My iPod is named HAL

As I was driving to work a couple of months ago, I pulled into the Union Station parking garage while listening to The Shins' "Caring Is Creepy" on the Garden State soundtrack (pretty worthy, by the way) on the CD player. As the song went into the chorus, I thought, "I've heard this before . . . in another song." I was sure I knew that chorus, or the vocal pattern, or something -- it wasn't an egregious rip-off on the part of The Shins, but still damn close. Of course, you can never think of a song with another one playing, and it was just bugging me.

I parked the car and began walking to my building. Just as I was about to turn on the iPod and tune out, I even came up with a couple of lyrics: Julius Caesar and the Roman Empire / something something something . . . dammit, what is it? I shook my head, plugged in the earphones, and gave up. Oh, well.

iPod shuffle, second song as I walked to work. Crowded House, "Weather With You." Son of a bitch.
Out of 9,057 songs, it nailed it in two tries. I was stunned, and felt like buying a lottery ticket or something. Didn't, of course, which is why I didn't win.

* * *

Fast forward to this weekend. I was working in the yard, accompanied by The Pod once again. (The iPod, not the Ween album, of course.) Shuffling it up, as always, and Killing Joke's "Eighties" came up. Now, I don't know how many of you recall this song, and of that group how many of you have heard it since, say 1991, when an up-and-coming Seattle act lifted the riff nearly note for note to create one of the staples of the grunge campaign. It was worthy of momentary reflection, though, when I was weed-eating (i.e., doing yardwork, not practicing Herb's erstwhile recreations) and "Eighties" charged into my ears with its sped-up "Come As You Are" intro.

While the Shins/CH similarities are debatable and perhaps only apparent if you listen to way too much music, the Killing Joke/Nirvana tunes were close enough that litigation almost came into play when "Come As You Are" hit the radio. (Kurt Cobain was always humble about who and what his band pilfered from, most frequently naming the Pixies but definitely acknowledging this particular borrowing. I think that forthcoming approach to his musical "creations" may have saved him some court costs and more.) Anyway, the notable parallel between the Killing Joke song and its later, more popular counterpart, was the most uncanny event in a mundane morning of yardwork until three things happened.

1.) I decided I'd like to hear the two songs back-to-back for good measure.
2.) I decided I probably would never bother to actually play them back-to-back.
3.) The very next song on the shuffle after "Eighties" was "Come As You Are" by Nirvana.

My jaw instantly fell open with a "Wha?", and I looked around the yard to see if I were on some reality television show. After realizing that it would have been the most boring, dreadful visual for any TV show ever, I simply stared at the machine with a "How'd you do that?" look. I was perplexed for half a hedge's worth, but I eventually came to the only conclusion there can be.

The iPod uses earphones that are jammed way into your ears, (a) likely destroying your eardrums gradually, but more relevantly (b) pressed way up against your brain. Over time, the player, with its feelers tapped into your brainwaves, starts to read your thoughts, musical and otherwise. Usually this just manifests itself in the shuffle coming up with the perfect song for the perfect frame of mind, but occasionally, like in these two examples, there happens that rare case where it reads the synaptic request for a particular track, and it delivers.

I'm dreading the day I casually click on the Disco playlist, only to have my iPod blurt into my earphones in HAL's voice, "Just what do you think you're doing, Whitney?"

...

a musing

a cross-post form the lammie-blog

The weather in st petersburg florida is hot....as.....fuck. Who in their right mind would live in such a god-forsaken locale? me, apparently.

The radio. It seems that because it's really fucking hot in florida all of the cool college radio people go to school in other states and as a consequence the radio sucks. Sure, we've got WMNF, the third leg of the Pacifica/WBAI radical radio triad busting out Democracy Now and Alan Watts buddhism lectures in the mid-morning but I'm stuck with R&B as told by old white dudes all afternoon - who the fuck wants to hear Rufus Thomas over and over again? not me. The weekend on WMNF is no better - polka party on saturday? The Sunday Schmita (sp?) klezmer show? fuck. I like klezmer and polka but not every weekend. I also know there's a reason why these shows are on air and I'm all for it, it's just that I have nowhere else to go. One of the few bright spot on WMNF, music wise, is Friday nights from 7-9 when Steve "the hitman" Williams and some guy named, strangely, the Original Get-Down Plunder, kick out the old school soul jams.

Unfortuntely, if WMNF is sucking I can't tweak the dial, always below 92-93-ish, to 90.7 (grunge and bile, we got style, paul verkuil) WCWM in the 'burg, 90.5 WUOG to rock out to the latest coolest hipper than shit tunes in Athens GA, or even 88.1 WMBR@ M.I.T. in Cambridge where (although they're a little more mature than typical college radio - they don't bring their drunk friends into the sound booth or their friends are nice and quiet) the playlist was brand new each and every day. I shit you not, the radio really sucks so bad here, in terms of hearing *new* things, that I find myself relying on internet radio - KEXP in Seattle (a little corporate but better than nothing) WFMU - East Orange NJ for the real deal college FM without the college and WFUV (Fordham - for my "adult" album rock jones). I also find myself digging around the ether-stacks on my own. Which brings me to my point.

We all miss shit. I missed Phish (whatever), Pavement (taken care of), and REM (still haven't figured out what everyone creamed in their pants for over them), among others. I've spent the better part of my lunch time and post-lunch time digging around and figuring out what I've been missing. So far Dinosaur Jr (smack in the middle of a Pixies-magnitude reunion) is promising, Nuetral Milk Hotel is fucking rocking and M. Ward is coming around the bend and picking up speed. Rock on.