7 days of favorite tunes, as nominated by Kim Ware, the Queen poet from The Good Graces and hip shaker from The Sunset District!

Day 1. "Delta 88" by Antenna.

For today's tune, Kim chose "Nirvana" by the Blake Babies and that got me thinking about all the amazing songs they put out over the course of only a handful of records. Their record, Sunburn didn't leave my CD player for a solid year. I completely fell in love with it. I even reviewed the CD in Players Magazine down in Tampa Bay and gave it 5 stars.

Fast forward a year or so and I'm digging though the pile of CDs that were submitted for review at Players and I come across one called Sway by the band Antenna. "Featuring members of the Blake Babies!" exclaimed the yellow sticker on the jewel box. I grabbed the CD and ran down to the car. I was completely hooked by the first tune, "Delta 88."

A scratchy sample jumps out of the speaker...

"Nobody with a good car needs to be justified."

The guitar builds up and then, SLAM! The band piles on with a some power chords, a snaky guitar lead followed by slacker vocals and fantastic harmonies. I am hooked.

The rest of the record was just as good but I always clicked back to "Delta 88" over and over again. I could drive to work in 3 "Delta 88s" and it was 5 "Delta 88s" to Tyrone Mall as long as traffic wasn't too bad.

Those of you familiar with my band at the time, Lie might recognize a little riff or two I borrowed from this song on our song, "Thunderbird" on our first CD.

So that's day 1. Stay tuned for 6 more. I have to nominate another person each day to do the same, so today I nominate Susie Richardson Ulrey because she's a fine connoisseur of all things music.

John McNicholas