Dec 4, 2007

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.)

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Gold star for me for being the first responder!

OK, my list is the very antithesis of cool. Apart from excluding all Harry Potter, I took no mulligans.

1. Femininity - Hayley Miils, The Parent Trap
If ever there was a song that should be mulliganed, it's this one. Hayley Mills is (was?) a dreadful singer, and the lyrics are appalling. I think they're supposed to be facetious, but never having seen the movie, I don't know for sure.

2. An Enchanted Place - artist unknown
This is an English Country Dance song. It accompanies a dance that is loosely based on themes from Winnie the Pooh, which so cutesy it makes me a bit queasy. Pretty song, though.

3. Happy Tappin' with Elmo - Sesame Street
Elmo tap dances. 'Nuff said.

4. Once in a Lifetime - Wolfsheim
Ooh, I really like this song. It's great for chair dancing (dancing while seated in a chair or car). I think the singer's voice is too nasal, but Morgue has pointed out that I say that about a lot of people.

5. Goodbye, Fare thee Well - Shanties & Songs of the Sea
This is a shanty .. or perhaps a song of the sea. Many years ago, Morgue needed sea shanties for some project, so I bought this cd for him. Isn't that a riveting story?

6. June Gloom - The Like
I'm not sure I ever listened to this one before it came up on shuffle. Not a favorite, but I don't disLIKE it, either. Get it?... The Like ... dislike... yeah, that's not funny.

7. Lechoo Yeladim - The Wiggles
Morgue cravenly mulliganed his Wiggles selection, but not me. This one is in Hebrew -- bonus.

8. Candy Everybody Wants - 10,000 Maniacs
Like many girls, I was really into 10,000 Maniacs in high school and college, though this song is not a favorite.

10. Montagues and Capulets - Prokofiev, Romeo and Juliet
Very cool ballet with very cool music. This piece is really powerful.

Anonymous said...

My pod only holds a small sliver of my collection, so even though it “randomly” reloads each time I sync, it mostly pulls from several smart playlists of the higher rated or most played tracks, with a few random goodies thrown in just for the occasional “WTF?” factor – Not very exciting, but here goes…

1. Downside Up (live) – Peter Gabriel – Originally from the “Ovo” project, this track was recorded live during the “Growing Up” tour, and features Peter’s daughter Melanie in a duet with her father, for the first time in front of an arena-sized audience. Call me a softie, but I just think that’s pretty darn cool.

2. Sonne – Rammstein – My second-favorite Rammstein song, but only because of the video. Check it out… Snow White decks one of the dwarves, spanks the rest, then OD’s on gold dust in the bathtub!

3. Pretty Like Drugs – Queenadreena – I knew of KatieJane Garside from her one album with Daisy Chainsaw. I was disappointed when she left, but then she surfaced again with Queenadreena, and all was well. I saw them open for Marilyn Manson in Glasgow on the “Golden Age of Grotesque” tour (just bragging), and as much as I like Manson, I have to say QA stole the show!

4. Down to the River to Pray – Alison Krauss – Completely A Cappella, only six lines repeated over and over, but building gradually from a solo to a full chorus with each repetition. It doesn’t sound like much on paper, but the effect is kinda’ cool.

5. The Test of Life – Praga Khan – For those who may not be familiar with them, Praga and his partner Oliver Adams are (were?) the driving force behind Lords of Acid. If you are interested, you may want to check out Digital Orgasm (Praga, Oliver, and Nikki from LOA) or The Immortals (just Praga and Oliver), but I digress… This song is about cutting.

6. Without You – The Impotent Sea Snakes – Boycott the Snakes if you must, but this is hands down the best song about suicide. Ever.

7. You Wanna Get Me High – The Donnas – Not much to say… Just a kickass rock ‘n’ roll track, by a bunch of girls who can kick your ass!

8. I Rule the Ruins – Doro – Jumping on the “metal with an orchestra” bandwagon, this is Doro’s solo version of the Warlock song of the same name. Does it count as a cover song since Doro was in Warlock and also sang the original?

9. Shake Your Blood – Probot – Lemmy’s vocals make this the only track on Dave Grohl’s “Probot” project worth listening to, and the Suicide Girls video doesn’t hurt, either!

10. Red Sector A – Rush – One of my favorite Rush songs from the 80’s… Funny how most of the tracks on my Pod have some sort of dark undertone -- This one’s about the Holocoust.

Tedwrd said...

Godzilla
Blue Öyster Cult
Long Days Night (live album)
BÖC has been one of my favorite bands for as long as I can remember. This is from a new live cd that I bought to test the new Amazon MP3 downloads.

Cinderella Man
Rush
A Farewell to Kings
Another band, like BÖC with lots of SC-FI/Fantasy themed songs. Neil Pert is the BEST. DRUMMER. EVER.

Assasin
Muse
Black Holes & Revelations
Some friends introduced me to Muse a little while ago, and it took me a while to warm up to them. This isn't my favorite song of theirs, but I'm not gonna skip past it either.

El Manana
Gorillaz
Demon Days
I'm sensing a theme here. Gorillaz has become one of the most played bands on my iPod since Demon Days came out. This is a nice mellow tune to contrast with some of the heavier stuff.

Ashes to Ashes
David Bowie
Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps)
Sequel to his first hit, Space Oddity, this is still one of the coolest viseos made.

Vital Signs
Rush
Moving Pictures
I was in a Rush mood and bought a lot of albums from Amazon MP3. They sound great. This isn't one of my favorite songs, tho.

5/4
Gorillaz
Gorillaz
A great background tune. I've heard it hundreds of times, still don't know the word, yet rock in my seat when its on.

Countdown
Rush
Signals
I thought I had more diversity on my lists, but aparently not.

November Has Come
Gorillaz
Demon Days
I'm not a big hip hop fan, by any stretch of the imagination, and I can imagine quite a bit. This is one of Gorillaz more hippity hoppity songs, but its mellow tempo is really nice.

We Are a Happy Landfill
Gorillaz
D-Sides
They've released a B-sides disk for both of their studio albums, changing the "B" to the first letter of the respective studio album. "G-Sides" for their self titled debut, "Gorillaz", and "D-Sides" for "Demon Days". Lots of nice quirky songs that you might not have heard on the radio.