 10 tracks. Simple enough. As always, feel free to play along as a ripple or on your own site.

Go, go gadget shuffler!

1. Games Without Frontiers - Peter Gabriel
2. Butterflies & Hurricanes - Muse
3. God Part II - U2
4. Solsbury Hill (Live) - Sarah McLachlan
5. The Trees Have Soul - Willy Porter
6. Foundations - The Beautiful South
7. Untitled - Neutral Milk Hotel
8. Down in It - Nine Inch Nails
9. Surfing Drums - Dick Dale and His Deltones
10. Blue Love Shawl - Gibb Droll Band

Whoa. Nine Inch Nails into Dick Dale. Talk about combinations Mother Nature never intended.

My favorite part about U2’s ”God Part II” is this stanza:

Don’t believe in the sixties
The golden age of pop
You glorify the past
When the future dries up.
Heard a singer on the radio
Late last night
Says he’s gonna kick the darkness
Till it bleeds daylight.
I, I believe in love.

You don’t often hear musicians quote so explicitly from other songs. In this case, the singer he quotes is Bruce Cockburn, another one of my favorites. And the lyric he quotes is a brilliant line from a brilliant song, ”Lovers in a Dangerous Time”:

When you’re lovers in a dangerous time
Sometimes you’re made to feel as if your love’s a crime —
But nothing worth having comes without some kind of fight —
Got to kick at the darkness ‘til it bleeds daylight

Friday Random 10 was never intended to be the place to expound on meaningful lyrics (particularly of songs that don’t show up in the Random 10), so I’ll just leave it there. But it’s such a great line and such a great song that I thought it was worth highlighting.

One more thing.... The best recording I’ve heard of “Lovers in a Dangerous Time” isn’t Cockburn’s original studio recording. It’s a live version on a Columbia Radio Music Hour compilation (iTunes) with Bruce on acoustic guitar and Rob Wasserman on bass. It’s simple and clean and powerful and wow. (For that matter, if you find the disc or go to iTunes, make sure to check out “Lord of the Starfields” on the same disc, also with Wasserman’s luscious bass licks.)