Five Random Songs

This is blog meme from a long time ago and I’m just now get­ting around to post­ing it, even though it was old even before I did it, as at least one of the songs indi­cates. In keep­ing with the idea of the meme as I first read it, I one day just put my iPod on Ran­dom and hit play, with­out start­ing any playlist or select­ing a genre. Frankly, I was some­what sur­prised with what came up (as I fig­ured it’d would be some iTrip sta­tion selec­tors or a pod­cast). This was the first time I did this, and here were the first five songs that came up:

1. Good Grief by the Foo Fight­er’s epony­mous album. While they’ve vir­tu­al­ly crossed over intot he pop genre, the Foo Fight­ers are still a pret­ty sol­id rock band. My only dis­like about the band: Dave Grohl no longer plays drums.
2. Hey Now from Fin­ley Quaye’s sopho­more album, Van­guard. Quaye bor­ders on trip­py, but nev­er los­es a melody in this slow-paced song. Also, his atten­tion to detail has always been some­thing I liked; slight changes through­out a song keep it from becom­ing monotonous.
3. I Like It from the Dix­ie Chick­’s lat­est album, Tak­ing the Long Way. Yes, I do like it. I would have out­done Rick Rubin on this song by real­ly mak­ing the final cou­ple of cho­rus­es epic sound­ing, but it’s a good song any­way. These ladies are the top of pop-coun­try, even if that’s real­ly not their fit so much anymore.
4. Piehold­en Suite from Wilco’s much unap­pre­ci­at­ed album Sum­mer Teeth. A melody more than a sin­gle song (as the name sug­gests); this one seems to be Wilco’s take on the sounds of the 20’s. Sum­mer Teeth was my first Wilco album, and maybe that gave me a some­what dif­fer­ent win­dow to view them through.
5. Left A Slide from Son Volt’s Straight­aways. Jay Far­rar just behind Jeff Tweedy; the sto­ry of his career, right? Prob­a­bly not, real­ly. Far­rar is exper­i­men­tal in his own right, even if not push­ing the same bound­aries that Wilco does. Like the pre­vi­ous Wilco song, this one might not be my top pick from this artist, but it’s still a great song from one of my favorite artists.

Just for the record, although I don’t know that it’s worth going into more detail, here was the next ten:

6. Retrieval of You — The Minus 5 — Down With Wilco
7. Hold Yr Ter­ror Close — The Go! Team — Thun­der, Light­en­ing, Strike
8. Cool Blue Rea­son — Cake — Pro­long­ing the Magic
9. Jet Pilot — Son Volt — Okemah and the Melody Riot
10. Words So Leisured — Franz Fer­di­nand — Eponymous

11. Hum­ble Me — Norah Jones — Feels Like Home
12. Stum­bling Through the Dark — The Jay­hawks — Rainy Day Music
13. Lose Some­thing — Veloc­i­ty Girl — Gild­ed Stars and Zeolous Hearts
14. Punch Drunk — Uncle Tupe­lo — Steels Feel Gone
15. Come To Love — Math­ew Sweet — 100% Fun

I sup­pose I could have kept on, but at some point you have to just stop and say ‘this is prob­a­bly way more than any­one else in the world cares about.’ This is about that point for me.