Minutiae

It's been a while since I've played the Friday Random Ten, that lovely game where you shuffle up your favorite music player and report the first ten songs it spits out, no matter how embarrassing. During the summer months, we work long days Monday through Thursday so we can have off on Fridays. I don't really sit at my laptop for extended periods of time at home (except to watch downloaded TV episodes), so I wasn't generating Random Tens on Fridays for a while there. Then I came to the brilliant conclusion that I can just pull ten songs from Thursday afternoon, set up a post to go live on Friday morning, and viola, a Random Ten. So here it is, the Friday (even though it's from Thursday) Random Ten, this time almost completely powered by the Pandora online music service.*

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Time again for the Friday Random Ten...last.fm had a technical hiccup this morning, so it bumped the REAL beginning of this list, "Ana Ng" by They Might Be Giants, who are in town tonight. I'll be at a wedding, but I know some people who are fans and will be at the concert, so to them: have fun.

Time once again for the Friday Random Ten, the game where...well, my media player is almost always shuffled up anyway, so let's say it's the game where, if I remember that it's Friday, I go to my last.fm page and report the last ten songs that I played. Pretty soon, this is gonna get interesting, because I'm going to let Pandora pick my songs one of these days.

The only...only thing I don't like about last.fm is that the artists and tracks aren't always listed in title caps. Look, I realize that, on the album cover, they're called "matchbox twenty" but come on, folks. It's "Matchbox Twenty." So, for the record, if something comes up in lowercase letters, rest assured that I haven't lost my sanity. I'm still a grammar nut. The Internets are just out to drive me insane.

Anyway, off to another Friday Random Ten, powered by last.fm.


There's really no argument which song on this list is the best...I mean, "Thunder Road" is one of the top five songs of all time, in my book. The worst song on the list, because I now protest almost anything Dave produced after The Lillywhite Sessions, is "Busted Stuff." A good unknown track is The Format's "First Single." Check it out if you haven't heard it yet.

The "I might never have to do this again" version.

I'm working with some nerds on coding that will let me put my ten most recently played tracks (as noted by last.fm) on the sidebar here. It will be a never-ending random ten. Until I get that finished, let's look at ten random songs from this morning, courtesy that wonderful service.

Time once again for the Friday Random Ten, the game where you shuffle up your favorite music player and report the first ten songs that appear. Feel free to make mixes out of any of my Friday Random Tens. That's the only practical use I could possibly imagine for this game.

1) Barenaked Ladies - Alternative Girlfriend
2) They Might Be Giants - Bangs
3) The Shins - Know Your Onion!
4) Steve Burns - Dirty Hair Breakfast
5) Jimmy Eat World - Kill
6) Weezer - Slob
7) Recess - Hanging On a Wire
8) John Mayer - Neon
9) Ben Folds Five - Sports & Wine
10) Styx - Mr. Roboto

I've finally decided to take control of my iPod. I know that sounds strange, but anyone who has followed the "Great Music Dump" storyline knows that I had too many songs on there that I just didn't want. The other day, I transferred all my iPod music onto my work computer hard drive (because it's way more spacious than my home laptop and now I can keep it all in one place) and wiped the iPod clean. I've started putting only the songs I know I want to hear back onto the iPod, making sure they're tagged properly with genre information and, for some, comments. I'm using Smart Playlists more effectively, too, making sure that some of the songs that fell into the "Film" category because they were attached to albums that were largely film score get their due on the "popular" (read: anything not Broadway, Film, Muppet, or Standup Comedy) list. I even made the "popular" list more dynamic by having the playlist be sure that what I'm listening to hasn't been played in the past week.

With that in mind, here's the Friday Random Ten, the "there's not a whole ton of songs back on my iPod so be patient with me because I'm betting there'll be repeat artists" version.

1) The Killers - Somebody Told Me
2) Nizlopi - Fine Story
3) Dave Matthews Band - Busted Stuff (the Lillywhite Sessions version)
4) Barenaked Ladies - Thanks That Was Fun
5) Barenaked Ladies - Go Home
6) Ben Folds - Jane
7) John Mayer - Clarity
8) The Beatles - Yellow Submarine
9) Journey - Faithfully
10) Steve Burns - What I Do On Saturday

There's no "best" song on the list, because I have different associations with all of them. I have a never-ending soft spot for Steve Burns, but you can't deny "Yellow Submarine." I would say that the "worst" song on the list is "Fine Story," because it's not representative of how good Nizlopi can be. It's a fine song, but it's no "JCB" or "Call it Up."

Last week, I realized that I need to more specifically narrow down my playlists on my iPod. It's not that I hate some of the songs on there, it's just that I don't want to hear them all the time, even if I want them stored. I've made a little bit of progress since then, identifying that my genre of choice could be called "Alternative Indie Power Folk Rock." Of course, there's no way I'm labeling it like that. But it's a baby step towards greater enjoyment of my iPod. Until I achieve a level of digital musical organizational utopia, I thought I'd not even bother with the "Popular" playlist this week. So here's the Friday Random Ten, the "nothing sorted out" version. I'm predicting some Broadway sleepers sneaking out.

1) The Eagles - Witchy Woman
2) Frank Sinatra - That's Life
3) Beauty And The Beast - West Wing
4) West Side Story - The Rumble
5) Ben Folds - Tiny Dancer
6) Coldplay - Easy To Please
7) INXS - Beautiful Girl
8) Indiana Jones - The Keeper of the Grail
9) Dane Cook - The BK Lounge
10) The Killers - All These Things That I've Done

Analysis: I'm not so much a fan of "Beautiful Girl," especially since every time it starts I think it's "Escape" by Enrique Iglesias. Of course, The Killers are the newest music on the list, so it's easy to call them my "favorite," but I actually have great opinions of almost everything up there.

It's time again for the Friday Random Ten, the game where you shuffle up your favorite music player (my iPod playing through iTunes) and report the first ten songs that show up. We'll call this week's list the "I need to create more custom playlists and not just a 'songs that aren't from movie scores or Broadway shows' list" version.

1) Michelle Branch - Everywhere
2) Keane - Can't Stop Now
3) Brendan Benson - Got No Secrets
4) Jamiroquai - Canned Heat
5) Bruce Springsteen - Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)
6) Frou Frou - Psychobabble
7) The Happenings - See You In September
8) Steve Burns - Maintain
9) The Beach Boys - God Only Knows
10) Powerline - Stand Out

Yeaaah...so....I need a "Jeff's Music" playlist and a "Popular Music" playlist, because every time I listen to my iPod, I realize those are two very different things. Either that or I could just take the 'N Sync off of my iPod...but then what would happen when I wanted to listen to "It's Gonna Be Me?"

Apologies to those of you that don't have LiveJournal accounts and aren't on my friends list...I realize I've only technically blogged once in the past week as far as my general readership is concerned. But here's the good news: I'm seeing a movie tonight! Which means tomorrow you'll get the fourth movie review of 2006. What can I say, there's been nothing good out.

Anyway, on to the Friday Random Ten, the game where you shuffle up your favorite music player and report the first ten songs that come up. Today's list isn't entirely random; I started with a song I really enjoy...when it came up on my already-shuffled list, I decided to start the "randomness."

1) Jimmy Eat World - 23
2) Ben Folds Five - Narcolepsy
3) Rolling Stones - Ruby Tuesday
4) Imogen Heap - Goodnight And Go
5) Oasis - Wonderwall
6) The Fray - How to Save a Life
7) Brendan Benson - What I'm Looking For
8) Remy Zero - Glorious #1
9) The Decemberists - Red Right Ankle
10) Hooters - All You Zombies

I'm partial to "23," of course, so I'll give it the nod for best song of this bunch. But there's some strong contenders this week. To say that "Goodnight and Go" is the weakest on this list is just a great big compliment to everyone else on it.

Later Today: Hawk Files - Abdulai Jalloh

In a Broadway mood this morning, I got through two listens of the Wicked soundtrack before I remembered that I had to do the Friday Random Ten, the game where you shuffle up your favorite music player (my iPod playing through iTunes) and report the first ten songs that show up.

1) The Decemberists - Leslie Anne Levine
2) Sufjan Stevens - The Tallest Man, the Broadest Shoulders
3) Iron & Wine - Freedom Hangs Like Heaven
4) The Shins - The Celibate Life
5) Jimmy Eat World - Bleed American
6) Weezer - The Damage In Your Heart
7) The Decemberists - Billy Liar
8) Barenaked Ladies - Second Best (Acoustic)
9) Toad The Wet Sprocket - Come Back Down
10) The Romantics - What I Like About You

Save for the repeat of The Decemberists, that list got pretty eclectic at the end, there. "Leslie Anne Levine" is probably the song that stands out to me as the best, but you can never deny The Romantics.

There's so many things that I could write about today: what it's like not to have a significant other on the Hallmark Holiday, the impending beginning of spring training, my one true love (the Hawks), or the cool new userpic that you see here. But, I thought about the iTunes meme I filled out last week, and I decided to do a version of the Friday Random Ten as a nod to the holiday and to make up for the fact that I didn't do one last week. Here's the rules: in iTunes (or your favorite music player), make a custom playlist of songs with "love" in the title. Shuffle it up, and take down the first ten songs. Easy as that! Here's what I came up with, labeled (Artist - Song - Album):

1) Brendan Benson - The Alternative to Love - The Alternative to Love
2) The Outfield - Your Love - Play Deep
3) Bon Jovi - You Give Love a Bad Name - Slippery When Wet
4) Maroon 5 - This Love - Songs About Jane
5) The Decemberists - From My Own True Love (Lost at Sea) - Picaresque
6) Santana f. Michelle Branch - The Game of Love - Shaman
7) Cast of RENT - Goodbye Love - Rent (Original Broadway Cast)
8) Five for Fighting - One More for Love - The Battle for Everything
9) Foreigner - I Want to Know What Love Is - Agent Provocateur
10) John Mellancamp - I Need a Lover - The Best I Could Do

What? No Bryan Adams? No boy bands? I'm actually kind of impressed with myself that my library is diverse enough to keep me free of them in the first ten songs.

Anyway, happy chocolates and flowers day to everyone out there.

This is a game I've be reading over at a great blog called The Long Cut for a while now, and I've avoided doing it because I thought it would look lousy on my old layout. But hey, LiveJournal is the kind of service that practically begs you to do memes. So here it is...the Friday Random Ten, where you shuffle up your favorite media player (iTunes for me, my iPod more specifically) and tell the first ten tunes that show up.

1) The Bodeans - Closer to Free
2) Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers - Free Fallin'
3) 3 Doors Down - Changes
4) Sublime - Caress Me Down
5) The Beatles - Penny Lane
6) Notorious B.I.G., et. al. - Mo' Money, Mo' Problems
7) Vertical Horizon - You Say
8) New Radicals - Someday We'll Know
9) Maroon 5 - Must Get Out
10) Blackthorn - The Drummer's Gotta Go

Some thoughts on the results? The best song, in my opinion, on the list is "Penny Lane," but it's not a surprise to pick The Beatles...a sleeper pick would be "You Say," because not many people know Vertical Horizon beyond their radio songs, and "You Say" is a solid song on the very good Everything You Want album..."Must Get Out" has the most sentimental value for me, for reasons I care not to explain...and "The Drummer's Gotta Go" sounds much better live.

With 1, 2, 3, 5, and 6, it's like iTunes is begging me to spend money in their lame new Mini Store. No dice, Apple. I'm happy with my collection as it is right now.