Friday Random Ten: Love is Suffering Edition

iTunes has offered up a sequence that's thematically consistent this week.

1. "I Got Loaded"--Los Lobos, How Will the Wolf Survive? REM and Los Lobos were the first non-mainstream bands I got interested in back in high school. I was lucky enough to have a fairly good semi-alternative radio station that you could sometimes pick up at our house, and they'd occasionally play tracks from this album.

2. "Get Up"--The Spectacular Fantastic, The Spectacular Fantastic Goes Underground. Catchy retro hooks. Though actually this track isn't all that catchy, frankly.

3. "This Never Happened"--Sex Mob, Sex Mob Does Bond. Eccentric jazz/fusion stylings with Steven Bernstein on slide trumpet.

4. "Excitable Boy"--Warren Zevon, Genius. "Excitable Boy" was carefully considered as an alternative pseudonym for Wild Thing.

5. "Winter Moon"--Stan Getz, Bossa Nova. Ah ... I'm going to have to listen to this album more often.

6. "Man Burning"--Josh Ritter, Hello Starling. Wow, this guy is a good songwriter.

7. "Oncoming Day"--The Chills, Submarine Bells. Classic '90s angst.

8. "I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Loved You)"--Aretha Franklin, Atlantic Rythm and Blues Vol. 6. She turns 65 next year, in case you were wondering.

9. "The Awful Truth of Loving"--Rainer Maria, Long Knives Drawn. This band runs towards the pretentious and the heavy-handed, but then, so do I.

10. "Agony of Pleasure"--Robyn Hitchcock, Eye. This song features perhaps the most disturbing figurative language of any song I've heard.