I admit I'm one of the podded masses, the white corded and plugged drones that now crowd our city streets, trains, planes and automobiles. Mr Sony gave us the Walkman, then reaped the rewards. Mr Apple gave us the ipod and has changed our culture.
When I bought my ipod I decided on 30 gig, in case I wanted to load it with more songs than I've ever had in my life then lie down somewhere for a week and listen to the whole thing, beginning to end. (Don't think the day isn't coming when there's some kind of competition, record attempt, reality show or website where people are challenged to do just that. It's coming, I can feel it.)
Of course having that much space means that when I go into a library and look at the CD's that I can now borrow and burn, I think, 'Hmm, famous movie themes played by a brass band from a British Coal Mining town? I'll have that.' (Sadly, that's not a joke.) Then when I get home I decide that I might as well put all the songs on, not just Superman and Star Wars and Indiana Jones. You never know when you may need the theme song from Ryan's Daughter.
This is why I love the shuffle feature, I just press that magic button and let the pod's digital fingers dig into into the depths of the lucky dip barrel and pull out an old favourite or something that I may never even have heard before, some bonus song from an obscure disc I downloaded "just in case", or some filler track from a band I do like that I'd never given the time to before. Sometimes shuffle will deposit a song on your doorstep that is truly a gem and soon makes it to your high rotation. Others are stinky dog droppings of cliches and bad guitar riffs that have you fumbling in your pocket for the skip button. This can lead to odd looks from passers by. Unfortunately, saying, "it's OK I'm just having a quick shuffle" does not solve this problem.
Of course sometimes I think my ipod is tuning to my needs, recently, after skipping a bunch of songs before letting a Bob Marley track play all the way through, the pod dredged up another Bob Marley song for the very next track. There are also plenty of songs out of the almost 4000 I have available that have never been played at all. What gives? Turns out I'm not the only one to wonder about this either, check out this article from American Newsweek.
I'm not going to mention some of the artists that have made their way onto my pod, only to have their work consistently skipped whenever it shuffles to the top of the pile. This is because some of you will deride me for having these artists there in the first place (which I probably deserve) and others of you probably love these artists. (OK, one of them is Robbie Williams, "Let me entertain you?" I wish you bloody would.)
One band I don't have on my ipod, and have been wondering about of late, is Aussie band Big Pig. If you haven't heard of them I'm not surprised, they broke up in 1990 I think, but their biggest album "Bonk" rocks it and any band that has a) Mostly Drums, b) Members that wear long aprons like slaughterhouse workers:
and c) had a song featured at the start of Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure (check the song out here) gets big ups from me. If anyone has a copy of that album, let me know. I think my ipod needs a few more songs.
That's it for now. I'm off to Paris this weekend (as you do) to buy some blue and white stripey shirts and beret's and eat some baguettes and escargot (mmm, slimy).
Until next time, keep podding along.
Au Revoir.
J
No comments:
Post a Comment