Clarence Ewing: The Million Year Trip writesFriday MP3 Shuffle: Happy Birthday D’arcy Wretzky Edition

Today is International Workers' Day, a day designated to aknowledge working people across the globe, and originally meant to commemorate the Haymarket Riot that happened in Chicago in 1884. It's also the birthday of D'arcy Wretzky, the original bass player for The Smashing Pumpkins. Although she has kept a relatively low profile recently, Wretzky's place in the annals of Rock history is secure through her work with Billy Corgan, James Iha, and Jimmy Chamberlin during a time marked by artistic brilliance and inner turmoil that saw both the peak of Alternative Music's popularity and also its waning years as boy bands and Brittney Spears took over the charts.

Let’s wish D'arcy a Happy Birthday and give a salute to working people everywhere by taking your MP3 player, pushing the Shuffle button, and sharing the first 10 songs your hear…

1. "53rd and 3rd" by The Ramones (Ramones) – A slower tempo track with allusions to Vietnam. Are these guys due for a comeback?

2. "First Fires (Featuring Grey Reverend)" by Bonobo – Take some DIY bedroom glitch and add an RnB beat, and you got yourself a stew, baby!

3. "Corner Pocket" by Count Basie – Classy Jazz that makes me think of the late great Dick Buckley and his Sunday afternoon Jazz show broadcast in Chicago for a long time

4. "Bullets and Graves" by Corrections House (Last City Zero) – Your standard music from the end of the world

5. "I Hope That I Don’t Fall in Love With You" by Tom Waits (Closing Time) – It just hit me because of an HBO documentary I just saw…Tom Waits is the Bizzaro Frank Sinatra

6. "Falling" by Hercules & Love Affair (Blue Songs) – Bassy, ecstatic dance music. You were expecting what else, exactly…?

7. "Birmingham Breakdown" by Duke Ellington – One of Ellington's early masterpieces probably on the Fat Babies' playlist

8. "Buried by the Blues" by Black Mountain (Wilderness Heart) – Similar to Country, but much more impressionistic

9. "Palladium" by Yesterday’s New Quintet (Angles Without Edges) - It continues to amaze me that this is one guy playing all the instruments

10. "Rushing" by Moby (Play) – One of the transition songs on the album, this one comes after the cinematic "South Side" and before "Bodyrock." What’s Moby been up to these days, anyway?

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