The Birth of an Idea (a.k.a. Ode To My Ipod)

My ipod is currently connected to my docking station playing my Foo Fighters playlist (Foo-tastic) getting me all geared up for their new album which I will promptly be downloading at midnight tonight. Now I'm sure some of you might be asking yourself what is in this Foo-tastic playlist and the answer to that is all Foo Fighters songs (painfully obvious I know). It's like my very own greatest hits album with songs hand picked by me. It covers the basics like Best of You and All My Life into some live acoustic versions of Everlong and February Stars and even has a few personal favorites sprinkled in like For All the Cows and Disenchanted Lullaby. When I need my Foo fix this is where I turn, and I'm already wondering how many songs off the new album I'll be adding to this playlist. But at the same time there is a bit of dread. The playlist currently sits at a round 25 songs. When making playlists I think that the number of songs selected is the most important part. When I first started I was making playlists of 50-70 songs. That's just too much. You don't get to appreciate the music and it's hard to make 50-70 songs gel together. So now I keep regular playlists to 18-21 songs and artist playlists to 25-30. Yet there are numbers that are off limits. Who wants a playlist of 27 songs? Not me. 27 is an ugly number (I don't know how else to explain it), 28 would be fine but 27 is no good. There has to be balance. In my opinion it's the key to making a solid playlist. So after the new album comes out tomorrow I have to either add either three or five songs to the Foo-tastic playlist (because 26 and 29 are also ugly numbers). It may seem a bit psychotic and maybe it is, but there is a method to my madness here (or at least at some point I believed there was).

My ipod isn't just a device that plays music for my enjoyment. It's one of my closest friends. Housed in my ipod are over 9,000 songs (to be exact as of today it's 9,495), about fifteen episodes of LOST, and tons of emotion and memories. Much like pants I don't leave anywhere without it, part of the reason is I always fear someone is going to break into my place of living and steal it. I'm pretty sure all my other worldly goods would be fine but these would be burglars are aiming to steal my ipod thus ruining me. And in my head these would be burglars are always dressed like ninjas, I wish I was making this up but sadly it's the truth. I can't allow ninja dressing burglars to make off with my friend so I take it with me always.

My ipod and Me



So the other day I had an idea. I was going to put my ipod on shuffle and use the first 25 songs played and write about them and some how connect them to me and maybe each other and it would all be based on random shuffling (this way I'm not being biased and picking my favorite songs). Well I started working on this project and three songs in I knew there was no way I could do this. Three songs in and I was already working with a song from Tim Burton's Sweeney Todd Soundtrack, a Jimmy Buffett song, and ummmm another song that escapes me but was virtually impossible to connect to anything. I thought about trying to shuffle the songs again and figured the results might be the same. I'm not going to lie I felt a little let down because the idea of this project was exciting. I loved the idea of taking random songs and writing about them and seeing what happens. But I felt that it would just be more or less ramblings. Which lead me to this idea. I present to you:

A Year of Shuffling

The plan is take the original idea of putting the ipod on shuffle and writing about songs but instead of twenty-five I'm going to shuffle the ipod everyday for a year. A new song every day to write about, to connect to life, to me, to anything really. Music is and always has been one of the most important parts of my life. So much about my life has been surrounded in music. I remember the song that was playing when I first danced with a girl in sixth grade (that would be All-4-One's I Swear) or the first non Billy Joel song I memorized (Livin on the Edge by Aerosmith) or what song was playing the first time I dressed up as a woman (Madonna's Like A Prayer... in retrospect this is kind of fitting no?).

Not all of the songs selected are going to be gems and I understand that. I fully anticipate actually finding a whole bunch of songs that need to be removed from my ipod all together, but I also anticipate finding a whole bunch of songs I either (a.) forgot about or (b.) never really gave a chance. But it's going to be a crap shoot because my ipod is a mess, it just covers so many different genres of music. My music taste covers a little bit of everything. So expect to see things like Pearl Jam, Aerosmith, Elton John, Spoon, Eminem, Kelly Clarkson, The Roots, Gorillaz, Snoop Dogg, and Sly and the Family Stone.

 (Sidenote: I HATE when people go "I listen to everything but country" for some reason I find this to be such an annoying statement. So okay you don't listen to country but I am to assume that you listen to heavy German bass and drums? Or that you are deeply involved in the French reggae sound? Shut up. Not all country is bad, I just wish you would clarify a little better. Be more like "I listen to a lot of different stuff but to be honest I don't much care for country". How hard is that really? Ok rant over.)

I am ready for the embarrassing guilty pleasures that are currently calling my ipod home because I know over the course of a year they're going to show up and I promise not to shy away from them. This project is going to result in some funny stories related to songs, some dissecting of lyrics and sound, some confessions on bands and theirs songs, and probably a deep inspection of who I am. I feel we can learn a lot about a person based on what they listen to. Maybe this project is just a way for me to get to the core of who I am, but I think mostly it's a way to share with people. Music opens so many relationship like doors. So I guess I'm inviting you in.

Journey starts tomorrow...