Thursday, September 20, 2012

Because I'm a joiner...

...and also I'm stumped for content myself this morning, I'm going to steal an idea from Unc. It's totally okay, though, because he stole it from Alan.

Like Alan, I only listen in the car. Unlike both Alan and Unc, I'm too dang lazy to filter for just the past month, so it's just a list of the top twenty most played songs on the iPod, period. My list is blandly mainstream compared to theirs, and most of it can be heard in elevators or drug stores these days:
  1. "Like A Prayer" Madonna
  2. "Emotion Detector" Rush
  3. "Cantara" Dead Can Dance
  4. "Touch And Go" Emerson, Lake & Powell
  5. "Goodnight Lover" Fluke
  6. "Riff Raff" Linkin Park
  7. "The Day The World Went Away" Nine Inch Nails
  8. "Marooned" Pink Floyd
  9. "Tomorrow, Wendy" Concrete Blonde
  10. "Burn" The Cure
  11. "Ascension" Dead Can Dance
  12. "Another Body Murdered" Faith No More & Boo-Yaa T.R.I.B.E.
  13. "Hey Jealousy" Gin Blossoms
  14. "Gold Dust Woman" Hole
  15. "Mystify" INXS
  16. "Tainted Love (Soft Cell)" Marilyn Manson
  17. "Hungry Like The Wolf" Duran Duran
  18. "Live And Let Die" Guns N' Roses
  19. "Don't Cry" Guns N' Roses
  20. "Think About The Way" Ice MC
Okay, I can understand that repeating a Madonna ditty once or twice on sunny, top-down drives can skew its ranking, but the one I don't get is the Gin Blossoms song. How did it get that high up there? I don't use playlists, everything is random shuffle, and I know I've never repeated it, because I don't even particularly like it. However, it is blandly inoffensive enough that I've probably never skipped it either when it's been served up; it's the acoustic equivalent of eggshell white paint on the walls.

The Linkin' Park thing is funny, too, because it's just a little twenty-second spoken blurb between tracks on an album, and I guess I just don't pay it any mind if it gets played by itself on shuffle.

Also, the list looks a little odd to me because I've been using the Amazon music widget on my phone a fair amount lately, and it's all full of VNV Nation, Moby, M83, Death Cab For Cutie, and The Glitch Mob.

24 comments:

Anonymous said...

I didn't know Hole did a Gold Dust Woman cover. I love the original by Fleetwood Mac (Rumors is on my iPod). This version is pretty decent as well. It's a bit jarring given my familiarity with the original, but it's growing on me.

I don't have a top 20 list, but my iPod has Fleetwood Mac, Steely Dan, Megadeth, KMFDM, Ministry, Ego Likeness, Levon Helm, various bluegrass artists, Metallica, Johnny Cash, Lacuna Coil, Dire Straits, CCR, Al Green, Slipknot, Sybreed, Pink Floyd, etc. See a lack of pattern? ;)

My "collection" also includes such luminaries as Miley Cyrus and The Fresh Beat Band because I have two young daughters. :D

Chris

bluesun said...

I guess that the Madonna can be excused because you have Rush and ELP up there, too.

Jay G said...

I heartily approve of #8...

aczarnowski said...

So I'm not the only one that has Fluke a fluke album outside soundtrack appearances. I was starting to worry. Though Atom Bomb is my top ten entry.

I haven't been "into" music for probably, uhm, 10 years? I'm inspired to find some Dead Can Dance now though.

perlhaqr said...

I've been listening to a lot of Dead Can Dance lately. Ocean, Ubiquitous Mr. Lovegrove, Black Sun.

I may very well be seeing them play on my birthday, in Mexico. They've been great live the other two times I've seen them, so, that should be awesome.

DanH said...

Like a Prayer is one of my favorite songs...and I don't particularly like Madonna either. Hungry Like the Wolf is up there as well. Frighteningly, I don't even recognize most of the rest ;p

Fred said...

Mine would be boring... I'm pretty sure the top 20 on my iPod are dominated by three bands...

Scott J said...

Duran Duran. Impressed you'll own up to that. I tend to hide my enjoyment of their stuff.

In high school I tried to emulate them to an embarrassing extent. My logic was that if girls were throwing themselves at Le Bon then I ought to try to look like him.

Didn't work out so well.

Erin Palette said...

My admiration for you has gone up now that I know you listen to VNV Nation. "The Art of Conflict" is on permanent rotation in my iPod for listening while driving.

perlhaqr said...

Coil - Tainted Love :)

Not the cheeriest cover of the song.

NAVIGATOR said...

BACH SITS AT RIGHT HAND OF GOD
BEETHOVEN AT HIS LEFT
MOZART SITS ON HIS LAP

Drang said...

Wait. People listen to music on their phones? Kids today...

LCB said...

The iPod shuffle is the pits. Whether it's just the shuffle for the whole device or on a song list...it tends to play the same group of songs every time it "starts" over. The only way I've been able to get it to change is by sorting my music on iTunes using a different qualifier. By song title instead of group name, for instance. The the shuffle focuses on a different set of songs...

Anonymous said...

Short time reader, first time commenter etc. Very eclectic. I had forgotten about the "Judgment Night" soundtrack. Faith No More and the Booya Tribe. Mike Patton...
Have you heard "General Patton Vs. The X-ecutioners"?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2TMWhW199o

Or what he has done with "Fantomas"?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vACkkDxr41U

Or Mr. Bungle: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITEDFYdLHFA

You may enjoy it or reach for the brain bleach and curse my name eternal. I'll scuttle on back to the lurking shadows. 'Twas that talk of music that embiggened my courage to post. Carry on

Anonymous said...

Now I feel even older - ELPowell??? TARKUS was one of my favorite LPs in High School, eons ago.

Grumpy Squid said...

It's times like this that I realize how much water has flowed under the bridge. I went out on iTunes and tried...note I said tried...to listen to your selections. Sheesh, I remember when my classmates were lined up at the ONLY store in town that sold 45s waiting for them to put Bobby Rydell's "Forget Him" out for sale. The Top Ten was lettered on a small chalkboard in the front window. People with better radios could catch the newest songs by riding the AM "skip" from Chicago.

I think I will go crawl back into my cave now...

Anonymous said...

Playing with this "Spotify" thing that the cool kids are using; put together the list into a Spotify playlist.

(Oddly, they didn't have Marooned, or Hole's Gold Dust Woman.)

Devynsdad said...

But are you respected in da hood like a G?

jed said...

Not having a iPod, iPhone, nor any pmp at all, and since I have yet to load any tunes on the Droid, about the only thing I have close to this is Winamp at work. Its 'random' has a habit of playing Ozric Tentacles and Pylon in sequence, which is rather jarring. Speaking of jarring, Rush is 'blandly mainstream'?

On the radio, the most frequently repeated thing I'm hearing is the latest from Mumford & Sons, which sounds a lot like the latest from them before that. Other than that, Lumineers, Fun, and Churchill seem to come up with some frequency.

Mossyrock said...

I came home to Pink Floyd "Time"...on repeat...CRANKED!!!!! The 20-something kid in the ground-scraping rice-sled at the stop light just looked at me like I was a demented old man...and I haven't even hit the half-century mark yet. Damn kids....GET OFF MY LAWN, PUNK!!!!!

PN NJ said...

FYI, the latest Rush album, Clockwork Angels, is excellent.

perlhaqr said...

Mossyrock: Ohhhhhhh yeah. :D I did that to a bunch of lowriders once with Diamanda Galas, "Confessional".

Justthisguy said...

What! No Mozart? No Bach? I'll admit to not minding some Steppenwolf and some Ramones, the bands of my youth, but for ongoing pleasure in old age, you really can't beat the _really_ old stuff.

Ed Foster said...

O.K. on Floyd, what, no Queen (I am OLD), and a question.

I haven't listened to country since Ian and Sylvia got divorced, and kind of segued away after Okie From Muskogee left me gagging, but I recently read that more people drive home listening to Country n' Cornpone than any other music.

Even with all those evil socialist/european type big coastal cities hawking figurative lugies at fly-over country.

So what does redneck music sound like nowadays anyway? It's been about a third of a century and I don't have a clue.