Monday, August 06, 2007

Guilty Pleasures: Shuffle Edition

Given that my walk between the parking lot and the office only gives me about 10 minutes of listening time round-trip (yeah, I know, I should be taking BART, I feel bad about it, but driving saves me about an hour a day, time I can spend with my kids, or doing... well, this), I've realized that carrying a 40 gig iPod around all the time is kinda silly. By the time I'd played with the scroll-wheel long enough to find a song I felt like hearing, I'd be on the elevator. So instead I've seized control over my daughter's Shuffle (she never cared for the damn thing... didn't get Dad's music obsession genes, I guess), which I dutifully load up with a couple dozen songs, rotated every week or two, and set to random. Makes a lot more sense.

Alas, I've found (at least for now) that it's a lot more fun to fill it up with some guilty pleasures, various upbeat crap I'd never dream of playing anywhere else but works great for the brief jaunt up & down Market Street. Here, then, my current Top Five Shuffle Guilty Pleasures -- the ones you won't find in my car, on my home stereo, on my regular iPod (in short, where I could actually be found out, unprotected by the Shuffle's artful lack of an i.d. screen or any identifying features whatsoever:

1) AC/DC, Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap: Nope, definitely not an AC/DC fan, but, honestly, nothing gets the job done quite as efficiently as Bon Scott-era AC/DC.

2) Guns 'n' Roses, Paradise City: Yeah, I'm a sucker for a few tunes off the first album. Just not all that often, thanks.

3) Fleetwood Mac, Tusk: I tend to lump 70s megastar-era Mac in alongside the Eagles and other peers as faceless, corporate rock. Buth, let's face it -- Lindsay Buckingham is a God. His work on the Tusk album in particular.

4) Kelly Clarkson, Since U Been Gone: Oh, Good Lord, is this embarrassing. But, really, I'm totally sincere. Growing up in the 70s, our Top 40 crap at least had great kitsch value -- think Bay City Rollers, Sweet, etc. But the last decade, nothing but shit. Boy bands? Kid-friendly hip-hop? All garbage. Except this one song.

5) Queen, Keep Yourself Alive: Oh, and speaking of that kitschy 70s music I grew up with... Not sure if Queen qualifies as a guilty pleasure, as they seem to have some critical support (maybe that's just revisionism?) -- but, yeah, this is pretty bad, so I think it counts. Sure is a lot of fun, though.

Incidentally, as long as I was out scouring the web for some mp3's to link here, I was delighted to stumble across this old favorite:
Elton Motello, Jet Boy Jet Girl
Ok, skip everything up above and just listen to this, before it's too late. Do it now!

1 Comments:

At 2:47 PM, Blogger Bobby B said...

I recently blogged about music snobs and guilty pleasures and kelly clarkson made my list too. interesting.

http://itsnotthebandihateitstheirfans.blogspot.com/2007/07/and-verdict-is-guiltypleasures-that-is.html

 

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