Ah Friday. The day most of us look forward to beginning at around 9:30 AM on Monday morning. The gateway to the weekend and the only thing standing between you and the release from the daily grind… I think that I can easily say for everyone, Thank God it’s Friday.

Friday also means it’s time for the Five. This week I struggled a bit with the theme as we head into the final stretch of “The Theme Days of Summer”. It hit me that we’ve covered a good bit of ground to date and that one thing we’ve not covered is direction. Furthering upon that thought the “Feng Shui” playlist was born.

Match ANY of the following conditions

NAME contains North
NAME contains East
NAME contains West
NAME contains South
NAME contains Heaven
NAME contains Earth

The playlist populated with 216 tracks, with nearly half of them being Prince related, go figure!

Last week’s Olympic inspired theme saw everyone going for the gold and some bringing home the bronze. Everything from Dylan to Bowie to the Godfather of Soul made appearances (some more than once) to represent their home country and bring back the glory.

For those who have not joined in the Five, here’s how it works: … I hit the shuffle button on my iTunes and share my five with some words (and on occasion the song itself) for each track.

Then it’s your turn! You can play along with the themed playlist or just share the first five of your shuffle, either way the fun is in playing musical voyeur for the day.

Here are this week’s tracks:

1. The Rolling Stones – Beast of Burden (from Forty Licks)

Yes friends of Ickmusic, this is my favorite Stones tune. Actually it’s tied with “Waiting on a Friend” for the top spot. There’s something about the laid back soul side of Mick and the boys that resonates with me more than some of their more up-tempo numbers.

2. Donna Summer – Heaven Knows (from Gold)

I am surprisingly unashamed of having this disco-era gem pop up. Featuring Joe “Bean” Esposito (who you can find much more than you ever wanted to know about by paying a visit to our friend Jason Hare over at Popdose) this was a Number 2 hit for Miss Summer and was the last of her purely disco hits.

3. Bryan Adams – Heaven (from So Far so Good)

Did anyone else see Bryan Adams on Jimmy Kimmel Live! the other night? It was a far cry from the lackluster performance that he turned in at this year’s American Idol finale.  He belted out “Summer of 69′” like it was 1984 all over again. This one brings memories of school dances and Saturday nights with Dr. John Barron on WSPK.

4. The Ohio Players – Heaven Must Be Like This (MP3) (from Skin Tight)

Back to the 70’s for what was likely the soundtrack to many a session of “7 Minutes in Heaven” in 1974. Clocking in at just over 7 minutes it’s hard to picture this track on the same record as the funk tour-de-force of the title track.

5. The Escape Club – Wild, Wild West (from Wild Wild West)

Cliché in just about every respect from the faux reggae breakdown to the super compressed guitar over the electronic drum beat to the innuendo laced lyrics you could not escape this tune in the late 80’s and well into the early 90’s. Released in 1988 the track reached Number 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in November and lingered on radio playlists for damned near a decade. Oh and the video, how could I forget the video…

Well we started in the East and ended in the West with a whole lot of Heaven in between, what’s bringing balance to your day?