From the CD collection (I could throw in Gamelan, Colan Nancarrow and Peter Maxwell Davis but though I’ve got that stuff it really doesn’t get listened to much).
A spread of some typical stuff that does get listened to (typically while doing the ironing).
The Cramps: The Most Exalted Potentate of Love
Kate Bush: The Big Sky
The Puppini Sisters: Heebie Jeebies
The Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band: The Intro and the Outro
Style wise:
1: Err? It’s the Cramps… a cornucopia of drugs and horror?
2: Um… it’s Kate Bush…
3: Close harmony 40’s swing
4: Adolf Hilter on vibes!
Oh dear, all 4/4 western pop. We need to bring back John Peel
I had planned to show my top four tracks on last.fm but three of them turned out to be by the same band so I scratched that idea. Instead I’ll pick four from “Tunes that make happy and stuff”, a Spotify playlist that has a selection of my favourite tracks and works as my “go to” list when I can’t think what to listen to.
“Tunes that make me happy and stuff”
“Hay Burner” - The Staff Band of the Royal Ordinance Corps
Unfortunately not on Youtube. It is my favourite version of this tune.
The songs I play most on my iPod tend to be the ones I like to fall asleep to. Hence my top four all-time, most-played songs:
“What If We Do,” Mia Doi Todd
“Whole Lotta You,” Pat Donohue
“Feel Like Makin’ Love,” Roberta Flack
“Edge of a Dream,” Sarah Jarosz
In the interests of balance, if I go out into my whole iTunes library and hit shuffle, the first four tracks that emerge are:
“Skink,” Sonic Youth
“Studio Talk,” John Lennon & Paul McCartney (from the Toot & a Snore studio bootleg)
“Epistrophy,” Thelonious Monk
“I’m Alabamy Bound,” Lonnie Donegan
Hank Williams Jr – Feeling Better
Kate Nash - Mouthwash
John Scofield – Drop and Roll
King’s X – The World Around Me
There are much-more obscure artist/songs in my library that get pulled-up frequently, but I wanted to list some that people might recognize at sight. After-all… I interpreted the spirit of the thread as not trying to show how esoteric our library is, but rather how diverse one might find it. Additionally, some genres I just dip my toe in every now and then, but these are samples of what my tub might be full of if I wanted to crawl-in and soak.
No iPods or such but from the CDs in the front of the car we have
Schuberts “Trout” quintet
The Singing Ranger by Hank Snow
That Was the Year That Was by Tom Lehrer
Steppenwolf Live
And GWARs Scumdogs of the Universe
Fleet Foxes - Blue Ridge Mountains. Covers the indie sound and the general more lighthearted stuff I like to listen to (Arcade Fire, Mumford and Sons, Bob Dylan and many more)
Death Grips - Guillotine (It Goes Yah). Yep I actually do listen to and finally understand Death Grips. This covers all the electronic stuff (which the vast majority is obviously less experimental and crazy) and experimental stuff I can listen to.
Miles Davis - Blue In Green. I love listening to a lot of jazz late at night and have a lot on vinyl. This also can cover any soul, blues, or funk kind of stuff I listen to that falls from the jazz beginnings.
Waka Flocka Flame - Still Standing. Covers not only rap, trap, and drill music, but also showcases the whole style of hip hop mixtapes with the constant ad libs, shouting, gun shots, air horns, etc. Its all hilarious and amazing to me haha
If I got a few more, I’d probably add in a dance or more legit electronic song like a Daft Punk song or a more mainstream hip hop song like Devil in a New Dress. But, in accordance with the thread’s intentions, I broke it down to just 4 songs to show the extremes of each spectrum in my iPod.
The first four songs that popped into my head (that are on my iPod) were:
“New Language” - The Pursuit of Happiness
“Eat It” - “Weird Al” Yankovic
“The Imperial March” (from the Empire Strikes Back soundtrack) - John Williams
“Big Bad Moon” - Joe Satriani
That covers clever alt rock, comedy based on R & B, movie soundtrack stuff, and blues/rock. It’s also a little guitar-heavy based on what I typically listen to. Here’s a random sampling:
“New Language” - The Pursuit of Happiness (well then, I guess the machine and I are in tune with each other…)
“Automatic Sighs” - Strange Advance (I have a lot of 80s music and a lot of Canadian tunes)
“Whatever” - En Vogue (funky female vocalists are also well represented in my music collection)
“Savoir Fair” - Sheena Easton (I pretty much have every record Sheena recorded. All the 80s stuff is also on vinyl )
On a 560-kilometre round trip yesterday in the car with my elderly iPod, Schehazarade (Vienna Philharmonic), The Locomotion (Grand Funk Railroad), Moten Swing (Benny Goodman), some of Abraxas (Santana).
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