Random Music Lover

Inspired by my buddy John’s blog, I began listening to my iPod on random Monday morning (the 12th).  Since then, I’ve resisted ending the experiment after enjoying a good laugh, but I’m consistently fascinated by the music I carry around with me…

I just got my current iPod about a month ago.  This is my third, not counting the several replacements I had to go through with  my first one.  Little Buddy Jr., as I named it, can hold about 111 gigabytes of music, and I currently have about 74 gigs on it.  For those not in on the whole computer storage game, that’s a hell of a lot of music.  I pride myself on having a pretty well-rounded assortment of music on my iPod at all times, because there’s no telling what kind of music a situation might call for…

A little while ago, on my previous iPod, I made a playlist called EGH, or Eric’s Greatest Hits.  The name comes from the tapes (like, cassette tapes) that my dad used to make for me when I was little and actually had a WalkMan.  These tapes featured some of my favorite songs, ranging from Stan Ridgway’s “The Gumbo Man” to most (if not all) of They Might Be Giants‘ “Fingertips” suite.  I played these tapes to death, and might still have them around somewhere.  Taking the creation of the EGH playlist into my own hands, I simply went through all the music on my iPod and picked out a song (either my favorite or just a cool song) from each artist.  That way, when I listened to the playlist on random, it was just the stuff I picked, and artists wouldn’t repeat.  The feeling of control I had over my iPod was probably a bit too much, but that’s just me…

Selecting the ‘Shuffle Songs’ feature was not an easy task.  Would I even like the first song that played?  How long before I skip over a song?  What will be the first horribly mis-matched transition?  Throwing caution to the wind, I began listening to my whole collection in whatever order my current version of iPod Software decided to serve it up.  With some relief, I started my journey to the sounds of Paul Weller, crooning a tune from his most recent album, 22 Dreams.  At least I was off to a good start.  I couldn’t help but think that my iPod somehow felt my apprehension, because I have so far been met with a heavy assortment of hit singles and otherwise familiar songs.  My pleasant surprise at this was partly dashed when I heard “We’ve Got Everything” by Modest Mouse, as I realized how much Modest Mouse I have on my iPod that I’ll have to sit through should I keep this project going for an extended period of time…

Since Monday, I have not skipped over a single song.  Even when I hear an artist I’ve already heard (so far, The Raveonettes, Clinic and, of course, Sparks have been the most frequent repeaters), I just keep the flow going.  The ‘trainwreck’ transitions that I knew were inevitable are turning out to be so sporadic that they are entertaining.  I’ve heard Gang Of Four into Spike Jones, Louis Prima into Love And Rockets, and countless more…

Unlike John, I don’t really plan on keeping this up for too much longer.  Unfortunately, if I were to put more music onto my iPod, it would restart the shuffle from the beginning.  Maybe someday I’ll listen to all of my library all the way through (after all, I did take a picture everyday for a year), but I don’t think it’ll be for a while.  I will keep posting interesting song pairings or re-discovered tracks from time to time, but any longer and I’ll be too far into this game to get out…

E.

This entry was posted on January 18th 2009 at 12:21 am and is filed under Music. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.