Select Five

In our first offering of 2025, we’re honored to travel the proverbial spaceways with astrologer Isa Nakazawa, host of the podcast Stars and Stars with Isa. Every week Isa sits down with an interesting celebrity to read their birth chart, and a fascinating discussion about their life's purpose ensues. In this episode, she discusses music as a gateway to her astrology practice and five songs that fuel her passion for cosmic exploration and interpretation.

Isa's Selections:

"Door of the Cosmos" - Sun Ra (1979)

"Virgo" - Meshell Ndegeocello (2023)

"Venus As a Boy" - Björk (1993)

"Scorpio" - Nat Adderly Sextet/Rick Holmes/Cannonball Adderly (1972)

"Space 8" - Nala Sinephro (2021)

Listen to new episodes of Stars and Stars with Isa every week

From heavy hitter new releases to quirky under-the-radar selections, we humbly looks back at the music that left the biggest impression on us in 2024. In the final episode of this tumultuous year, Team Select Five waxes on about the songs that marked our moments of personal grief and milestones of professional growth ... or just plain got us singing at the top of our lungs driving solo in the car.

Kate's Selections:

"Jolene" - Beyonce (2024)

"Summer in the City" - Quincy Jones (1973)

"Nightclubbing" - Grace Jones (1981)

"My Girl" - The Temptations (1965)

"Freedom ‘90" - George Michael (1990)

Brian’s Selections:

"We’re On Our Way" - Common & Pete Rock (2024)

"Soul Bossa Nova" - Quincy Jones (1962)

"Say" - Rosie Lowe & Duval Timothy (2021)

"The Dress" - Dijon (2021)

"Going Back To VA" - Pharrell Williams (2024)

Pam's Selections:

"Alone" - The Cure (2024)

"On The Beach" - Neil Young (1974)

"Que Pasa/Me No Pop I" - Coati Mundi (1981)

"The Last Year" - Jessica Pratt (2024)

"Raining in Manila" - Lola Amour (2023)

Listen to our year-ender playlist with all the songs we talked about in the episode + many more that got us through 2024

Mike Cochran - aka Maitre D - is a Bay Area DJ and a prolific beatmaker who's been crafting hip-hop and R&B tracks for nearly two decades (producing credits include Jidenna, Sadat X, Wordsworth and Guilty Simpson). When he's behind the decks, he can rock any party with his creative open format sets full of original remixes and blends. But one of his favorite gigs of late is playing at Motown on Mondays parties across the country. In this episode, Maitre D pays respect to five Motown covers that take us in all kinds of directions - from reggae to Moog-heavy, to psychedelic.

Maitre D's Selections:

Vanilla Fudge - You Keep Me Hanging On

Donnie Hathaway - What's Goin' On

The Jay Boys - Can't Get Next To You

Hugo Montenegro - You've Got It Bad Girl

Rahsaan Roland Kirk - Never Can Say Goodbye

Check out Maitre D's Motown edits

Find him on Instagram

More about Motown on Mondays parties

What does it take to make a living as a dancer? Just ask Paymaneh "Bibi" Khalili. A stalwart of the Bay Area hip-hop dance community, Bibi is the founder of DAM Events, a mixed arts showcase that gives up-and-coming talent the opportunity to strut their stuff. She's also a choreographer in her own right, having taught performance workshops, directed dance teams, and served as a judge for local hip-hop dance competitions. In this episode we talk about some of the legendary choreographers who influenced Bibi, the struggles of being a career dancer, and the songs that helped kick off her lifelong love of performing.

Bibi's Selections:

Fatima Robinson (Choreographer) - Michael Jackson/"Remember the Time"

Tina Landon (Choreographer) - Janet Jackson/"If"

Jay-Z (feat. Amil & Ja Rule) - "Can I Get A ..."

Basement Jaxx - "Breakaway"

Pharrell feat. Gwen Stefani - "Can I Have It Like That? (Remix)"

Listen to Bibi's playlist

Find out about the next DAM Event

Celebrate the sounds of The Town with journalist Liam O’Donoghue, the host and producer of the popular local history podcast, East Bay Yesterday. Liam's show routinely covers the rich and underexplored tales of the East Bay's past, whether it's a deep dive into Emeryville's former "Rotten City" reputation, or a story about the long gone mass transit Key System that pre-dated BART and AC Transit. When he's not reporting on East Bay lore, Liam is also a music nerd and a DJ. In this episode he combines his love of history and music by taking us on an audio tour of Oakland's different musical eras through five special songs, spanning from mid-century West Coast jazz to warehouse party music.

Liam's Selections:

The Dave Brubeck Quartet - "Take Five"

Gene Russell - "Black Orchid"

Souls of Mischief - "'93 til Infinity"

Keak Da Sneak - "Super Hyphy (Thizz Remix)"

The Younger Lovers - "The Ballad of Two Stubborn Men"

Listen to these songs and so many more on Liam’s extended playlist of Oakland Jams!

Subscribe to East Bay Yesterday

As the co-host of "Forum" on KQED Public Radio and a writer for the Atlantic, journalist Alexis Madrigal often reports on big ideas and urgent stories that affect the Bay Area and the world. But in his spare time, he loves running, gardening, and 70’s funk and disco. In our latest episode, Alexis talks about a wide-ranging selection of five tunes he holds dear from his past and present—from P-Funk, to Norwegian Jazz, to Latin Hip-Hop. Along the way, we’ll learn about how his Dad’s record collection got him through his post-college malaise, the song that gets him in a book-writing mood, and his deep appreciation of music and art borne out of colonial occupation and resistance.

Alexis's Selections:

Funkadelic - "One Nation Under a Groove"

Gato Barbieri - "Encuentros"

Daniel Herskedal - "The Mistral Noir"

La Dame Blanche - "Veneno"

Thao & The Get Down Stay Down - "Temple"

Catch Alexis on KQED’s Forum

Listen to his Containers podcast series

Learn more about his forthcoming book

February 2024 marks five whole years since Bar Shiru first opened to the public, and we are eternally grateful for the creative partnership of its owners, Dan Gahr and Shirin Raza Gahr. To mark this special occasion, we gathered a few Select Five friends and supporters to the bar and recorded our very first episode in front of a live audience!

We're honored to kick off 2024 with the esteemed Cheryl Dunye, a world-renowned filmmaker and director of episodic television. Cheryl's work includes the groundbreaking 1996 film The Watermelon Woman, which is part of the permanent cinema collection at the Museum of Modern Art in NYC and was added to the Criterion Collection in 2023. She's also directed episodes of The Umbrella Academy, Bridgerton, and Queen Sugar, among many other shows. Born in Liberia and raised in Philly, Cheryl is now rooted in the Town’s vibrant filmmaking community, having founded Jingletown Films, an Oakland-based production company. Hear her talk about five of her favorite tunes of the moment, the emotional places they take her, and the big wide cinematic possibilities that music can open up.