Friends & Music…

Big news today… I officially have broken the 400 friends mark on my myspace page. That’s officially 367 more friends than I have in the real world (and you thought I wasn’t counting).

In other news. My friend Josh (of thelongbrake.com fame) has “tagged” me and in order to maintain my status in his real world “top 8″ I’ve decided to play along. Here’s the details…

1. scan through your itunes or cd library. refamiliarize yourself with the nooks and crannies of your musical options.
2. identify five categories — genres, if you will — of music. these should be as obscure and finely-articulated as you’d like. feel free to use modifiers liberally.
3. nominate — select, really — a “perfect song” for each category. include a link for each song to something (the amazon page for the CD, or the artist’s website, or whatever).
4. ideally, some of the songs will be nominally obscure, or, at least, not completely mainstream and overplayed. no need to tell us all about songs we all know!

So here’s my all time desert island top 5…
(note:: I became painfully aware at how poorly labeled my music is by genre… I also had a hard time giving just 5… but here you go… oh yeah… if you click on most of the songs you can listen to the whole thing)

1. Taken “alternative & punk” is the 12 minute epic Make Like Paper by Red House Painters off of Songs for a Blue Guitar. I got this record while I lived by myself at a camp up in Michigan and I remember listening to it throughout the fall and winter CONSTANTLY. It was hard to pick 1 song off the record, so I picked the longest because it will give you the most satisfaction.

2. Take from “Christmas” Come Thou Fount by Sufjan Stevens which was on Songs for Christmas Volume 2. This is one of my favorite hymns because of it’s frank honesty and Sufjan’s arrangement strips it of anything that isn’t honest. I could listen to this every day of the year. Maybe I should.

3. Taken from the “Country” genre, which I have a lot more of than I realized (don’t worry, none of that new country… yeah, I’m talking about you Kenny Chesney)… at any rate it’s God’s Gonna Cut you Down by Johnny Cash. This song is raw and rough. I like the rhythm and the blunt honesty. It makes me smile.

4. Taken from the “Indie” genre is Tree House (here’s a link for a video, you should watch it) by I’m from Barcelona. My brother played this band for me at Christmas and told me that it reminded him of “contemporary praise and worship” from the late 90’s early 2000’s. It’s amazing how right he was… and the best part is that it’s all the great things about that kind of praise and worship and mixes it with a healthy dose of the Polyphonic Spree. I love it, you should to… you probably won’t.

5. Taken from the “Pop” genre is my favorite song off of Ryan Wilkins new record Beautiful Disrepair called “Lay Down My Arms” (you’ll have to listen to this one at his myspace page. I love the way he uses walk downs throughout the song and his falsetto is ridiculous. Best line… “and I need the strength of ten thousand men or more, or just yours…” You should buy this cd from … it’s great!

I will now tag Johnny Rice, Dusty & Brian. You better play along. It’s important.