When we were younger, one of the things my brother and I looked forward to was the Top 100 (later 500) Countdown that KHJ would do over the Labor Day holiday. We’d listen the entire weekend, arguing endlessly on which songs deserved merit and which ones didn’t.

To this day, he still can’t understand how The Stones’ Satisfaction could ever crack the Top 50, let alone win a year or two.

The ritual of creating top 10 lists extends to most of us; Top 10 Movies, Top 10 Tweets, Top 10 Financial Bailouts… you get the drift. They seem to ground us, offering a sense of continuity and order. Maybe they help to make sense of what has occurred in the past and provide a method to move forward with hope and optimisim.

And so, over the next week or two I plan to offer you my Top 10 music tracks for the first half of 2009 in no particular order. Note these aren’t all new releases. A couple of these gems are old friends that I’ve recently rediscovered.  But they were in heavy rotation on my iPod.

I’d be curious to hear what you've been listening to so drop me a comment and let me know what made your top 10!

Wilco (the Song) - Wilco

An old friend struggled for years to get me to appreciate Wilco. But I could never find the entry point. I used to remark that they reminded me of the Grateful Dead which meant “yeah I recognize that they are probably good, but the Tweedy cult isn’t for me.” And yet recently, I have found myself checking out another great track on “shuffle” and exclaiming, “Wow, Wilco.” Yet, nothing could have prepared me for Wilco (The Album) which blows me away with almost every track. The “Frequency” was right. Wilco will always love you baby.

For this list of songs I’m adding wine tasting descriptor tags in order to create music set lists that pair well with wines. As this is entirely subjective, I’d enjoy hearing how you might describe this song in that way. Post it right there, in the little box below.

Tags: Big, bold, chewy, concentrated, connected, bite, straightforward, heroic, energetic, well balanced, classic, tannic but approachable, nice structure: a sonic shoulder for you to cry on. Pair it with a classic Cabernet Sauvignon or a dependable Syrah.

Do you play charades? Growing up in a show biz family, I heard stories about legendary “charades” performances from Hollywood’s heyday. Like the time Gene Kelly acted out Mordecai “Three Finger” Brown by running into the room, launching into a baseball slide and simply holding up three fingers.

My family played Relay Charades which differs from normal charades. Essentially, every player is asked to arrive with a themed list of 10 or so topics (Al Pacino films, Coldplay songs, novels with the word “day” in the title, etc.). All players are then assigned to one of two teams, and each team is positioned away from the other in its own room or space. Equidistant from both teams, is a moderator who will relay a list of topics for each team to act out. Play begins when the moderator gives Player 1 from both teams the first topic. They race back to their rooms to act out the topic to their team. Once the team calls out the topic, Player 2 races back to confirm its correctness to the moderator. If correct, the moderator then hands out the second topic. Player 2 then races back to his room and begins to act it out… and so on and so forth until all 10 topics have been answered correctly. The team that finishes first wins that round. During the course of the evening, all players will be given the opportunity to be the moderator and to read from their own list. Still with me?

What makes Relay Charades particularly awesome is that at some point a member of your team will uncover the nature of the theme. All of a sudden the game speeds up tenfold, becoming rapid fire. Using the Al Pacino film theme as an example - Let’s say Player 1 acts out Dog Day Afternoon and Player 2 acts out Scent of a Woman. You can just about guarantee that when Player 3 arrives with the 3^rd topic, he will be greeted by team members screaming out other Pacino films like Godfather, Serpico, Scarface, Scarecrow, and so forth. The secret is in creating themed lists that are initially cryptic but once revealed offer enough awareness to generate some passionate responses.

For instance, what’s the common thread in this assortment of names? George Gershwin, Frank Sinatra, The Cure, John Lennon, Billie Holiday, Carole King, Cole Porter, and the Cardigans.

Give up? Then meet Kat Edmonson, a 25 year old Austin native, who on her debut album has the temerity to cover songs that were made popular by the aforementioned  legends.

With an intriguing voice that recalls Blossom Dearie, Phoebe Snow and Inara George, Edmonson breathes new life into some very familiar songs; Summertime, Night & Day and Angel Eyes. But it’s on lesser known gems like… wait for it… Charade, where Ms. Edmonson really makes you sit up and listen.

Over Kevin Lovejoy’s elegant and sparce arrangement; piano, percussion and Eric Revis’ base line weave a slow, sensuous pulse, Kat stretches out her phrases, embuing each word with significance. Somehow she is able to express wistfuless along with highly extracted lust. If this were wine, it would be made from intense mountain fruit, grown in stressful soil that causes vines to struggle to survive let alone ripen to create a juicy grape crop. Because of its complexity, I'm adding it to the cocktail mix. But should a certain someone linger longingly, beware.

Now click on the clip to your left to compare it with the original, written by Johnny Mercer and Henry Mancini as the title track for the Stanley Donen film starring Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn. Completely different. With its percussive intro and "Bondish" guitar riff, this screams 60's. While lush, it eschews heat, remaining cool to the touch, framing the main motif of this classic romantic thriller. Side note, the screenplay for Charade, written by Peter Stone, is considered by many to be one of the best scripts ever filmed. Take a look at it here.

A final note. Kat made a really charming and inspirational video called Be The Change during the last presidential campaign. I think she's going to be around for awhile - maybe long enough to be the subject of a Charades' list.

This post comes courtesy of Karen Schwarz, the wife of my sister- in-law’s 1^st cousin… I know, take a deep breath. Now exhale and read a little story that I found lovely and touching. I hope you will find it so as well.

Romancing the Brisket by Karen Schwarz

This Valentine’s Day I’m making a brisket dinner for my family.  The recipe I use is from an old family friend, Ruth Silverman, of Gloversville, NY.  I know brisket doesn’t sound like Valentine’s Day fare, but after reading up a little on food history and asking Ruth a few questions, I learned that her recipe, which traveled for 96 years and logged over 5,000 miles, is actually a very romantic story.   Here’s what I mean.

Get your world map out and put your finger on Hungary. 

That’s where Ruth’s brisket got its start, in the family of her mother, Helen Schwartz. Helen was born into modest circumstances in 1898, when for families like hers, beef was a luxury.  In fact, it was only when an old dairy cow met with the butcher, that they might get a brisket. The brisket is a big tough plank of muscle that covers the breast bone and has to be cooked for hours to make it tender. Helen’s family probably added to their pot of hot water the standard Eastern European seasonings -- onions, garlic and paprika.

Now go back to the map and bring your finger from Hungary, across Europe and the Atlantic to North America, and locate Gloversville, New York, which is just northwest of Albany.

In 1914, when the 16 yr old Helen made that journey, Gloversville was the world capital of glove manufacturing. 

There she fell in love with Harry Neivert, from Poland.  They married and had 3 daughters:  Beatrice, Molly, and Ruth.  Helen no longer had to wait to get a brisket, and she added ingredients that were not available in Hungary: brown sugar, garlic powder and canned tomato sauce and beef broth.  

Now we get real romantic. …. When Ruth turned 21, she defied her parents and traveled to Gulfport, Mississippi --- to elope.  It was 1944, and her fiancé, Air Force co-pilot Barrett Silverman, left for Europe days after they were married. Ruth waited and worked in a battery factory.   When World War II ended, Barrett came home and they started a family.  Ruth made brisket, and added to her Mom’s recipe ---the 1940s food sensation:   onion soup mix!

I met Ruth in 1987 when I was dating her friend’s nephew. We talked about food and when I married the nephew, she gave me the brisket recipe. I have since added my own touches:  a cup of red wine and a very romantic… blender.   Bear with me here.  After the meat is cooked, I put the pot of vegetables, broth, tomato sauce and wine in my garage for several hours.  The fat rises and forms a waxy orange seal that I lift right off with a spatula. Underneath is a dark gelatinous sludge, which will be transformed into the world’s finest gravy by the aforesaid blender. It’s an Osterizer Supreme and my parents got it as a wedding gift, 58 year ago.

Ruth’s brisket fuels my family’s furnace.  My 15 year old son, Jack, puts away 8 slices at dinner.  It’s bitter cold at 7:30 the next morning, when I drop him off at school for jazz band practice. But he is ready to go. As I pull away, I picture Jack tuning up his guitar.  His signature song is All of Me, which was an immediate hit when it came out in 1931. I imagine Helen dancing to it in her kitchen in Gloversville with her three little girls. If that’s not romantic, I don’t what is.

Written by Gerald Marks and Seymour Simons, All of Me has been recorded by over 500 artists including all the usual suspects but performed memorably on an episode of Sanford and Son by Redd Foxx with Scatman Crothers accompanying him on guitar. In 1999, Woody Allen added it to the score of his wonderful homage to 30's jazz, Sweet and Lowdown, starring Sean Penn as the mythical Emmett Ray. Arranged by longtime Allen musical partner, Dick Hyman, this brisk version features Howard Alden on guitar, and is sung by Carol Woods. It's played so irrepressably that one can almost forget how mournful the lyric is. Note first the marvellous interplay between Alden and Ken Peplowski on clarinet. Then note the wonderful break where they downshift gears into Peanut Vendor, a popular Cuban rumba also from 1931. Crisp and bright, bursting with juicy red fruit, It would work wonderfully at any Sunday barbeque or even better, as the upbeat antidote on the treacly sweet Valentine's Day mix.

There are so few worthy of our admiration, but Paul Newman certainly warranted it - not a saint by a long shot, just a guy who used his celebrity properly. Damn, this journey is tough!

One of my favorite Newman films, Cool Hand Luke, benefited greatly from a masterful score by Lalo Schifrin favoring guitar pickin’, banjo and harmonicas. If you don’t know Schifrin by name you know his work (Mission: Impossible, Mannix, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., Dirty Harry and Enter The Dragon). Here he opts for a symphonic approach and while I don’t love the brisk pace he starts with, the melody is exceptional and the end titles still brings a lump to my throat (by the way this theme is called “Down Here On The Ground” and was recorded by a number of artists including Wes Montgomery).

Note the upbeat second section about 2 minutes in. Titled Tar Sequence, this was used during the 70’s and 80’s as the theme to KABC’s Eyewitness News (ahhh the memory of Christine Lange, Tawny Little and Dr. George Fischbeck).

With his work on 1969’s Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Burt Bacharach won Oscar® not once but twice (Best Original Score and Best Song - Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head). Here is South American Getaway featuring the amazing Ron Hicklin Singers scatting over a jazzy, waltz rhythm, which perfectly captures the emotional rollercoaster of Butch and Sundance’s journey to Bolivia; from the initial high of being back in business to the melancholic low when they realize that their way of life is quickly coming to an end. I’d add this to the mix on Taco Tuesdays or to any outdoor gathering and of course as a pre or post script to your Oscar nite party. October fun fact: while Bolivia doesn't have a lot of land planted to vines, they do boast the highest vineyards in the world.

Finally, for kicks, here’s Paul Newman’s Eyes by Dogs Die In Hot Cars. This catchy little ditty just makes me smile – especially now.  Named after an RSPCA (Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) campaign advising dog owners not to leave their pets in cars, this Scottish band put out a really fun album in 2004 called Please Describe Yourself from which this track hails, and no, it ‘aint Andy Partridge on vocals. Grab something with a lot of slurpy fruit and raise a toast to the bluest eyes you ever saw.

So long, Butch. Glad you left us so many indelible memories.