Monday, April 18, 2005

Listening to...

the new iPod shuffle I got (for free, from these guys) for the wife. The limitations of this device are obvious, but actually kind of ingenious. Yes, life is random. I've been using my 40GB model more and more this way -- just putting it on shuffle and hitting play. There's only so much energy you can put into creating playlists, and with 13,966 songs, a lot of stuff slips through the cracks. Just tonight, after loading up the cute li'l shuffle in AutoFill mode, I heard, and gained a (re)new(ed) appreciation for, "Stars Are Stars" from the first Echo and the Bunnymen album (a lost favorite), one of the dozen remixes of "A Question Of Time" (not one of my favorite Depeche Mode songs, but enjoyable as a surprise), "Got A Lot On My Head" from Candy-O by the Cars (which I used to have on 8-track!), and a catchy instrumental electronica track that I'll have to seek out in iTunes. I can see how the lack of a screen could get annoying.

2 comments:

Don Ball Carbajal said...

I have been having a similar experience, not using the new teeny iPod, but just the shuffle setting in iTunes, which is pushing 60GB worth of tunes.

I also have a lot of seminal new wave albums in my collection. It's actually the non-singles that seem to have the power to instantly zap you back in time. The singles ("Bring on the Dancing Horses", for example, in the case of Echo and the Bunnymen) have sadly lost much of their impact due to radio overplay then and now.

Michael Plank said...

Another thing I did recently was to create a new playlist of songs I've rated with 3 stars. The "My Top Rated" gets old after a while!