Random musings

Partly inspired by my attempts to find something to drive along to on my way to work, but mainly pinched wholesale from The Word Magazine, here is my Randomizer.

The rules are simple. Get your iPod or similar music player. Set it to "Shuffle" and write down the first five randomly-selected tracks it chooses. Apparently it tells people everything they need to know about you. And your dodgy tastes in music, by all accounts.

And no cheating. You cannot choose tracks that make you look cool and interesting.

Right, out of the 3,800-odd tracks on my ancient but serviceable 3rd generation iPod, what do we find?

1 Santana - Smooth

Damn. This could have been something off one of the more interesting seventies albums, not the later stuff where the Fugees would show up and Carlos was just phoning it in.

2 R.E.M - You

Album track off 'Monster', if I remember correctly. My jangly indie credentials are restored.

3 Thin Lizzy - Emerald

Ah. You see. Brother no.1 used to play Thin Lizzy, Rainbow, Deep Purple and ACDC on the stereo at Sunday lunchtime when we all lived at home. I think it used to drive my parents nuts, despite my dad's protests of "No, I quite like this one. It's got a great tune" partway through an eight-minute Ritchie Blackmore solo. With the Lizzy, though, any band from Ireland was always going to have my mom on side.

4 The Stranglers - Golden Brown

January 1982. Immediately I'm in the metalwork room at King Edward VI Grammar School, trying to work a lathe. None of this health-and-safety stuff, neither. Eleven-year-olds with power tools? Get stuck in, you ponce.

And any lazy commentator who writes anything along the lines of "Golden Brown? That sounds a bit like Gordon Brown..." needs to be taken out and beaten with a length of two by four.

5 Massive Attack - Risingson

Coolness at last. I think. Although I suspect this one might be Katie's. Swings and roundabouts, though, she's put her Alexander O'Neal collection on there, and any one of those could just have easily emerged.

Right. Now it's your turn. You can comment with your random five tracks - yes, you lurkers, let's be hearing from you. Or those of you with blogs could put a post of your own together.

Go on, knock yourselves out.