That’s right, Friday has rolled around once more and you know what that means! It’s time for me to set my pod a’shufflin’ and report back the first ten songs it spits out. As always, I will neither omit, neglect or ignore any of the songs the pod brings to the surface, proving once and for all that I have slightly odd taste in music. So, without further stalling…

1. Lady Magret, Cassie Franklin (Cold Mountain)
2. Paint it Black, Sneakin’ Out (Mississippi Studios Live)
3. I Can’t Explain, The Who (My Generation)
4. Catch Me Now I’m Falling, The Kinks (One for the Road)
5. Amsterdam, Coldplay (A Rush of Blood to the Head)
6. Don’t Do It, The Band (The Best of the Band)
7. Jessie’s Girl, Rick Springfield (The Best of Rick Springfield)
8. A History of Lovers, Calexico/Iron & Wine (In the Reins)
9. How Do You Do It, The Beatles (Ultra Rare Tracks Vol. I)
10. One Day I Will Walk, k.d. lang (Hymns of the 49th Parallel)

Favorite Song: I think today I’m going to have to go with Jessie’s Girl by Rick Springfield. Listening to this song reminds me of two things. The first is my LA childhood and when my babysitters would watch MTV while my mom was out (we weren’t supposed to watch it). The second is a friend I had at my first job in Philly. She was deeply enamored with Rick Springfield and every time he played in the area, she would go. She had met him several times (because, let’s face it, he’s at the point in his career where he’ll make appearances at the local mall) and had a picture of the two of them hanging in her cube.

Favorite Album: This is a tough call, as there are quite a few albums on the list that I love. For today, I’m picking the Beatles Ultra Rare Tracks Vol. I. I realize that this isn’t exactly an album, at least in the sense that the artists didn’t carefully select and record tracks for this thing. What’s cool about this cd is that the whole thing is the random tracks, the alternate versions of the songs, and the moments when they were talking in between takes. For Christmas when I was 10 years old, my uncle dubbed his entire Beatles collection onto cassette for me (there were 6 cassettes in this collection, each running a whopping 120 minutes long). They ran in chronological order, and the final cassette was the same stuff that is on this cd. It was my favorite one, and I would listen to it over and over, loving the moments when you could hear Paul quietly counting the beats off, or when John would start ad-libbing.

If you need another hit of Random Friday fun, check out these folks:

Ashley
Ben
Brian
Dodi
Ellen
Howard
Jeff
Mark
Matthew
Sherri

If you’ve got a list up and want some link-lovin’, give me a shout.