Category Archives: 15 Shuffle Songs

What I Believe

by

This shuffler exercise, as with lots of stuff on this website, is another underhanded, backdoor attempt to prove who has the most diverse musical taste, the widest appreciation of music, etc.

“Look at me, I like country and reggae and punk and jazz.”

“No, look at me, I like folk and ska and rockabilly and punk and migrant workers playing wooden flutes.”

“No, look at me. . .blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.”

Well, good for you. You win the friggin’ Dave Marsh Award.

I’m going to lose these contests every single time. And you know why? Let me use a drug analogy. I don’t know a lot about drugs personally, but I read a lot. Let me give you Handsome Dick Manitoba’s number one from “Richard Manitoba’s 9 Best Drugs Ever (In Descending Order), from “The Official Book Of Sex, Drugs & Rock ‘N’ Roll Lists,” first paragraph only:

1. Heroin

“Best drug ever. No matter what drug they invent, what I might have missed – because there are a plethora of new intoxicants all the time – I went out with a World Championship ring on my finger. I went out winning the World Series and I retired in 1983. Heroin was the granddaddy of them all.”

I’m not quite as old as most of the authors of this site, but I’m plenty old. And I’ve dabbled in all those genres at one time or another. But I think I’ve found the heroin of rock ‘n’ roll.

So, I’ll continue to dabble occasionally, but I know what I really need. And there’s plenty of variety within the “heroin” genre. (This will surely surprise the hell out of all of you, but I think if the only music I had left was the fairly big Hellacopters catalogue, I could get by.)

Kick Out The Jams.

This Time It’s For Real (I Think)

by

1) Hellacopters – (Gotta Get Some Action) Now! – Yeah, I know. But if this is the only song my MP3 player played it wouldn’t be so bad.

2) Hellacopters – Dirty Women – Great Sabbath cover.

3) Queens Of The Stone Age – Mosquito Song

4) Gang Of Four – Outside The Trains Don’t Run On Time

5) Turbonegro – You Must Bleed/All Night Long

6) Hellacopters – Bullet – Speaking of the Misfits. . .

7) Dead Boys – All This And More

8) Hellacopters – Be Not Content

9) Angry Samoans – Carson Girls

10) Thin Lizzy – Derby Boys (Early version of Cowboy Song) – From the extended “Jailbreak” CD set.

11) Devo – Mongoloid

12) The Raconteurs – Old Enough – I think Raconteurs is Jack White’s best project and “Consolers Of The Lonely” is his best project’s best album. For all you kids in the audience, a real drummer often makes things better (good riddance Meg White).

13) Hellacopters – You Are Nothin’

14) KISS – Let Me Go, Rock ‘n’ Roll

15) Hellacopters – All I’ve Got

This list is funny. I don’t know why my shuffler didn’t shuffle very well. I have almost 1000 songs on my MP3 (950 by The Hellacopters, say you). It’s old. Maybe it knows what I like best. Who knows? I never use shuffle and immediately turned it back off anyway after this.

Shuffling off to Buffa-Lawr

by

I love shuffle. Like listening to killer free form FM.

I have around 1500 tunes on my IPhone, and the last 15 (that are not designated “Track XX” because I am too lazy to write the name in):

 

  1. Come Together: Spiritualized
  2. Somebody to Love: Airplane
  3. See the Sky About to Rain: Neil Young live at Massey Hall
  4. Deep Blue: Arcade Fire
  5. Prayer in Open D: Emmylou Harris and Spyboy
  6. Set Me Free: The Kinks
  7. Drown: Smashing Pumpkins
  8. Mr. Tough: Yo La Tengo
  9. What if we Give it Away: REM
  10. Achin’ to Be: Replacements
  11. Good Things Happen to Bad People: Richard Thompson
  12. Sunday Morning: Velvet Underground
  13. Love You To: Beatles
  14. Boris the Spider: The Who
  15. Poem for Eva: Bill Frisell

I Don’t Shuffle, But My MP3 Does

by

1) Hellacopters – (Gotta Get Some Action) Now! – Existence of God proven once again.

2) Devo – (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction – I’m actually pretty tired of this (and “Whip It”). Obviously, I favor parentheses.

3) Hellactopers – (I’m) Watching You – From their final album of covers you won’t know, “Head Off.” I’m three-for-three on parentheses.

4) Hellacopters – (It’s Not A) Long Way Down – This is getting funny.

5) Masters Of Reality – 100 Years (Of Tears On The Wind) – But seriously folks. . .

6) KISS – 100,000 Years – The suit has switched from parentheses to Years.

7) Wire – 106 Beats That – From Years to Numbers.

8) Wire – 12XU – “The Shuffler’s Broke, But The Suit Remains The Same”

9) Hellacopters – 16 With A Bullet – I think I just realized I’m doing some sort of alphabetical order, not Shuffle.

10) Hellacopters – 1995

OK. I’ll stop now and do the exercise correctly later.

This Is Just A Test

by

I gave your 15 Shuffle game a whirl on my iTunes and here’s what I came up with. I have no idea what it says about me or my musical inclinations.

1. Ramones – She’s the One – not the Springsteen song, but you probably know that

2. Sea Oleena – Island Cottage – OK, the rules said “NO editing/cheating.” I have no recollection of downloading the whole album this song comes from!

3. Wrecking Ball – Bruce Springsteen – bootleg of the 4/24/2012 concert at HP Pavilion I attended

4. Living Colour – Information Overload – from 1990’s Time’s Up

5. Walker Brothers – Land of 1,000 Dances – goofy cover of soul classic

6. Swervedriver – Sunset – from shoegaze group’s 1st album, Raise

7. George Harrison – Run So Far – from his underrated final album, Brainwashed

8. Eddie Hinton – Super Lover – anything by this soul master is pretty cool

9. Bad Brains — Sailin’ On – from a MOJO mag sampler called I Love NY Punk

10. Mick Jagger – Brand New Set Of Rules – boring song from 2001’s Goddess in the Doorway

11. Fiona Apple – A Mistake – another spooky Apple song from 1999’s When a Pawn…

12. Grand Funk – Closer to Home/I’m Your Captain – when Grand Funk was popular in the 70s it was totally uncool to like them (because the critics hated them). But with my years of perspective I’m willing to stick my neck out and defend this as pretty good blues rock.

13. Emmylou Harris – J’ai Fait Tout – from the great Red Dirt Girl

14. Rachel Unthank & The Winterset – Sexy Sadie – nice cover of The Beatles’ classic

15. The Sparkletones – Boys Do Cry – deep cut from the rockabilly band most well know for the great “Black Slacks”

15 Shuffle Songs

by

One goal of the exhausting essentials series was to show where our musical tastes overlapped here at Remnants HQ. In the coming days I’ll be posting the songs from each of our lists where we didn’t overlap with anyone, but I was reminded today of a Facebook meme from a couple of years back called 15 Shuffle Songs. The instructions were:

(1) Turn on your MP3 player or music player on your computer.

(2) Go to SHUFFLE songs mode.

(3) Write down the first 15 songs that come up–song title and artist–NO editing/cheating, please.

Back then I went to my recent history in iTunes and found this list, which does show the breadth of stuff I listen to:

Bob and Marcia, Young Gifted & Black: 60’s pop reggae

Elvis Costello and the Attractions, You Bowed Down: Rock

Marvin Gaye, Poor Abbey Walsh: R&B

Bob Wills, Stay a Little Longer: Country Swing

Liz Phair, Perfect World: Indy singer-songwriter

Augustus Pablo, Skanking Dub: Dub reggae

Daby Balde, Halaname: Senagalese singer-songwriter

Mavis Staples, Down in MIssissippi: Gospel R+B great covers Dylan

Tricky, Overcome: UK hip hop (though I know that’s not what it’s called)

Impossible Shapes, bombs: Neo psychedelic folk

John Fogerty, Rambunctious Boy: Classic rock solo

Neko Case, Maybe Sparrow: Singer-songwriter indy rocker

Tabu Ley Rochereau, Lily Mwana Ya Quartier: Classic afro pop

Hank Jones, Ray Brown & Jimmie Smith, My Ship: Jazz

Foo Fighters, Exhausted: Rock

So, when this list popped up because of the new Facebook page layout, I thought it might be a good conversation starter here. The only problem is that I now use five different collections of music: There is iTunes on my computer, as well as Google Music and Mog streaming service. Plus on my phone I have a selection of songs in the music app, and a connection to my Amazon purchases, which allows me to stream anything I ever bought at Amazon. And on my iPod I have another collection of songs.

I’ve been listening to the Amazon collection on my phone most recently, so I thought I’d pull from that for my 15 Shuffle Songs.

Beck, Blackhole: Indie rock from his major label debut, which strongly suggests the lush music he would go on to later.

Leonard Cohen, A Singer Must Die: Classic Singer-Songwriter from his evolutionary New Skin for the Old Ceremony.

Kanye West, Say You Will: Hip Hop Pop par excellance from the initially underrated 808s and Heartbreaks

T. Rex, Christmas Bop (1975): Their Christmas greetings special release.

Rolling Stones, Memory Motel: Classic Stones.

Beck, Loser: Classic Beck, the song that broke him big.

Rolling Stones, Stray Cat Blues: Classic Stones grinding blues leer. It may not get better than this.

Eddie Head and His Family, Down on Me: 20s Country Gospel from a fantastic compilation called American Primitive.

John Hicks, Day Dream: Jazz.A fantastic pianist plays Billy Strayhorn.

Elder Otis Jones, Holy Mountain: More 20s Country Gospel from American Primitive, which doesn’t have the greatest sound, but is still very listenable.

Jens Lekman, Julie: Great Swedish Singer-songwriter mixes tunefulness with shaggy dog storytelling and excellent writing.

Ray Charles, I Can’t Stop Loving You: R&B  star goes Country enjoyably.

John Hicks, Lush Life: More Hicks plays Strayhorn.

Baka Beyond, Spirit of the Forest: New age world music pablum. I’ll push Next before I hit delete.

Nick Lowe, Withered on the Vine: Pop genius rebirth as singer songwriter genius,

Now it’s your turn.