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Monday, March 05, 2007
music meme thingamabob
I have been plotting this meme for a while. It's not really a meme, because I'm inventing it, but hey, maybe it will become a meme, and then my life will not have been in vain and all, and wouldn't that be fun?
The idea is, you take your iPod or similar device, and you hit SHUFFLE SONGS in the first menu, so that it randomly selects songs one after another from your entire library, except for the ones (audiobooks in my case) that you have told it NOT to select during shuffle. Or, if you have no iPod, you can do this with the song files on your computer and your favorite listening software -- just make a big playlist with everything you have and randomize it. Or you can use your favorite mix CD. Or that tape you made on that lazy Saturday in 1988. Man, remember when high-speed dubbing was just so awesome?
OK. Anyway. You do this shuffling random songs thing with a timer set to go off in a given amount of time, and you discuss each song for the length of the song or until you hit skip, at which time you go on to the next song. So you could end up with a doctoral thesis on Vivaldi, say, or little snippets about twenty different songs. Who knows?
In case you're wondering why I ever thought this was a good idea... I have no clue. But I'm going to do it anyway. Here goes.
Endangered Love, from the Veggietales. We always call this just "Barbara Manatee". We like it a lot; in fact at least one of our many family nicknames comes from this song (it's C's). This was the Silly Song on the first Veggie Tales video we ever had, and we thought it was... really silly. And it is. Even LT sings along with the entire thing. OK, next song.
Blind Man's Bluff, from Tales from Childhood by Schumann. Not much to say about this except that it is gorgeous piano music and I downloaded it for free from musopen.com and it's really short because it's already over and I had to pause the next song which I think might be cheating.
Love Bites, Def Leppard. Oh my goodness. This was my very favorite song in the eighth grade; it was from the very first album I ever owned for myself. On cassette. It was a clear cassette, which I thought was the coolest idea. I can still smell that just-opened-the-cassette-box smell; can you? At the first school dance when I was in eighth grade, this was the last song, and I asked this boy to dance who was geeky and skinny but seemed nice, and after he made sure that the girl he really liked didn't want to dance with him, he shrugged and danced with me. I developed an enormous and embarrassing crush on him that lasted the entire school year, and then we were a couple for a year and a half after that. And this was Our Song. It was fully a year after he broke up with me before I could hear that (utterly unintelligible) opening bit without feeling like I'd been punched in the stomach. I used to torture myself by the hour with this song, à la Marianne Dashwood, except with electric guitars and screaming instead of decorous pianoforte melodies and Shakespearean sonnets. Ah, young luuurve. Now it's just a song that evokes a time period for me, and I still think it's pretty cool-sounding. But then I like tapered-leg jeans too. Bring back the ankle zippers! OK, skip.
Sometimes Love Just Ain't Enough, Don Henley and Patty Smith. Don't really like this song too much. I downloaded it years ago when I was specifically making a CD set of songs from my high-school and junior-high years. It's just... kind of cheesy. It made it onto my iPod because compared to the size of a Librivox audiobook, it takes up no space at all, and someday I might want to listen to something cheesy. Who knows. Skip.
Amazing Love, Rebecca St James. I love this song. It makes me cry in a good way and sometimes it gives me chills. You know, I'd never listened to it on my iPod before and I don't think I knew that it was a live recording with the audience singing along. But now I do. T dislikes this song because she changes the lyric "how can it be that you my God should die for me" to "... you my King should die for me." Doctrinally important, yes, but musically I think it's just a quibble. If he'd never heard the original version, he'd still think it was fine. When we sing it in church, my dad changes the line about "in all I do, I honor you" to "in all I do, I WANT TO honor you", because as he aptly points out, a lot of the stuff we do actually doesn't honor God. Scuse me while I just listen quietly to the rest of this song. Thank you. I needed that.
Adagio from the Brandenberg Concerto #1 by Bach. Um. I like Bach? Bach makes me smile? All of this is true but it's not exactly an 'epoch in my life' kind of song. It's not even my favorite Bach, by a long shot. And I can't listen to it properly while I type anyway. Skip.
Orinoco Flow, Enya. You know, this has been one of my favorite songs since it was new. I just love the sound of it, and it's just such a joyful song. Must turn it up. The whole family likes this song. It was actually really popular when I was in, what, high school? I don't think Enya gets a lot of play at high-school functions nowadays, more's the pity.
Dies Irae from the Requiem in D Minor by Mozart. I can get so carried away by the sheer musical perfection and intricacy of just about anything by Mozart. The Requiem always makes me think of the movie Amadeus, where it has a part in possibly my favorite movie scene of all time, from a pure cinema-appreciation standpoint. The way the scenes with Mozart in bed are constructed around the creation of his music -- the heartbroken despair of Salieri as he sees firsthand the genius that he has quite literally killed in his jealousy -- the passion -- the brilliance -- the beauty of the music itself -- agh. OK, I know what I'm watching while I knit tonight. AAAA-MEEEENNNN.
Another Def Leppard one from Hysteria: Pour Some Sugar On Me. Jennifer and I used to shout the beginning thing at each other all the time. Also, we would put on loud rock music and clean her house (she had a borderline-wicked-stepmotherish aunt who generously allowed Jenn to live with her but also made Jenn do what I still think was far more than her fair share of the housework -- i.e. all of it) and it made cleaning Jenn's house fun. If Jenn lived next door to me we would probably take turns going over to each other's houses to crank up the music and help each other clean. I do not understand the point of any of the lyrics of this song, except to know that really the lyrics were not the point. I'm thinking that they're not talking about pure cane sugar from Hawaii, though.
Four minutes to go.
Ooh, In the Mood, performed by the Boston Pops. Was this Glenn Miller? We played it in high school band but my fond memories of it go back to that hilarious scene in Cannery Row, with the crazy dancing, and even more than the movie itself, I remember my dad's utterly abandoned laughter while we watched it. Musically, I didn't appreciate the brilliance of big band music till late high school. Now I torture my kids with it for long periods of time. It's my favorite music for dancing around the house. Well, it and the Bangles.
And there's my timer, so now you have it: thirty minutes in the life of Rachel's iPod.
Comments
creative!! I like it.
Posted by: debi at March 5, 2007 09:11 PM
I remember when clear cassettes came out. VERY cool. I think one of my Guns N Roses was clear. Those were the days!
Posted by: debi at March 6, 2007 07:23 AM
CLEAR TAPES! Ah, yes, how cool were they? I think my brother had Run-DMC as a clear tape. Alas, we never had high-speed dubbing, but I thought it was SO COOL when I saw it.
There's a song about manatees? I need to hear it; I have this strange love of manatees, don't ask me why.
Amazing Love -- the version I have is the Passion Worship Band. I listened in the car on the way home today and they also sing "... that you my King should die for me ..." Low-number statistics, I know, but there it is.
This is the kind of meme I could get behind. I also need to load some Librivox onto my iPod but am too lazy to do so.
Posted by: mary ![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.1970dodgecharger500.com/oldsite/nav-commenters.gif)
at March 6, 2007 06:55 PM
Ah yes, the Bangles - perfect dancing music :-)
Remember that time when Christy came home and didn't like how the house was cleaned and made me do it all over again? That place was CLEAN, I have no idea what her problem was.
I want an iPOD. Wah.
Posted by: jenn at March 6, 2007 07:03 PM
Ooh, fun! If I ever manage to post again, I'll try it. :-)
Posted by: Kat with a K at March 16, 2007 07:14 AM
