Random Rules II

It's that time again, kids! For lack of anything more inspired to write about, I'm gonna hit you all up for audience participation.

In case you forgot (or are new to the Random Rules thing I stole from the Onion AV Club), the rules are as follows:

Take your iPod or other MP3 player and do a shuffle that includes all the tracks on the device. Take the first 10, list them, and comment. One track per artist, and you can skip soundtracks and audiobooks if you choose. You can also take one "mulligan" and skip a single track you find too embarassing to describe (mention it at your discretion). Add a comment to this post with your list to let us know how much cooler you are than me.

Here are mine:

1) "Spade" - Marilyn Manson

Okay, justifying Marilyn Manson isn't easy, but the album this comes from, "The Golden Age of Grotesque," is probably their best, and this is one of the best songs on it. Hard rock, alternating between slow and moderate tempo, with a very effectively sinister tone. With the number of Manson tunes I have on my iPod, I'm surprised I didn't have more of them to choose from. Oh well, "Spade" will do.

2) "Waste it On" - Silversun Pickups

Silversun Pickups sound a lot like Smashing Pumpkins (who I hate), but I like them anyway. This isn't the best track off of the album ("Carnavas"), but it has a cool baseline.

3) "The One" - The Like

The Like is a girl band I bought a few tracks from because they were playing at Coachella the last time I went. Not bad. Kind of sound like The Pretenders to me, but less annoying. They ended up playing at Coachella while we were still in line to park.

4) "Ikea" - Jonathan Coulton

From the "Smoking Monkey" album. It's not his best song, but it's funny and clever. You can't really beat a song that features the lines, "Ikea: Just some oak and some pine and a handful of Norsemen/Ikea: Selling furniture to college kids and divorced men."

5) "Haven" - Flesh Field

Obscure industrial with a nice buildup. It sounds a fair bit like soundtrack music from The Matrix before the lyrics kick in, and then it sounds ... well, Flesh Field doesn't use excessive vocal distortion, but they have both male and female singers, which rarely works well for my ears. In their case, it works better than many.

6) "Ball of Confusion" - Love and Rockets

I forgot this was on my iPod. It's a good song if you haven't heard Love and Rockets lately, but it's a bit too plodding for my taste. Certainly not their best single ever, but that technically goes for every single they ever released as Love and Rockets, considering their entire ouvre as Bauhaus was better than anything they did without Peter Murphy.

7) "Doggie Tom" - Lords of Acid

This is one of my favorite Lords of Acid songs. It's got a fantastic drumbeat and is a very catchy song. Its limited popular appeal can probably be attributed to the fact that the subject matter is risque, to say the very least...

8) "Tentative" - System of a Down

I liked System of a Down for about a week. I really need to remove all System of a Down songs from my iPod.

9) "Right Here, Right Now" - Fatboy Slim

From his album, "Greatest Hits - Why Try Harder?" This song is cool background music, I guess. It has a cool beat, but, like many Fatboy Slim tunes, is incredibly repetitive.

10) "Roots Radicals" - Rancid

Yay! A punk song. Now I seem pretty cool, huh? Well, I would feel a lot cooler if my mulligan hadn't been "Uncle Noah's Ark" by the Wiggles. (I guess I can be thankful that it wasn't "Shake Your Tail Feather" by the Cheetah Girls. What can I say? I have two young daughters.)