Daily Loaf

With the Thanksgiving holiday looming ahead in all its turkeylicious, cranberry sauce-drenched glory, I’ve decided to go obvious and give thanks for great music with a playlist of 10 of my favorite songs expressing gratitude, whether it’s for friendship, love, a great party or the gift of a fiber optic Jesus.

1. “Thank You for Being a Friend,” Andrew Gold, All This and Heaven Too (1978).
Gold’s hit reached No. 25 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in ’78, but the warm soft-rock number made pop culture history after it was shaved down to 46 seconds and recorded by singer Cynthia Fee for The Golden Girls. I watched a few hours of Golden Girls reruns on the Hallmark Channel recently and I let “Thank You for Being a Friend” — arguably the pinnacle of TV theme songs — play through every time. Yes, I watched six episodes in a row — so what? Golden Girls is ’80s sitcom gold (no pun intended) and bad old-lady fashion aside, it holds up rather well over time. Thus, this shout out is dedicated to the song and the show.

2. “Thank You,” Led Zeppelin, Led Zeppelin II (1969)
Delicate swells of Hammond organ by John Paul Jones, the bright, full-bodied strumming of Jimmy Page on his Vox 12-string guitar, and Robert Plant’s vocals serenading like a soft caress, then growing stronger with his passion — Led Zeppelin’s “Thank You” is a flawless love song for a hard rockin’ band, with poetic lyricism like, “And so today my world it smiles / your hand in mine, we walk the miles / Thanks to you it will be done / for you to me are the only one.” Read the rest of this entry »

From the review of the 12/08/08 show: “Of Montreal put on a stage show that was an aural and visual hallucination brought to dazzling life. The six-member band played against a huge backdrop of vivid, psychedelic animations and under washes of saturated lights. Two sets of drums were mounted on risers on either side of the stage and a revolving screen set up between them hid-or-revealed a motley cast of performers, who acted out all manner of scenes and scenarios with and without frontman Kevin Barnes, and in costumes and masks that ranged from cute to freakish. Barnes himself disappeared behind the screen to change outfits a dozen or more times, from fur to sequins to spandex to centaur, a performer serving as his second set of legs for that last ensemble. He covered himself in red paint, in shaving cream, in glitter. He sang and played guitar, pranced from one side of the stage to the other in nothing but a pair of sassy gold trunks, climbed up a riser to sing from its heights or play drums a few minutes, climbed back down to be executed in a faux-gallows, and appeared to have a grand old time all throughout.” (Barnes pictured, photo by Phil Bardi.)

For a complete list of Best of the Bay winners, click here.

Repo! The Genetic Opera is a new horror movie musical set in a near-future earth where an epidemic of organ failures brings big business to a biotech company that offers organ transplants for a price — those who miss their payments are earmarked for repossession and hunted by evil Repo Men. 7:30 p.m., Tampa Theatre, $9 adults/$8 students with ID/$7 seniors and military. Pictured below: Paris Hilton as Amber Sweet in Repo! The Genetic Opera.

Of Montreal brings their intellectual synth-pop and outrageously theatric stage show to The Ritz Ybor, the second half of a national tour in support of Skeletal Lamping, the band’s ninth and latest studio album. New York brother-and-sister-led indie rock duo The Fiery Furnaces open. 7 p.m., Tampa, $17.

Henry B. Plant Museum welcomes author Les Standiford, who gives a talk about and signs copies of his new book, The Man Who Invented Christmas: The True Story of How Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol Rescued His Career and Revived Our Holiday Spirits. A champagne and hors d’oeuvres reception kick-off the events. 6 p.m., Plant Hall, University of Tampa, $20 Henry B. Plant Museum members/$25 general (includes admission into the Victorian Christmas Stroll).

Dr. John Bannon leads the St. Petersburg College Band through a program of works that includes Bach/Moehlmann’s Prelude and Fugue in g minor, Bach’s Sheep May Safely Graze, Paul Dukas’ Fanfare to precede La Peri, Haydn Wood’s Mannin Veen, “Dear Isle of Man”, Howard Hanson’s Dies Natalis II and Victor Herbert’s “March of the Toys” from Babes in Toyland. 7:30 p.m., SPC Music Center, free.

Business coach and fourth-generation business owner Tom Shay offers tips on marketing, sales, customer service and how to survive and thrive in the current struggling economy. Noon-1 p.m., the Courtyard on Beach Boulevard, Gulfport, free; to RSVP, e-mail specials@localshops1.com.