Time to close down the week.  Hopefully next week I’ll be Above the Weather and I’ll be back in my normal, crazy 10+ posts per day mode.

Instead of a round-up, this week, I’d rather leave you with two images.  I mentioned when I posted earlier this week on Memphis’s March for Gay Rights that the really cool pictures were yet to come, as I attended the march with a brilliant, inspired black & white photographer with a little bit of Ernest Withers in his blood.  The pictures are now being developed and I’ll share more next week, but for now, here are two pictures from two different struggles, two different times, two different views of the same place:  The lawn in front of Memphis’s City Hall.  The first shot comes from Ernest Withers himself, during the Civil Rights movement.  The second comes from the aforementioned photographer at Monday’s March for Gay Rights.  His name is Monty Shane, and you can see much more of his work here.

[Click to embiggen!]

As I said, I’ll be sharing more of his pictures from the march next week, but in the meantime, if you’d like any more information on his work, feel free to contact me.

Okay, music time!  Some songs are simply epic.  Death Cab for Cutie’s “I Will Possess Your Heart” is one of them. I usually know what song I’m starting the Friday Random Ten with by Tuesday or so, but this week, I really had no idea until I was standing on my porch last night and I just started humming this song, even though I hadn’t heard it in months. And I was like “Oh. Yeah.  That’s the one, definitely.” The introduction to the song is over four minutes long, and if you skip ahead, you’re doing yourself a disservice, because the slow building energy of the song is part of what makes it magnificent. So much tension and stress, plodding along, building, adding layers, second by second…yeah. So let’s start with that, hit shuffle and see what happens.  More videos after the jump.

1. Drive-By Truckers – “Santa Fe”
2. My Morning Jacket – “The Bear”
3. X – “Arms for Hostages”
4. Roadside Graves – “Ruby”
5. Carly Simon – “The Right Thing To Do”
6. New Kids on the Block – “You Got It (The Right Stuff)” [Hahahahah, embarrassing.]
7. Pattern Is Movement – “Right Away”
8. Nina Simone – “I Loves You Porgy”
9. Bon Iver – “Lump Sum”
10. The Killers – “Goodnight, Travel Well”

What a weird random.  And hello again, Nina Simone, who appears every single week.

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The song I’m starting the shuffle with is “Sore” by Annuals, simply because it’s truly one of the most beautiful songs I’ve heard in months.  The only tangential relationship it has with anything that’s gone on this week is that I moved this week, and I am Still Sore.  So, here, introduce yourself to an amazing band while I try to get rid of this pain in my aching, elderly back. If you listen to the words and watch the video and tear up a little bit, then you are normal.

More songs/videos after the jump.

1. Thom Yorke – “Atoms for Peace”
2. The Drifters – “Save the Last Dance for Me”
3. Fever Ray – “Now’s the Only Time I Know”
4. Band of Horses – “Blue Beard”
5. The Sundays – “Here’s Where The Story Ends”
6. Jamie Lidell – “Compass”
7. Sarah McLachlan – “Time”
8. New Kids on the Block – “Hangin’ Tough” (Shut up.)
9. Wilson Phillips – “Reason to Believe” (Continue to shut up.)
10. Tori Amos – “Flying Dutchman”

A less honest blogger would have pretended #’s 8 and 9 weren’t there and skipped them, but no, that is not how I am.

Seriously though, one of my favorite things to do, when the weather is nice and I have somebody in the car with me (when I am cruising with my bros in my Trans Am), is to crank “Hangin’ Tough” as high as it will go at stoplights. If the people in the car next to you laugh and start dancing and singing along, you know that they have a sense of humor about life, and that they are fun people. If they start exchanging condescending looks with each other and saying, “Oh muh guh, Jennifer,” then they are obviously unworthy.

Okay, videos:

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