Inspired by a series of articles by Sadi Ranson-Polizotti, a healthy dose of ego and the realization that imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, it occurred to me to share my thoughts about some of the fun and eclectic music on my iPod. This means choosing songs not by some intelligent method like picking highlights or songs I find particularly meaningful at this moment, but by putting the overstuffed bastard on shuffle and seeing what 10 songs it comes up with randomly and what I can think to say about them - be it explanation, musings or apologies for listening to some really silly stuff.
The iPod is an amazing tool. I've written about this particular iPod Mini before when I first bought it as a Christmas present for my daughter. She almost immediately rejected the lovely silver thing for a pink iPod Mini, which was thrown over and passed on to her mother by the summer in favor of a Nano. So here I am, a 46-year-old guy listening to an iPod which has engraved on the back "To Caroline With Love - Christmas 2004", which I think says it all when it comes to fatherhood - not the words, but the fact that I'm the one listening to the iPod rather than her.
Now the wonderful, ridiculous thing about even a 4gb iPod Mini is that you can stuff absolutely stupid amounts of music on it. Mine has almost 1000 songs on it because I'm a big fan of Elvis Costello's 3-minute rule. The fun thing about it is that there's no way on earth that there are 1000 songs that I actually, genuinely love, so easily half the content consists of songs which have novelty value or which just happened to be on CDs with songs I do like, or which got on there by accident when I downloaded songs for someone else on my computer. With 1000 songs, there are at least some which got there by mistake or were beamed on to it by aliens which I would never listen to, but it was too much work to go through all the songs and find them and delete them. I figure that if they come up I can just skip them.
So I put the iPod on shuffle and hit play, and this is what it came up with.
![Persevere [CD on Demand]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51BTgA3x9nL._SL120_.jpg)
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Chromatius
Sounds like a meme - put your MP3 player on shuffle or random and type out the first 5.
This will get embarassing. No self-censorship!
This my Zen Jukebox, I'll do the Ipod another time:
Rod Stewart This Old Heart of Mine
Johnny Winter - Stray Cat Blues
MC5 - Teenage Lust
Unforscene - Nuclear Symphony
Like a Miracle - Tarwater feat. Tikiman
2 - Chromatius
When I saw your Doc Watson, I was sure some of my bluegrass, country blues or alt-country would show up; no such luck...
3 - Dave Nalle
Fear not, Chromatius. Pure percentages indicate that it looks like a run of Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs next time...
dave
4 - M. Sahm
Fun game, Dave. I just pressed play, and my first five random songs were:
Take It or Leave It - The Strokes
Facing East - Thievery Corporation
Destiny - Zero 7
Shake Your Rump - Beastie Boys
Rubber Soul - Herbie Hancock
The only thing I hate about full shuffle is those beeping channel setters for my iTrip occasionally come up. Oh well.
5 - Mark Saleski
woa! very cool dave (except for that Macarena thing, but i understand guilty pleasures well).
and how did i never hear of that Kerouac disc? yow, time to place an order!
6 - Connie Phillips
This is great, Dave. You're braver then I am. With my 40gig iPod, and more then 2500 songs so far, I have plenty of room for guilty pleasures that I might not be so brave to admit to.
I hope you continue with this as a regular feature.
7 - Dave Nalle
In a previous incarnation - before I had to reformat it, the iPod was loaded with about a 50-50 mix of music and old radio shows and comedy routines, which is where the Macarena song came from. Most of that got deleted - like 30 episodes of the Goon Show, a collection of SNL Jeopardys and all of the Cheech and Chong except the song.
BTW, did you guys know that the iPod will play WMV format, so if you have spoken stuff or old radio or TV material you can put it on there in that format at much lower quality than you need for music and fit maybe 500 hours worth of material into 4gb, which is enough for several audio books and a lot more.
Dave
8 - DJRadiohead
With the 60GB iPod and 12,372 songs... OK, no one likes the asshole who starts the oneupmanship.
Yeah, there are a few guilty pleasures but most of them are songs (or at least albums) I wouldn't be embarrassed to be caught listening to by someone else.
9 - John Owen
From my 20 GB holding 5100-odd songs;
Peter Piper performed by Run DMC
Hot Cha performed by Roland Kirk
Where Did You Sleep Last Night? performed by Lead Belly
Darling Nikki performed by Prince (a live 1986 bootleg show from Atlanta that is OFF THE CHARTS)
If Drinking Don't Kill Me performed by George Jones
Ahhhhh.... that's a good buncha music. And after that's Zappa, then Marty Robbins, then the Zakary Thaks, then Etta James, then The Jackson Five, then Baaba Maal....
I have such excellent taste in music.
*hugs self*
10 - Dave Nalle
I can't imagine filling a 40gb or 60gb iPod and actually liking enough of what I'd have to put on there enough to not be skipping 2 out of 3 songs, so don't worry, I'm not jealous of your large capacities.
Dave
11 - Mark Saleski
i can't imagine filling a 60g ipod and not getting carpel tunnel spinnin' your thumb around that wheel!
12 - DJRadiohead
I don't have carpel... I have tendinitis. Maybe it is the iPod's fault.
13 - John Owen
Dave, fair enuf. I actually got a 20GB for that reason; I couldn't imagine filling up 60 GB with music I actually wanted to hear often out of my own collection. What does that say about my collection?
But I've finally decided that's beside the point. I have loaded up my 20GB with box sets and compilations galore, plus a few hundred full albums, and it turns out that having so much to choose from means I am very often pulling the IPod out of my pocket to find out what the hell it is I'm listening to that's pleasing me so very much - it turns out there's a lot of good music that shines out of context.
I think the, what, coping mechanism you adopt for having an x-sized Ipod differs from the coping mechanism you would adopt for a 5x sized Ipod. I'm sure there's a college paper in there somewhere... any of you kids around here majoring in psychology?
14 - Mark Saleski
i'm probably in the minority here, but i only use my ipod for review material. it's just easier to have it on there so that i can listen and write anywhere (meaning i'm not tied to a computer, for instance...and yes, i don't write on the computer)
15 - Dave Nalle
This whole 'coping mechanism' business sounds awfully psychological. Can you have iPod related disorders? Like iPod OCD where you have to sort all the songs by weird criteria? Or perhaps iPod withdrawal if you're without your tunes for too long?
Dave
16 - Mat Brewster
I'll play along.
Carl Douglas - Kung Fu Fighting (guilty pleasure? maybe, but I still can't not smile when I hear this)
Hot Buttered Rum String Band - Ginseng Sullivan from a live show dated 2-4-2005
James Taylor - I Bought Me a Cat
Ryan Adams - She's Lost Total Control
Beatles - Lucy in the Sky with Diamond
So that's two cheese, 1 classic and a couple of somewhat obscure jems. Not too bad, I guess.
17 - Dave Nalle
Out of curiosity, do a lot of you iPod users look for obscure live bootleg material through P2P networks like Gnutella or Kazaa? I feel less guilty about getting bootlegs that way than I would if I downloaded actual commercial releases.
Dave
18 - mat
I don't have an ipod, but I listen to a lot of live bootlegs. My list here. I don't tend to get them from Gnutella networks, but from bit torrents and from the always mavelous archive.org
19 - Dave Nalle
I haven't been terribly successful with bittorrent so far, but will give it another try. I'll check out archive.org too.
Dave
20 - Elvira Black
Great piece, Dave. I've been meaning to get a iPod but haven't as yet--but I'm sure when I do it will become an object of belated obsession just as Herman, my Mac PowerBook, is to me now. I'll have to think of an appropritate name for it though, and decide beforehand if it's a girl or a boy.
21 - Mat Brewster
I find I am much more sucessful with bittorrents when I download things with a whole lot of seeders. Anything with only a couple is bound to either take forever, or crap out.
A couple of other sites with good live music downloads are bt.etree.org which mainly covers the jam band territory, but you can find shows from just about everything and the bluegrassbox which isn't bit torrent, but covers just about everything bluegrass.
22 - Dave Nalle
Elvira, I name all my computers after ancient gods. My iPod is Maponus after the gallic god of music. BTW if you're looking for an iPod they've been out long enough now that you can get used ones or refurbs on ebay super cheap.
Dave
23 - The Theory
ooo. This is a fun game!
My iPod is a 30GB with 6,427 songs.
The first 5 to come up on suffle:
"Vito's Ordination Song (Acoustic Version)" by Sufjan Stevens
"Nanook Rubs It" by Frank Zappa
"Bleed" by Further Seems Forever
"Made of Steam" by Dengue Fever
"Friendly Warning" by Snakefinger
not a bad list at all. Of course, any time you start off with Sufjan it bodes well.
24 - Dave Nalle
Thanks for that link to Bluegrassbox, Mat. I found some good stuff on there.
Dave
25 - Mat Brewster
You are very welcome, Dave. They have some great stuff. It's not very well organized and they do a lousy job of listing what shows they have available, but if you can sort through it, and love bluegrass then there is a wealth of good music.