Wednesday Morning Playlist

In the winter and early spring, my early morning runs are often indoors, around a .10 mile track at my health club. I'm always accompanied by my iPod, because the piped-in adult contemporary music is less than inspiring. Currently, I've got about 500 some-odd tracks to rotate through, mostly classic rock with a couple of worldbeat and jazz surprises to keep me interested. Lately, I've been playing a game in which I put the player on "shuffle," and every time I complete a lap, I bump it ahead to the next track. That way, I only hear 48 seconds of each tune, but I get to hear dozens of them over my run.

Today's playlist was particularly well varied. It made me think about all the sources I have to thank for my different tastes and discoveries in music. So, I've numbered the tracks and cross-referenced them below with a shout out to my influences.

1. "Salsa," Yuri Buenaventura
2. "Life and How to Live It," R.E.M.
3. "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag," James Brown
4. "I've Been to Memphis," Lyle Lovett
5. "Motion Picture Soundtrack," Radiohead
6. "Brass in Pocket," The Pretenders
7. "Be Still My Beating Heart," Sting
8. "I Might," Wilco
9. "You're the One," Paul Simon
10. "Goodbye, Yellow Brick Road," Elton John
11. "Anywhere's Better Than Here," Replacements
12. "And She Was," Talking Heads
13. "Right and Wrong," Joe Jackson
14. "Black Moon," Wilco
15. "Old," Paul Simon
16. "Red Rain," Peter Gabriel
17. "Laughing," R.E.M.
18. "Purple Rain," Prince
19. "Starman," David Bowie
20. "Find the River," R.E.M.
21. "I Can't Stand Up (For Falling Down)," Elvis Costello
22. "Soif Conjugale," Konono #1
23. "Love Is an Eternal Sacred Light," Paul Simon
24. "Rock On," David Essex
25. "Green Earrings," Steely Dan
26. "The Ocean," Led Zeppelin
27. "Blinded by the Light," Manfred Mann
28. "Qing Wen," Kenny Garrett
29. "A Mind with a Heart of Its Own," Tom Petty
30. "Night Moves," Bob Seger
31. "Good Times, Bad Times," Led Zeppelin
32. "Texarkana," R.E.M.
33. "One Sunday Morning (Song for Jane Smiley's Boyfriend)," Wilco
34. "Livin' Thing," Electric Light Orchestra
35. "Black Widow," Michelle Shocked
36. "A Girl Like You," Smithereens
37. "Home at Last," Steely Dan
38. "Jimi-Jimmy Jam," Jimi Hendrix
39. "Jam-Master Jammin'," Run DMC
40. "Strange Relationship," Prince

2, 4, 6, 11, 12, 13, 17, 18, 20, 32, 35, 36, 40--Thanks to WXRT, 93.1 FM, "Chicago's Fine Rock," for bringing me the hippest underground/alternative music of the 80s and early 90s.
5--Thanks to Ryan Kaplan (DHS Band '09) for talking up Radiohead until I went out and bought Kid A.
7, 6, 29, 39--Thanks to Rolling Stone magazine for being my guide through my college years.
8, 14, 33--Thanks to NPR and their excellent music programs and blogs for hipping me to Wilco.
10, 24, 27, 30, 34--Thanks to my older brother who taught me the joys of 1970s pop radio via "Musicradio" WLS, 890 AM, when I was just 8 or 9 years old. I'm pretty sure he knows more about obscure 45s than anyone I've ever met. He can spend hours in a used record store.
21--Thanks to Kurt the guitar player who asked my younger brother and me to play horns for his post-punk/ska/alternative band in the mid 80s.
22--Thanks to Afropop Worldwide, a great program about pop music from Africa and beyond.
25, 37--Thanks to Melissa the guitar player who helped me develop my love of Steely Dan when I visited her at her house on the Glenview Naval Air Base back in high school.
28--Thanks to Downbeat magazine for being my guide for the past couple decades.
38--Thanks to that kid in my sophomore math class--we were the two loaners in the back, and he knew I was a Hendrix fan, so he turned me on to Nine to the Universe, an underrated set of informal jam sessions. Then we did that trigonometry project with the surveying equipment where you have to find out how tall the stadium goalposts were.