This week's FRT is an odd blend of post-punk, glam, New Wave, classic rock, ambient and funk: genres as divergent and quarrelsome as siblings in a "mixed family," but each sharing some genetic likeness with the others. In some strange way, they're inseparable.

1. The Stranglers - "Always the Sun"
2. Oceansize - "Women Who Love Men Who Love Drugs"
3. Marc Bolan & T. Rex - "Zip Gun Boogie"
4. Brian Eno - "An Arc of Doves"
5. The Fixx - "One Thing Leads To Another"
6. The Meters - "Funkify Your Life"
7. Kate Bush - "Strange Phenomena"
8. Clan of Xymox - "A Day (remix)"
9. The Raveonettes - "Ode to L.A."
10. Genesis - "Follow You, Follow Me": I never cease to be amazed that this song was once a "classic rock radio staple." By today's standards, it's as mellow and MOR as "rock" gets.

Then again, Queen, REO Speedwagon, Journey, Foreigner, Van Halen and other "hard rock" acts transitioned into the not-so-hard-rock stable over time, both by relative "hardening" of newer songs by newer acts that were played on the radio, and by what I like to call the older bands' *"hardness perception shift." Once a band has a "mellower" hit song, that band's catalog - even their harder songs - become perceived by radio programmers (and by extension, the listening public) as softer. But that's another theory, for another posting.

* Also known as the process of fogeyfication. For you Chicago Northsiders, check out "Morse Avenue Is Great" - a blog by Archie Gait, "dedicated to dispelling the myth that Morse Ave. [in Rogers Park] is some sort of hellhole." [as seen on Gapers Block] Have a wunderbar weekend.

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