The Random Shuffle Chronicles - Week 1

For the past two years or so, I’ve been trying to complete the daunting task of listening to every song (all 6,237 of them) on my iPod. This particular challenge has only one rule: I’m not allowed to skip over any track as they play on random shuffle.

The rule makes for interesting combinations of songs. For example, Led Zeppelin’s “Over the Hills and Far Away” could be followed up by Kanye West’s “The Good Life,” which could be followed by Simon & Garfunkel’s “The 59th St. Bridge Song,” and so on, and so on.

This listening technique doesn’t make for good party music, however, particularly when a song from Wagner’s Ring Cycle shows up. The lack of the ability to keep the shuffle going at a party makes my task a lengthy one, as do other various other factors. I don’t listen to my iPod at work, my iPod car kits keep breaking, and, about half-way through the challenge(at two different times), my iPod has frozen, taking me back to square one.

However, this time, there will be no excuses. I’m going to make it through every song, or bust. And, if my iPod freezes one more damn time, I’m buying a new one.

I want to make this challenge more interesting (to me) this time, so I’m going to write about it weekly, recapping the good, the bad and the ugly of the weekly shuffle, and highlighting my favorite parts and the most interesting parts of my iPod’s shuffle choices.

So, without further ado, here are some brief observations from Week 1:

Total songs listened to (of (6,237): 112 (1.7 percent)

The Good: The iPod actually played quite a few songs from the latest batch of albums I added, instead of sticking mainly to the songs that have had multiple plays over the years. Instead of such staples as “Won’t Get Fooled Again” and “Can’t You Hear Me Knocking,” I got to hear Blue Cheer’s “Summertime Blues” and Lee Michaels wailing away on “Hold on to Freedom.”

The Bad: There was nothing really too bad in the shuffle’s selections this week. Though, a couple limp-wristed Supertramp songs (“Hide in Your Shell,” “You Started Laughing”) were played, and the iPod chose to pick Beatles songs from the Cirque du Soleil Beatles Love soundtrack, rather than from my actual Beatles albums.

The Ugly: The Styx. Good Lord. The Styx. The iPod decided to have itself a Styx fest during its first week. I know we all thought “Renegade,” “Come Sail Away” and even (gulp) “Lady” were awesome songs back in 7th grade, but I can’t even begin to fathom why I ever bought the Paradise Theater album. Normally, I could listen to those songs with a shudder and move on, but “Nothing Ever Goes as Planned” and “Half-Penny, Two-Penny?” Gah. What’s worse is that the songs played while I was sitting out in the living room with my roommate, who has great taste in music, and now assumed I used to have good taste in music. I’ve now inflicted irreparable damage on my street cred. Damn.

Top 5 Songs of Week 1:

“Million Dollar Bash” – Fairport Convention

“Summertime Blues” – Blue Cheer

“Too Much In Love” – The Move

“Black Mud” – The Black Keys

“Emergency” – The Tony Williams Lifetime

SARR - The Incredible String Band - The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter

Music made by the hippies that lived down the hall from you in college, giggling into all hours of the night in a haze of marijuana smoke and patchouli, if those hippies knew how to write a song as good as the tunes on this record. Nuggets of humorous tongue-in-cheek folk music abound, augmented with water harps, dulcimer, pan pipes and everything you can find in your kitchen closet. A highlight: “The Minotaur’s Song,” where we learn that the mythical beast can’t dream well because of his horns.

SARR - Fleetwood Mac - Live

I seem to have a terrible habit of buying live albums by bands I’m not particularly fond of in order to hear one or two of the song I actually like by such artists. I came to Fleetwood Mac Live through this habit, tired of not having my favorite Christine McVie and Stevie Nicks- (I’m not a big Lindsey Buckingham fan) penned songs in my library. I should have bought a greatest hits album instead. The Mac sounds bland here. The McVie and Nicks songs (“Say You Love Me,” “Dreams,” “Rhiannon,” etc.) are OK, but not as polished as they are in the studio. As for the Buckingham tracks, ugh. I’ll take the studio version of “Never Going Back Again” – where I can actually hear his intricate finger picking – over this muddled mess any day.

SARR - The Flaming Lips -The Dark Side of the Moon

My advice to you before listening to this is to forget Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon exists. The Flaming Lips and Stardeath and White Dwarfs turned Floyd’s masterpiece from a space-rock stoner’s dream into a groove-heavy, electronic trance album. It’s not necessarily trance music, but this Dark Side’s grooves are hypnotic. Believe it or not, Roger Waters’ tales of madness sound more menacing with Wayne Coyne & co. performing. Pink Floyd’s trippy, lush atmospherics become cold, mechanized pulses that bore into your brain, daring you to get up an dance. Pink Floyd, it is not, but something different (and great) altogether.

SARR - The Black Keys - Brothers

I’d buy into the hype on this one. Brothers is a swampy, filthy tour-de-force. Dan Auerbach and Patrick Carney have created a stew of psychedelia, sludge, blues and soul. Through the trippy funk of “Black Mud,” the chug-and-groove of “Sinister Kid” and the Motown-at-a-snail’s-pace take on Gamble’s and Huff’s “Never Gonna Give You Up,” the Keys take listeners back to psychedelia of the late 1960s, but leave the era’s excess and self-indulgence behind. Maybe this is the sound Blue Cheer was aiming for.

SARR - The Flaming Lips - Embryonic

This psychedelic freakout needs an accompanying movie so I don’t burst a blood vessel trying to visualize what these songs sound like. Freakiness aside, Wayne Coyne and co. have created quite the party/dance album on half of this disc. Despite the squeals and squelches on such tracks as “The Sparrow Looks Up at the Machine” or “Worm Mountain,” Michael Ivins (bass) and Kilph Spurlock (drums) create enough grooves for you to dance yourself into a frenzy. When you want a break, lose yourself in the breezy, computerized soul of “The Impulse.” Party on, Wayne.