10 Things iPod About You

It returns! I'm tired and can't think so once again, random commentary on the first ten tracks to come up on Party Shuffle on iTunes! Hopefully there will be something insightful or at minimum, witty, but I make no promises!

Message In A Bottle - The Police
Nowhere near my favorite Police song but it's cool. It's the kind of song that I probably wouldn't skip over if it came up. Oddly though, the song [right now anyways] reminded me of the punk cover of the song by a band called 22 Jacks. 22 Jacks always makes me giggle a bit because I highly offended their agent back in my glory days as Director of Concerts in college. At the time, 22 Jacks was getting a lot of pub since the band was made up of several members of more famous punk bands. When their agent suggested booking them, I made a remark something like, "Oh, the self-proclaimed punk supergroup" to which he replied, "I don't know about self-proclaimed but they're pretty fucking good, I'll tell you that!" I actually had a really bad habit of offending agents and managers in that job. It's probably a good thing I didn't pursue that field as a career. This would probably be a good time to tell the story about Slightly Stoopid threatening to kick my ass once but... well, that'd just be blatant namedropping since they're apparently becoming somewhat biggish now and I wouldn't want to do that! I'll save that story for another time, I guess.

Simple Man - Graham Nash
I stumbled upon this on an mp3 blog a few months back. I don't really have a lot to say about it since I may have listened to it once or twice since then. But I kinda dig the song really. If I was a pretentious piece of shit music reviewer, I'd talk about the harmony in the backup vocals and some kind of glowing praise about the haunting sound of his voice. But that's not me. My reviews typically consist of saying things are "cool" or "awesome." I just can't muster much more than that. It's one of the reasons I hate most album reviews. People tend to masturbate with their own words in that kind of writing. If it's cool, say it's cool. If it sucks donkey balls, say it sucks donkey balls. How hard is it?

Holiday - Madonna
Now we're talkin'! Holiday actually always reminds me of the Truth Or Dare documentary they did for Madonna back in the day - one of my favorite musician docs actually. Throughout the movie, there's a running theme of her calling together her backup dancers before the show and doing a prayer. At one point, as they're walking to the stage after the prayer, they cut loose on this a cappella version of Holiday that is a ton of fun. Madonna is one of those acts that I would love to see live if I thought she wouldn't be an "artist" and decide that she was too good for her old stuff. Fucking artists. They always want to ruin it for the fans. This may be the first time that I ever noticed the crazy percussion in the background on Holiday. What's up with that?

Waiting Room - No Doubt
Fuck me. I have to listen to this whole song? This is off the Rocksteady album that had a few bright spots and a lot of stuff that I was just kinda "okay" about. Rocksteady's a weird album because they worked with so many different artists and producers on it, it turned out a little mish mashy at points. This particular track is a collaboration with Prince which sounds really fucking amazing on paper but just turns out kinda "eh" once it's done. There are parts of the song that I really dig the hell out of but I can't stand the chorus which kills things a bit for me. The main riff sucks too. But it's Gwen and Prince so it can't be all that bad, right? I bet Prince and Britney could have a hell of a collaboration. I wonder what Prince thinks of Britney as an artist - not The Artist - just an artist. Okay... I can't take it anymore. I must skip.

Happy Days Theme!
Hell yes! Now that's how you clean your musical palate! Of course, it makes me a little sad because it reminds me of how fucked up modern television has become in their disrespect for opening theme songs. After fifty years of television, we're losing that great art and it'll never return as the networks look for more and more ways to get more ad time into 30 or 60 minutes.

Beautiful People - Marilyn Manson
Ahhhh, my Manson phase. I actually own a Manson album although I haven't listened to it in years. I used to really dig that album and a few things he did after it. Now? Not so much. Even this song which I still think is pretty well done, I don't really enjoy it anymore. I guess I also have to admit here to owning the Marilyn Manson autobio book that I believe I never read because I was so stunned when he talked about his grandfather having vaseline encrusted suction cup mounted dildos in a workbench in the basement in the first chapter - which of course was the whole purpose of him writing it. Shock and awe, baby - shock and awe.

Tennessee - Arrested Development
I love this song. I even loved it years later when they did that One Hit Wonders TV show a few years ago and AD won it by performing this song. They still had it. I used to own this song as a cassette single. Most of my "urban music" was only cassette single actually. If you were to dig through that drawer of tapes right now, you'd find fine selections like this right alongside En Vogue, Father MC, The Cover Girls, Stereo MCs, and so, so, so many more. But this one actually holds up very well unlike a lot of others. It's kind of odd though that they never really had more than this song and Everyday People make it big. I guess Mr. Wendal sort of did but not to the same level of success. Mental note: Check iTunes to see how good the rest of their stuff is.

Diamonds On The Inside - Ben Harper
I was late on the Ben Harper bandwagon and I still don't really have a good seat on it. I own a few songs by him that I dig muchly but I've never taken the time to dig deeper to find more stuff that I like. I'm sure there's quite a bit of it because the stuff that I like I REALLY, REALLY like. Sadly, that's about all I can say.

Take It On The Run - REO Speedwagon
You can blame my aunts for this one. Speedwagon is definitely a remnant of me being exposed to their musical tastes in the 80s. This is probably actually my least favorite of the big Speedwagon hits but it's still amazingly awesome. It's cheesy, of course, but that doesn't take away from being amazingly awesome.

Anyone able to tell I'm running out of steam yet? Yeah, I thought so.

Nightswimming - Dashboard Confessional w/Michael Stipe
This is from that super cool Dashboard live album where they work with Michael Stipe doing both Dashboard and R.E.M. tunes. If you haven't checked that out and are a fan of either band, you're doing yourself a great disservice. Get your shit together!