Today’s post is dedicated to my good friends Michael and Pete at Ickmusic. Michael has a nice weekly series called The Friday Five, in which sharing from the class is heavily encouraged.

As you know, we heavily encourage the audience participation here as well, so I very quickly became a fan of The Friday Five. I don’t often get a chance to share my choices on Fridays, which tend to be busy, but I always like to weigh in eventually. And by “always,” I think I’ve actually done it two or three times, but who is counting? I felt pretty good about the five tracks that I shared this past Monday at Ickmusic, so I thought that I would share them with all of you. Check ’em out, and go have your own Friday Five fun with Michael!

1. Nada Surf – “No Quick Fix” – Gotta give credit to Heather at Fuel/Friends for really making me love this band with her posts about them. She posted an acoustic show that really hooked me in, and made me get the catalog. Sadly, the download link doesn’t seem to be active for that acoustic show anymore, but you can still read a great interview that Heather did with Matthew Caws here. This cut can be found on this version of Let Go.

2. Ryan Adams – “Come Pick Me Up” – This song always seems to come up in the shuffle on the perfect morning. This is one of those mornings. I’ll admit that I heard this song for the first time via Elizabethtown, although I had heard Adam Duritz weave it into the middle of “Round Here” countless times. I hadn’t gotten on board the Ryan Adams train at that point, and when I heard it while watching Elizabethtown, it threw me for quite an emotional loop. Of course, that didn’t stop me from turning down the chance to go see an amazing Ryan Adams show here in Cleveland last year. For even more good stuff, check out the Ryan Adams Elizabethtown sessions here.

3. Bill Champlin – “Organ Solo/In The Heat of the Night” – I got into Bill’s stuff after being a longtime Chicago fan. Started buying his solo albums in 1994, and this record Mayday, recorded live in the studio is a great career summary of Champlin’s solo work and also his work with Sons of Champlin. For the Champlin-curious, the Sons of Champlin Live album on Grateful Dead Records is also a good one, if you can find it. Honorable mention to his latest album No Place Left To Fall, the first solo release from Champlin in a number of years released last year – it’s good stuff.

4. Extreme – “No Respect” – I’m not going to say that I was a diehard Extreme fan back in the day, but I liked the hits, and bought Waiting For The Punchline as soon as it was released. Saw them on the tour for WFTP, and was stunned at how good they were, and I subsequently talked up Gary Cherone to anyone that would listen, when he was tapped for the VH singer slot. And I continue to defend Cherone-era VH as recently as this past week on Twitter!

5. Ernie and the Automatics – “The Best Is Up Ahead” – This is the latest band project from former Boston guitarist Barry Goudreau. For any of you that followed his solo work in the 90s (i.e. not RTZ) you might cringe a little bit, because some of it was pretty bad. This CD is one of my unexpected favorites of the year.

Surf on over to Ickmusic and offer your five cuts – as you can see, it’s a lot of fun!