Thursday, October 27, 2005

Won't You Take Me To | Funkytown?

I'VE recently decided to listen to every single track on my iPod.
Well, not every track: I've skipped some 12th Man stuff because that's better when you listen to the full thing, and in the interests of my sanity I've skipped any Britney Spears tracks that pop up.
It's a fairly long task, but then listening to and writing notes about 3394 different tracks generally is. There's a few that the Internet searching service got wrong, but other than that it's all pretty good. It'd be nice to get past songs that start with "b" (songs beginning with "al" to "an" took forever and a day).
But, I know what you're thinking. Why has he got Britney Spears on his iPod? Actually, if you think that's bad, I've also got John Denver's Annie's Song, a distinctly unmemorable track from manufactured (but very pretty) 90s band the Teen Queens (Be My Baby for those wanting to get a copy), and most heartbreakingly of all, Billy Ray Cyrus telling everyone about his Achy Breaky Heart.
Before you all excommunicate me, I would also like to present Men At Work's Down Under, a sampling of Coldplay, U2, Matchbox Twenty and Maroon 5, and any of the important stuff sung by one Jimmy Barnes.
So why keep so many songs? For one, I own a 40-gig iPod that isn't close to being full as yet, so any culling has been postponed for a while.
The second and most important reason is that I have a portable collection of songs that are very handy if someone wants to listen to a particular track. Generally these requests come form those saddled with two x chromosomes, although I have played requests from males. Why Jason Warren-Smith wanted to hear Peter Andre's Mysterious Girl will forever remain a mystery to me.
Again, I hear you ask, why do you have that on cd to start with? I buy a lot of compilation cd's, so there's generally a mix of classics and crapulence. Thus the same box set that gave me Jimmy Barnes and INXS telling everyone about the Good Times they are about to have also chucked in some horrendous 80s pop by Kids In The Kitchen. For every Sounds Of Then (I laugh and think that this is Australia), there's a Mysterious Girl.
Sometimes you come across gems though. At one stage I had the whole playlist on random, and came across the George Baker Selection's Little Green Bag, which will be familiar to those who've seen the Toyota ads here in Australia where a guy wearing a "Make My Dinner" t-shirt joins in a women's rights rally.
There could be more, but at any rate I reckon I've got most requests covered. Provided, of course, people would rather listen to the Traveling Wilbury's or the Cockroaches rather than Madonna or Bruce Springsteen. Or even Achy Breaky Heart. What were people thinking?!?