Tune-age-Tuesday - Ipod Shuffle!

I love me some media player shuffle-time. Every evening, after work, I take my Snoop-Dogg out on a daily potty-break jaunt and frequently bring along the old ipod and I’ll put it on random just to see what it’ll come up with. Last weeks random-play was so redunkulously varied and obscure I just had to mention it here. It was like I was listening in on a schitzoid nightmare soundtrack or something. Check it:

• Track 1 Melt Banana, Warp, Spin from the CD “Teeny Shiny”. Melt Banana are my favorite girl-fronted Japanese punk band. For those old enough to remember playing vinyl records on a record player, imagine Melt Banana sounding like a 33rpm Iggy and the Stooges record on 45rpm while you’re simultaneously hearing a low flying jumbo jet overhead and breaking glass in the back alley. Or maybe a freaked-out cat. You get the idea.
• Track 2 Leonard Cohen, Coming Back to You from the CD “Various Positions”. Cohen started out doing super poetic folk music in the seventies and by the eighties was trying his hand at Casio-funk, one-man-band zen-Cassanova balladeering. Super cheesy, super awesome. (For those that don’t know, Jeff Buckley’s Hallelujah was actually written and performed by Cohen)
• Track 3 Slayer, Piece by Piece from the CD “Reign in Blood” I think the band name and title pretty much says it all. Pure eighties thrash-pioneer goodness. Or.badness. Maybe.
• Track 4 Neutral Milk Hotel, Naomi from the CD “On Avery Island”. This was the quintessential Lo-fi singer/songwriter indie-cred artist to have in your collection from the nineties. If I remember correctly there was some controversy over the song The King of Carrot Flowers Pts. 2 & 3 from “In the Aeroplane Over the Sea” since singer Jeff Magnum bellows out “I love you Je-suuus Christ! I love you, yes I do!” over and over which ordinarily doesn’t sit well with Pitchfork Media types. But lucky for Magnum, NMH has still managed to enjoy Sufjan Stevens type indie-rock canonicity since.
• Track 5 SOD, Freddy Krueger from the CD “Speak English or Die”. As can be imagined these guys sparked a little controversy in the mid/late eighties with their nobody-escapes-the-satire schtick but they were the poster-child band of the hardcore/metal crossover and became a joke-band classic. A couple dudes from Anthrax and a guy named Billy Millano.

Ah, yes. You’ve got to love ipod shuffle..!