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PODCAST

Select Five

Hosted by Oakland music enthusiast Pam Torno, every episode of Select Five features a special guest talking about five songs and why they matter. Subscribe to the podcast now and get to know artists, music makers, filmmakers, community builders and other creatives from the Bay Area and beyond through the music they love.

music music commentary

All Episodes

00:37:47

Ep 42: MicahTron Amplifying Queer Voices in Five Songs

Select Five ·

2025/10/30

The multi-talented MicahTron is a rapper, producer, writer and DJ who has performed around the globe. But she still stays grounded in the Bay Area LGBTQ+ community and uses her superpowers to amplify queer voices. In this episode, Micah highlights five of her favorite queer artists of the moment, while reflecting on her own journey as a queer hip-hop performer born and raised in San Francisco. BONUS: we'll get an exclusive first listen of her latest track, "Blood Suckers", coming out in

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00:48:36

Ep. 41: Zully Adler’s Five Visionary Songs from...

Select Five ·

2025/09/30

Meet Zully Adler, the Director of Further Triennial, the founder of Goaty Tapes, and a longtime curator and historian of modern art and music. A consummate digger, Zully is known for unearthing rare musical gems on cassettes he finds in flea markets, garage sales, thrift stores and other odd corners of Northern California. In this episode, he pieces together the story of the Lost Coast's underground musical counterculture through five stylistically diverse, unheard recordings by little known

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01:10:00

Ep. 40: Five Books We Read This Summer

Select Five ·

2025/08/18

This summer we took a little break from our normal routine to hit the music books! In this episode, Pam, Brian, and Kate reconvene to report back on their summer reading and whether these stories are worth your time. Our Summer Book Selections: The Islander: My Life in Music and Beyond by Chris Blackwell I Heard There Was a Secret Chord: Music as Medicine by Daniel Levitin The Upcycled Self: A Memoir on the Art of Becoming Who We Are by Tariq Trotter (Black Thought) A Chance to Harmonize: How

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01:08:59

Ep. 39: Jordan Kurland's Jazz Obsession in Five Songs

Select Five ·

2025/05/23

Jordan Kurland is a partner in Noise Pop Industries and the co-founder and partner of Brilliant Corners Artist Management. As a band manager, Jordan works with the likes of Death Cab For Cutie, The Postal Service, Toro y Moi, The New Pornographers, Perfume Genius, and Soccer Mommy. So he’s played a huge role in ushering in some of the biggest indie rock acts of the day, but he’s also an obsessive jazz fan and record collector. In this episode, Jordan selects five heady, funky, and esoteric jazz

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01:03:03

Ep. 38: Five Songs With The Catman of West Oakland

Select Five ·

2025/04/29

Cats may dominate his life, but Adam Myatt -- aka The Catman of West Oakland -- is also a working audio engineer and a longtime musician who somehow makes time for it all. Meowzers, it's a lot! In this special episode, we visit the Catman in his personal studio and mixing space, Hand Me Down Recording, to find out about his wild journey to becoming the Bay Area's most famous cat rescuer, how his musical projects play a role in his cat-centric life, and the local community of musicians he actively

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01:02:01

Ep. 37: Journalist Walter Thompson's Many Brushes...

Select Five ·

2025/03/27

It’s not often that you get to meet your favorite musicians—unless you’re Walter Thompson. Walter is a San Francisco-based tech journalist, writer, and the host/creator of the Fund/Build/Scale podcast. He’s also had the good fortune to have met many music stars throughout his life. In this episode Walter talks us through five songs that bring to mind his most interesting encounters, and along the way we learn about his childhood love of great pop composers, his brief residence at Burt Bacharach’s

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01:08:22

Ep. 36: Five Cosmic Songs with Astrologer Isa Nakazawa

Select Five ·

2025/02/18

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

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01:36:16

Ep. 35: Select Five's 2024 Year-Ender Episode

Select Five ·

2024/12/23

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" -

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00:40:33

Ep. 34: Live From Sierra Meadows, a Special Episode...

Select Five ·

2024/11/27

November’s been a rough month! Fortunately Team Select Five was able to take a field trip to Sierra Meadows, a cool glamping resort near Yosemite National Park, where we found a little peace of mind. Pam, Kate, and Brian joined about 50 other people at a private retreat focused on creativity and community, in which every attendee contributed to the weekend programming by sharing knowledge, teaching a craft, putting on a performance, or volunteering for the event. It was the perfect opportunity to do

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01:17:32

Ep. 33: Exploring Filipino Culture in Five Songs with...

Select Five ·

2024/10/14

When your sense of home is divided between two countries, it can have a profound effect on how you relate to the world and everything you create. Such is the case with nic feliciano. nic is an artist-performer-writer-musician-cook who was born in the Philippines but is now based in Berkeley. Whether it’s feeding people in the streets with her food hustle, Sup Streetfood, or making plays at her beloved home theater, Bindlestiff Studios, nic’s art is always inspired and informed by her experiences in

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Ep. 32: Motown Covers with Mike C The Maitre D

Select Five ·

2024/07/18

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

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00:46:17

Ep. 31: Bibi Khalili's Dance Journey in Five Songs

Select Five ·

2024/06/18

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

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00:50:55

Ep. 30: Five Oakland Songs With Liam O'Donoghue/East...

Select Five ·

2024/05/08

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

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00:58:15

Ep. 29: Five Songs with Alexis Madrigal

Select Five ·

2024/04/16

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

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00:48:00

Ep. 28: Bar Shiru's Five Year Anniversary

Select Five ·

2024/02/21

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!

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00:37:56

Ep. 27: Five Songs With Filmmaker Cheryl Dunye

Select Five ·

2024/01/31

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

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01:28:35

Ep. 26: Our 2023 Year-Ender Episode

Select Five ·

2023/12/29

We made it through another challenging year and we couldn't be happier! From forced career changes to grieving the death of a pet, 2023 was a real struggle. But now that it's mostly in the rear view mirror, we can look back fondly at some of the musical highlights that kept us afloat. Brian's Selections: 5. Unknown Mortal Orchestra - "Nadja" 4. El Michaels Affair + Black Thought - "The Weather" 3. The Beatles - "For No One" 2. Muddy Waters - "She’s Alright" 1. De La Soul - "Trying People" Kate's

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00:46:29

Ep. 25: Saskia Wilson-Brown's Journey Through Scent...

Select Five ·

2023/11/21

How do you turn a song into a scent? And what does music teach us about scent-making and its history? We take a deep dive into these questions with Saskia Wilson-Brown, whose mission is to disrupt, decolonize, and democratize perfumery. Saskia, who is Bay Area-bred, is the founder and executive director of the Institute for Art and Olfaction in Los Angeles, a nonprofit art studio that makes perfumery accessible to all. Listen as she takes us on an aromatic journey through five songs that relate to

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00:52:41

Ep. 24: Trackademicks on the Art & Craft of Remixing

Select Five ·

2023/07/25

Get inside the creative mind of music producer and ace remixer Trackademicks! Whether it's putting an amapiano spin on a '90s R&B ballad or mashing up two songs from disparate musical scenes, Track has a knack for weaving tunes from a variety of genres, eras, and tempos into fresh new joints that club DJs crave. In this episode we talk about five of his own remixes, his affinity to the original songs, and how he reimagined these familiar classics so they can be heard in an entirely different

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47:17:22

Ep. 23: Five Disco Favorites from DJ Patrick's...

Select Five ·

2023/06/13

It's time to deepen your disco knowledge with Patrick Lotilla, aka DJ Patrick. As a resident DJ at Bar Part Time in San Francisco, a key team member of Bar Shiru, where he curates records a couple of nights a week, and a co-founder of the Brouhaha party series that brought world class DJ talent to the Bay Area, Patrick is a big presence in the local nightlife scene. And his taste in dance music is vast and eclectic. In this episode we focus on five of his favorite rare grooves from the late 70s to

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