Friday Five : \’frī-(,)dā,-dē ‘fīv\ : On the sixth day of every week, I hit the shuffle button on my iTunes, then share the first five tracks and thought for each track. Sometimes there is a playlist involved, occasionally we’ll have a guest, but most of the time it’s just me. The rest is up to you, our friends and readers! Fire up your media player of choice and share the first five random track of your shuffle in the comments.

The Five:

“The Luck of the Irish” by John Lennon (from Some Time in New York, 1972)

John getting the Dylan out of his system.

“Shine” by Trey Anastasio (from Shine, 2005)

Outside of the context of his day job with Phish, Trey tends to flex his pop muscles. Aside from the unmistakable noodling guitar leads, this sounds more akin to a Barenaked Ladies tune than any of his jam-band contemporaries.

“Big Empty” by Stone Temple Pilots (from Purple, 1994)

It’s a toss up between this and “Interstate Love Song” for my favorite STP tune. Sure, it is “Creep” part 2, but its inclusion in Brandon Lee’s turn as “The Crow” immediately sealed this as the more memorable tune. I read somewhere, regrettably, that there are plans to remake the 1994 film.

“Paperweight Room” by Broken Social Scene (from Lo-Fi for the Dividing Light, 2010)

Hmm, I don’t think that I’ve listened to this before. Short, instrumental, pretty… next!

“JTR” by Dave Matthews Band (from The Lillywhite Sessions, 2001)

There are a few different versions of this tune floating around out there; most recently on the “Legacy Edition” of Santana’s Supernatural in its infant form as “Rain Down on Me.” The basic structure is there, but it lacks the groove of the DMB version. It does, however, reveal the tune’s gospel roots. The Supernatural version lifts a refrain from the gospel hymn “John the Revelator.” The band had abandoned the tune for the last few years, so it was a huge surprise to my wife and I when they opened with it when we saw them this past summer.

What’s on your shuffle today?