Ape-ril iPod shuffle

Get it? Gorilla Blog....Ape-ril...no? Nothing? Okay, moving on.

I’m back again, to see if my random iPod shuffle of the month creates any new eerie “connections”. This month – not so much. So if you're up for disappointments, read on.

This month's shuffle was done on the way back from NH a couple of weekends ago (Easter, probably), and Sage helped me out. You'll notice some comments from her, which is why I bring it up.

1. “Live-in Skin”, Foo Fighters. When this song came on first, I immediately thought, “I bet a Nirvana song will be next!” (For those who don't know, Dave Grohl, leader of Foo Fighters, was also the drummer for Nirvana.) One thing I’ve learned – when you expect a weird iPod shuffle connection, you’ll never get it. So one should expect it when they least expect it. Or something like that.

2. “In Too Deep”, Sum 41. Nothing too exciting here.

3. “Waiting for the Worms”, Pink Floyd. This song comes out of nowhere, a track from their classic album “The Wall”, one I haven't listened to in ages. Sage immediately thought there was a connection: “Tapeworms dig in deep into skin!” A bit of a stretch if you ask me. But to keep things interesting, here's a story from my high school days that has to do with Pink Floyd. In 11th grade Trig class, for some unknown reason, one Monday we had a "Show and Tell" day. I think someone talked the teacher into doing it, and I got it into my head that I would "show" how I could eat 1 pound of kielbasa in 1 minute. Of course I never attempted this before; it just sounded like a good idea. So the night before I cooked up some Hillshire Farms, wrapped it up, and brought it to Trig class (which happened to be around 9 am). Of course I failed miserably -- failed in that I didn't even finish half of it in a minute -- but at least I got to eat kielbasa during Trig class. Anyway, I felt quite low that I failed so badly that I thought I should bring something else to the "show and tell" extravaganza. So I got up and said that I could recite Pink Floyd's "The Wall" in its entirety. Now "The Wall" is quite a long double album, and would have taken me into 3rd period English if I tried reciting the entire thing, so I said name any song on the album, and I'd recite that one. I knew in the back of my head that I could do the entire album...except for "Hey You". Don't ask me why, but for some reason I could never remember the lyrics to "Hey You". But considering there's over 30 songs on "The Wall", what were the chances someone would pick "Hey You"? Pretty good, as it turned out, as that WAS the first request, and I ended up sitting back down, meekly, with my tail between my legs, stinking of kielbasa. High school was fun, wasn't it?

4. “Feeling Gravity’s Pull”, R.E.M. The first song from their great album “Fables of the Reconstruction”. I loved that music back in the 80’s. In fact, if I wasn't listening to Pink Floyd back then, I was listening to R.E.M. Or Peter Gabriel. Or Aerosmith. (Hey, it was New England in the 80's...Aerosmith was like the Red Sox or waiting in sub-zero temperature for the bus: You HAD to like it -- there was no other choice.)

5. “I Will Survive” (Live), R.E.M. Two R.E.M. songs in a row! Unfortunately I don’t really count this as being anything too strange. I have 252 R.E.M. songs on my iPod (as I’ve said before, I’m an aging-80’s hipster, so of course I do), so the chances two R.E.M. songs would play back-to-back (at this point in my shuffle) was 251 out of 5,546, or only 4.5%. Nothing too exciting. Oh, and their version of Gloria Gaynor’s disco classic isn’t really that great anyway.

6. “Llama”, Phish. The album version, which is kind of unusual, as I only have a few of Phish’s studio albums on my iPod. Speaking of llama’s, my llama shit delivery should be arriving shortly, I hope! So maybe my iPod was trying to tell me something about my gardening...

7. “Magnet and Steel”, Walter Egan. NICE! This made it onto my iPod by virtue of being on the “Boogie Nights” soundtrack, and this classic 70’s saccharine love song is glorious in its cheesiness. I had a boss at National Geographic (let’s call him “Shane”), who for some reason used to quote/sing this song all the time, especially the chorus: “For you are a magnet / and I am steel”. (He used to also opine longingly about "The Pina Colada Song", and how the couple in the Rupert Holmes classic found each other when they were looking for someone else, and how it was all summed up with the line, "Oh, it's you". But he was also a huge Miles Davis fan, so he wasn't completely insane.) It is quite ridiculous when you think about it. (Not just the lyric, but the fact that Shane used to quote it. Meta can back me up on that.) And I certainly hope that this song is now firmly entrenched in your head for the rest of the day.

8. “NICU”, Phish (from Hampton 3/6/09). Again, one might think this is another weird coincidence – 2 Phish songs in the first 8. But when I tell you I have over 550 Phish songs on my iPod, you might think 2 things: 1) "Okay, so it’s not that unusual", and 2) "10% of your iPod is Phish? Do you have a problem?" Well, yes, I do, and that’s mostly because I have about 25 different shows on the iPod. But hey, I’m still only using about 10% of the 80GB drive, so give me a break. (And I probably have another 150 or so shows on CD or tape elsewhere in the house. Okay, maybe I do have a problem.) However, this song did make me do a double-take when it came on, as I was wearing my NICU sweatshirt at the time. (And if you may be asking what “NICU” stands for, it’s a play on words from one of the refrains from the song: “And I see you”. Get it? No. Okay, moving on...)

9. “Coal Train Robberies”, Elvis Costello. Fun fact #1: Elvis Costello was born Declan Patrick MacManus in 1954 in London, but his parents are of Irish heritage. Fun fact #2: In "E.T.", when Elliot's brother Michael comes home from school and raids the fridge, he's singing the lyrics to "Accidents Will Happen". "There's so many people to see / So many people you can check up on / And add to your collection..."

10. “Until the Day is Done” (Live from Athens), R.E.M. The boys from Athens, GA make their 3rd appearance in the April shuffle, and I’m sure it won’t be their last.

So nothing too creepy during this month’s song shuffle. If nothing interesting happens in May, this segment might have to be retired.

UPDATE: So as I said, I did this shuffle a couple of weeks ago, and typed it up, and never got a chance to post it. Since then, my iPod has gone the way of the Betamax and 8-track tapes. Meaning, I had to get a new one. So here's what happened. One day last week I was going for a walk at lunch, and grabbed my iPod and headphones. When I got outside I noticed that when I unlocked the iPod, it still wouldn't work. I tried resetting it, tried a hard re-boot, and nothing. Not even the backlight would go off, which is supposed to happen after a minute or so. All I had was a dead iPod with Elvis Costello staring at me from his cover of "This Year's Model", and the promise of "Lipstick Vogue" to play. So on my way home from work I stopped at the Apple store in Chestnut Hill to see if they could do anything. They were less than helpful, telling me my warranty was expired (I had bought this iPod Classic about 16 months ago, and the warranty is only good for 1 year), so I had 2 options: Pay $130 to send it in for a drive replacement, or buy a new one and get 10% off if I recycle my old one. The latest iPod Classics go for $250, so with my discount, it was a choice of $130 for a used iPod, or $225 for a brand new one. I went with buying a new one, for the most part because I wasn't sure I could go more than a day without my iPod in the car. (The commute with the radio? What am I, a farmer?) So now I have a new iPod, and who knows if it has the virtual intelligence that my old one had. Check back next month for another shuffle, and we'll see if the new iPod gets nutty on us.